FOOT HIGH FENCE

With the glint in your eyes of a million soft blows

A chess set of problems in neatly formed rows

A demeanor as subtle as a stuffed up nose

Your actions they only confuse me.

You let your heart off on the road of dispute

On the oft-beaten track that you seldom commute

You chop back the greenery and force feed the root

Can’t you see that you’ve only been cruel to me?

With your corduroy words spillin’ onto your shirt

Your misty-eyed novels of how you’ve been hurt

You bring me your lace and you give me back dirt

Do you think in the mirror I see me

As a one-time gypsy with the world in a jar

Where in trying to please me you take me as far

As a four-wheeled dream in a mid-sixties car

And you constantly try to run through me.

All the hours that you spent starin’ into the feet

of the bouncers, the peons and the kids on the street

in the company of toothaches you’re hoping to meet

someone who can clear your complexion

so you pry me and prod me and you try to make sense

like a tightrope walker on a foot high fence

saying things like, “I love you” and contractual dents

in my dreams and my hours of reflection.

words & music by Brad Riesau

©1984 Brad Riesau / v32unes

original 4-track version released on BRAD RIESAU - v32unes

rtRECORDS v32-001 (cassette only) / released 12/25/84

Adapted from the original liner notes: This excursion in nastiness and wordplay seems to have no origin. I can’t even recall which coast

it was written on but it was written in approximately 1981.