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1. |
Sleeper
01:20
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The midsummer noon sun
On the white closet door
Through Venetian blinds, threadbare
Hung over cracked windows
The place I once called home
A shell of its old self
But the map that still hangs here
With pinned thumb tacks for each trip
Is an archive of loved years
Good memories in death’s grip
The serpent eats its own tail:
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2. |
Four Years
04:54
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Save me from my wildest dreams
For wild is not what I need
Give me walls and a ceiling and fill me with nice things
And call me home
If this is all there is then I’m glad
And it feels good to be glad about that
Take a walk, air your skin, let me get settled in
Write my name on your chest in black ink
That smile said it all, pause for breath and please, pause for more
Don’t think you’re any different to the ones who never listened to us before
The corners hide the truth in here
But the walls have eyes and they know what you’re like
I’m covering my fearful ears
That conjure up the worst they could from what it is they’ll hear
We are falling apart in the backyard
It’s been years since we talked and I’m trying to remember your face
The hardwood has bowed from the weight-bearing walls we replaced
Nobody lives here anymore
And this house is condemned like the one I grew up in
At least I’ll say that we’re still friends
You’ll maybe see it differently but I won’t be there to hear it
We are falling apart in the backyard
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3. |
Satellite
04:23
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We watch for snow on the mountains
We wait for rain in the streets
These days we’re mostly just relieved
The weeks seem shorter than last year
The evenings suffer the most
I liked you better with long hair
It grows so fast when it’s short and it’s aging us both
Satellite, are we ever out of sight or is it hard to look away?
She said, “You think too much to be easy in your own good company”
And it’s those words that haunt me
Seems like another life…
I found you laying in the shallows
Of the Sayulita low tide
As flamenco guitars filled the streets and bars
We took the bunting from the street lamps
And wrapped ourselves up in it and danced
Satellite, are we ever out of sight or is it hard to look away?
She said, “You think too much to be easy in your own good company”
And it’s those words that haunt me
“Can I stay?”, in her second breath
As my mind fills with dread
And it’s those words that haunt me
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4. |
Good Posture
04:38
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I will die with the light in my eyes
On a central prairie highway in the sunrise
Refracted prisms through the fracturing windscreen
Kaleidoscopic as the world spins around me
But I’ll remember the sun on my face
And the way that the salt flats nearby made it taste
And in the low light and from upside down
That old frown is a smile now
But a picked wound will never heal
No better than a fatal laceration
But I don’t remember that feeling right now
This is a promise that things can improve
I’ve been dreaming of death as a happy ending
And laughing to spite that old wound
But a picked wound will never heal
No better than a fatal laceration
I will die on the Italian coast
All alone off a white sandy beach west of Rome
I’ll swim out until I can’t anymore
And I won’t fight as the waves drag my body below
I will die with a smile on my lips
At the knowledge I gave everything I could give
And as the dark waves flip me upside down
That weight in my chest will slip right out
I will die with the light in my eyes
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5. |
Roma
04:43
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I read the sad decline
Of one of the greatest minds
Who after 90 years
Was left with too much time
I wrote the distance closer
Am I a beacon or the vultures?
A medic with no morphine
Just hope to help the pain ease
When we die does it even really happen if no one is there to hear it happen?
Her stubborn English blood
Is thoroughbred and tough
She dug her grave too deep
To just step in and sleep
And I’m in the city flow
But it’s too fast to let go
Beyond the green and grey
But not at heaven's gate
When we die does it even really happen if no one is there to hear it happen?
I see you’re scared to love
They say you love to hate
Is there a difference anyway?
You are a solid rock
You are the hardest place
And you’re the only thing stuck in your way
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6. |
Split Between The Eyes
04:26
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My knees creak like the door in the spring
When the rain stops and the sun dries its hinge
My wounds leak like the old kitchen sink
And the linoleum floors fade from deep red to pink
My mind runs on its own like the clock
That my grandfather left and that still hasn’t stopped
This house sinks on its foundation plate
My body aches, this ain’t right for 28
Polarized, split right between the eyes
My arms spread wide and I divide
I pray I’ll remember the good parts
The books say to lead with a pure heart
But they’re non-instructional
It’s late, can’t this wait until morning?
You’re untamed and here without warning
And the gaps in the archive widen
Systemic loss
This will be glossed over while the voice in my head gets continually louder
Dysthymic plight
My intuition falters and every side-eyed glance is at my own fault here
Polarized, split right between the eyes
My arms spread wide and I divide
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7. |
Rest
05:59
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I know a thing about obsession
And I know that demon won’t let go for less than everything you’ve got except him
But even demons can be bought for something
I am the anchor in your depths and while I hold you steady, rest
Because I was built to hold my breath
You're just bringing out my best
Dragging dirt and breathing water
I’ll drink the darkness that surrounds you
And leave those demons not a place to hide
You and I now lie alone
But our ghosts will carry on
I know a thing about excuses
And I know the fear that you must feel to want to use one
The truth is hard fought and often not won
But I saw the devil in the corner tying nooses
I’ll offer first when he needs a neck and while I keep him busy, rest
Because I was built to hold my breath
You’re just bringing out my best
I can hang until he can’t hold me
Or until the rafters fall at our feet
I’ve seen that you seem so over this
So come clean with yourself
Yea, you seem so over this
I’ll get the ball rolling the words right off your tongue
I’ll be the bottom so the only way is up
You and I now lie alone
But our ghosts will carry on
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8. |
Favourite Books
04:02
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They won't call it a breakdown
When it's every second week
We build walls just to feel proud
That we built anything at all
We traded minds, you called it "small talk"
While we were locked up in your room
You got high and laid yourself down
I watched your demons punish you
Only the dead are without fear
And we know your head is not your own nor anyone else here
The wall is within you
Would you please keep your feet pressed to the floor and your eyes on the front door
We drove miles just to see towns
That inspired our favourite books
But every time we were let down
This isn't how I thought it'd look
Only the dead are without fear
And we know your head is not your own nor anyone else here
The wall is within you
Would you please keep your feet pressed to the floor and your eyes on the front door
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9. |
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I conceived my own penitentiary
I dreamt the padded walls and a million locks but not one of the keys
Oh, St. Michael in peril of the sea in all your breathtaking beauty
I’m as hopeless as the high tide crossing to the mainland just out of reach
I concede, her demons live on in me
I daren’t even dip a toe in that treacherous sea out of fear I’ll drown
Won’t St. Michael come look for me now?
Her ghost is holding my head down and pulling at the hook in the side of my mouth
God, just let me out
Oh this is anything but living
And I feel everything but alive
Take me back to that prairie highway
And lay me on the saline flats tonight
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10. |
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White-knuckled in the spare room, amber lights burnish spindrift currents across the rimples of timeworn books. Like old bark in your hands, you shelve them against torsional creases in your palms, patterned in sharp tectonics; lengthening lines in abbreviated years.
Over the treads of its gossamer ridge lie records and mazes mapped into thin vellum. A life in its becoming. An archive sketched into being, dimensional and drifting. Off-white walls, sheer like deep glens; kingfishers in the marsh, grassweeds in their shaver bills that drip into gentle eddies in the aging green wetland. Open wide and rest.
The bed sits rigid against your lithic spine. Shims of white light peer beneath the heavy door as the volumes burst ripe and violent, churning in the dim. In or belonging to the past: the rumple of a plastic bag in your hands as you jump from an oak tree. Vermicular frogs in a mildewed catchbasin. Tracing with the tip of your fingernail the tenuous sinews of her forearm. Moving to a lightless city for reasons you don't understand. The age you realize your mom was a sentry through nights of adolescence and your dad had good taste in music all along. You divorce your old self on your wedding day and write him into a story.
A window opens into fractured twilight, where mortar and herringbone meet winnowed oatgrass in the foothills. The air tastes like salt and soft leather. Above, serrated geometry shifts into sinuous molds, and in the sky your most recent past drips like thick paint along the reclining horizon; mottled cartography laced into blooming sundown. Time is passed down like a sigil proudly worn. Look back to a place where you lived absolutely and loved steadily to know where you no longer belong.
The midsummer noon sun
On the white closet door
Through Venetian blinds, threadbare
Hung over cracked windows
The place I once called home
A shell of its old self
But the map that still hangs here
With pinned thumb tacks for each trip
Is an archive of loved years
Good memories in death’s grip
The serpent eats its own tail:
The cycle repeats
The chorus refrains
But the verses change
Just enough for it to be worth it
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Altona Vancouver, British Columbia
Indie rock/emo band. 'I Hope I Got All The Good Stories Out Of Them' out now.
20% of all merch sales gets donated to Girls Rock Camp Vancouver.
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