[Floating Hook] Now I’m working through *Crisis* With my knees against the bed And I don’t know if my eyes are watering Or if I’m crying instead I keep wiping at the panels But the colors start to slide Now I’m working through *Crisis* And another world just died [Verse] I bought it off the spinner rack Drugstore smell and covered mags in the back Seventy-five cents in quarters and a pack of gum Reagan talking through the television About morning in America, and the right to own guns But Supergirl was dead in Superman’s arms And reagan wasn’t helping anybody as he traded arms Her cape folded under her My thumb pressed into the corner His mouth open And I'm looking on in horror I didn’t know stories could do that Kill somebody and Bring them back Then sell me the next issue Before I’d finished grieving [Chorus] We were children in collapsing universes Learning every world could end Heroes broke their backs for strangers Villains sometimes died as friends The missiles waited in their silos The Russians waited on the news And I waited for the comic shop To tell me what was true [Floating Hook] Now I’m working through *Crisis* With the pages in my hands And I don’t know if my eyes are watering Or if I finally understand There are bodies in the panels There are speeches from outside Now I’m working through *Crisis* And another world just died [Chorus] We were children in collapsing universes Drawing symbols on our skin Waiting for the mutant massacre To tell us who would make it in The rich men smiled behind their podiums The poor men vanished from the frame And every month the heroes changed But the villains kept their names [Verse] Secret Wars arrived in plastic bags A black suit crawled across Spider Man and now there is a symbiote and a master plan and venom is the beginning of the death of him again (nanananananananananananananananana) Cable television Shopping malls Star Wars lasers pointed at the sky A smiling president telling us Not to worry about the glowing map behind him At home I stacked my comics By company By number By how badly they had hurt me *Watchmen* sat apart from everything A blood drop on a yellow clock Men asking who watches them While Iran-Contra crawled beneath the door And Oliver North raised his hand Inside the same television That used to show cartoons I looked at heroes differently after that I looked at adults differently too [Floating Hook] Now I’m working through *Crisis* Issue seven on my bed And I don’t know if my eyes are watering Or if I’m crying instead I keep wiping at the panels But the ink comes off inside Now I’m working through *Crisis* And another world just died
