1. |
Little Wave
03:44
|
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1.
Pain is a secret mark
And then it spreads out like a stain.
Eyes hung like lilies on
the surface of the rain.
First I made a little word
and it choked her like a wound.
Her arms bent around me
like a sky all bleak and blue.
Broken-footed, empty-headed,
dance my fingers outside of her hand.
Fill her mouth with sorrow -
that’s the kicking of my lungs.
Need another voice.
I’ll be silent for awhile.
Didn’t want to do it.
She forgives me with a smile.
CHORUS
I know, I know what I am:
I’m a little animal,
I’m dead without your love.
I know it’s not enough to say it.
I know, I know what you are:
you’re the little wave that
breaks against my mouth.
I hope you know I want to drink it.
2.
First, her face, like thorns,
got stuck inside my heart.
Hands twisting ribbons
round the body-kicked-apart.
Moment on the lip of joy,
she trembled like a watery bruise.
Arms bent around me
Still that sky, same bleak, same blue.
I will not speak, I’ll let you speak.
I’m burning holes in everything.
I want a smile,
a burning line smiling back at me.
Torn hand, like rag,
she fluttered inside my head.
Legs weak with distance
as she jumps across the bed.
CHORUS
3.
If you ask me to explain,
it is a simple, stupid wonder.
At night, when you lay sleeping,
I’m ashamed of all the blundering.
CHORUS
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2. |
||||
1.
It’s cold tonight
and I see it’s my fault;
it’s purple and I’m
sitting still
It’s cold tonight
and I see you’re unhappy;
it’s raining and
I’m heavy against my will.
Could I rise,
could I rise,
could I take you
by the hand,
be a baby,
be an unobtrusive
child for you again?
My sweetness,
you’re a beauty,
you’re a beauty
with your fingers
in his hair.
CHORUS
And I’m tired of pretending means
I’m tired now of talking, touching, looking, thinking;
I’d love silence and that
sweetness at the nape of your neck
and you smiling like you’re ready to explode;
you were something, you were something
like a tree all decked for Christmas
and now here comes the New Year
and we’re dry, dry and grey again.
2.
It’s nine o’clock
and I’m your headache
and I’m booming
and my voice is
a-banging in your face.
I’m speaking,
it ’s ugly,
I’m pretending I am pretty;
I’m the body
and the body might be
a total waste.
Play with me.
Well we’re awkward
and I bump you in the dark;
then I’m speaking
like a chicken,
like a cow
And I’m sorry about this
thing here
and I’m sorry that
you lose me;
if I could I would
touch your real
heart somehow.
CHORUS (x 2)
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3. |
Maybe a Train
03:37
|
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1.
Maybe a train,
maybe a ride of many days,
maybe a station with dim lights
and strangers on the platform…
Leave the heat of the endless plains
and make for the mild northern hills.
Maybe a room where
I’ve never been before,
maybe a window opening
on a city I’ve never seen before…
I’d like to drink sweet tea
and wait for nightfall above the street.
CHORUS
I want to hear your voice—
until I hear your voice.
I want to have you near—
until you’re with me, near at hand.
In silence, let us sit here
and let the sun shine
and get as close as
I’m ever going to get
to that lonely trip
from love by cowardice.
2.
Maybe a road,
maybe a sunny, summer road,
maybe stopping at some junction
for something very icy-cold…
Oh, I have not gone away yet;
too broke to even fill the tank.
Maybe a walk,
maybe never turning round to look back,
maybe unfailing,
maybe never winding down…
Oh, I have not gone that way yet.
Soon I’ll be too old to even dream of it.
CHORUS
3.
Maybe the end.
|
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4. |
The Beating
04:06
|
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1.
Sounds like the end of the world
and I’m lying down like I do,
like I’ve never moved.
Can’t sleep through this weather.
I hear it ripping around the roof.
If it’s the end of the world,
I hope you’re with me here
when the morning comes.
When I wake up forever,
don’t want to be left outside the door…
…begging mercy
and beauty,
more time,
no more bleak romance.
With eyes as bright as angels’,
why did I kick her to the floor?
CHORUS
Listen to me: do I come, do I go?
I know my voice has pushed you
to the end of love.
I want to love you again.
Will you love me again?
2.
I’m ashamed to say:
I had a dream
(I mean, everybody has a dream).
In my dream there was a woman
who looked at me a funny way.
If I’m unwrapped now,
I think I’d be sorry,
I think I’d want to hide.
Let me see a few more mornings
before you take me on the tide…
…and down the delta,
across the water;
more time;
I know I’m slow as stars.
Her eyes as sweet as angels’,
still I’m forgetting more and more.
CHORUS
3.
I’ve got something to say.
I don’t wake you to tell you
because I’m too afraid.
I’m sick of wanting to be someone.
Oh, when will that fade away?
I’ve got something to say,
but don’t wake up and listen—
it will only come out wrong.
Just backwards, broken nonsense;
I just want to have it done…
…give me beauty,
please mercy,
more time.
It’s a dark romance.
With eyes all shot from beating,
still we pounded the savior more and more.
CHORUS
|
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5. |
||||
1.
Night came on, November blown
and the edges of the scene still dim with light.
Flashing rush of flakes.
A road blind with ice.
Do you remember, on that
one long hill we might have
lost our lives?
We could’ve closed our eyes.
All-night drive, nowhere in mind,
cross-country backway, outside of time.
Down the spine of some long weekend
we just slid out of sight.
Was it darker then than when we left?
Yeah, the glow from the radio seemed more
green and sad than before.
Nothing beamed in anymore.
Where were you?
Were you dreaming of the same far places?
Come down from your high places
and cross the broken border.
No more freezing in the desert,
no more dry snow like a dust-storm.
They say that nobody dead can hear you.
Still, I wish our missing friends would pray for us.
CHORUS
When do we get away?
When do we go abroad?
Could I live one foreign moment
and not wreck it beside you, baby?
Don’t want to slide, don’t want to die
in the depths of winter, still unchanged.
2.
We stopped at ten to stretch our legs and
Our baby girl wanted something warm.
Wind like awful knives
When I open the door.
Stood there breathing in an
Atmosphere all reeking
Fuel and ice and brine.
Watched you go inside.
All night stop, ice-box and coffee,
Not another sound, just the hum of white lights.
Breaks my heart to see you
Trying to decide what to buy.
Through the window I’ll be watching,
You feel torn from my side –
Another wound,
another wound for my bride.
Will God take anything we give him?
Even the darkest, hopeless, hateful -
If it’s all we have to offer?
And when will we ever get outside of
All we’re trapped inside of?
Let the stones and the snow bear witness –
Just tell me I have loved you.
CHORUS
|
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6. |
Chim Chim Cheree
03:13
|
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CHORUS
Chim chiminey,
chim chiminey,
chim chim cher-ee!
A sweep is as lucky
as lucky can be.
Chim chiminey,
chim chiminey,
chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off when
I shakes hands with you.
(Or blow me a kiss
and that's lucky too.)
1.
Now, as the ladder of [life]
has been strung,
you may think a sweep's
on the bottommost rung.
Though I spends me life
in the ashes and smoke,
in this whole wide world
there's no happier bloke.
CHORUS
3.
I choose me bristles with pride,
yes, I do:
a broom for the shaft
and a brush for the flue.
Up where the smoke is
all billered and curled,
‘tween pavement and stars
is the chimney-sweep world.
Where there’s hardly no day
and there’s hardly no night;
just things half in shadow
and halfway in light.
On the rooftops of London—
Ah!—what a sight!
CHORUS
(Chim chim cher-ee
Chim cher-oo!)
|
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7. |
The Birthday Bash
04:38
|
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1.
Late summer night, it’s my best friend’s birthday.
We’ll have a fire at the bottom of the yard.
And I’ll string a line of lights along the alley-way.
Can we do it at your house though?—mine’s too close to
the road out of town.
Late summer night, it’s my best friend’s birthday.
He’ll drink too much and get all weepy and wet.
And the dew on the soft, dark grass will soak
the trailing hem of your autumn dress.
CHORUS
Half a stick, a blackened patch;
dead flames of last night’s
Birthday Bash.
An eighth of a bottle of something sticky-green.
The wind will empty everything
and the morning won’t fill it up again.
2.
Late summer night, it is my best friend’s birthday.
We won’t invite any other girls—but you must come.
He knows no one but you and me—
plus it’s nice to have a girl around.
Late summer night, it’s my best friend’s birthday.
He’s very old and it is hard to understand him, when
every word comes out inside of a bubble from
in between his nose and chin.
CHORUS
3.
Late summer, night-time, my best friend’s birthday.
If anybody sees him they might say: He’s acting like a retard.
But in whose eyes does he look so bad?
Not yours or mine—we don’t talk like that.
Late summer night-time of my best friend’s birthday.
Before he sleeps in the icy ground, he says:
Today (today, today) was not my birth-day.
But thank you, he says—
and then he says, I’m sorry.
|
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8. |
The Lies
03:18
|
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1.
Vous avez aujourd’hui
horreur de ces mains.
Vous n’avez plus l’envie,
comme avant,
d’être touché par ces deux
conspiratrices.
Par celle qui a tenu le papier
pour celle qui a tenu le crayon
qui a écrit les mensonges
qui vous ont incité
(qui vous ont incité)
à m’adorer
vraiment...
CHORUS
Songe
et crie;
subis
la mainmise;
oublie
la vérité.
Je sais
qu’il faut
oublier
pour écrire
quelque chose
de vrai.
2.
Vous avez aujourd’hui
horreur de cet homme.
Vous n’avez plus l’envie,
désormais
que l’on touche à cette
cicatrice terrible.
Par la main qui a ouvert le cahier
pour la main qui a manié le crayon,
qui a écrit les mensonges
qui vous ont incité,
(qui vous ont incité)
à m’adorer
vraiment.
CHORUS
Verse 1
CHORUS
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9. |
||||
1.
First Book I Couldn’t Have,
I couldn’t have because I was
no good at math, though that first book
was all concerned with math, I thought—
or so I think I must have thought—
though what my ten-year-old idea was,
of math, who knows, because I couldn’t even
do a sum or multiply by one.
Was it images of geniuses like Gauss,
Galois, and
Gödel with his hair slicked back and
a painting from the Renaissance
showing how perspective’s drawn and
Arabs staring at the sky and
Newton having apple 𝜋,
Klein’s bottle having no inside.
CHORUS
More overcome than
Carroll’s funny, palid queen,
who cried before
the pin had even stung—
though unlike her,
in that nobody’s going to
find it funny when
one does it to one’s son
2.
Second Book I Couldn’ t Have,
I couldn’t have because I wasn’t
brave enough, although I’d known
a lot of fear, which takes a lot of
courage just to bear—or so
I think it must have done, though what
my childish notion was, of fear, who knows.
Was it awful things—like a ghost-dog
watching for its Lady’s ship, long after
she had sunk away and faeries in some
photographs taken when
Victoria was our Empress and
dark fortresses of murdered kings and
Norsemen stringing their horses up.
CHORUS
3.
Third Book I Couldn’t Have,
I couldn’t have because I lacked humility:
I wanted to do a
History of everything I’d ever seen,
or dreamed I’d seen,
a catalogue of all the ways
the world might be—not meaning that
a world might be just any way.
That book was an empty room with
white walls waiting for the stain of saying
all my filthy thoughts, with no one listening
but God.
You said: You’re no great Fabulist.
Do not indulge in that, you said.
Do not pretend that you are special.
Mad, you laughed, and walked ahead.
CHORUS
(One does it to one’s,
one does it to one’s,
one always does it to one’s son.)
|
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10. |
Two Sisters
05:20
|
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1.
There was an old woman,
lived by the seashore.
Refrain A
Bow and balance to me.
There was an old woman,
lived by the seashore—
a number of daughters,
one, two, three, four.
Refrain B
And I’ll be true to my love,
if my love’ll be true to me.
2.
There was a young man,
come there to see them.
Ref. A
There was a young man,
come there to see them
and the oldest one
got stuck on him.
Ref. B
3.
He got for the youngest
a beaver hat.
Ref. A
He got for the youngest
a beaver hat
and the oldest one
got mad at that.
Ref. B
4.
O sister, O sister,
come walk the seashore.
Ref. A
O sister, O sister,
come walk the seashore
and see the ships
as they’re sailing o’er.
Ref. B
5.
And as these two sisters
were walking the shore.
Ref. A
And as these two sisters
were walking the shore,
the oldest pushed
the youngest o’er.
Ref. B
6.
O sister, O sister,
please lend me your hand.
Ref. A
O sister, O sister,
please lend me your hand
and you shall have Willy
and all his land.
Ref. B
7.
I never, I never will
lend you my hand.
Ref. A
I never, I never will
lend you my hand
and I shall have Willy
and all of his land.
Ref. B
8.
Sometime she sank and
sometime she swam.
Ref. A
Sometime she sank and
sometime she swam,
’til she came to
the old Mill Dam.
Ref. B
9.
The Miller, he go out
his fishing hook.
Ref. A
The Miller, he go out
his fishing hook and
he fished the maiden
out of the brook.
Ref. B
10.
O Miller, O Miller,
here’s five gold rings.
Ref. A
O Miller, O Miller,
here’s five gold rings
to push the maiden
in again.
Ref. B
11.
The Miller received
those five gold rings.
Ref. A
The Miller received
those five gold rings
and he pushed the maiden
in again.
Ref. B
12.
The Miller was hung
in the old Mill Gate.
Ref. A
The Miller was hung
in the old Mill Gate
for drowning
little sister Kate.
Ref. B
|
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11. |
||||
1.
I read an old philosopher
who writes about a man,
who inebriated as a youth
was led into a brothel.
Who as a man, upon the shore,
on country roads, and in the city,
watches little faces
looking for a sign.
He’s waiting for an indication,
something in the jaw or eyes,
something that could settle it
and put an end to his ceaseless speculation.
He is afraid that
having known that
fatal, painted woman,
unawares, he might have
fathered a child.
CHORUS
Reality is not the terror
possibility is (x 3).
That’s why everything is slipping away.
2.
Like a scar that comes and goes,
like an echo ‘cross the water,
like a ghost that’s never visible,
this could be, or not be.
But he seizes the impression,
he sustains it through the night.
Must be getting sicker—
what was maybe feels like certainly.
He’s thinking back
and he is looking in the mirror
and he makes their inky images
on every surface that he can.
He sees his lover’s features,
he makes the choice:
I am a father.
I made the mother;
I abandoned the child
CHORUS
3.
If you do not get it,
then get this.
Picture this:
you are alone without a boat
over seventy-thousand
cold, cold fathoms.
And if you do not like
this morbid story,
remember this:
you are alone without a boat
over seventy-thousand
cold, cold fathoms of water.
Unawares you might have
fathered a child
CHORUS
|
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12. |
The Lamb
03:21
|
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1.
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee;
gave thee life and bid thee feed,
by the stream and o’er the mead;
gave thee clothing of delight,
softest clothing, wooly bright;
gave thee such a tender voice,
making all the vales rejoice?
Do you know—do you?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Do you know—do you?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
2.
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
for he calls himself a Lamb.
He is meek and he is mild,
he became a little child.
I a child and thou a lamb,
we are called by his name.
Do you know—do you?
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
Do you know—do you?
Little Lamb, God bless thee.
(I a child and thou a lamb,
we are called by his name.)
|
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13. |
A Psalm to Sing
04:10
|
|||
1.
Is there a psalm to sing
when you’re lost to the blameless king,
when you’re quit by the holy one,
disowned by the righteous son?
Is there a psalm intoned
when you hear you’re to be stoned
and thus banished from the city?
Father, mother show no pity.
Is it you?
I don't know who I'm speaking to.
Oh, I been dreaming of
somebody who's gonna
show me that we’re loved?
2.
Is there a psalm you hear
when all you’ve earned is drawing near,
when the end goes on forever,
and it’s a never-resting Never?
Is there a psalm that’s rung
when the wicked dead are hung
exposed upon a tree?
See how cursèd you can be?
Were you there?
Did I see you there somewhere?
Have I been dreaming of
somebody who's gonna
show me that we’re loved?
3.
Is there a psalm that cries
for everyone that dies
and could do nothing about sin,
who had no harvest to gather in?
Is there a psalm for fear
no friend’s gonna persevere,
to tell me it’s gonna be alright,
so I can face the terror of the night?
Is it you?
I don’t know who I’m speaking to.
Oh, I been dreaming of
somebody who's gonna
show me that we’re loved?
4.
Sorry for this psalm so dark.
I didn’t mean to touch the holy ark.
And am I cast from here to hell?
Did I really hear the warning bell?
|
||||
14. |
Every Hour Here
03:04
|
|||
1.
Do we ride our bikes around
the circle in the cemetary, weaving?
I wave up to you on the cross.
Am I to come upon you suddenly
like this, forever—happy, relieved
you are here?
And I can see you.
I can feel you.
I can see you.
2.
You are like the ticket-half
I find inside the pocket of my
old leaf-raking coat.
There all the time, all the while,
forgotten.
I so often seem to leave you
in churches and other islands
and on my beads.
Where I can see you.
I can feel you.
I can see you.
3.
I take the ticket-half and
put it on the table saying:
this is God and he’s here
through my comings
and my goings.
But I walk past the ticket-half,
I walk past the ticket-half,
I walk past the ticket-half—
just as I’ve walked past the cross
on our wall.
Our self-importance grows so
dazzling, we don’t see you
(dazzling, we don’t see you,
dazzling we don’t see you).
(But) gentle Jesus,
aren’t you always,
aren’t you ever hour here? (x 3)
|
Cameron M. Thomson Toronto, Ontario
Cameron Thomson is a Toronto-based moral philosopher, musician, and writer. When he’s not writing or making music, he may be found on the beach, searching for beach-glass and other treasure, or in the woods, digging for historical glass in former dumpsites. Visit him on Instagram at @cameron_m_thomson. ... more
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