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As the fall winds rattle at our door and call us to the lunatic sea
For the pleasure games we play so easily that never really make a soul
The details will haunt us in strange ways like snow and smoke and skeletal leaves
Who will resurrect us? Jive, ass and teeth, once we’ve all drunk all our fill of fire
A faint sadness hangs about the trees as if our life and times were fruit
Ripened too quickly into rot and fallen on this stinking spot
Tones of history ring here like a gong but the pitch is bent and queer
Upon a beach of bones the iron orchid stands and casts her cobalt gaze across the years
Mrs. Amelia Underwood, carry my heart in your hand
Jesus will shine on you brightly, into the hollow lands
Now the sky, a fiend of fire, the season’s tears to ancient wine
A ghostly blight from godless eyes, the howling flames of our design
That I might live and mean it like the lion means to kill
In the lion all desire and prayer is one
Used to be time was upon us, carried our hearts on our sleeves
Wearing the joy and the sorrow like beautiful fall pained leaves
Mrs. Amelia Underwood, carry my heart in your hand
Jesus will shine on you brightly, into the hollow lands
Someday I’ll find your rotting bones, oh my golden old friend it’s so hard to let go
While time is drifting like the ice in the hearts of the burgs drifting beneath the northern lights
Lonely is the town and dark is the dusk in the city’s bloodshot eyes
There was hardly a sound but for the feathers of vultures beating the ground
We are only slaves to our ghostly arms and legs
Dancing in our graves and laying in the ruins of this golden age
I worked in the fields in a dignified way but my pride was just another agent of decay
You were my song when you ripped your pretty head
And let the laughter fly like you were burning your bread
Hold the dogs at bay, your laughter was the love that ran today
I tried to wield a greater blade but all you lions can keep your bloody pride
We are only slaves to our master’s memories
Staggering through the days to yield the seed of the golden age
When we were young we said we’d never play the game
With our handles of wine and blood stained blazers
Well time now has surely passed us by and I remember our school but little of our crimes
Oh my dear brothers what were your names?
And what was the nature of our glorious anger?
The sound we fear is only our day creeping behind us to another stranger
We are only slaves to our distant youths and coming graves
Let them say I was a hard working stiff and sand of the golden age
I caught a glimpse of your body by the river, I was alone and the sky went forever
I was the one that killed your father in the First World War
I once vowed to love your sister for a lifetime, took her to the altar
And left her like a wind chime that was the dawning of the age of the cannibal world
Lord have mercy on my soul, have mercy Lord,
Mama have mercy on my soul
I took your wild peacocks down to the sawmill and ground their bones into dust and blood meal
A rainbow of feathers and shame fell upon my wicked hand
Lucy my love get inside my Grand Torino, I tell you little girl don’t go into the jungle
There’s a million hungry insects there and man they’re going to eat you alive...
Yes they will
Lord have mercy on my soul, have mercy Lord,
Mama have mercy on my soul
Cold dead moon don’t stare at me with your bony judgmental eye
Only the peacocks and earthly things can judge me as they pass by
Can judge me as they pass through this world, judge me as they pass by
Lord, he has my number under the thunder in his hand
Carry me back into the sand
Into the sand with the flowers and the fern
Old Mr. Centipede climbing tobacco leaves
Looking for livers and hearts for to eat
Cold and grey clouds staining the sounds
Straining the weight of a sorrowful sky
Wool on the trees, dust on the eves
The bark on the pines is worse than its bite
All of the lines have been lies this far, there is a feeling I must keep from you
The hills of nomads, we envy their lives
Apicture we love; Hills Have Eyes
This old motel song you dig when you’re stoned
But sounds like a cheap shot when you’re sober and cold
But if you are as stoned as a ghost in the snow, your eyes will be blue flames
These lines are crawling snakes up your open legs
You wear them pale and fine
This is the line I’ll give you true as the dawn
While the furious eye on the sun is upon us
The way your breasts dance while we’re making love
Now that is a line penned by... a divinely guided hand
Tailwind carry the birds to the coast to watch the clouds roll along
Pollen and pitch whisper the scripture of kings in a tongue only spoken by ghosts
Did you fall in love with the cannon’s fire? And the smell of a smoldering world
In the bloody sand where lead flies like insects through the air
This is just a moment of confusion, birds like a lattice to the sun
You calculate the simple execution by the silent run of the numbers in our blood
You don’t have to go through any more changes, it’s all done now
You don’t have to break the wild horses that run you and run you down
You don’t have to untangle the bells that jingle and chime and charm you
You don’t have to change, you don’t have to hold onto your past
You don’t have to carry it down this path, it’s all part of the deal
In the pitch of the night is a stranger, strange as the shadow by your side
It calls to your mind a face you haven’t called upon for years
Once you were a magnificent fiend, eyes like electric eels
An executioner of the highest degree
Here you are family sweet torturer in the arms of the secret world
Apiano plays to the vague erosion of the day
You don’t have to go through any more changes, it’s all done now
You don’t have to break the wild horses that run you and run you down
You don’t have to untangle the bells that jingle and chime and charm you
You don’t have to change, you don’t have to hold onto your past
You don’t have to carry it down this path, it’s all part of the deal
Goodbye Ruby, watch you winding
Down these snake trails that roll like rain drops in the dust
Windy woman, blown my cover
I sit here all alone but I would never sing this kind of song
Wicked dreams
Down drowning streams
Of blood and other wild schemes
That play like mold for the rust
Swallow’s wings
And other old and tattered things
The dull and fade of wedding rings
Now this song is one of those
There’s fire in these hills, closer every day,
The wind calls the hangman to my name
My father said the ocean would beat upon my grave
And that on that day I would long for my home
And it’s family stone
Here I am waiting
In watercolor grey
I’ll wait for you or Jesus or any other technicolor day
Howling dogs at the dust cloud walls
Snapping at the heels of death
To share with them a piece of the catch
I long to see the Banyan trees or any other place,
Where the waves are made of thunder
And the seabirds clean the blood from off my feet
Oh wicked ocean, made my heart a beggar
The crabs that ride the jet streams
Are picking out the eyes of my dreams
The fire in these hills gets closer every day,
The wind calls the hangman to my name
My brother said the wild
world would feed upon my skin
And that on that day I would long for the farm
And an honest simple faith...
The majesty of insect wings
And the brittle of their bones
Reminds me of a tropic wind
Blowing through the skull of our home
Ruby I chased your laughter with elephant wings
You left me for the law
Left me bones for the grave
Childish beauty
Sunday charm
All has made a ghost of me, spirit dead, shackled arms
As I hung the wind whipped your wild name
And pierced the heart of a fading ghost
For seabirds only death upon the plain
The blood that beats this heart
Is blood upon the floor
Ruby you lead the hangman to my door
My mother said a woman would be the death of me
And that on that day no god would hear...
An outlaw’s dying prayer
These are not thieves come to take your ruby ring
They are not ghosts with tales too long
It’s the sound of dancing of many-legged things
That gather your tears from off the ground
Our home is a feast love moving from the land
We’re swaying swamp reeds in the sand
It’s a cold feeling that hangs about our bones
When we ride the death’s head waters like leaves
Take my arrow, the last one I got
Wait for the wind to take your shot
Maybe tomorrow you’ll leave another tombstone
Made of sand and moss
Here’s my teeth Mama, do you want them back?
To tear the woven web and wires that bind you
I killed a man and I’d kill a country full
To keep the rusted boat beneath your feet
Our days are numbered too but not outnumbered yet
While I see you laughing at the sun
The stars lay on your naked skin, the moon was on your breast
When a hail of arrows fell upon us
Take my shell of buckshot the last one I got
Wait for the wind and take your shot
Maybe tomorrow we’ll leave two sunken tombstones
With the silt and moss
Can you take aim at my enemies?
I can’t see them anymore
I will fire blindly into the trees and hope I hit someone’s god
Or three of some kind of ghost
These are our times Mama, made of blood and bone
Furious misfortune is upon us
We had a run of luck and ran it to the ground
It calls our lives from the darkness
I see you with burning eyes, burning with my tears
I hate, I hate to see your fear
I’ll leave a hundred bodies rotting in the sun
And when my final bullet flies I’ll be gone
I’ll be with my love upon the Styx River
We are born into fire
Born beasts to hunt each other down
Build our churches of blood and murder
And judge our wealth by what we keep from each other
You brother once had love in hand
Now you keep only teeth and eyes
You walk the desert half wolf half god
Kicking at the skulls of husbands and daughters
We carry our hate like slaves
We are born buried to the grave
Down the path to the August orchards
The fruit and leaves are dusty with the heat
An old dog lays like a dinosaur
The way he’s beaten by the unforgiving sun
Beneath the trees wound within the shade
I held your arms and held onto your legs
All your hot tears swallowed by the dust
With each tear our devices continue to rust…
But they sing our grace like prayers
We are born buried in our graves
We all run from the twisted grip
That holds our unspeakable doom
We live beneath those hands all our lives
The hang over our path like the thunderheads of hell
Run brother, keep on runnin’
You don’t have to live like the dealer of death
Run from your god to your last dying breath
And they’ll kick the dirt over our bones
When we call for the father’s arms
On Sunday I found your rotting bones
Oh my old friend it’s so hard to let you go
Of course time is a drifting thing. Drifting us a part
But who knew the tide would take us so far
Took a train on past the lonely arms of this town
And got off at the dust of the city’s bloodshot eyes
At the station we stood around for transformation
While the stoned vultures fell upon your grave
We are only slaves to our ghostly arms and legs
Got us dancing in our graves
And they lay around in the wreckage
Of this pitiful little world
I headed out into a Jasmine field
Underneath a thundercloud’s dark and watchful eye
The tubes that kept the old sun lit began to die
And bruised light and berry vines creep into the night
A thousand burning flash bulbs exploded from your eye
When you tipped your pretty head and let the laughter fly
Oh my failing useless brain would melt beneath the softest rain
And drip onto a picture of your smile when you were young
We are only slaves to our masters’ memories
Keep us staggering through the days
To lay around in the weeds of our dusty little dreams
From the so-called heaven, there came not a sign
But just one lightning bolt that hit me in my mind
From my head my greasy blood fell into the flowing mud
And ran away from my skull like restless memories
There beside the glassy stream I layed my head and let it bleed
To the song of crickets in a tragic symphony
The bullfrogs roared beneath the banks
Like the sound of Sherman tanks
Engaged in the destruction of everything that breathes
We are only slaves to the falling bombs we made
With such loving craft and shape
They leap upon the sky and the heavens’ golden braids
Do you remember the good times?
We used to hang em on the heavy days
Oh lord we was wild wind then
Our heads full of dreams and cocaine
Blowing through the ditches and city canyons
And into the sky of those reckless days
If I knew now what I knew then
I’d run just a little bit harder
And sing a song like Jesus did when they nailed him on high
Funny how the time flies by until the flesh slides from our bones
Here we are setting summer plans
And the leaves have all turned brown and are falling
And the rain is calling
Riding in a coffin full of sunshine
High up in the snowy highways
There coked up the mountains look like the skulls of gods
But they never made our graves
Brother keep on rolling on
And dragging your pride through the mud
There may be nothing left to live for now
But the wind blows on rusted days
Let the sun fire into our eyes before our blood is rusted dry
The speed rushing through our veins
Is eating up the miles of this lonesome highway
Let’s crawl back onto the road before dawn
Tries to keep our load
Man, it’s such a simple game
Another town, another rusted day
Only love and false gods live for today
And burn down their own sons before the fade away
The beaten light is crawling now sunk in howling disease
That sad gold stone of the dust crawling from us on its knees
The moon and sun will bust and rust and turn to blood and dust
Yes I’ve seen it in my mind’s eye
But they’ll never burn and blind and crust
Like the tears of rage within your eyes
Early in the morning while the snow still fell
Upon our love’s grave, babe, and you and I are quite dreaming
And the slippery moon was the only one to shed a tear
While we finished the services
And buried a little madness on this earth…down
Sister, weigh your heart
There really ain’t enough gold and blood to get that far around
It you ever hang it from the trees for the wolves and stinging bees
I’d hack it down and gather it in my arms …with me
Our wild tears embalmed the black sky
Until its guts burst and fell like loaded dice
On our fixed game that plays and plays like murder in the night
And sometime late in the cedars and pines
Your life ran from you with the wind on fire
And you took the arms of a lonely death
Early in the morning while the snow still fell
Upon our love’s grave, babe, and you and I are quite dreaming
And the slippery moon was the only one to shed a tear
While we finished the services
And buried a little madness on this earth…down
Sister, you laid your trouble down
I gathered all your heart that I could hold
The rest of it is gone in the animals and earth
It was best to let it crawl out of your skin,
And run
Woke up at 8 to the rain coming in
Falling on my old red rug
I poured myself another wine and blew another line
And listened to your voice haunt my head
Maybe I mistook you for a diamond ring
Maybe there ain’t no such thing
We shared a bed laughing
And a pint or two of gin
That don’t mean were starring in the movies
Woke up at 8 to the sound of tears
Falling from our fool’s gold eyes
I watched your pale spine from the corner of the bed
Its shape began to scream at heaven
Maybe I mistook you for a diamond ring
Maybe there ain’t no such thing
We shared a bed, some laughs, and a pint or two of gin
That don’t mean were starring in the movies
Woke up at 8 to the sound of birds
Singing a lonely old song
They stood inside the light like the blood of the sun
Screaming “Where did it all go wrong?”
Maybe I mistook you for a diamond ring
Maybe there ain’t no such thing
We shared a bed laughing
And a pint or two of gin
That don’t mean were starring in the movies
Jesus and wild dogs guide us ever on
There is nothing you can do for those poor fearless fools
Now we’ll never live forever together together in those sky days again
You’ve gone around the bend walking in the dark
The black sky in your weeping eyes
Is clawing through the great disguise of what we’ve been
Getting at for such a long time
The birds fly on the wind, carry their young beneath their wings
Riding the tides of the falling skies
Those termites and rats have made those great holes in our maps
And the graves that we’ve been digging
And for our bones and spare change to rollin’
The sick cars are coughing up doom and the broken traffic lights
Of hell, their silver fangs hang piercing away each city street with
Their cold, unblinking eyes. Bent at the alter made of loose soil
Beside the trash and broken glass, every prayer comes rolling
Down the cold wild wind from the blowing sky…
The birds fly on the wind, carry their young to a home on high
Riding the tides of the falling sky
The filthy scum around the captain’s eye is staring into the sun
That dripping sun scum will hold you mesmerized as you go higher, ever on
And when you reach a certain peak you will see the lives of western
Dreams made of mud and Indian teeth
And the honey of white women’s thighs\Now the golden combs inside shaped like other worldly insect eyes, they smell like Jesus’ blood and the taste
Reunites you of good but distant times
The pines wail in the night
Mourning the souls of their brothers and sisters
As you charge into the sun
The captain tells you of a whorehouse in his eye
You’ll see the blood and smell the oozing fruit
And know you have arrived
As you charge into the sun
There he shows you where his treasures live,
The heads of Indians and Spanish men of god
Kept in gold leaf liquor and formaldehyde jars
On shelves a thousand miles high
He’ll pour two whiskeys with blood and horses’ eyes
The shit will keep you hard for the rest of time
So you can kill and fuck the stars in the sky
It is the grandest dream he could comprise
The bombs sail on the wind
And carry our love to our brothers and sisters
The captain’s eye will never lose its sight
Down below the drift under the light of the cold moon
That shines like falling ice
Where the shake’s tales beat like drums against the earth
A low and mournful hymn
And the palm leaves hush the begging goats and pigs
Like a reassuring ghoul
There beats a new heart, in spice and soil
Ohhhhhh….the Damned moaned
Now time moves by the sons of the black birds
Like a choir of rabid hens
And the fallen sing with dark black eyes
That nearly tell their tale
Lost in the eddies of the slowest tides
Courting mournful tones
That cling to the narrow curves of our skulls
And guide us ever on…Ohhhhhh…the Damned moaned
Bring with you all of your songs, all of your death dreams
Awaken all of your living bones to every living thing
Bring with you all of your drones, all of your gold strings
And swing all of your bells for every living thing
Bring with you all of your songs, all of your death dreams
The hardest rain was firing down all the night that our love ran
Man did it fall like nails to the ground
I saw your face beneath that old moon smiling bold as the dawn
How did it shine despite this crumbling world
I heard the timberwolves out there howling a lonely old song
That rag upon the leaves. Those notes I will never forget
The days begin to slide like mud from the cold winter slopes
The nights played to the black birds in my beard
And in the days played to the grey ones…
Up in the canyons where we used to make love
Far from the city streets
Tear drops falling like blood from her eyes
She said things will never blow our way again
The wind blew slow through the aching pines
And rolled around her beautiful hair
And she said, “No, man. I’ll never be your wife.”
“and I got a man who wants to kill you.”
Went east from the ocean into pepperwood
Layed in the orchard with the rotting fruit
Drinking cans of beer all afternoon, sometimes late
Before the sun got too old, I saw a dust cloud rising up across a field
Into the forest with the cold moss and mold
From behind me I heard the pounding of earth
And I went on into that black hole
Ran all night like a small town dog until the muddy slew met the tide
And upon me I smelled the whisky and cold sweat
And he began to kill me dead
My legs were sinking in the silt and mud
My chest to the rising tide
With hi sboot on my shoulder and his pistol to my chest
He took my life
In a flash, I recall how the dawn used to come
Goodbye love, I may see you again
But probably not for a long while
All young men sleep easy
In the mud beneath the midnight rain
All love flows to the ocean
Without a trail or trace
All young men sleep easy
In the mud beneath the midnight rain
All love flows to the ocean
With a smile upon my still face |