I have infinite qualms about typing out lyrics; often I don’t know EXACTLY what the words are I’m singing, and occasionally the slightest alteration in what word I choose to type here changes the meaning to one specific interpretation, even when I might mean two different things. The process of transcribing things often forces a disambiguation when, in my mind, things might be ambiguous. However, you guys want lyrics, so here they is.
No One’s Listening
Fluid and graceful she grew out of your waist, threw her hands on your earlobes / those half-formed fingers spoke through a bear in the stars pulling sisters from her heart / laid upon the earth to hold your camera, beautify the memes you hand her, resonate the places she can find / Stupid and hateful, a self defined in pain wasting day after day in an existential play / till the earth, made of art, burrowed tunnels in your heart / and uncomfortable, you shake your body, steer it where the feeling started feeding from some loaned, endearing mind / Here I am to hold your camera, beautify the memes I’m handed, resonate in every piece I find / And then the stars sing “HELLO HELLO HELLO!” though no one’s listening.
Coded Lights
Cold hands, fingers, and toes, were wrapped in leaves and sweaters / Late fall smell on your clothes, breathing through your letters / We hide away our weird delight as strangers who adore the lie / and I would seem a little alive to you / Warm hands, where do they go? / A story you tell better / We’ll stay quiet and alone but in the room together whispering in coded lights the stories that we know and like and I would seem a little alive to you, my unfamiliar girl / Oh I know what I want tonight / A sick sweet ephemeral lie, so I would seem a little alive to you, my old familiar girl
Warm For A While
Tiptopple over in a sea of clover and swim for a while with our stem-stung faces in alien places we’ll run for a while and warm our skin in the furnace we call home and quiver when we find ourselves at home / The terrarium’s receding in pieces gleaming in a trillion suns all refracted into one one tiny little string that sings to shape the scenery all etched in ether conceiving me with our memory reeling and our egos peeling we’ll dream for a while we’ll be warm for a while though we can’t sew this beast to keep from leaking or quiver when its warmth invades our home / A sticky subject on a circuit board spring-green and glowing beneath my bed behind board games and artifacts from the childhood reel of your biography film, a play displayed on a screen that we can’t see though it feels so close to me / Oh who are you stranger, more than data in my memory? Est-ce que vous m’aimerez?
Radio Hit Musical
On the morning in the sun, humid air in human lungs / Tumble through the soaking yard sweating quarts in mother’s car / ‘Hey Helene, my room’s all new, melting colors dripped on you’ / Love my neighbor while I’m young; after noon, another one / Wind it came to bend the trees, basement walls, come cradle me / ‘Will your hands come quiver here when the thunder cracks your ears?’ / Morning comes with new cartoons; television wash your wounds / I am safety, Hour Three; December’s dim memory / Oh Helene, when I think I’m seventeen you look at me like you can’t see I was the boy who sang in radio plays when we sat together cursing the weather / Don’t you remember me, Helene? / How we warmed the cement floor while we cowered, pressed record and flashlit faces fashioned worlds, radio hit musicals, and out we poured some melody lily-soft and sickly-sweet / ‘Who,’ you’ll wonder, when you’re old, ‘was that faceless five-year-old?’ / Oh Helene, how am I at seventeen? Oh, whatever happened to me? When will we make more of our radio plays? And when will we ever huddle together? Don’t you remember me, Helene?
Les Enfants Dorment
Slow words cooling in your ear / sweetest dream you’ve had in years / all hearts to the fiery sky, burning and all the flames go blue / the pine trees shake their fists at you for building nests from their fingertips for your children to sleep / Sun’s eyes sweeten the crests on the sea and we float woozily above / Lazy hours, we’re wet and we’re free, carving our initials in the sun / Blue eyes closing all the time calm me, fingers intertwined / We keep our heads up and quiet down pour les enfants en dormant, pour les enfants m’adorent / Who knew who, running low on the road, scraping our knees in the grass? / We smile so sweet, fall asleep in the snow, pressing close to keep each other warm / They were two and they melted; now there’s just one, and her castles are crumbling; I can see her letters in the sun / Fold your wings and sleep away; we’re just characters in plays and when we wake up the sun will be gone
Whisper Me Pretty Secrets
Sirens who sleep in the pavement lie awake in my backyard dreaming in warming and hinted smiles and radio disasters / With half-closed eyes we speak in tongues, still and quiet all the night, whispering, ‘Oh, mister, please, we’ll always love you. Unroll here, unravel your body tonight, warm your hands and whisper me you’ll always love me like a vampire, keeping me all safe from in-the-sun, and I will let you keep your teeth all clenched and locked in my head-wire; you are my vampire.’ / And then we shake there for hours; all convulse in the flowers, the tulips and dandelions whisper me ‘I’ll always love you, and I will keep us safe from everyone. When waterfalls collapse us all, we’ll lay and watch the sun, and when the feeding hours end, cut and fucking run.’ / Grin in the morning and face the lie: my burning eyes at dawn, my empty-yard disaster / Ache in the teeth squeezed a gentle heart and left her hands behind, and when I pull they just hold faster / ‘In your dream I’ll always love you like a vampire, curled asleep when we both see the sun, but I won’t let you sleep a wink alone to dream a world I learned to shun, so I’ll see you, pretty one.’
Balloons And Confetti
Come come there’s nothing here but balloons and confetti from a stranger’s birthday party attended by two close friends who were close to the moon and the sun and the one strange girl with ribbons tied in ugly knots in her long long hair that was cut in clumps that fell sparkling in silver rainwater in the backyard when it flooded and you hadn’t yet learned to worry / Oh silver silver baby don’t worry there’s light left for years in the hot hot sun / Oh silver silver baby don’t worry there’s light left for years and there is temperature running through your holy body breaking apart / You want to run but it only makes your heart run hot / You’re afire in the middle of the family room and your sister sister she’ll be leaving soon / There’s a baby awaiting the fear in her hand / You want to hold her by the feet until she can’t stand it / Twitching by the bricks and the sticks she demanded
Like Lost Teeth
Let’s go darling to the cactus garden in the driest desert little animals lick their teeth at water thieves one day darling we will suck their hearts and cry for ourselves in quiet little howls all smothered in our sandy sheets oh my darling with the rain our garden will be heavenly oh my darling let’s arrange for rain and escape / If we transformed our dreams, [...], from invisible light on invisible screens / Now we’re stuck inside a battle like a bullet in a body floating past the faded giant’s heads we used to hover near and we rattle rattle rattle like lost teeth crowding all around the withered nerves to which we once adhered / There is home, there is, in our world
A Momentary Blink
Woke up in a bedroom next to a family drugged and hazed so the days they sweep on by astronaut helmet patterns on my pillow all of my dreams set in more specific significant places that sing for me for the momentary blink when you whisper little mister don’t you miss a little kiss or two or two or three when you’re dangling there with your toes in the trees swinging from the ceiling flying over me staring out the window at the neighbors we imagined / A black hole had opened next door and nosed around in their closets we could see it from the swingset before the neighborhood went dark / Woke up in a freezer next to the animals though confused they took me for their own put astronaut helmet patterns on my new bedsheets oh at night we thrust our wings and take off out the open window singing harmony for that momentary blink we could wreck at any second but we’re quicker than that we breathe for that momentary blink a pretty fiction we can think and think and think / You were swinging from the ceiling with our hands on me staring our the window at the neighbors we imagined and then the neighborhood went dark, and then the neighborhood went blank
Violets
The bears attempted to feed someone the violets in their fur, roving ’round the sidewalks, stepping ’round the flowers / We all cramped onto sticky leather, evacuated our homes; speeding past the sidewalks, we won’t eat the flowers / One was in my office one was in my home oh we gotta pull back hold together and one day they’ll go home one was at the church and he asked about my soul oh you’ve got to chew those flowers our of his hands and that will make you whole / One was in your house one was in your bedroom one insisted gently that he’d never hurt you / One was in my mind in my dreams for weeks one hand-fed the dog a flower and now the dog can speak / I cut the canvas and crawled from the car to the shade at the side of the road; in moments, I was in the canopy, right above the flowers / They crept from the trees in the tens of thousands and petals rained from their fur / They pulled me down and devoured me among the flowers / And one, his eyes were sweet as he bit into my bone, ‘Oh, you could’ve kept your human hands to yourself, and we could’ve left you alone.’
The City Hours
All enthused for metamorphoses you and strangers who shine at things like you poked and prodded played in alchemy her sweet silver soul turned your face to gold / Flew into the truest mist you’ve breathed sweating in her room swooning and consumed draped and dizzy as your bodies gleam awed in something’s power in the fleeting hours / And you’ll smile and see the sun on each other as you speak and squeal and jump, pre-lovers still afraid to love another / Were you awake in the city hours as flowers blinked in the street and the smoke that rose from the faults and holes curled to comfort me / Are you awake in the city hours as towers twirl at your feet and lo behold all your fingers fold up in ecstasy / As you smile and see the sun on each other take your tapes record and run freeze another warm and twitching dream to thaw when the tape ends and you stop smiling awake in the city hours as sour as they are sweet / But sweetness holds you and feeds your whole human sense of being / Your sense of things as beautiful as these had shattered with ease but please don’t fear their richness in the cold they are your heat when you’re old they are the gleam in a mind that won’t dream
Surrealists On Vacation
Let’s quit our work and lay around in feathers over the clouds in a balloon wrapped up in sheets we leap around the balconies and make believe it’s always June / I dreamed of you when summer came hollow and heavy and you woke up in my sleeping-room suddenly the afternoon was gone distant as your dreams and holy memories your soothing silhouette you pray you don’t forget how sidewalks move and open up in front of us while passersby don’t even look / We sweat and sing all addled from our opiates / We have a playground in our mood / I dreamed of you when you first came over to find me lighting candles in your living room now we’re bonded tied and glued / God must after all believe in common poetry and love as children we believed was common as the seasons
Dangerous Drugs
We’re on our knees in gleeful meetings we remember from some fleeting blissed-out moment in the bedroom, and then we’re twinkling like needles in the evening, all slivers of amber light that carve your face as you whisper me ‘Will you get me higher than dangerous drugs and trust me in the morning not to run? For I can’t live a moment without the senses that you swell, and I can feel you in my blood.’ / We are the trees, we are the ceilings and the spires, we conjure chemical wires that carry current that twists our spines. At night we rise to greet the miracles we try to find curling in the atmosphere that carves your face as I bend your ears: Will you get me higher than dangerous drugs and trust me in the morning not to run? For I can’t live a moment without the senses that you swell and I can feel you in my blood. / After the warnings, let’s plunge till we’re stuck and siphon all the syrup we can suck until we’re laid out on our blankets, wide-eyed, hallucinating patterns, all corroded in my room / If you get me higher than dangerous drugs and trust me in the morning not to run then maybe we’ll protect one another like lovers and I can feel you in my / I could feel you in my / I can’t feel you in my blood
I’ll Be Your Elevator
Overflowing with the thoughts I wrote and scratched on your name tag, I scribbled notes and little poems both hypnotic and abstract to twirl your world, all smooth and small, content and plain; we’ll move the walls without restraint and move to cities we remember from the week we were shaking, nearly feverish, delirious, and longing and aching to twirl the world all through the halls, around the den, into our beds and out again / Darling how’s the furnace in your room? Does it flicker and spark the way that it used to, back when we slept away there and glowed like the radiator? Are we locked in together, are we warm under one umbrella out in the rainstorm? We’ll hide in the cellar later, then I’ll be your elevator / How we tumble and we stumble over feet so familiar. If you’re nervous, then I’m nervous not to fumble and filter and blur your world, all smooth and small, where all is well / You’ve got your walls, I’ll go in my shell / Let’s spin them all and count the seconds till they’re flat on the table; let’s throw them off and walk through the fallen-down forests behind the yard, for soon it’s Fall, and fall we will; like trees and empires will when we stick our hands and shiver, smiling sweetly, watching windows in the back room with the furnace on and the sky view all opened up to you / You hum like a generator and glow like the radiator in the back room / I’ve got the heat to continue, yeah, I’m just as warm as I used to be when we slept away there and we glowed like radiators / Now we’re stuck in the cellar baby and I’ll be your elevator
Rubbing Arms And Setting Fires
Two dizzy creatures covered in charms tracing the blood vessels trapped in their arms / Half profoundly confused, awed, and barely able to move / Sleepy and sober, dim as the stars, feeling and folding her in his arms / Half profoundly confused, awed, and barely able to move / While streetlights sweep across the ceiling they swoon and can’t contain the feeling / Dizzy yourself and spin like your heart spun when you met me, rubbing my arms / Half profoundly confused, awed, and barely able to move / While streetlights sweep across the ceiling they swoon and can’t contain the feeling / Half profoundly confused, awed, and barely able to move / Oh, if half the legend is true, I will never find another killer like you / You’re the one I want setting fire to my world
Cricket Girl
I’d let you move in and sleep in the basement, baby / Alright, cricket-girl, you know when you wake me wailing / We’ll dance in living rooms, draped by the windows, and I’ll hold you with broken fingers tonight / Here we watch the orange sun; we can watch the orange sun and I can whistle your name to thrill you / I’d let you move in and sleep in the basement, baby / Alright, cricket-girl, you know when you wake me wailing / How you gnaw on my arms and elbows; how sweetly your eyes glow / Under streetlights you cry at me, waving madly with all six legs / I’ll hover right here, I’ll fly you home at midnight, and I will whistle your name to thrill you / I’d let you move in and sleep in the basement, baby / Alright, cricket-girl, you know when you wake me wailing / Every night you lick and chew and cry at me / Every night you serenade the street / Kiss me right with your insect mouth, come back in the light and turn to love, curl up at the foot of the bed / Or you might get around to curling up with me and I will whistle with you late in the night and in the morning teach you never to bite, and we will hide here so we’ll never die / I’ll find a bed for you and keep you happy / I’d let you move in and sleep in the basement, baby / Alright, cricket-girl, you know when you wake me wailing
Ordinary Girl
You’re the actress in scenes that played in my hopeful head in the seventh grade, when I floated out on a rainy sea in my little world I was fast asleep and dreamed a dream that never came because it wasn’t true but it seems to be when I’l close to you but I can’t speak to that objectively ’cause you’re no ordinary girl to me / What the hell do I do with this thing I once imagined to coexist in the same old world where I move and breathe and in the little hours I fall asleep and dream a dream that never comes because it isn’t true though it must have something to do with you or maybe you’re just a fantasy I invented to pretend there’s something close to me but I can’t speak to that objectively ’cause you’re no ordinary girl to me / It never came because it wasn’t true but it seems to be when I’m close to you and you are not just a fantasy; you’re as real as the sun falling through the trees that I can only see subjectively, oh, you’re no ordinary girl to me, now let’s go start a fire and carry it in the street
