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THE DESPERATE HOURS


Dear friend, I think we’re prisoners with invisible stripes.
That’s how I’ll begin this song you’ve asked me to write.
We’re lost in this petrified forest of invisible hypes.
We wander through this dark passage all through the night.

I’d never ask you to thank your lucky stars
For bringing us together on this isle of fury.
The desperate hours flash by like subway cars.
I wonder where they’re headed in such a hurry.

Dear friend, I think we’re lost in this lonely place.
Would it do any good to knock on any door?
Should we paddle back up the river and try to retrace
The desperate hours that left us alone on this shore?

We’re two against a world of situations.
But the king of the underworld has an appetite
For the flesh of the men and women of all nations.
So the desperate hours they drive us through the night.

Dear friend, I think we’re angels with dirty faces.
The king of the underworld has us against the wall.
He’s a devil with women but lacks in the social graces.
So the harder he drives our hearts, the harder we fall.

We’re three on a match, smoking here in the midnight.
But this fire in the left hand of God is a holy terror.
It reminds us that we’re no angels dressed in white.
And so the desperate hours are going to haunt even our mirror.

Dear friend, I think we’re in a China clipper.
Dear friend, I think the winds a drift are out of control.
To sail across the Pacific, you must shed your lead slipper
And fly to your dark reckoning with both body and soul.

To have and have not a hand to put your hand in -
That’s the only question we follow into the big sleep.
Dear friend, these desperate hours are too deep to stand in.
But, dear friend, these desperate hours are all we keep.

Words and Music by Galen Green c 1978

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