Forever

Unpack the suitcases, baby, let's stay home for a while
You can run but you can't hide and I was just hitting my stride
When the floodwaters poured down from the mountains
Floatin' dogs down Main Street

Call all your friends, tell 'em you won't be blowin' 'round for a while
Tell them with this call, the line gets cut
'Frigerator's full and the radio's on
The Yankees are beating the stuffing out of someone
Ain't it funny how some things are still almost recognizable

For years I planted my seeds far and wide
But never very deep
And they all blew away
Stripped off of the topsoil, faded and lonesome and blowing
Like the dust of New Mexico

They killed the mayor for water rights, south of town
But life goes on
One time I saw him out-drink a buffalo under the moon
His wife was an ex-hooker in Florida during the Bay of Pigs
She graduated from the race riots in Michigan so they say
Things were going good til he started cheating on Mom
Don’t ask me to speak English, I speak American

Don’t worry, I won’t reveal any secrets 'cept to say
That it's one thing to find a little love after the homecoming dance
But when you've given it up as some hopeless teenage dream
And then find yourself picking up rocks on the beach
Placing them inside of a heart-shaped box
After you lost your faith in faith
In beauty, in meaning, in anything

You have redeemed my faith in the alleyway poet
Who drinks away his nights and sleeps away his days
Recounting mad visions of princes and reckless women
And desperate men

When I close my eyes
I can picture you in that red dress
Clinging to your frame like a cloud that settled there
And there you were
But still it was not until that first kiss
That the earth beneath my feet
Made some barely perceptible shift
And I come to this moment
When I say the words
I never, ever thought would escape my lips

I'm gonna love you forever
Forever and ever
I'm gonna love you forever

And as the paint is peeling down off of the walls
Put on your cowboy hat, girl, I think I hear the call
Of the desert wailing, mad blowing like a street corner saxophone
Calling us home

Gonna love you forever
Forever and ever
I'm gonna love you forever