Miles Hodges - What's in a man lyrics

When this man enters a room, he wishes to keep his chin up To carry with him a continental smile And a heart that lifts the floor like a splintering bra** chorus of drums and saxophones Quest and Coltrane marching to Gettysburg at my feet With shotgun improvs that grow And rock steady playing like a humble base line for the beautiful The gorgeous shootouts that ring out throughout old Chicago jazz clubs And smokey New Orleans hallways He is a man He is a man because he claims he's claimed his humanity Yet still walks with the melancholy whisper of everything mama couldn't teach him Preacher couldn't preach to him On Fridays when the party ends the clouds unclench their fists I walk home, empty pack if Marlboros in my back pocket Girl, I don't know so well under my left arm laughing too damn loudly I sit under a poster of Hendrix with Mona Lisa-like eyes that follow me wherever I go and I wonder What's in a man It wasn't always like that though Before the intrigue of standing tall swallowed my skin Every boy had a smiling father to dribble him Every watch could stop if you please Every set of five fingers had a warm twin that fit But since then I've spent too many Sundays with the sun and girls just looking for dick Thought I had one once but now all I do is write black love poems The only thing she hates more than me are mirrors The only thing I hate more than love is not being in it Call it crystal eyed or young of me to say But some days I wake up wondering where have all the trumpets gone What makes a man And what have they done with Motown's tongue When did the sound of my own breathe become not enough music to get me through the night And why can't we let ourselves go in the nighttime without messing it up in the morning In the morning, wake me up like we died in each other's arms twelve hours prior And had been planning to do so on breathe cue from the first time my lips cuddled your forehead I know my carpet may not taste as sweet as the golden gates but you slept here last night Some where between the bankers club and the eight ball from yesterday I was reminded that a broken heart bleeds red So my past, my insides got you looking like a fresh murder Can I be a man and clean that up for you? Can you love me just as hard if I'd rather talk some stuff out Rather picket fence my tongue quiet and slow like a steam across the whole navy Van Gogh of your body Cheek to back curve of your thigh until I disappear And there's no more before, no more after Just a screaming white light rattling the inside of your skull like a drug addicted prisoner And a man standing tall with a motionless face Looking down on his work like a lost diamond