1. |
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When the lights come up, they cue me from the aisle
As the camera moves over the audience
Before it settles on me for a rote, teleprompted speech
But my idiot brain just cannot speak the words to save us all:
"The Fear will never leave, we were happy losing sleep,
We were happy losing sleep
The Fear will never leave, we were happy losing sleep,
from the balcony to concrete"
I lit a cigarette with ashes from your breath
And the city contracts in the drawing of a shade
The evening slips away in parasols and rain
All the water and blood I have siphoned from deeper wells
So where the water meets the land I'll bury my feet
And wait for the waves to cover me
Because every drop I steal is another horizon swell
And the city will rise on a tidal crest of words
To cure us all
"The Fear will never leave, we were happy losing sleep,
We were happy losing sleep
The Fear will never leave, we were happy losing sleep,
from the balcony to concrete"
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2. |
A Leaf In The Pool
05:52
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In the bitter wind, tethered to oxygen,
Light was the bullet that bloodied your side
I was waiting, a captive audience, with breaths I baited
And scattered across the divide
Things don't really happen, if I don't choose to see them
So ascend and arise with summer stalking my eyes,
I win this time when you step into the light
On the ocean then, cut through with dorsal fins,
Kiss the barcode adhered to your wrist
We were waiting, open lungs around rosaries
All counted before we could sleep
Things don't really happen, if I don't choose to see them
So ascend and arise with summer stalking my eyes,
I win this time when you step into the light
On the white sand, in the Mid-Atlantic,
We fall on film but it's all for you
On the white sand, in the Mid-Atlantic,
We fall and we fail but it's all for you
It's all for you
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3. |
The Hidden Staircase
04:12
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At that moment I awoke with the softest strand of pearls
clutching all about my lungs and I fell back under...
Everyone! Everyone! Fall asleep!
We are the glory of covetous men
Everyone! Everyone! Tears in the porcelain
Meaning does not mean a thing, anything
Everyone... Everyone... Waking up... Waking up...
In the camera we are born on some vacant, distant shore
In the cinema, to the light we cling
This is what happens when everyone's vanishing
Somewhere just beyond these hills are the whitest houses
Where children silently ascend the hidden staircase
Everyone! Everyone! Fall asleep!
This is the coma of karmatic taste
Everyone! Everyone! Speak into the microphone!
We have not a moment to waste on waking up
In the camera we are born on some vacant, distant shore
In the cinema, to the light we cling
This is what happens when everyone's vanishing
Everyone vanishing...
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4. |
Raise High
03:44
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We laid down deep in the cold war
Packed our bags and set sail for the north shore
The memories of Spain that we never made
Still wait in Barcelona
Under the shade of old palisades
With Miller and Hemingway
Raise High
The candidate comes, she has dust in her pockets
So eager to trade her life for a chain, her love for a locket
But the candidate came and no one was saved
So they're closing the polls
Around when the rain has come to claim
What we can't even save
Raise High
After the war, with blood in the water
My albatross in an ocean of red
After the war, we'll rise again
It took you too long to wave your goodbye to me
But I'll raise high
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5. |
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We've been searching for someone lost in the headlights
At the bottom of a well
And for seventeen hours, the water rises up
In the belly of the whale
And then light from the heavens shines upon Nineveh
From the bottom of a well
And we're holding our candles up to the ribcage
In the belly of the whale
Brave the waves
This isn't gonna be easier, you carpenters
Break the waves
This isn't gonna be easier, you carpenters
Stranded this far away from home
The life you save may be your own
In a shipwreck of angles, we're bad lucked and beautiful
In a fading crystal ball
And for seventeen hours, my knife is tracing red
In the line upon my palm
The whale and the well now contend for attention
In a broken crystal ball
When light from the heavens leads us to Nineveh
And washes us ashore
Brave the waves
This isn't gonna be easier, you carpenters
Break the waves
This isn't gonna be easier, you carpenters
Holding the last line of defense
When I fall through the countless leagues and fathoms
Straining for air, we come up with blood
But I knew your name before you wrote it
Your name before you drowned
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6. |
From This Height
04:03
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From this height, her procession is a thread of light
Pale and gossamer and tethering the Upper West Side
We set aflame, we light on fire everything invisible
Our prayers ascend, aloft on wires
The siren call of satellites
Our beauty is our light from balcony to reprise
Hold your breath, we're umbilical, letting go and spreading wings
In the dark, you my poison wine, draw the shades and drown me slowly
We set aflame, we light on fire every mile unreachable
Our limbs extend, our bodies tire, the concrete pulls us all inside
Our beauty is our light from balcony to reprise
In love and alive, our beauty is our life
From this height, we all fall down
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7. |
Ghost Of The Future
02:39
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8. |
Bearings
03:28
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The cables winding down, the wires strung from frame to frame
It's such a quiet sound, the postcard-perfect distance we've made
We're swinging from the rafters, my love
We swing while the audience awaits
They're severing body from blood and we swing, we swing
After life, after all the music fades and slowly dies
My love is alive in the fire, underwater
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead
We've been lost for it all, but I'll get my bearings back
We're on fire for our fiction
Summer in your hips, the pull of bottles and broken waves
We could just live like this, forever in debt to the memories we make
I will wait for you in the forest by the bay
I will wait for you in the parting waves
After life, after all the music fades and slowly dies
My love is alive in the fire, underwater
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead
We've been lost for it all, but I'll get my bearings back
Will you shine your light on me
Because I'm always....
We're on fire for our fiction
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9. |
Gallows & Galleries
03:59
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All the weight of the world placed upon a open palm
And buried for centuries
Now the light opens up in our eyes but we still deny
The true shape of anything
Heads will roll from our guillotines, down resolutions
And into our streets
And the stench will rise from Los Angeles
So opportunist, has it come to this?
(Slow down)
Set fire to the pages
When we've lost the light, the light
Our bodies in the river
When we've lost the light, the light
All the bombs, all the bombs we don't hear this far away
Still open our enemies
So haste the day when the flag waves above a turning wheel
With blood flowing through the hub
And our hands will lift when the curtains rise
In absolution, to black out the skies
And then stench will fall from Los Angeles
So opportunist, has it come to this?
Has it come to this?
(Slow down)
Set fire to the pages
When we've lost the light, the light
Our bodies in the river
When we've lost the light, the light
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10. |
The Manuscript
04:21
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We don't have time to waste, so we sleep like seconol
We tie our bodies to the trees
He slit his wrists and then the blood came suddenly
Across the typewriter keys
"I am a bitter taste, I am a violent thing
I have no thoughts to raise the dead"
His words were so like mine, I can't help thinking that
Our tongues were severed in the same breath
All night they picked you up off the ground
These days my life goes by in tangents unrequited
In spindles of discarded thread
And they wrap around us now, out in this concrete colony
Rending limb apart from limb
There was a time, you know, when even Christ was pardoned for
The sluggish stuttering of man
So don't forget that when you look him squarely in the eye
And beg forgiveness for all your sins
All night they picked you up off the ground
As the pages burn in your manuscript,
I will sing you to sleep
You say you won't bend, but I know better than that
You're only ashes and wind
All night they picked you up off the ground
All night they picked you up
Your whole life you searched but you never found
All night they picked you up...
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11. |
Holding Caulfield
12:39
|
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You burned your kerosene hands playing with fire
Now it's our time again to shuffle through the bones
As New York idiot birds balance on wires
This distance will blind, this is love, this is home
Welcome home
The mood ring industry sends letter from lovers
In envelopes sealed with your taste
Pulling hair from the roots, names without bodies
Remember, remind, retract and replace
I walked to the window and raised my hand to wave
But I could not remember the name we created to make
This goodbye seem okay
Ticking hands at your heart, they're mine to the fibers
And your blood's enough to bring rain
Pulling hair from the roots and paying off prostitutes
To wear your old clothes and call me Salinger
I walked to the window and raised my hand to wave
But I could not remember the name we created to make
This goodbye seem okay
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12. |
Black Eyes, Black Eyes
05:09
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I will look down and see my bones upon the murmuring water
A vision of life, a trespass of intellect, flatirons on the river
The glory of it, becoming and then became, a sudden burst of reason
When death catches wind and lungs become reservoirs for a silence monolithic
Black eyes, black eyes will not open for you and I tonight
False light, fault lines will not open for me as I resign
I will take shape of boarders and boundaries, of continents and nations
Rising at once to cover the whole of it, the hum and static of stations
The glory of all, the horrible moment when my hands cannot hold the river
And my body slips in, a vessel of oxygen for the sharks to bloody the water
Black eyes, black eyes will not open for you and I tonight
False light, fault lines will not open for me as I resign
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