This is a song I wrote when I was living in Long Beach, CA several years ago—what feels like a lifetime away from me, now. It was another life.

I was exercising the deep hurt that I felt after the end of a relationship—transitory. A Dixie cup? It's not my place to say. Feelings. Truth. Facts. Gossip. What do any of those things really mean, when you are hurting. I think you just want the pain to stop—and it always does eventually.

What I do know, is that I sobbed as I wrote these words, and that they were cathartic. Hopefully, they will be to someone else, now.

No Vacancy

words and music by Michael Patrick Vitale

Dancing with a lover on a dead-end street

Stepping on toes with my two left feet

I fell asleep under a vacancy sign

The NO was burned out, but then she changed the lights

A foggy walk alone on a new moon night

She disappeared all together when I closed my eyes

The street lights flicker on and off, on and off, on and off, like her emotion

Until I find I'm off the deep end of an abstract notion

I forgot the melody a caged bird sings

The door's wide open but I've got clipped wings

The seed went sour in the dying light

So I'll sing for my supper 'til the water runs dry

The quick hide hid under a broken nail

The Essex split in two over an angry whale

There were rumors of cannibals living on the island nearby

So the survivors took the opposite course and ate each other when the truth was in short supply

I forgot the melody a caged bird sings

The door's wide open but I've got clipped wings

The seed went sour in the dying light

So I'll sing for my supper 'til the water runs dry

Parallel lines in the wilderness

Train tracks broken by a small recess

As the casualties are listed by a talking head

She limits her emotion behind words she read

I forgot the melody a caged bird sings

The door's wide open but I've got clipped wings

The seed went sour in the dying light

So I'll sing for my supper 'til the water runs dry

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