Cigarette Shadows

(These are song lyrics from the alt-rock band Echo of a Sundial, a relatively popular early 90’s group hailing from a suburb of Seattle in the United States of My Head. All song lyrics - unless otherwise noted - are credited to lead vocalist Jeremy Whitfield with occasional input from his band mates)

Trailing
Off to the air

Swimming
through dark oxygen, like
phantom hair

Faces of broken mirrors
crowd the clouds
of memories

I’d like to think that something
worth smoking lies
inside of me

Didn’t they say
it’s the cancer that makes
us all
right inside?

I can’t say
if it’s the devil that makes
me
feel alright...

*
And the streetlights are comets
in the grey
Freeway stars tell me
I’ll be okay
But the shadows of my
cigarette blues
know the truth

Oh, it’s true...

Maybe you
Can push through...
*

When the cave doesn’t cave in
the shadows just keep
marching on

The windshield’s opaque
and it’s making
all these
reflections wrong

The driver’s got a bourbon surprise
And a dirty yellow gleam in her eye

I just wanna dance
Take a chance
on all these
clouded lies

*
And the streetlights are comets
in the grey
Freeway stars tell me
I’ll be okay
But the shadows of my
cigarette blues
know the truth

Oh, it’s true...

Only you
Can push through...
*

There’s a constellation
of pain
in this haze

The nicotine fits
are the shit
for escape
from the faces
my tobacco makes...

Watch the world go by...
through grey time-travel
to the graveyard behind
these dreams..

and it seems...

The smoke ring goes
to the memory it knows
will sting...

I just wanna dance
Take a chance
on all these
clouded lies...

the clouds lie
all the time...

*
And the streetlights are comets
in the grey
Freeway stars tell me
I’ll be okay
But the shadows of my
cigarette blues
know the truth

Oh, it’s true...

Only you
Can push through...

If you wanna push through...

Please push through...

It’s only smoke, it can’t
it can’t
kill you...

Oh, please, push through...

(Jeremy Whitfield, EOAS self-titled album, 1989)