1. |
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I can’t remember what you wore
On the last night we kissed on the platform
When you passed through the train’s sliding doors
Beloved, bewildered, adored
There’s an unrepaired hole in the wall
Between the funeral home and the chapel
Where voices that nobody hears
Fall to the floor, from the mantel
I searched, on the night that you died
For someone to shoot me with novocaine
Slipping on forfeits and failures
My body, a house after a hurricane
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2. |
Sewn Hands
03:47
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You waded in a murky stream
That swept you off your feet,
Knocked me to my knees,
Taken downstream
I sewed my hands in sweat-soaked prayer
Still, you did not speak
Beneath the water lilies, you did not breathe
Wayward dream, taken downstream
Torn in tatters, ‘cross the seams
The cold hard ground wrapped ‘round my feet
Bewildered angel who lies beneath
Behind the glass, buried downstream
Moonlit visits to the anodynic clinic
Pushed down my hunger, cut my connection
Those hands that clawed you scratch at my door
Hailing Mary, spent and sore
I chiseled toward you through the smoke
I saw your eyes’ light through a hot glass scope
My heart dismantled, poured into elegy
It wasn’t you, but a memory
Torn in tatters, ‘cross the seams
From beyond, you’re freezing me
My burrowed head is nearly dead
Sullied stream, wayward dream
The sharpest eyes, the coldest knives
The blackened glass did shatter
You rose above me from the floor
Your hovering heart oscillates and scatters
Your wraith unbound, my heart grew bolder
A titanic specter shadowing my shoulder
The ties did bind, the ties did tear
You dropped your burdens, walked down the stairs
I tried to touch you through the glass and see you through the dense white smoke
It must have been some pointless kind of joke
Are you somewhere out there breathing with me under the same moon?
I'm digging my grave with a tablespoon
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3. |
Littleton Mill
04:42
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On the clearest night, under stars like milk
I saw you at the mill, moonlit, soft, and still
Halfway around the world, dark as death
My lungs, full of rocks, drew their breath through blunt instruments
Whatever happens after the last breath, and a stilled heart
Memory fades while passions grow, never to be torn apart
To become ill, awash in wintry light
Faded are the sleetless nights
You sweatered and scarved, holding your kite
Your pulse a stone splashed in the sea,
Its ripple disappeared
I’ll only see you when I stop looking for you
Won’t your unblinking eyes see me?
Ease me, with silkened hand, back to your sun-soaked, salving, eternal fountain
Where I may bathe in your voice
Your faithful servant, with rattled bones, dragging bags of stones along a raw and stormy road
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4. |
Bare Trees, Silver Sky
03:52
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At dusk the bare trees, caressed by silver sky, are enveloped by the lamps that light the stillest nights
Dilating in my memory, your deepest brownest eyes
The gentlest lulls, down the sidewalks we’d glide during your last winter alive
My car hums down the street, I look beyond the lonesome passenger seat at buildings rumbling in and out of focus, their windows passageways to places where you hover
Fluttering homeward, to know something more
To become ill, a sea storms below
Through touches, through phones, beyond the horizon
To the unseen unknown, while I’m left here with the echo of the last sound of your voice, and the rumble of the last tick of your pulse
There’s not much in this world that I know to be true
I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I know there’s one for you
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5. |
Showered in the Sunlight
02:57
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You showered in the sunlight
Till you were ablaze
You shined with dizzying kindness
You were born and you were razed
I don’t want this sort of world anymore
It’s written across my grizzled face
Opened our eyes somewhere under the rainbow
All romance left the state
The salvo did nothing to salvage the spirit
Inside the billet furthest from the moon
As I lie waiting for a roaring train
To meet my body soon
Drawn in chalk along the streets we walked
Rain washed it all away
If I could find you in the next life
I could not be convinced to stay here
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6. |
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At midday, the sun came out from behind a cloud
Casting a shadow of a tree by the beach
Heartfelt, the heart felt little difference
Where nothing could keep you around
At midnight, the world broke down
Noises from underground snuck up with violence
Voices on your phone called you home
Where nothing ever breaks down
At dawn, you were still gone
Gloved compartments, under streetlight
Where everything foul rained down
Where everything foul rains down
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7. |
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Walking with you, walking with me
Watching your eyes beam
Down sidewalks and streets
You looked to the sea
What did you want to show me?
And when you want, stay with me
Wrap your words around me
When you leave, I want to go with you
To be where you are
An awful noise buzzing
I didn’t see coming
Poured through your home
You couldn’t pass through mirrors
You couldn’t walk through walls
You couldn’t hold on to some way to feel less alone
And when you want, lie here with me
Wrap your words around me
When you leave, I want to go with you
I just want to follow you
When a person grows ill, where can they go?
Someone threw dirt on the fire that lit up your dreams
Your body went cold
Your hands and your toes
Those hands I’d give my world to hold
And when you want
Stay with me
Rest and breathe deeply
When you leave
I want to go with you
I just want to see you
Won’t you please
Come back and talk to me?
Would you let me see you, wherever you are?
Walking with you, right by your side
Walking with you is where my dreams reside
For all time
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8. |
Canopy of Crimson
08:22
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The snow dusts the sidewalk, the cold glides on the wind
Your voice coats my eardrum, from heaven, descends
Bathed in blurred streetlight, your eyes pierce and shine
The pins and the needles simmer in time
There’s frost on the window, obscuring the pane
The sun warms the sleet where you stared at the rain
Dark beams part the ceiling, light beams part the sky
Your mouth and teeth muffled, echoing, alive
Staring at the rain, your eyes met the beams on the ceiling
You dropped all the weight you’d been bearing
Climbing cold walls, your pulse stalled at their crest
When you were a child, carried across snow
Your lungs drawing breath, your heart pounding on
You walked on the beach, you swung from the trees
You rode down the river, you smiled and showed teeth
You looked at the camera, you smiled so wide
You raised your right hand, you touched the mare’s side
The dreams that you carried, unseen and unreal
A nurse dressing wounds that time doesn’t heal
We’re looking out the same window, looking out for each other
The darkness unfurls, a reflective umbrella
A canopy of crimson, erasing the light
Our battles have all been waged, our bodies underground
Stood proud and paralyzed, without a sound
My footsteps fall heavy, my brain struck with clatter
Your wraith walked on in, the crows they did scatter
Your black hair did shimmer, you beamed across the room
Your unblinking eyes exhuming the gloom
You moved past the chair, you laid your heart on the stairs
You said “I’m glad that it’s here. I’m glad that we’re here.”
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Teething Veils Washington, D.C.
"These songs—sepia-toned yet searching, eccentric yet melodically inclined—add up to something that feels like its own universe, sometimes wistful, sometimes the kind of menacing only achieved via a late-career Tom Waits death rattle." -Wash CP
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