Ambitions Are - The Golden Palominos

You don’t trade money here

You trade information

And skin

Right now there are thousands of forgotten people

Trying to remember you

Children are killed because they write an enemy’s name backwards on the wall

Young girls tie ribbons around their slender throats trying to keep their heads

on

Chocolate boy walks to ice cream truck for vanilla cone is shot dead three times

This city kills its young

The angels all have guns now

The angels aren’t anyone you’d want to pray to

No-one here has goals like:

Get a job, get married, have kids

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

No desire to get rich

Become famous

Move out

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe

Keep breathing

Every woman who walks by is every woman you’ll never have

Beautiful, quick and poisonous as mercury

The city is full of women slim and busy

Hoping there is room in some man’s life

For them

Women sort through the dead bodies like bags of laundry with exhausted mama eye

Sigh because they are too dry for tears

People huddle in kitchens, clasp their hands, celebrating

Something has tried to kill them and failed

Nightclub men twitch too subdued to recognize apocalypse

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

You’ve driven these streets a thousand times and all they offer is their

exhaustion

Your nightmares have your name now

You exit the glitter storm, go home alone and embrace the violence instead

The city has claimed all your blood and memory this is cool and unusual

punishment

You go for years without touching another

Never think of the 'why?'

You are so casual about brutality

Doctor says: take this, it’ll settle you down

Doctor says: take this, it’ll settle your system

Doctor says: take this, it’ll we’ll settle the bill

Doctor says: take this, it’ll settle the score

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

There’s a voice on the loudspeaker and she speaks your language

Doesn’t need to stay

It can disappear when the wife walks in

Here comes the interrogation room scene

Today is the day you’re gonna get caught

You’re terrified of what you crave

Don’t get delighted

They want you scared

The sweet things don’t stick around but the bullshit lasts forever

Please press pound

You’re dual-channeling for new friends or just new things to envy

Who’s running the machine you run on?

Wish you had someone to speak code with

Wish you had someone to steal things for

Wish you had someone to fuck you so you could finally go to sleep

You just want to die

A little bit

Ink and paint is making you faint in your pale pale shirt stolen from uptown

stores

Watch the girls in the twin sweater sets smoke, cough, throw up

Teeth-scraped knuckles are a tell-tale sign

Get in the car

Get in the car

Get in the car and what you hear is a sound of impact

Turn around slowly and check your body for bruises

There is no-one here to take care of you

Open-mouthed, waiting for a candy kiss and all you get is rain communion

Between lap dances and laptops you see girls who fuck like they’re boneless

You’re thirty eight and your job is telling fourteen year old boys what to

think is cool

Are you laughing?

They are

And this one is a fire

And that one is a flame

And this one is a spark

And that one is a match you put out in your mouth when no-one was looking

And in your dreams your grandparents live forever

And you throw your love into the air like glitter swallowing stars,

spitting up stardust

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

Mothers wring their hands and say: I’m so at a loss

Best friend says: I’ve come not to praise you, but to destroy with my bare

fucking hands

Girl on the television says: you all work for me now

Boss says: come here, let me hit you just once

Man on the street says: I can make any woman kill herself in a year

So you drive your dead body home at night

And when you sleep the angels kisses are mercury

Mercury

Breaking love into lust

Grinding pearls into dust

Breaking love into lust

Grinding pearls into dust

Breaking love into lust

Grinding pearls into dust

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe keep breathing

The ambitions are

Wake up breathe

Keep breathing