Flightless Bird, American Mouth

For me, this song is about a first love and the profound sentimental value attached to it.

It opens with: "I was a quick wet boy Diving too deep for coins All of your street light eyes Wide on my plastic toys"

For me, the significance of being "quick/wet" and "diving too deep" is based in the speaker's reckless behaviors. He's quick to jump into things and the dangers of doing to aren't really that important to him. Perhaps this mirrors his attitude about relationships at the time. "Street light eyes" describe someone who is alight with youth and possibility, a person who still looks at the world with wonder. But the "plastic toys" that fascinate this person indicate some level of childishness/preoccupation with material objects.

He goes on to say: "Then when the cops closed the fair I cut my long baby hair Stole me a dog eared map And called for you everywhere."

The cops closing the fair coincides with the speaker "cutting [his] long baby hair", which suggests that his world is becoming a more serious place and he can no longer blame his carelessness on his youth. He steals a "dog eared map" and "called for [his young love?] everywhere", because along with the fair and his long hair, his first love and all of its beautiful simplicity falls away. He is attached to his lover and his own fleeting youth, so he begins his search for meaning in a scarier, more adult world.

He asks himself: "Have I found you? Flightless bird, jealous, weeping Or lost you? American mouth Big bill looming."

He likely "found" love again, but it's not the same as his first love. It is like a "flightless bird" that envies the lightness and freedom of other birds. Even though he found new love, he feels "loss" for his old love, as he reflects on more adult concerns, like being swallowed by the "American mouth", a metaphor for consumerist society, and the "big bills" that he has to pay.

He goes on to describe himself as: "...a fat house cat Cursing my sore blunt tongue Watching the warm poison rats Curl through the wide white fence cracks"

His being "fat" represents the way in which he feels weighed down. He curses his "sore blunt tongue", which has been made so by the "warm poison rats", and watches them "curl through the white fence cracks", although he can't chase them, since he's weighed. The scene overall is a greater metaphor for his adult responsibility and the way it prevents him from chasing "poison rats", or exciting, but dangerous vices, as he once did with his young love.

"Pissing on magazine photos Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ mountain stream"

I'm unsure about the first line, but I think that "magazine photos" represent the idealizations of young love, and how they act as "fishing lures" for the "blood of christ mountain stream", for the actual, unglamorous sacrifices needed to be in a relationship.

The last lines: "Have I found you? Flightless bird, brown hair bleeding Or lost you? American mouth Big bill, stuck going down."

Pay a final homage to his first love. Has he found her/someone like her again? Even if it's far less glamorous and far more complicated than it was initially? Or has he lost her/any other chance at love in the "American mouth" of consumerism/adult responsibility, and the impossible escape from it?