Maybe it's time to go for broke
With rocks in your pockets and rules in your head
There's no shelter left in this shattered pen
This beautiful prison will soon house the dead

You'll be gone by spring
You'll be gone

Your woolens are wearing thin now
Your pioneer hearts are burning out
You’re not the first to arrive in glory
You won't be the last to fall

You'll be gone by spring
You'll be gone

Farewell to your captain in his white cravat
Farewell to the safety of order
You came to this land with blood on your hands
What's a drop or two more at the end?

You'll be gone by spring
You'll be gone

You'll be gone by spring
And flowers will bloom from your mouths

You'll be gone by spring
And the earth will drink your poison down

You'll be gone by spring
And we'll carry your wounds reopened, unwound

You'll be gone by spring
And the ice in your bones will thaw

You'll be gone by spring
Lost, forgotten, not found.

song list

The Tower

I've been living in fear too long
Built myself a tower too tall to scale alone
A spiral to the sun, a solitary anchor
That has warmed me, long years, to the bone.

But these four walls grow too familiar
Cracks in the concrete I itch to reconfigure
There's mildew congregating in the corners
Where's my scrubbing sponge? Someone, fetch the broom…

O Prince of regret, let go my bitter hand
I've been haunting your halls too long
Won’t you let me let you go?

My steps are heavy as mud
Ground through the toes and heels down to nubs
Shattered shield and no teeth in my head
to bite the hand that feeds the ongoing dread.

But the scion of fear is losing hold
Its edges wear down, its fingers grow cold
What cobwebs have cluttered my scrying eye?
If it’s grudges you hoard, take mine

O Prince of bad behavior, let fairer heads prevail
I've been drunk on your company far too long
Won’t you let me let you go?

The view from my window is green
If I leap from this spire, will I fall
or will my better sense catch me?

O Prince of bad grace, O Prince of ill intention
O Prince of tender feelings left to rot
I’ve got grudges to purge, and grief to air out
So let me let you go
Let me let you go

I will let you go

song list

Indelible

I haven't thought of this in years
The colors vivid and so clear
Dappled on your face, a child's print in paint
I have since put away childish things
I don't need to go back, but it's nice to look from a distance

If ever I had the timing or the time
Forever and again
Maybe I would fix my life
Or make the same mistakes over
But this is the present, we’re in the present,
And there’s nothing to be done

We will arrange ourselves how we see fit
We will convince ourselves that our flaws are just follies of age
We will arrange ourselves from memories and photographs
and we'll forget the rest
This is the privilege of time
These are the gray hairs growing in
But you I’ll never overwrite,
The marks you’ve left are all in ink

Was I faking it to make, or
Have I always been a fraud?
Copying figures by rote, while passing jokes in our notes
The shoes of sincerity have never fit me well enough to walk in.
But you read between my lines,
and now we’ve got so many paths to find.

If I had the timing or the time
Forever and again
Maybe I would spend the hours
Counting down to when we met
But this is the present, we’re together in the present
And there’s so much to be done

We will arrange ourselves how we see fit
We will convince ourselves that our flaws are follies of age
We will arrange ourselves from memories and photographs
and we'll forget the rest
This is the privilege of time
These are the gray hairs growing in
But you I’ll never overwrite,
The marks you’ve left are all in ink.

We will arrange ourselves for clarity
We will tell our stories slant
We will edit and erase and pretend that everything was always in place
But all the time
After all that time
The marks you’ve left are all in ink

You are indelible
And the marks you've left are all in ink.

song list

Theseus

Who were you in the end?
A king with no crown but a price on your head
The sword of your father held tight in your hand
Your name in the mud and blood on the sand

You’ve never quite grieved for your former selves
You left them half-formed at the bottom of your closet
Loved and reviled, and lost to time
Don’t you know that’s how stories start to rhyme?

O Theseus, your ship has sailed
O Theseus, your ship has sailed

I've emerged from this labyrinth a sinner
I thought I was trying to survive
But I've been aimed at this city like a loaded gun
Make like Romulus, let my wolf run

I'm a son twice over and a pawn for myth
I'll found your kingdom on the palimpsest of all the rest
No plan but a list of names in my fist
Point me westwards, tell me who to conquer next

O Theseus, your ship has sailed
O Theseus, your ship has sailed

No one thought to ask
Is it justice you seek or a justified thrill?
Never mind, it makes no difference given time
After all, that's how stories start to rhyme

So never mind to the women you left behind
And no mind to the father whose flag you denied
Your fated republic awaits
Built on monuments to grief you've left in your wake

O Theseus, your ship has sailed
O Theseus, your ship has…sailed

Here’s the thing: you are not favored by the gods
You were shorn for war the moment you were born
Carved by mothers and augurs and the turn of the knife
Don’t you know what you’re cutting away?
Every plank that you replace won’t be quite the same
now you're scattered across holes in the ground,
Painted on shards under glass in town
a vessel in dispute as to the truth and the agenda of your name
it's not the same, it's not the same
it's not the same, it's not the same

Who in the end are you,
but the owner of a boat that’s seen better years?
Does it matter what was true?
Do you even remember you?

O Theseus,
O Theseus,
O Theseus,
O Theseus, your ship has sailed.

song list

for those who believe in reincarnation

I never thought to believe in much
I’ve got enough going, I don’t need the crutch
But lately I’ve been wanting more time
But time without you might not be worth a dime

So what if the world was full of doorways, my dear?
Trip through one and lose your way for a year
I've got keys to a few that I've yet to try
But the risk I'll be taking is leaving you behind

So let me live this life to the fullest
And die before I am born
I'm a traveler lost and delivered
With fortune teller's deck in hand

I'll tell you your future from what I recall
Of the books and the letters I've left unread
They'll say: don't mourn, I'm alive
Alive and adrift in time

I'm alive
I'm alive
So rid me of this self-fulfilling guilt
I’m alive
I’m alive
So free me from this future-borrowed grieving
I'm alive and not alone
and there’s other stories still to be told
I’m alive, and so are you
There's no afterlife to suffer for
Just a walk through an open door
and maybe we’ll remember more next time

Next time, I'll be the worm burrowed under your porch
Rent asunder by the plow or drowned in poison from the ground
I'll be under your boot, but don't worry
there will be, there will be,
there will be a next time
there will be a next time
there will be—

I never thought to believe in much
I’ve got enough going, I don’t need the crutch
But lately I’ve been wanting more time
But time without you might not be worth a dime.

song list

The Archivist

Blue-lipped, the archivist falls
Between her stacks of those forgotten
She failed her role too many times
Now she'll have to pay her fines

To live is to be remembered
That's what the archivist said
Put yourself into the pages
Perhaps you'll live again

Take care, take care
Take care of the pages you keep
Protect all comers, accept all kinds
Or when the man comes to call
The past might set you up for a killing fall

An archive needs order, precision and tact
They ruled at the start of her reign
“This book’s uncertain, and that too perverse:
This degeneration, we’ll have to reverse…"

So season on season, year on year
The archivist fought for their cause
But good intentions and blinkered scope
Can turn to a slippery slope

To live is to be remembered
That's what the archivist said
So ignore the warnings and sour grapes
We'll learn from our mistakes

Now big men rise, bigger men fall
And the archivist plays her part
But when there's no iron left to nail
All eyes turn to the hammer

To live is to be remembered
That's what the archivist said
So excise the evidence of our disgrace
We’ll cut off what spites our face

Take care, take care
Take care of the pages you keep
Protect all comers, accept all kinds
Or when the man comes to call
The past might set you up for a killing fall

You’ve got to watch both hands of the man that writes the rules
You’ve got to watch the line in the sand
You don’t earn the coins on your eyes ‘til you’re dead
And seeing no evil won’t stop its spread
So don't pay the ferryman just yet
Pay him too soon, he'll still call in the debt
Those false obscenities you put on the fire
Have turned into fuel that they’ll throw on your pyre

To live is to be remembered
That's what the archivist said
So when the lies and truth collide
Best prepare to pick a side

Take care, take care
Take care of the pages you keep
Protect all comers, accept all kinds
Or when the man comes to call
The past might set you up for a killing fall

The new boy is less than the sum of his parts
A blank page, bleached white and cold
His forebear left no trace, left no sign
I suppose there was no war in her time

After all:
To live is to be remembered
That's what the archivist said
So don't bow down to the black bars
Or you'll be forgotten instead

Take care, take care
Take care of the pages you keep
Protect all comers, accept all kinds
Or when the man comes to call
The past might set you up for a killing fall

song list

Cathedral

Oo, old gods, listen loud
Oo, let me hear the siren of you now
You glow in taxi headlight halos
If I turn my head just right, will you follow?
Hold on, don’t—castaway
Hold on, don’t—cast us away

Oo, old gods, long unnamed
Sounding church bells, always the same
Oh, they sigh
If I close my eyes, they'll break the surface
Hold on, don’t—castaway
Hold on, don’t—cast us away

You've only one job to take
It's only our natural state

We are not divine
The gods do not hear us
We make promises at the end so someone else might keep them
So we keep a vault
with seeds inside it
Sleeping, sleeping ships of our better selves lying cold in wait

We offer our humble history to a nameless future
We offer to newborn hands a hammer and nail

This is a cathedral
Begun centuries ago
Won't see the end
and neither will our children’s children
This is a cathedral
carved from cold, hard stone
Bleed your sweat and your faith
For a crowning rosette from the saints

We build monuments of warning
To save us from ourselves
Beyond language, beyond time, in hopes we're understood

We offer our humble history for this great nameless thing
We offer to empty hands a bibliography

This is a cathedral
Begun centuries ago
Won't see the end
and neither will our children’s children
This is a cathedral
carved from cold, hard stone
Bleed your sweat and your faith
For a crowning rosette from the saints

Listen, old gods I’ll never honor
What is hope, but a past that doesn’t falter?
I’ve got fear in my veins that my skin can’t hold
But the mob is kinder than I’ve been told

You’ve got one job, one job, one job to hold to
One job, one job you've got to be good for
Old gods, you don’t exist unless we let you
So listen as we hold our breath
Don’t cast us away
You don’t exist, but—stay…

This is a cathedral
Begun centuries ago
Won't see the end
and neither will our children’s children
This is a cathedral
carved from cold, hard stone
Bleed your sweat and your faith
For a crowning rosette from the saints

Oo, old gods, listen loud
Oo, I know the siren of you now

song list

Santiago

This will be a great city, they said before the plague
So they built their arches wide
Yes they built their arches wide

Now they’re lost, buried and decayed
Drowned in the valley til the sun burns them away
Never was a priest that stayed long enough there
to know the joy of dancing in the empty air

This will be a holy site, they said before the drought
So they stood their statues tall
Yes they stood their statues tall

Now they’re lost, buried and decayed
Drowned in the valley til the sun burns them away
Never was a priest that stayed long enough there
to know the joy of dancing in the empty air

We will raise our children here, they said before the famine
So they dug their furrows deep
Yes they dug their furrows deep

Now they’re lost, buried and decayed
Drowned in the valley til the sun burns them away
Never was a priest that stayed long enough there
to know the joy of dancing in the empty air

It was no god that brought the drought
and no god that brought the famine
It was no god that stole the land and raised a temple like a flag
It was no god that brought the cross
and no god that killed the crops
Now all that's there to worship is the sea and the sand
Yeah all that's there to worship is the desert and the dam

And now we're lost, buried and decayed
Drowned in the valley til the sun burns us away
Never was a priest that stayed long enough there
to know the joy of dancing in the empty air
But when the waters fall back we'll dance in the drought
shaded by the arches, the water poured out
For never was a priest that stayed long enough there
To know the joy of dancing in the empty air

This will be a great city, they said before the plague
So they built their arches wide
Yes they built their arches wide

song list

Carrion Crow

I used to think that asking was enough
that our shadows could be held in hand and captured in quill
but the carrion crow of Time came first
wicked black beak wide open with thirst

We are so much better in letters
I can't recall the last time you called me in a temper
But I certainly remember the note you left last December
On a solitary evening from a different zone of time
And I think I thought I told you what I felt in the moment
But I think I might have dreamt that and just wrote you a poem
That I never thought to send in reply

But every time we're fine
While the carrion crow drinks up the wine

we do our best and we fail
we pretend and we prevail
hold our heads up as we wail:
“we'll go on, we'll go on”
“we'll go on, we'll go on”

Those little horoscopes you make
Of broken swords and knights on the take
It's not distrust, you tell me,
just a pathological need not to be a burden
Don’t I know it, aren’t I sitting here beside you with the same diagnosis?
I won't trouble you, and you won't trouble me
And together we will be faithful and untrue
altogether me and you, damn us all

we do our best and we fail
we pretend and we prevail
hold our heads up as we wail:
“we'll go on, we'll go on”
“we'll go on, we'll go on”

I will never lose my strangeness, I'm afraid
It follows me round like an unkind word
And you, well, you'd know better than I
The sterling opacity of your quiet eye
I've got strong words lodged unsaid in my throat
They stopper up every time you uncloak
But I guess this is what we committed to between us
With all you and all me and all this

we do our best and we fail
we pretend and we prevail
hold our heads up as we wail:
“we'll go on, we'll go on”
“we'll go on, we'll go on”

While the carrion crow gorges itself on sweet fruit from the vine
We maintain it's just a miscommunication
Or a lack of explanation
No need for validation
Papering over the cracks and calling them foundation
We've got love and that's enough,
(Please tell me it's enough)
for the next year and the next life and the never-ending void

Please, tell me we're fine
Before the carrion crow drinks up all the wine

we do our best and we fail
we pretend and we prevail
hold our heads up as we wail:
“we'll go on, we'll go on”
“we'll go on, we'll go on”

song list

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed, consider buying a track or two at my Bandcamp (pay as you like).