1. |
Open Armarium
02:06
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2. |
Out of Caverns into Snow
05:21
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Out of Caverns Into Snow
I stepped out of your caverns into snow
I saw your traces everywhere I'd go
I felt your glance above me in the sky
Pressed onto my chest where I did lie
Everything you touched is hollowed out
Every word you breathed is in my mouth
You laid me down and forged around my heart
I made my burning coffee in the dark
But this is not the way the song will come
Singing through tuberculosis lungs
When I reach, and you reach, and we don't meet, there's a trauma
The wind is knocked out of me
When you walk through your door and the air hangs stale upon you
Your heart is hollowed out beside the sea
You paused to breathe and stunned me through your wounds
Your Polaroids compose a gentle tune
I thought I saw your shadow on the stairs
Your voice piercing through winds from everywhere
Your hair clip and your empty cans are here
But your breath does not pervade this heavy air
This must be the way the heart turns gray
Steady as you came, you went away
On the beach, in the grass, taking Morse code from the moonlight
I might find you right where you might find me
When you walk through the yard and you're scratched in between the tall weeds
The sand inside your shoes will keep you clean
Every shot at peace just disappears
Let me bend your body and your ear
Every shining ship moored to the shore
Tied up to their tills forevermore
We built whole worlds on rooftops till the dawn
Nothing that you care for stays for long
There you are in everything I see
Won't you just appear in front of me?
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3. |
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We Walked Through Leicester Square
Worn with winter air
We walked through Leicester Square
By the fair we strolled
Beaming down the narrow road
Carousel alight
Warmed the bitterest night
Stumbled up dark stairs
Pressed against your chair
Brooding boiling bursting through
Lay you down to lick your wounds
Take your swing and see it through
But I'm in your ear
Drag out the dead
Tucked in their beds
Impaled by your pen
Blacken the days
Memories erased
Gild the gown you're in
On the train we dozed
Chalk marks on your soul
Bars on New Year’s Eve
Bottled on our mantlepiece
So you go and so it goes
The road to hell is paved with stone
Wherever you may lay your bones
I'm in your ear
Drag out the dead
Tucked in their beds
Impaled by your pen
Dragged through the days
Memories erased
Gild the gown you're in
Ashes on the bed
Silver turned to lead
Peered into your sea
Boxed away our grief
Holy grails and catacombs
Slap my wrist and send me home
Sweating shoulders, writhing roads
You are in my ear
Stolen souls and mirror balls
Cabs that orchestrate it all
Batted girls and littered halls
We are in your ear
Drag out the dead
Tucked in my bed
Impaled by your pen
Dragged through the days
Memories erased
Nightgown's nightly spin
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4. |
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The Voice Inside your Pillow
Do you think you’d mind
If I tell you what I’m thinking
Before I lose myself
Let me play your voice inside me
Before you sleep
The night will know
Your eyes are penetrating
Casting shadows on the pillow
Where I am
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5. |
Moonbeam Transmissions
03:37
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Moonbeam Transmissions
Transmission moonbeams
Of the sea and sun
Weave through your window
Till you too (two) are one
Invisible lightness
Penetrates your skin
Boarded beneath your floor
Till it trickles in
I know who you are
Born from power lines
Asleep awake alight
Waking who you find
Beams through your fingers
Plaster in your hands
Paint on your plywood
Splinters of your strands
Protected, holy
Walking on your knees
Transmission moonbeams
Vestry to the sea
You know who I am
Born from power lines
Light clasped in your hands
Slowing down the time
I want your baseboards
Nestled by my chin
Graces and merits light
Where without, within
Your lamplight pierces
Through the darkest woods
Transmission moonbeams
As I wish you would
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6. |
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7. |
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Ghosts Waiting to be Fleshed
Dredge up the dirt and make you bleary
A thousand marbles makes one old penny
These ghosts are waiting to be fleshed now
Claire Drinkwater the seamstress seems less stressed now
I bought a doorbell so you could ring it
Installed a mail slot for you to use it
You’re making knots from top to bottom
I don’t know how to untie them
You recognize me, don’t you?
You won’t be seen here, will you?
We’re not to stay here, are we?
Take off the bandages, see how slowly wounds close
Take me with you
Where are we going?
No more the nadir for you or me
Go where you are
Be where you were
Stay where you’re not
Bog it on down with all the weight of all the wait you brought in with you
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8. |
You Write on My Face
05:08
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You Write on my Face
I did receive your letter
Wrapped and bound with care
You would not come to meet me
So I found my own way there
Not wind nor rain did slow me
I crept around the halls
Up to the room you rented
On my face you did draw
Mouth against the floor
Wrapped and bound with care
Sole pressed firmly to the chin
Reticence and fare
Dally away the days
On creaking unmade beds
Convivial chasms
Flutter around our heads
Hanging up and catching out
Fabric stalls a potter’s wheel
The wrong tools for the right tasks
Crack the royal seal
I live my expiation
Yet all astir with him
Is the same knit-bombing Circe
Who parboiled my limbs
Heels that bruise my neck
Fingernails that scratch
My effigy is squinting
To know who struck the match
Close your eyes and ears
As you learn to spell
Bless your heart & go away
It’s everyone for themselves
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9. |
Cobblestone
03:34
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Cobblestone
We walked along the side streets
There were no footsteps near
The lights went down around us
Muffled voices flickered
The afterglow was hanging
A gentle lull was prescient
The midnight moon perspired
Dripped across our window
These stairwells house the living
These havens have drawn us in
These devils shone their bright lights
These hurricanes are pounding
The architect is planning
The cobblestone a dead end
The shops have all stayed open
It’s raining in Madrid
I want to find the all-night store
Aren’t you coming with me?
Hey, look how cross you’ve made me
Across the bed you’ve made me
These light beams unrelenting
Draped over your body
Daunting all these old crows
Thwarted off beside me
You won’t forget this, will you?
You don’t believe me, do you?
Minds are for forgetting
Hearts are for remembering
Your eyes are sealed from my face
Your ears are closed to my voice
This pulse transmitted through the earth
Falls off by the wayside
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10. |
The Teeth of a Blizzard
01:39
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The Teeth of a Blizzard
Thousands of wondrous failing words
Turning me into a bitter man
The earth hard and frozen to my toes
Even after the teeth of the blizzard withdraw into their mountains
The world is small and the heart is large
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11. |
Hallways
03:23
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Hallways
I’m only half-watching because you shone in my eyes
I’m only in waiting because you won’t leave my side
You’re only becoming what you knew you would be
You’re only half-here from igniting the sea
You stood by the window to stare down the wind
While I slept in the hallway again
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12. |
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Don't Look Outside Your Window
Don't look outside your window
Your suitor is standing there
Saluting from the sidewalk
The first frost dusts his chair
Look into your fireplace and dream
Don't give up on what you need
When you are looking
You'll feel me behind you
But I won't be saying a word
Don't look outside your window
Don't be afraid to let go
Walk on into tomorrow
Take your ticket and go
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13. |
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14. |
Pre-Dawn Rain
04:44
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Pre-Dawn Rain
I had to let it die
So I could be born again
You built your post-and-beam
Over our foundation
You weren't here
To know this fight
To see and walk
Without your light
You hate my songs right back to life
But I don’t want them back
When our house falls down
You will press on through
Your volcanic soul
Will be a friend to you
When the world caves in
You will flicker on
Your torchlight leads the way
Carving chiseling on and on
You had to let it die
To quell the concrete voices
There are only specters here
Our battlefield is noiseless
Your heart redeemed
Your shield is wrought
Your world turns around
And I fall off
It’s yours to grow
To stitch and wash
To hang from moon to moon
When you're all alone
Sensations huge and strange
Pattering your roof
The sound of pre-dawn rain
When I'm all alone
Voices huge and strange
Pattering my roof
The sound of pre-dawn rain
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15. |
If You Remember Me
03:07
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If You Remember Me
When it’s midnight in your kitchen
When sleep won’t take you
And it’s too cold to walk to the store
If you look out your window at the snow
And you remember me
Don’t let yourself drift too far
You’ll empty out the ashtray tomorrow
There’s nothing left to do here tonight
When you walk back to bed
And turn your lamp off
You quiet the burdens of old
When you’re smiling in your bedroom
Putting your makeup on
For whoever comes to your door
I’m smiling with you
Like in the old days
There’s nothing here to keep me anymore
If your letter comes back to you
No one lives there anymore
But someone is walking those halls
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16. |
Sirens and Belles
02:20
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17. |
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What Does a Black Hole Sound Like?
What does a black hole sound like?
What does it say to you?
Where do your risks take you
What do they say about you?
Do you know what’s beyond you
Or how it fails without you?
When will you let the time move backward
Where it shouldn’t go?
So wear a surgeon’s glove
To reach into the nadir
Bog me down and bury me
A year’s impedimenta
Analogies are avalanches
They carry consternation
Relay-racing bombed batons
Potent permutations
These gifts are dense and potent
These gifts are cold and brutal
Where do you keep the key
That opens up your closet door?
How do you build your meanings?
What does the cold ground feel like?
What does a black hole sound like?
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18. |
Post-Marks
04:03
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Post-Marks
I'm soured by the experience
How you laid your hands upon me
And stepped down the hallway with shoes on
Breathing through the wall
Your breath escapes your body
Your chest still rises and falls
The second hands are moving
I know you lived it all
I'm shaped by the experience
I'm pear-shaped in your fingers
I stepped down through the stairwell
I hear you through your floor
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19. |
A Mute Thespian
03:34
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20. |
Ossifier
05:39
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Ossifier
Turn my gold heart into bone
Ossifier, dry and dryer
No more than bricks and mortar
Mainlined between thighs
Passed along, passing on, on and on
Relayed, re-laid
Sick and mortal, displeased, dis-eased
Honey for bees
Taken to dispatches
Disses in patches
Signed and dated, hand-numbered piss patches
Glistening with trainwreck glory
Consumed by arsonist eyes, stone-solid and graveyard-cold
I’m singed, carved and casted
Sculptor you are
Ply, shape, weld me
You rise with the sun
No worse for wear
There's no word for where we can stop or go
We're damned if we do or don't move
Brinkmanship-born
Stave off this flood
Sculptor you are
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21. |
Velorio
12:29
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Velorio
It’s a long way to fall in the blink of an eye
At the drop of a hat what you had passes by
There are blind ballerinas, as starving as sure
Taken in by grave thespians, cared for and cured
Bound to a basement for nothing since birth
Sleeping on concrete for something of worth
These ancient armariums had ailments to quell
We’re damned and redeemed where the water meets the well
Rain patters rooftops while hailstones strike bells
Sounding our sourest anthem in chorus
Years disappear where words fall on deaf ears
We sleepwalk from pillar to post
Swarming in, seeping through, sweeping out, follow through
Burn this bridge, warm your hands, see it smolder, house it in you
Build it up, tear it down, set apart, living hell
Weary words etched in ink, sow and reap, swim and sink
Make it end, lest you roll on, careen to nowhere, grow old wishing
Let us fail, lest you stall, build your world to die dreaming
I’m soldering around the outside of your door
Sealing our unregistered stillborn brood inside these walls
A blindfold-and-cigarette ending and burial
Leaving seeds in barren woods
I will not keep this grave clean alone
Watching the weeds grow
They wilt when winter comes
Our souvenirs buried in snow
Antiplagued and uncontained, walk on and don’t turn back
In fourteen years I haven’t known such peace as this
Nor seen forever past our crumbled-sand skyscraping monument
Rising from this broken bed
I won’t disturb the dead
These breaths are clean
These breaths are mine to own
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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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