Milk Thistle

I was walking

Like a shark in the dark

Through Fishtown in Philly

When I got a little hungry,

So I hit up Hiroki

Working the host stand

Was this pretty brown-skinned angel

She had tattoos on her fingers

And tattoos on her hands

She wore these half-drawn eyes

Like it was too bright outside

And pouty lips,

That'd look pretty feeding me lies

She was penning a picture-in-miniature

On her little notepad

I tried to think of something clever to say

But I kept drawing blanks

Well the very next day,

We had coffee at La Colombe

Then she took me to the Barnes Museum,

Where I followed her like a lost dog

She told me about the paintings

And the painters who painted them

Soutine and Matisse and Vincent van Gogh,

Monet and Cézanne and Pablo Picasso

Well, when we had our fill of art,

We visited the fountain in the square

It was the dead of winter

So cold--the water was frozen in the air

She walked around the edges of the park,

Collecting milk thistle and strange herbs

And I followed her the way you'd follow a butterfly

Just floating through the air

Well I saw her just one more time

Before we went our separate ways

She took an artist residency in Iceland

And I drove across the country,

Looking for something I still haven't found