Califone - Family Swan lyrics

Golden-eyed pigeons fly in pairs
Grey squeaklings linking space
"Swans mate for life"
The old git on the news turns to the camera
For the last word, "life"

Even the wizened are media-savvy
Swan families sticking their beaks
Mounted on long thin necks
Into other family members' business
The sickness of one means the rest
Won't go to fill their swan-bellies
No, they'll stick togethеr
Floating around until the poison kills
That bullet was outlawed yеars ago
Lead shell-casings litter the area

He was a family-swan dead, bit the bullet
Heavy head hanging on a long limp neck
"It's hard on your mother
It's hard on your mother, you know"
In my head, I say
"Yes, you are hard on my mother"
He wants to shout out
"You're killing your mother
You're killing your mother again"
Family man tried to down a bottle of pills

Family-mother had to get farm-woman
From next door
To come and get the pills out of his mouth
Flipping him over, cursing
Like pulling out the fringe of a
Rug caught in the vacuum cleaner
His lips tightened over dissolving pills
White, cream, blue pills
Tiny logos carved into them
Tiny logos carved in the dissolving pills

"Are you trying to kill your mother?"
That was his crazy cry when at twelve
I got caught playing nicky-knocky-nine doors
Seemed absurd mother passed us in the hall
Heading for her hot bath for the first time
I noticed and wondered why
A woman's ass is wider than a man's
Foolishly I'd asked
"How did mom get cancer?"
Turned out I was to blame the answer
"Having a child later in life and
Not breast feeding caused the cancer"

Oh, bitter pill oh, bullet with a name on it
A tiny message carved into it
A tiny message carved into
My dissolving heart

When I moved away from their madness
Family-mother put on her tweed
Going-to-the doctor suit
And came to my little attic apartment
She didn't say hello to my boyfriend
Sitting on the edge of my bed
She was there to inform me
That I would have to move home
My leaving had affected her sleep

Oh, now she's eighty
She has terrible nightmares
I prompt her to reveal them while
I learn that she's integrating me
Into the disasters she watches on TV

Family man tells me a million terrible things
All at once, one after another
My stature decreases
I become short and ugly again
Oh, my voice is hollow, small
(My voice is hollow, small)
I can't do anything right
(I can't do anything right, I am worthless)
I am worthless (Hanging on)
Hanging on (To blame) to blame

My thinking forms awkward words
To be twisted and thrown back
Into my tiny fifty-four year-old face
Family man's gonna set me straight
"Your mother's gonna live
Another twenty years
She's going to live to a hundred"
Family man rants and gets confused
"Your mother's gonna live
Another hundred years"
"She's gonna live another hundred years"

Oh, I wish he'd make up his mind
I wish he'd make up his mind
Either I'm killing her or she's
Never going to die
Family man tells me a million terrible things
All at once, one after another
Family man gonna set me straight
Family man gonna set me straight
Family man gonna set me straight
Family man gonna set me straight