Aint it just like the night to play tricks
When you're tryin to be so quiet?
We sit here stranded, though were 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
Blindmans 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
But louise she's all right, she's just near,
Shes delicate and seems like the mirror,
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That johannas 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 her farewell kiss to me
Hes sure got a lot of gall to be so useless and all,
Muttering small talk at the wall while Im in the hall
Oh, how can I explain? 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 even mona lisa must have 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 jeeze, I can't find my knees
Jewels and binoculars hag 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 whos pretending to care for him
Saying 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 evrythings 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