City Of Ghosts

[Intro] Every night I return to the haunting city full of familiar pain. Unable to reach by train, can't fly in by plane. Not by road or rail but only by dream before dawn. Not quite a place I can reach by any maps ever drawn. I just close my eyes and this city builds itself around me. A city eyes fail to see where ghosts are free to be... --- [Verse 1] There's a boulevard of unfinished sentences and forgotten praise. Ashes glow like neon signs in the city of night that consumes the days. Streetlights humming old apologies from past calamities. Storefront windows full of better versions of me nobody sees. The clocks here never tick – frozen behind dusty panes of glass. Yet every hand just circles yesterday and tomorrow fails to pass. The traffic crawls through intersections where the lights just look grey. Where all my grand ambitions couldn't cross or maybe lost their way. Apartments lean like tired giants struggling to stand alone. Growing tall by denial of trust a place where rust has grown. The tenants whisper through the cracks with voices just like mine. Confessing things they almost were where 'I'm ok' doesn't mean 'I'm fine'. Spray-painted across crumbling stone and every locked door. Somebody wrote...'YOU COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE'. Some of the letters climb high – nearly twenty stories tall. Whoever wrote them knew what goes up is doomed to fall. --- [Pre-Chorus] But somehow the glowing embers refuse to die. A grim reminder the end lurks beyond the day I refuse to try. --- [Chorus] Welcome to my city of ashen neon lights. Built from blueprints of pain and seemingly endless fights. Every broken dream became a building inhabited by a ghost. Upon closer looks you'll see it's me that is every single host. Every scar became a street to wander along lost and alone. The avenues are lined with ethereal futures shown from what a troubled past has grown. The skyline stitched with promises of all the goals that I would never see. Yet beneath the streets burns the stubborn coals refusing to abandon me. --- [Verse 2] There's a district where my broken childhood is left to linger. Stealing memories from myself yet I'm not sure where to cast my finger. There is a carnival that haunts not with joy but with dread. Built around a carousel that replays my pain instead The ferris wheel turns over empty pavement lots. Still reaching for a sky in which every star now rots. And high above the shattered rooftops are hopes hung from telephone wires. Weathered by years of disappointment – singed by frequent fires. Yet somehow they never quite expire just suspended like a dream. Forever out of reach or maybe thats just how they seem. I pass a theater showing all my disasters with an audience that looks like me. Every seat is occupied by the remnants of all I failed to be, cheering every fuckin' tragedy. Over population doesn't stop the arrival of phantoms in this city. For its built to confine as many of me so long as they know pity. --- [Chorus] Welcome to my city of ashen neon lights. Built from blueprints of pain and seemingly endless fights. Every broken dream became a building inhabited by a ghost. Upon closer looks you'll see it's me that is every single host. Every scar became a street to wander along lost and alone. The avenues are lined with ethereal futures shown from what a troubled past has grown. The skyline stitched with promises of all the goals that I would never see. Yet beneath the streets burns the stubborn coals refusing to abandon me. --- [Bridge] I've tried to burn this place down – I've tried to evict each ghost. Poured gasoline across the memories but only lost what I cherished most. I begged for an end – I prayed for a collapse. I dreamed of the day away from these nightmarish traps. But truth be told I like it here... Built by each and every fear...a quiet place to disappear... --- [Final Verse] I wander on down the river churning with spirits that failed to cross. Anything caught in the current is chalked up as a loss. It just cuts right through like it's trying to wash away the decay. Black and deep with all I couldn't save proof it'll always be this way. Its waters carry countless dead versions of me drifting into the haze. But at the end out of reach lies the glow they flow towards brighter days. Welcome to my city of neon ash and ambitious death. Where bright dreams and darkest doom pass within the same breath. Where my ghosts call home and populate quick. And every loss of me just becomes another brick. This is the one and only place I don't feel completely alone. For every ghost here understands every disaster I've known. --- [Outro] So every night I return too afraid to lose my way. If I didn't have this place where would my spirits stay? So I let the losses stack until I'm beneath it all. Beneath the constructs I've let grow this tall. Beneath the monuments to all I've failed to be... There's still a city standing and somehow – it's where I'm truly me...where I'm truly...free.