1. Oh My Sadie

2. Unbending

3. This Past Storm

4. Much At All

5. I Don't Know 'Em

6. Blood & Rust

7. Help Me When I Say

8. Oracle's Tune

9. A Modest Boat

10. Paper Thin

11. Falstaff

Oh My Sadie

We’re a snake bit squad that’s overwrought and all chewed up

But we still suit up

We still suit up

 

And after years of drunken stumbling thought we’d find our step

But we haven’t yet

No, we haven’t yet

 

Oh my Sadie

How I’m begging you to stay

Oh my Sadie

I’ll need you till their dying day

 

My grim and glacial home was the only thing I crazed

With an upright tuned

To a silver moon

 

Until the commissary captain caught us in our tracks

I didn’t even know

We were on parole

 

Oh my Sadie

Oh how I need you by my side

Oh my Sadie

I’ll need you till the day they die

 

Take your taste for royal waste and burn it quick

Cause it’s got me sick

Yeah it’s got me sick

 

And let the smoke unplug and drain the thoughts keeping you awake

Who needs them anyway

Who needs them anyway

 

Oh my Sadie

How I’m begging you to stay

Oh my Sadie

I’ll need you till their dying day

 

But I’m as bound to you as the lonesome sound to its minor key

And I’ll always be

I’ll always be

 

So load the truck and come unstuck for one more shot

Save me a spot

Save me a spot

 

Oh my Sadie

Oh how I need you by my side

Oh my Sadie

I’ll need you till the day they die

 

Oh my Sadie

How I’m begging you to stay

Oh my Sadie

I’ll need you till their dying day

Unbending

Where time and space meet on a road unending

We stand on separate sidewalks miles apart

And it’s here that I have stopped pretending

That I’ve known my way since the very start

That I’ve known my way since the very start

 

Crowds en masse, they chant defending

Saying: streets are made to be paved this wide

But in the gravity of their voices descending

We sink and we slide to each other’s side

We sink and we slide to each other’s side

 

My will in unbending

You’ll always be mine

 

They’ve pulled our trampoline out tighter

Now time’s too stiff beneath out feet

So we twist street signs to fool outsiders

This space is meant for just you and me

This space is meant for just you and me

 

Let ‘em keep their stories with happy endings

And we’ll keep our songs with the maudlin beats

They may find their homes with a clock and a compass

But they’ll never find that unending street

In that time and space that we both shall meet

 

Yes my will in unbending

You’ll always be mine

 

It can’t be found in some man-made invention

No super market or three-dimensions

Just meter and rhyme:

You’ll always be mine

You’ll always be mine

You’ll always be mine

This Past Storm

This past storm recalled in me, my darling

A story that I thought you’d care to know

I’ve no place left to go

 

How I wound up in a hole so low my darling

With this strangest most dangerous brew ever known

Is all here in this note:

 

Oh, I cheated death in the kind of wreck that turns your hair to gray

They respected me, mistakenly, overestimating my age

So I broke out and headed south, before my dark roots could grow

And my cover was blown

I just thought that you should know

 

I found a town in east Colorado

Where I learned to stitch up tattered clothes

It was in my bones

 

The old man who was my teacher

Let me sleep inside the stove

I never felt less alone

 

Though I was as good a tailor as that town had ever seen

I couldn’t recognize this wool that was pulled right over me

In that sudden cotton-mouthed blindness, the only regret I could hold

Was letting you go

I just thought that you should know

 

So I awoke on this fishing boat, my darling

With a thousand men I do not know

A thousand miles from home

 

We all speak a different language

Cloaked in the smoke of a north Atlantic night

Just trying to live our lives

 

With what you lent I can pay my rent for my old dog and me

But I still can’t circumvent the seafloor that’ll be our home next week

I’m a reprobate and profligate who can’t navigate this far from shore, anymore

I just thought that you should know

Much At All

You faded fast at the end

Your screen creaking and your doorframe bent

I still can smell you in this room

It’s like gunpowder soaking in cheap perfume

 

But I don’t really need you much at all

No I don’t need you at all

 

All you left were your rusted shears

You never did like this phony beard

Your fade-to-black was a maddening sight

But you also never cared to end things right

 

But I don’t really mind it much at all

I don’t mind it much at all

 

I hope that you see

 Each word that I speak is untrue

When I tell you that I don’t want you

Cause you know that I do

 

I walk barefoot to close the gate

My steps seem heavier every day

I notice it most when I’m out wandering late

My vestigial heart is just dead weight

 

I don’t really need you much at all

I don’t need you much at all

 

A false prophet in a tempest tossed

It was my crooked staff-cross that got you lost

I stare out the screen at the tracks you made

And I sharpen your shears and start to shave

 

I don’t really need you much at all

No I don’t mind it much at all

 

And I hope that you know

Each word that I wrote is untrue

When I told you that I don’t want you

Cause you know that I do

I Don’t Know ‘Em

It’s a question that they wrote me

In a story

About a city quarantined

Filled with the desperate and diseased

 

And I answered in a poem

Called “I Don’t Know ‘Em”,

That reads, “it won’t break my heart

When they rip themselves apart”

 

So I will breathe

On those peaceful streets

Until I sleep

Oh to dream that night away

 

And I’ll throw away my pistol, not beat but wistful

Like a captain old and frail

Whose ship that never hoisted sail

 

Maybe I’ll plant a garden, but I’ll beg your pardon

If I drown every seed

Growing’s not my specialty

 

And I will sweep

Up each dead leaf

And I’ll make a bed for me to sleep

Oh to dream that night away

 

And a storm blew, it blew my eyes open wide

“Someone help me, please help me,” I cried

And the ground shook, but all I heard was the beat

Of my pounding heart as I awoke on the street

 

Inside the mausoleum, I paused to see ‘em

Standing still in the dark

Like statues in the park

 

I miss their conversations, and their desperation

And their diseases all the same

No, they’re not to blame

 

And I will weep

In our cemetery

And I’ll find a hole for me to sleep

Oh to dream that night away

Blood & Rust

The forces formed and the phalanx split

I bet you can still remember it

It’s nothing if not an astounding view

Of those rebel troops surrounding you

Of those rebel troops surrounding you

 

You look at me like I ought to know

In our bedroom dug like a fresh foxhole

Then you hand me my survival kit

Just a blindfold and a cigarette

Just a blindfold and a cigarette

 

You chose war

While I chose you

Ain’t it cruel

 

Your city-state will crack and split

And I’ll make my home right under it

It’s the ones you love that lay siege to you

But I can’t be blamed for the things they do

No I can’t be blamed for the things they do

 

You chose war

While I chose you

Ain’t it cruel

Like destiny you head out west

Where your general’s been laid to rest

On his gravestone you scrape back the dust

And read: those not covered in blood are covered in rust

Those not covered in blood are covered in rust

Help Me When I Say

It’s a silver line of light across my eyelids

As the violence follows me down

The silver line helps me come to feeling

Revealing your peeling heart

I’ll hold my tongue cause I know this is the when

I’m left standing abandoned in the rain

 

Help me when I say

Please don’t go away

Please don’t leave me here alone

Help me when I say

Please don’t go away

Please don’t leave me here alone

So far from home

 

Very few people know the sequence

Of the events that prevents our love

Yes it’s only you and I who know the reasons

For the treasonous way you put me down

Help me if you can I’m filling up on

All the ways you and the days you fool around

 

Help me when I say

Please don’t act this way

Please don’t cast me off your bones

Help me when I say

Please don’t go away

Please don’t cast me off your bones

So far from home

 

Help me when I say

Please don’t go away

Please don’t leave me here alone

Help me when I say

Please don’t go away

Please don’t leave me here alone

So far from home

Oracle's Tune

It sounds insane

But the oracle she called my name

Dragged me inside,

Stuck these ancient coins up to my eyes

 

Said with these I see right through

No matter what you do

Like Styx this river's fixed in front of you

And you know it to be true

 

She grabbed my cheeks

I felt my little heart get weak

Whispered to me

You're as shallow as those breaths you breathe

 

Your words are dirt, tar, and glue

No matter what you do

Paving the shoddy streets in front of you

And you know it to be true

 

Your thick rough fear grows with the beard

Of neglect around the neck of you

And you wear it proud

Like a self knit shroud

But only death is a refuge

And there is no other truth

 

Sleep my dear

On the ground beneath your chandelier

Then hide away

Behind the shades o're your window pane

 

Just know they can still find you

No matter what you do

In the crack where black shines through

And you know it to be true

 

Your thick rough fear grows with the beard

Of neglect around the neck of you

And you wear it proud

Like a self knit shroud

But only death is a refuge

And there is no other truth

So I break out

Drag her words behind me on the ground

By the time I’m home

I’d lost them 10 blocks ago

 

With those two coins I buy myself a brew

It’s all that I could do

But as I inhale filthy night’s perfume

I hear the oracle’s tune

 

Your thick rough fear grows with the beard

Of neglect around the neck of you

And you wear it proud

Like a self knit shroud

But only death is a refuge

And there is no other truth

A Modest Boat

Oh how you’ve spread all around my head

And I’m still so goddamn young

And I’m afraid, that you now aim

For my twisted tongue

 

So if I can’t speak

Won’t you arrange for me

A modest boat

For to take me home

 

Your garden’s gloom now fills the rooms

Of this house I haunt

If I close the shades, I might get another day

Just not the one that I want

 

So if I can’t see

Won’t you direct me

To the harbor of stone

For to take me home

 

You can take the photographs, and each unbroken dish

And the second best bed, like in Willy’s dying wish

But the friends you keep are far too steep for me to bargain for

Oh I hope what I got coming don’t leave me wanting more

 

It’s been years, since my brothers did hear

Even their telephone ring

Now it’s too late, to fix the fate

Of this most important thing

 

So, if you bury me

Won’t you equally

Send my bones

To each of their homes

 

And if you heard my wayward words

Know they’re for me alone

I didn’t mean for them to seem

So overgrown

 

So if I can’t speak

Will you arrange for me?

A modest boat

For to take me home

 

You can take the photographs, and each unbroken dish

And the second best bed, like Willy’s dying wish

But the friends you keep are far too steep for me to bargain for

Oh I hope what I got coming don’t leave me wanting more

Paper Thin

Across my bed before the dawn

She said “hold me tight and hold me strong

And say that you will be here now

That you won’t leave and you don’t know how

And you don’t know how”

 

She said “feels my arms, heavy as brass

Feel their weight and feel their mass

Am I not your iron ore?

Am I not your molten core?

Your molten core”

But all you are is paper thin

A strand of hair against a blood red sky

All you are is paper thin

And all you are is wasted in my eye

 

A silver tongue and words like fire

Can’t spin gold neath a steeple’s spire

I’ve spent weeks on end alone

But can’t find a vein in this goddamn stone

In this goddamn stone

 

Like a dressing on a stage

Or a half-wit sonnet on a page

At a shallow depth it’s crystal clear

But if they turn, how they disappear

I’ll disappear

 

And all I am is paper thin

A tower lost behind a horizon line

All I am is paper thin

All I am is wasted in your eye

 

All we are is paper thin

Two traffic signs they long left behind

All we are is paper thin

All we are is wasted in their eye

Falstaff

Like Falstaff

On his marble stage

I lost my balance

On these hollow legs

 

I need

Your spirited flood

To come and warm my weary blood

I’m too dry to beg

 

Carve me

With your broken bottle of wine

A good six or seven times

Into a dozen portraits of you

 

Then lead us

Down the paths that we want

Down the tunnels that haunt

Fools who try to pass through

 

Just ease me down, ease me down

Upon that bed

Ease me down

I need some rest

 

I lost my step just like I planned

Pour me my crutch so I might stand

Yes I won’t live on wounded knees

And I won’t let you make a fool of me

That easily

 

Falstaff

In a barroom haze

Caught me flat-footed

When I looked the other way

 

He pulled me

By my shirt to his chest

With whiskey and flesh on his breathe

Stared straight into my face

 

And said: ease me down, ease me down

Upon that bed

Ease me down

I need some rest

 

I lost my step just like I planned

Pour me my crutch so I might stand

Yes I won’t live on wounded knees

And I won’t let you make a fool of me

That easily