1. |
The Bridesmaid
03:58
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Like some animals slinking
There’s an inter-island feud we are nearing
They’re hurling their horseshoes right at you
Here comes resentment on wheels
Rolling down your street at high speed
Caught between the millstones
Hail over your day
The bridesmaid has her way
Stirring up the fray
The bridesmaid’s born that way
She sings into coffee cans
With strings attached
They stretch to your building
And into your prize-winning kitchen
The rain falls on Irving, unnerving
You were inseparable, impenetrable, unmovable
Time to stop believing
Craft the night away
Witching all the way
War for what you say
The bridesmaid shines this way
Waste my will away
You know I was built this way
Painting up the hallway
The bridesmaid loathes the day
Wish the day away
You know I was made this way
Buried hearts by the bay
The bridesmaid’s born this way
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2. |
Before Sunrise
04:15
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The sun set past the window, you walked out to the street
Your brown eyes lit the pavement on the day we came to meet
The moonlight came to take me, but you got to me first
We strolled on up the hillside, I held you by the church
The band they came out swinging at the dry eyes in the house
We arm-in-arm’d through the ballroom, they shook the windows out
We stepped on up the hallway, the keys fell to the floor
Your ring shone with the moonlight, you held me by the door
Brightly in the sunrise, buried in the bed
The light shone on your pale face, a dream swam through your head
Your hands they found my shoulders, your heart it found the rest
The dust did come unsettled, you danced inside my chest
I stepped out to the courtyard, coffee in my hand
The crowds took to the pavement, a noise I couldn’t stand
You came to me so sleepless and rested like a cat
The rain drummed at the window, do you remember that?
I turned around darkened corners, my head weighed down with lead
There’s no heaven in Las Vegas, there’s a hell above the bed
I walked along the bright streets and stepped on through the swill
The predators with their leaflets, their poisons, and their pills
No more will our hands lock, no more will we meet
Your shadow hangs before me on late-night Shepherd Street
The wine we didn’t open in the attic by the beam
casts a shadow through the window, just beyond our dreams
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3. |
Each Morning
04:46
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You take me here and there, Virginia to the coast
You saw me in the light that suited you the most
We follow one another’s trails across the bay
We swallow one another’s islands, as we lay
You told me how I could be reading you the news
You find me hard to read and harder now to use
This must be something other than what we had built
Behind me, I only see airports and hotels
You’d leave me behind
But the news isn’t real
You say what you think
But not how you feel
These landscapes orchestrate our static
These landscapes dignify our habits
Each morning we wake
Under all-black clouds
I thought they were the same ones
But I’m not sure now
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4. |
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I’ve really let myself go
Places that caused grief look okay now
For now
The trouble with reservations is they stick to you,
Follow you around and can’t be canceled
Casting narrow nets across my own street
Reining in whatever wants to stay with me
Doesn’t make much sense anymore
And now I’ve really let myself go
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5. |
The Black Widow
04:05
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You spin too many tales to be true
Bloomed into a black widow through and through
Prey from behind volumes of Chaplik
One-sided-mirror me, borrow my chapstick
And then you trail me home, twenty-one paces behind
You look through my window when I turn out the light
You watch me sleep
Your boundary-crossing arachnid-thread head
Weaves me in an icy web
No Arecibo Observatory ever could have seen you
No pre-Raphaelite could have conceived of you
Sinking teeth in, you milk and spout
My mouth’s sewn shut, our lives inside-out
Though even a black widow’s time runs out
You spin too many tales to be true
Bloomed into a black widow through and through
A monastic researcher, plotting, cruel
Father Noel has lost his cool
In your cave, drive me bats
Tumbling, crumbling, fading fast
Cracking up all of your eggshells tonight
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6. |
By the Way
04:08
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I want you to know who I am
I want you to be unafraid
I moved on up
I loused it up
Fallen by the wayside to fade
I sprung from my bed in a sweat
I head-counted all that I’ve wrecked
I packed your things and swallowed the ring
Back to bed I crept
What do you mean, I’m just an in-between?
The clock still goes ‘round, while your heart careens
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7. |
The Human You Were
02:35
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You won’t rebuild the human you were
The puzzle pieces don’t fit together
You won’t revisit the town where you wanted to live
Hear its heartbeat or take its pulse
You don’t inhabit the world you write about
There’s no conduit leading to who you dreamed about
That inkwell’s dried
Those trees are taller
There are no more letters and no more parcels
There are no reactions or harsh responses
There are no praises
You haven’t earned them
What is the value in imagination
Without ambition or revelation?
You haven’t lived it, you found your own way
There are no portals into yesterday
And who would want that?
It’s too late for that
It is okay
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8. |
Webbed
03:38
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Empty your baggage out onto the bed
I came to your island, it’s where I was webbed
Your voice hanging grandly where your body lay still
Your fingernail broken at the white window sill
Layers of lairs removed with your tweezers
For piles of papers that block out your light
Glooming, the gloaming is casting our shadows
Between dialysis in the daytime and nicotine at night
Tossing my paperweights aside in the sun
It’s too hard to talk while you’re biting my tongue
Turning the corner but still out of tune
You don’t need to worry, I’ll be out of here soon
Plying and plodding the piano too hard
It’s how I was dragged up in the place where I was scarred
I will go underground, naturally plotting
Losing the plot where daisies grow sodding
Icing the bite marks on your couch where I sat
Pulling my hair out, like I need help with that
It’s a wonder how you find anything on these shelves
You know that these dishes don’t wash themselves
Cold institutions of grey-building days
Painting by numbers, latching their gates
The doorway stands open, a cat’s in the hallway
The avenue’s bustling where you leave me lonely
I really have tried but I don’t understand
Your scouring-pad fingers while you’re holding my hand
Not wanting for a moment to go with the flow
But gone with the flood, to each one their own
Don’t sell your organs, I won’t pray for forgiveness
There is no first aid where you’re smothered in blankets
The stairs make me dizzy when I go out for food
I don’t know where I’m going or what I meant to you
“Come on and follow me out onto the ledge
You won’t slip or fall as long as you’re webbed”
Be careful of theater people and the hats that they wear
What you think you’re holding is not really there
As the last silo standing when the warships left town
Millstones of sweetness were weighing us down
You’re housing my body but there’s no place like home
At the edge of the world we ran out of room
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9. |
Dinner Date
03:51
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You were born too soon
I was born too late
And so we dine alone
Wash our plates
Time is so unkind
Your hands should talk to mine
Our bones will soon be dust
Buried in the brine
Fade away
You will never fade
Your heart will wake just as mine
Dusting the cobwebs to the side
Washed from the sheets where we lie
Night after night
Worlds where your thoughts swim
Light that does not dim
Take me walking by the sea
Take me in
Fade away
You will never fade
Your heart will wake just as mine
Dusting the cobwebs to the side
Washed from the sheets where we lie
Night after night
Fade away
You will never fade
Let’s go away for awhile
Let’s radiate through these aisles
Oceans astir, winds for miles
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10. |
Allover Fainting
03:22
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They all liked your face
They all picture-framed you
Socialite disgrace
Hook, line, and sinker
Your carpentry
Can you feel the city shake
With every plaster face you break?
Some sharpened teeth to stir
You’re working out of turn
Moons rise and worlds turn, all over you
I believe your hands
Mothball matchless magic
Some spokes and forty varnish coats
A veil of teeth to stir
You’re working in return
Moons rise and worlds turn
Allover you
A taxless toll
These kings lose all control
Who do they really know?
Not you
And me
May I watch you breathe
Over afternoon tea?
It’s free
It’s just afternoon tea
It’s free
It’s just afternoon tea
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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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