Death Is a Business - Familiar Streets Lyrics

You walk down the road
That used to lead home
An empty house on a lonely street
Stinking, soured memories

If you enter there now, only dust you will find
But the paradise of youth I do see in my mind

A childhood whiled away-I rushed through it all
It's scrawled on a white barren wall
My manhood was a childhood dream
Tell me manhood's not all that it seems

And now the family I wanted to leave far behind
Is scattered like dust drifting farther with time

And I wish the night would come swallow me whole
So I can't see the paths that I'd worn to the ground
Though this block where I grew up still looks much the same
It can't hide the home crumbling further each day

The ghosts of this old town are stalking me
The ancient gnarled trees they talk to me
Abandoned yards overgrown with weeds
On the ruins of our old lives they slowly feed

Where is my hometown when they all have fled
And the streets the people I once loved no longer tread
When our footprints by the lakefront are forever gone
And the doors I'm racing towards they won't stay open long

I look through the window where the sun used to shine
On the family, now a lifetime gone, that sat in this room
The walls were stripped bare, there was nothing left behind
And one of our number, I won't see very soon

Drive into the sunset, return to exile
Where the faces are faceless, and nobody knows your name

We used to walk miles 'cross town
Now those miles are too far for a drive
You used to be a stone's throw away
I'll see you maybe next holiday

And so the friendships we made
We have left in the snow
Where they lie in the dirt
Like a fossil of old

So I journey on and drag myself away
I could travel and see all the wonders of the world
But there'll never be anything in all that I see
That'll rob me of breath like these familiar streets