ADE7A
Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet?
DE7A
We sit here stranded, though we're all doing our best to deny it
EE7A
And Louise holds a handful of rain, tempting you to defy it
DA
Lights flicker from the opposite loft,
DA
in this room the heat pipes just cough,
DA
the country music station plays soft,
E7
but there's nothing, really nothing to turn off
ADE7A
Just Louise and her lover so entwined,
DAE7ADE7A
and these visions of Johanna that conquer my mind.
ADE7A
In the empty lot where the ladies play blind man's bluff with the key chain
DE7A
And the all night girls, they whisper of escapades out on the "D" train
E
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight,
A
ask himself if it's him or them that's really insane
DA
Louise, she's all right, she's just near
DA
She's delicate and seems like the mirror
DA
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear,
E7
that Johanna's not here
ADE7A
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face,
DAE7ADE7A
where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.
ADE7A
Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
DE7A
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
EA
And when bringing her name up he speaks of a farewell kiss to me
DA
He's sure got a lotta gall,
DA
to be so useless and all,
DA
muttering small talk at the wall,
E7
while I'm in the hall
ADE7A
Oh, how can I explain, it's so hard to get on?
DAE7ADE7A
And these visions of Johanna, they kept me up past the dawn.
ADE7A
Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
DE7A
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
EA
But Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues, you can tell by the way she smiles
DA
See the primitive wallflower freeze,
DA
when the jelly faced women all sneeze,
DAE7
hear the one with the mustache say, "Jeeze, I can't find my knees"
ADE7A
Oh, jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule
DAE7ADE7A
But these visions of Johanna they make it all seem so cruel.
ADE7A
The peddler now speaks to the countess who's pretending to care for him
A
Saying' "Name me someone that's not a parasite,
DE7A
and I'll go out and say a prayer for him." But like Louise
E
always says, "Ya can't look at much, can ya man?" as she, herself,
A
prepares for him
DA
And Madonna, she still has not showed
DA
We see this empty cage now corrode
DA
Where her cape of the stage once had flowed
DA
The fiddler, he now steps to the road,
DA
he writes everything s been returned which was owed,
DAE7
on the back of the fish truck that loads while my conscience explodes
ADEA
The harmonicas play the skeleton keys and the rain,
DAE7A
and these visions of Johanna are now all that remain.
This arrangement for the song is the author's own work and represents their interpretation of the song. You may only use this for private study, scholarship, or research.