California, Gracefully
Journey of Addiction and Redemption: Every Time I Die's Poetic Ode
Lyrics
Two sets of taillights burn dim and divide,
Refers to two sets of dim taillights, symbolizing separation or distance.
Stretch for miles making track marks across what veins fail to carry.
Describes the vast stretch of road, creating marks like veins that fail to carry something significant.
You should have taken my keys while my hands were shaking.
Suggests a missed opportunity for intervention or prevention while the speaker was in a vulnerable state.
You could have kept the dead gone, entombed in the soil of arms.
Implies that intervention could have kept the deceased away, buried in the safety of comforting arms.
Raise the breathing abrasion with a turn of the key.
Describes starting a vehicle and intensifying a difficult situation.
Lost motor skills and a set cruise control.
Depicts impaired motor skills and a reckless reliance on cruise control.
Mangled insect screams through the puddles of drool.
Paints a chaotic scene with insect sounds amidst drool, possibly reflecting the speaker's altered state.
Mainline the highway baby,
Suggests embracing the highway as a means of escape or distraction.
Tie off the concrete veins and set the radio to FM
Metaphorically ties off the "concrete veins" and engages with love songs on the radio, hinting at escapism.
Love songs clocked relapse defined by the RPM's of a static heart,
Relates love songs to relapse, measuring the rhythm by the static heart's RPM.
Reanimated by the rush of eyes and horizon.
Describes feeling alive and revived through the rush of experiences and the horizon.
Nothing warms like a road flare when caution sets.
Suggests finding warmth in dangerous situations, such as a road flare, when caution is disregarded.
Anodyne seeps like dashed yellow lines through the withdrawn rearview addict.
Compares anodyne (pain reliever) to dashed yellow lines, possibly indicating a temporary escape from pain.
Drenched to the drawn teeth in seething foam.
Portrays being deeply immersed in a situation, surrounded by intense emotions or challenges.
If you want me dead, you should have called me home.
Suggests that if someone wished harm upon the speaker, they should have brought them back home.
Rumble strip as pulse prevents retreating eyes, dilate and close.
Uses a rumble strip as a metaphor for a pulsating heartbeat that prevents avoiding reality.
I can feel the dry heaves moisten, I can feel the blood withdraw.
Expresses physical sensations, linking the dry heaves to moistening and blood withdrawal.
You are my failed twelve step program.
Describes someone as a failed twelve-step program, possibly referencing unsuccessful attempts at recovery.
A red light could kick this habit, a needle full of the junkies fuel.
Suggests that a red light or a needle could be the solution to breaking a harmful habit.
Drops of blood on her fingertips.
Indicates physical evidence of harm or struggle, with drops of blood on fingertips.
Your arms are a deprivation chamber.
Describes someone's arms as a deprivation chamber, possibly alluding to a toxic or harmful relationship.
Sterile to sixty in forever flat.
Portrays a sterile, unchanging state at a high speed, possibly reflecting a sense of futility or stagnation.
Dissolve into the coast like John Wayne.
Metaphorically dissolves into the coast like John Wayne, suggesting a heroic but inevitable end.
A hero and his heroine.
References the speaker and someone else as a hero and heroine, possibly in the context of a tragic narrative.
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