Mayflower

Alice and the Devil
Richard Bicknell, Scott Patton, Steve Boyes
© Beautiful Chair Music, ASCAP

Oh they say she caught the devil
Turned him into flesh and blood and bone
Fire and oil she joined together
His skin was split and peeled away
She was raised just a girl in Colwyn, Pennsylvania
And a girl was just a girl, her mama said.
But she had blue eyes that would see the world around her
Terrify and claim her soul
Cause there was death in the cathedral
Murder underground
Sleeping on the subway
New York City bound

Chorus
Take it all, take it off of me
You won't meet my resistance
Take it all and just leave me be
To shut my eyes at night
And I can't escape my body
But for dreaming that I'm rolling
In the strong and dirty arms of Alice Neel

Now the devil he wanted Alice so badly
He would hunt her like a hound
But she would raise her brush in anger up against him
And Alice drove the devil down
And her love could burn to madness
Splashing all the walls
In her muslin rooms of sadness
Unflinchingly recalled
(Chorus)

Take it off, take it off of me
I need to shake it off, shake it off
I need to shake it all off of me

And they were naked on the Empire
The drag queens and the poets and the lawyers
And Alice screaming "Take it off! Take it off!"

Take it all, take it off of me
It's only my reaction
Take it all and just leave me be
To shut my eyes at night
And I can't escape my body
But for dreaming that I'm rolling
In the strong and dirty arms
Of Alice
(Chorus)