INTO THE ROIL
BOUND:
Stories in the night told / The wind moves above the trees and / I’m gone from my body calling out / To save me, come take me tonight / We climb through the evening mists / our memories fall, bleeding and limp / Born to white light / From firelit window and open doors / The roads are paved with golden bars / And round and round the world is bound / By a chain of radiant stars / Outside a patch of ghost pipe / Grows along the prairie drive and / I’m caught in a circle bone white / By the pale life inside / Feel something take root in me / Like a fox caught, metal and teeth / Bone split, broken and free / The circle spins around us / The whole world cobbled from dust / The circle spins around us / We're reborn as stars collide
EARLY FROST:
The ice on the windshield / melts away / In the morning sunlight / Last night my call came / ten years too late / Drive south on the highway / Modern myth is dying/ modern man is lost / No more mountain learning/ before we’re caught / We swear that we will try to / Change all that we were born to / It comes when it’s quiet / it comes at night / A clarion call sounds / To gather ‘round fires / With you in arm / Telling tales of gold crowns / Relearn what we’ve gathered / In the small hours / Sit and stare out at / Uncharted waters / Depend on those you turn to / Grow old together with you
DARK HEART OF THE WOOD:
Born with a crest of your own / Seven-league boots on a balsam throne / Hemmed-in woodlands, carved from stone / A songbird full of the tunes you stole / And a rusted trailer can’t outlast the running water / Oxide into autumn wire /And the grass will thread the holes with green and gold / O! Springtime’s choir / Gotta risk it all / For the promise held in another’s hand / Gotta risk it all / Outside yourself you’ll understand / Born without a crest of my own / No skeleton key for all closed doors / I came so close that the window froze / From the breath i took, from the breath you stole / And your winter armor can’t protect you from another / Confide in the hunter’s moon / And the summer sleeps until the hawthorn blooms / O! Come too soon / You really shouldn’t look at me that way / You really, really got to let it go some day /You should take the hand you’re sworn to take but if you stay...
NORTH STAR:
Yellow tinged with green / Masses of evanescence swarm the stars like angry bees / And I’m clad in my father’s furs / Held aloft on a silver mirror shallow thin and cold / But I won’t go into the night / Don’t care what experts claim / No mood for practicality when all the myths remain / Warriors overhead / In one gigantic rosette of flame, to shine in red / But i won’t go into the night / No, i will wait for the light / Will it ever come back /To this heart of mine / This rooted pine / Will it ever come back / Won’t you ever come back home
COVER OF WINTER:
The first light on the wall / And I had noticed how / The sounds were changing / You were sleeping through it all / The growth of beak and claws / My wings were aching / You were suddenly, under me miles and miles away / Rise up against the wind / Release your grip / Circling, circling one more time again / With every feathery sweep of wing / Reconstruct my origin / Leaving it leaving it all behind again / How I’ve missed this cold / The freezing and the thaw / Of winter waking / Barefoot and alone / After touching down / My hands were shaking /Trembling, remembering their own power again / Too young and dumb to be afraid / Tumbled down and in a terrible calamity / Caught and snared, await the day / Impatiently I’m leaving it leaving it all behind again
LAST RITES:
The house she grew up in is now / Adrift in an ocean of sand / Cactus line the drive / Spires in a line / Empty malls entwine / First love, last rites / Of the pure hearted / No regrets, it’s just life / Save the dreaming for when we’re asleep / A red-eyed sunset bled white / Caught in the driveway, tongue-tied / Sweetest thing she knows / Heavy like a stone / Thrown around young bones / In the fading light of day / Memories fall away / And only dust remains
INTO THE ROIL
Why do you look so surprised that our luck’s run out / Another perfect day / Another endless drought / And the rising tide / I never meant it oh to feel this spark / Did you expect me just to come apart / it'll come for you / It'll come for you / Like it comes for me / it'll come for you / It'll come for you like it comes for me / I know you haven't tried / To let the flood run down / Overflow the banks and wash the hatred out / Seas will rise / Ebb and flow / Ebb and flow / I will survive / Let me go / Let me go / Thrown into the roil / I'm the wave out of control / In the overflow
WAX/WANE:
Every day you would wave to the night-shift workers / Dancing a hurricane round the corner / Gone to a place where the loose ends gather / Fabric unraveling faster and faster / Theory of everything / Pulled along by a string / Around your cold little heart / Told that the limelight still keeps shining / After the cameras all stop rolling / Just another scene / Diamond ring make believe / Whispering offscreen / Bring me back the first branch of summer / Whittle it down, throw it in the embers / What’s at stake for what we’ve created / i hope that the waiting has made you stronger / Mirror, mirror, by the lamplight / Down the streets, young things keep calling / Tasseography, haruspex, palmistry / Tell your secrets to me
PEACEMAKER:
Tread carefully over the trip wires / And cover the tracks that show / Reflections of signal fires / Rhe river runs black like a plume of smoke / Release your breath / Muzzle flash / No god comes to those who fall / Wipe off your warpaint / Take off your armor / i’ll wash the blood away / Your sons will be reborn / Raised up on stolen soil / Now steady your hands / Take site / In fire your faith restored / Like stripes on a uniform / Red and gold / But you story will be retold / Put on your peacemaker / Houses burn thick with smoke
WANDERLUST:
Backroads, rutted deep / i know these paths from my old life / Storefronts have changed, streets rearranged / Underneath the two stoplights / With you, was where i learned love / With you, was where i learned love / But the prairie wind is cold / Steals the heat from your bones / And scatters you out like seeds alone / Walk through the fields, past powerlines, and the old roadside graves / Painted names under bridges / Painted saints swear Jesus saves / And i, feel changed but the same / And i have been remade / Time goes by so fast / Cracking paint / Sagging stained glass / Friends scattered to the unknown / But the stage lives on alone/ Let him who will / Go wander still / Out past the lights of town / To find something that never can be found / Cold before the dawn / It's a fond farewell / Darkness moving on