Ghost Town

Every Day Begins and Ends

A blurry figure caught in time
Something snapped in pebble shrines
Carpet frayed like time’s lost twists
A ceiling fan spins my emptiness

Faces doubled, mirrored eyes
Hiding half, revealing lies
Water spreads the skyline thin
Shadows fade inside a grin

[Chorus]
Stitch me through the yarns of days gone by
Squelch my voice where angels lie
Strangers walk, the city’s bends
Every day begins and ends again

Laundry ghosts, a fleeting sign
Half a face, a borrowed line
Sand unraveling through my hands
Every day revisits them

[Chorus]
Stitch me through the yarns of days gone by
Squelch my voice where angels lie
Strangers walk, the city’s bends
Every day begins and ends again

[Bridge]
Push the button, watch it glow (watch it glow)
Secret codes, the natives know (the natives know)
Daydream ceilings, thread the seam (in between)
Every snapshot filled with things
Like who is that and what does it mean?

Can’t quite make out the made up threads
Can’t understand why I began
But I do know what brings the end
It’s why I won’t come back again

[Chorus]
Stitch me through the yarns of days gone by
Squelch my voice where angels lie
Strangers walk, the city’s bends
Every day begins and ends again

[outro]
Every day begins (and ends again…)
Every day begins (and ends again…)
Every day begins (and ends again…)
Every day begins (and ends again…)

Inside My Ghost Town Head

Read about the track:
dabodab.substack.com/p/inside-my-ghost-town-head

Two potheads in the row ahead of us
Slumped over ‘cos Bo Diddley
For some reason wasn’t taking too kindly
To all the potsmoking party goers filling up the seats

Some girl we picked up on the way to the show
Was going on about her stupid boyfriend
“Nice to meet you,” she finally said
Whispering something underneath her breath

Where do the ghosts we don’t remember go
When memory fails to mark its dead?
That haunt the empty streets of might have beens
Inside my ghost town head
Inside my ghost town head

Lost inside some random midnight hot tub
Without my glasses, blind and stupid once again
Someone waving in the middle of nowhere
And almost stopping — what might have happened then?

Where do the ghosts we don’t remember go
When memory fails to mark its dead?
That haunt the empty streets of might have beens
Inside my ghost town head
Inside my ghost town head

Just before the solstice
Of our creeping old age
Whispering from the cobwebs
Out of frame and far off stage
Dangling like a participle
Pregnant with a pause
Until the spirits at the seance
Crash the wedding without cause

No sign of absent godfathers to shepherd the angels
Who wander aimlessly like fools and the wind
Smoking in the boys’ room with fat kid consciences
Lost in all our ether, lost and haunted like old friends

Where do the ghosts we don’t remember go
When memory fails to mark its dead?
That haunt the empty streets of might have beens
Inside my ghost town head
Inside my ghost town head

Inside my ghost town head
Inside my ghost town head
Inside my ghost town head
Inside my ghost town head

Invisible Ink

I wrote you a letter you’ll never see
I wrote it in cursive words I couldn’t speak
Folded the page so the silence could keep
I Z-fold the creases I can’t quite complete

The ink disappears when the daylight comes
Invisible now before bravery runs
Every mark fades like a half-sung song
Halfway and halftime both have and have not become

[Chorus]
Invisible ink where you and I fade
Invisible ink on the promises we made
Invisible ink full of things left unsaid
Invisible ink, but it’s all in my head

I hold the paper up against the light
Now the moth knows the ending and gives up its fight
The edges burn slow, giving into the night
This déjà vu ending just doesn’t seem right

[Chorus]

Life turns on phrases and foregone conclusions
Drawn in the margins, erased by illusions
Minutiae confused by compounded solutions
Truth hides between all the failed substitutions
Fingerprints left at the scene can’t keep secrets

I wrote you a letter you’ll finally see
When invisible ink reappears after me
The words shine through what the silence concealed
Signed and delivered and finally unsealed

Invisible ink where you and I fade
Invisible ink on the promises we made
Invisible ink full of things left unsaid
Invisible ink, but it’s all in my head

A Box of Faded Lyrics

Joe Maki: original recording, keyboards
Briyan Frederick: lyric, sunoai cover arrangement

My memories have faded
Brown and splotched with age
But the words can still be lifted
From off of every lyric page

This one we wrote together
You played guitar, I wrote the words
But this one I don’t remember
This is one that no one’s ever heard

But that’s you and that’s me
What did that sentence mean?
Were we caught up in the rhythm and the rhyme
But that’s you and that’s me
Inside this dusty box of faded lyrics
Forgotten after all this empty time
After all this empty time

I remember you playing this one
How you landed on that riff
How that was half of the battle
Thinking back on all of it

Now I’m blowing off the dust and the cobwebs
Breathing life into yesterday dreams
And that’s as far as I ever want to take it
Satisfied the embers still glow within me

But that’s you and that’s me
What did that sentence mean?
Were we caught up in the rhythm and the rhyme
But that’s you and that’s me
Inside this dusty box of faded lyrics
Forgotten after all this empty time
After all this empty time

Lately I’ve been poring over pages
Pages and pages of time
Conjuring up the laughter
That still fills the spaces in my mind

My memories have faded
Brown and splotched with age
But the words can still be lifted
From off the lyric page

But that’s you and that’s me
What did that sentence mean?
Were we caught up in the rhythm and the rhyme
But that’s you and that’s me
Inside this dusty box of faded lyrics
Forgotten after all this empty time
After all this empty time

A box of faded lyrics
After all this empty time
After all this empty time
After all this empty time…

This Damned Apparition

Lyrics are inspired by a photo by Mr.13 (@AbyleoB) on X

Bismillah scrawled on the face of a truck
A polaroid snapshot I can’t place in time
The edges are frayed with smudges and dust
And something in ink runs empty with rhyme

Headlights lean forward into a wavering road
the sky presses down, thick with unfinished stories
Like we’re waiting for fates to unfold like a poem
With stanzas draped randomly full and heavy with worry

This damned apparition
Reappears in the rearview
Of startled tomorrows
Of tired old men
Whose yesterdays crumbled
On doorsteps and doorways
Their singular frenzies
Dispelled once again

Here we’re stuck at a truckstop in somebody’s town
The engine is stalled like this lifetime on hold
and every caught stare is fate telling us something
But nothing will come of it outside in the cold

This damned apparition
Reappears in the rearview
Of startled tomorrows
Of tired old men
Whose yesterdays crumbled
On doorsteps and doorways
And singular frenzies
Dispelled once again

Would that this was a phantom
With love in his heart
Aching and winsome
Pining and fraught
Would that I was the devil
And you my disguise
You at the crossroads
Of every goodbye

That road left behind us in throttle decay
Takeaway marbles and pocketed dawns
Lost to afternoon’s daydreams, golden with haze
Tumbling like yesterdays scrambled in song

It’s an afternoon seething with clouds full of nothing
That’s collected like cancer and tumoring dread
The false hopes of children unfed on our tension
Taut with the feelings of what lies ahead

This damned apparition
Reappears in the rearview
Of startled tomorrows
Of tired old men
Whose yesterdays crumbled
On doorsteps and doorways
And singular frenzies
Dispelled once again

Dispelled once again (once again, once again)
Dispelled once again (once again, once again)
Dispelled once again (once again, once again)
Dispelled once again (once again, once again)

In a time lost to all of its bends
Somewhere back then

Cured

I’ll admit it wasn’t pretty
I was handed every key to every city
Practically reeling from her razzle and her tongue
But I’m kicking and I’m breathing
Several decades past teething
Every monkey has an uncle; here’s a fork, I am done

Could never figure out the angle
But satisfied and ratified in her tangles
And temptations that she dangled on strings
It’s all a blur all but forgotten
Flowers wilted, tossed and trodden
By fallen angels who can’t figure out their wings

‘Cos now I’m cured
Of all the nonsense, presented past the circumstances
Consequence’s truth might try to heel
But fail to steal…
I’m cured

It’s the miracle of ages
Defying all the lofty sages
Who from mountaintops proclaimed my dire fate
From their rusty rattled cages

Hello, world, I’m ready
If the world will only let me
I’m deadly but I’m steady I am told
Fire breathing dragons
Now pull my new red wagon
Another journey on my rosebud now unfolds

‘Cos now I’m cured
Of all the nonsense, presented past the circumstances
Consequence’s truth might try to heel
But fail to steal…
I’m cured
Of all the nonsense, presented past the circumstances
Consequence’s truth might try to heel
But fail to steal…

fail to steal…
what will reveal

Notes: Joe started this one with a piano instrumental he wrote initially some time ago and unearthed and revised on October 25, 2025. He described it like this:

“So I ran across a piano piece that needed fleshing out — I think it might be something. It’s called Hearth, or maybe Fall Ends. I’m deep in the autumn frame of mind, and it suggested a fire slowly dying with the frost creeping in. I had to use a different piano sound in the middle — not sure what I used originally.”

That set the tone. The piece immediately felt like late autumn — quiet, reflective, a little bit haunted by the chill of change.

When I took the inspiration for the lyric, I started from the word Hearth, but my mind wandered to Hearth and Home. The title felt familiar, almost comforting, yet the minor inflection in Joe’s music turned it away from any notion of simple warmth or nostalgia. It became something more complicated — a song about how we try to understand each other but rarely succeed.

The past week’s conversations with people crept into it too. It feels like everyone just wants to be understood and appreciated, but we’re all a little trapped inside our own heads. Words are blunt tools for delicate things. They don’t do us justice. So much gets lost in translation — and yet, we keep trying.

---

Hearth and Home

You’re stuck inside your head
Despite the universal truths
People are the same, but not the same
An extension of the fears that held their youth

But who am I but just someone
Another man who’s come undone
Unspun around the common thread
Stuck inside this great big head

After all is said and done
You never really know someone
You never know what you don’t know
You never know their hearth and home
You never know their hearth and home

It’s practically impractical
Before it gets dramatical
I’ll leave before the curtain calls
No, you won’t catch me after all… pretending
Words are dumb and never really know
The ending
Yet it’s always the same
It’s always the very same ending
And it’s such a shame

It’s such a shame!…

You’re stuck inside your head
Despite the universal truths
The brutes in us are winning
While all the ghouls in us come grinning

Through their masks at masquerades
They dance around the false facades
Mispronounced like lemonade
The credits roll, the image fades

After all is said and done
You never really know someone
You never know what you don’t know
You never know their hearth and home
You never know their hearth and home

About the Song
Hearth and Home sits in that fragile emotional space between intimacy and isolation — the quiet ache of realizing that even when we share our thoughts, we remain mysteries to one another. It’s a song about communication and disconnection, about the warmth we reach for and the chill that inevitably returns.

Notes: Life can feel like a card game we didn’t choose to play — one where the deck is reshuffled every time we start to understand the rules.

In “Shuffled Men,” I explore that restless feeling of being caught in life’s endless remix — the routines, the role reversals, and the quiet absurdity of pretending we’re in control when the cards have already been dealt. It’s a song about chance and identity, about men who’ve been shuffled through the years until they barely recognize the hand they’re holding.

The word shuffle runs through everything — from playlists to paperwork, from the streets we walk to the thoughts we turn over. It’s rhythm, motion, and futility all at once. The song takes this everyday motion and stretches it into something existential: how we move when we’ve forgotten why we’re moving.

The chorus centers on a dark little truth:

Who ever thinks it’s them / Who are shuffled over when / The cards are cut and shuffled once again.

We all assume we’re the ones holding the aces — until the next cut proves otherwise.

“Shuffled Men” isn’t bitter, though. There’s irony and humor in the way we keep playing along, even when we know the game is rigged. It’s about persistence — a blues for the modern mind, where metaphors tangle like wires and we keep shuffling through anyway.

By the end, the song drifts from the outer shuffle of society into the inner one — relationships, lust, memories, and the jukebox echoes of youth. Those “jukebox hits that shuffle through the air” are as much about nostalgia as they are about the patterns we can’t escape.

In a way, it’s a song about everyone.
We’re all shuffled men and women — rearranged by time, by luck, by love — still standing in the deck, waiting for another hand to be dealt.

Shuffled Men

I shuffle through the noise
And shuffle my unruffled ways
My role’s been shuffled thoroughly
But I still shuffle through the days

Shuffling the pieces
Like a playlist put on shuffle
Shuffling my feet
And fear my shuffling is muffled

[chorus]
Shuffled men…
Who ever thinks it’s them
Who are shuffled over when
The cards are cut
And shuffled once again
All the lazy one-eyed jacks
And crazy kings
Unaware the pocket Ace
Is sleeping with the queen
And shuffling the men who can’t be seen

We shuffle through the wreckage
Of every side shuffle we encounter
Shuffling down the street
With every Tom and Dick redoubter

Piled with paperwork we shuffle
In and out of shuffled lineups
The weary shuffling of time
Is striking out before the wind-up

[chorus]
Shuffled men…
Who ever thinks it’s them
Who are shuffled over when
The cards are cut
And shuffled once again
All the lazy one-eyed jacks
And crazy kings
Unaware the pocket Ace
Is sleeping with the queen
And shuffling the men who can’t be seen

I’m sleeping with mixed metaphors
Those shuffled whores
That shuffled men
Lure in to even scores
And shuffle through the back door
Once more

I shuffle through the joys
Of my disheveled bedroom toys
And shuffle tired ploys
In shuffled scripts of little boys

Shuffling between the worlds
The shuffled luck of teenage girls
But my luck is spent on jukebox hits
That shuffle through the air like this

[chorus]
Shuffled man…
Who never thinks it’s him
Who’s shuffled over when
The cards are cut
And shuffled once again
All the lazy one-eyed jacks
And crazy kings
Unaware the pocket Ace
Is sleeping with the queen
And shuffling the men who can’t be seen

Forgettable

Don’t you remember what you said
Or was it something that I said
Or misread
Something about something that you did
Or undid
Or was everything we had
Left forgotten on the bed?

But I seem to remember
Before you left after you entered
My life
I was never the same
At least in my mind
It was gone before you came

[Chorus]
But maybe we’re forgettable
Maybe just regrettably
Unsustainable
Terribly forgettable
Maybe we’re forgettable

Blame the weather or blame the maid
Or something stranger that remained
In the air and the refrains
Simply nothing stayed the same
As it once was
As it once somehow became

[Chorus]
But maybe we’re forgettable
Maybe just regrettably
Unsustainable
Terribly forgettable
Maybe we’re forgettable

Forget about tomorrows
And all you said about your sorrows
Forgotten like a swoon
Or the rooms
Of all the houses you consumed
And left behind me and you

Don’t you remember what we said
Or was it something that I said
Or misread
Or was the dread of having said it
When it
Mattered most without it
Or within us
What then?

[Chorus]
But maybe we’re forgettable
Maybe just regrettably
Unsustainable
Terribly forgettable
Maybe we’re forgettable

Mrs. Goldfinch

1-2-3
1-2-3

Mrs. Goldfinch, by and by
Told her neighbor one small white lie
And you might find them exchanging stories
On a random early Thursday morning
Over by the fence
The latest neighborhood suspense
Involving yours truly
Who was unduly reprimanded
By the authorities
On suspicion of possession
Possessing what? She cannot say

Dear Mrs. Goldfinch
The letter said
Confidential, bold and red
Stamped and sealed but misdirected
In my box, undetected
Mrs. Goldfinch, I would never have suspected
(by and by)
Even by and by

She herself knows all about
Mr. Green, that old hairy lagabout
Lacking any common sense discretion
He walks his dog in every wrong direction
Up and down this very street
Never shoes but sandals on his hairy feet
It’s really quite a sight you see
Beyond the comprehension
Of Doris and me

Dear Mrs. Goldfinch
The letter said
Confidential, bold and red
Stamped and sealed but misdirected
In my box, undetected
Mrs. Goldfinch, I would never have suspected
(by and by)
Even by and by

Dear Mrs. Goldfinch
And dear old Mr. Webber
Living at the end of West Spinster 905
Her sitting at the window
He is somewhere else, assuming
They’re never seen together, the neighbors all surmise

Fluttering like a teapot
All a’titter at the suggestion
Of any impropriety
Involving the certain somebody who is now in question
It’s not that I am so immune
To bandy moon or June in tune
As I am slightly wont to do
But on the contrary I might proffer
To open up the dusty coffers
If only just to take a peek

Dear Mrs. Goldfinch
The letter said
Confidential, bold and red
Stamped and sealed but misdirected
In my box, undetected
Mrs. Goldfinch, I would never have suspected
(by and by)
Even by and by

1-2-3…

And so they go their separate ways
Mrs. Goldfinch and Ms. O’Day
Who pirouettes just like a swan
Mrs. Goldfinch long since gone
To call on Mrs. Green
Who hasn’t yet been seen in this short song
She’s the one
Who started the disturbance at the pond
(Do go on)
Mrs. Goldfinch in her yellow bonnet
And Mrs. Green, what’s going on?
Mrs. Goldfinch, now what’s wrong?
Said Mr. Briyan Frederick Baker, as an aside
(by and by)
Possibly just to chide her
(by and by)

Dear Mrs. Goldfinch
The letter said
Confidential, bold and red
Stamped and sealed but misdirected
In my box, undetected
Mrs. Goldfinch, I would never have suspected
(by and by)
Even by and by

Mrs. Goldfinch (I would never have suspected)
Dear Mrs. Goldfinch (under noses, undetected)
Oh, Mrs. Goldfinch (now what’s wrong?)
Mrs. Goldfinch
Mrs. Goldfinch
Mrs. Goldfinch

Even by and by