She lives above me, and I live below / a girl who enters every photo show
I've seen her pictures, they’re things I know / the backyard spigot ‘n the hose
My busted window and our dead-end street / her giant nipple’n ‘er narrow feet
I have the headache, I know the smell / of Kodak paper in a well
And it feels like I just fell into darkroom chemistry

An open fireplug, a homeless man / gang graffiti on the taco stand
The shot impromtu and the shot she planned / (broken china with a wedding band)
flood of sunlight through the cellar door / sky behind the storm, the sky before

Empty boxes in a vacant room / half-fed dog, a quarter moon
And it stinks from July thru June from the darkroom chemistry
In the dark that I call the tomb, lay more photography


Calls herself Nico and she pays homage to Man Ray
I see her always dressed in black, slightly turned away
Calls herself Nico and she tends to make love thru the lens
Now get a picture of my shock —
she's showing photos of my night beneath her softbox

She lives above me and she’s filled the place / her prints could catalog the human race
Storefront bedrooms, long-rusted boxcars / brown men playin’ blue guitars
A grave left open, a grave just-filled / two dozen cliches from the lumber mill
And when winter drifts a garden wall / her 6-watt shadow’s in the hall
Then my head meets the wrecking ball of the darkroom chemistry
And it feels like I just fell........

Wish the pictures were worth the smell of the darkroom chemistry