Robyn Hitchcock - Visions of Johanna lyrics

Ain't it just like the night to play tricks
When you're tryin' to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded
Though we're all doin' our best to deny it
And Louise holds a handful of rain
Temptin' you to defy it
Lights flicker from the opposite loft
In this room the heat pipes just cough
The country music station plays soft
But there's nothing
Really nothing to turn off
Just Louise and her lover so entwined
And these visions of Johanna
That conquer my mind

In the empty lot where the ladies play
Blindman's bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of
Escapades out on the "D" train
We can hear the night
Watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it's him or
Them that's really insane
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all
Too concise and too clear
That Johanna's not here
The ghost of 'lectricity howls in
The bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have
Now taken my place now, little boy lost
He takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery
He likes to live dangerously
And when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me
He's sure got a lotta gall to
Be so useless and all
Muttering small talk at the wall
While I'm in the hall how can I explain?
Oh, it's so hard to get on
And these visions of Johanna
They kept me up past the dawn

Inside the museums, Infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must
Be like after a while
But Mona Lisa musta had the highway blues
You can tell by the way she smiles
See the primitive wallflower freeze
When the jelly-faced women all sneeze
Hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeez
I can't find my knees"
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from
The head of the mule
But these visions of Johanna
They make it all seem so cruel

The peddler now speaks to the countess
Who's pretending to care for him
Sayin', "Name me someone that's not
A parasite and I'll
Go out and say a prayer for him"
But like Louise always says
"Ya can't look at much, can ya man?"
As she, herself, prepares for him
And Madonna, she still has not showed
We see this empty cage now corrode
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
The fiddler, he now steps to the road
He writes ev'rything's been returned
Which was owed
On the back of the fish truck that loads
While my conscience explodes
The harmonicas play the skeleton
Keys and the rain
And these visions of Johanna are
Now all that remain