image The Time Of Summer Lightning It was the time of summer lightning, you must’ve caught my heart off-guard, you sent me a letter, the ink’d run in the rain, you wrote: ‘Our love turned out as fleeting as the smoke from a joint’. I sucked my stomach in and imagined your nipples hard…… On the humpbacked bridge where some kid had scrawled ‘Audrey Loves Mikey 4 ever’ and I wondered if forever had expired yet You said It’s not a lover you need, more like an exorcist. I said “I was just never much good at that happiness thing, I had those baby-buggy blues at barely six months old, But where the hell am I gonna find redemption this time of night?” I felt a raindrop hit my wrist and trickle down into my palm…… You introduced me to this guy you’d met, Maybe the love of your life you said, Everybody said he looked like Steve McQueen, You met him at your brother’s funeral, He said he got a hard-on at just the sound of your voice, But I said ‘You just don’t look right together, You just look strange together”. I watched my footprints in the mud fill up with rain. You sent me flowers I heard you stole from a grave……… I’m driving with my knees while I light a cigarette, There’s a roller-skater hanging off the back of a bus And the wind shakes the night like it’s some hussy it owns And you’re sitting close beside me in your tight black capris, And the city’s lit up like a circuit-board And the cars move round the ring-road like jewels round a noose. I said ‘I love this scuzzy neighbourhood, it’s where I belong, I rent a room from a poisoner that I met in the joint, We sit up half the night talking about the meaning of life, About the white-knuckle ride from birth to death, From the delivery-room to the chapel of rest’. You said ‘I hate it when you take yourself for some kind of fucking saint.’ I said ‘Level with me, Audrey, are you really gonna marry that guy? His ring will hit your finger like a cell-door closing’. And in dead kind of voice you said: ‘Why don’t you just drive me home?’ Audrey got married in a turquoise dress On a cruel and heartless sort of day, And Wonderboy wore his leg in a cast I watched it all from a car parked down the street. Now I’ve found a job at a music store Full of kids playing fuzz guitar all day, I heard God speak in a cloud of reverb: He said ‘Aww man just let it go, it’s the only way’. I met a woman called Gemma, We took a ride on the Tunnel of Love, She’s with me right now, picking at a tuna melt, I know sad stuff happens, it don’t mean jack shit, But I can’t stop thinking ‘bout Audrey, I just can’t shake off Audrey. You know the time I love the best? You know the time I hate the most? It’s the time of summer lightning, The time of summer lightning………… [ Back ]