Lyrics — Rachel Efron

I Changed My Mind,
I Want You
Your Money Costs
Too Much
Still For You
Hold Me In The Dark
Little Bit Of Bad
Woman Who
Remembers You
String
Demeter’s Dream
Last Goodbye (Persephone’s Dream)
Until She Tries
Her Heart Again
Home To Me

1. I Changed My Mind, I Want You

She lay breathing a locked room
The earth beneath her spinning round and around
She was hyacinth in bright bloom
With roots that couldn’t reach the ground,
cool soft ground
She kept every nightmare
Wide awake terror
Far from her own sight
Tangling pleas of protest
Screams of distress
Quiet as midnight

Closed eyed stare
Sap stuck hair
Hushed while the singers sing
I’ll prefer
To be her
Now I feel everything
Like the sun that shines in the clear blue
And this hope that you love me, too
When I hear your voice asking what’s ours still to do
I changed my mind, I want you

She has never had a lover
Know what she gave up to survive, just survive
Sex was nothing but a cover
For ways she wasn’t yet alive, quite alive
Now you step to meet me
Smile completely
See through to her eyes
Say her name like warning,
“Wake! It’s morning!”
Kissed in your sunrise

I’m sick with what I conceal
Be witness that I am real
Human as I came
In your arms I claim my longing

2. Your Money Costs Too Much

Of course
It will be yours
Love hardened into a crutch
What weight can I carry for you today
Your money costs too much

A mirror for your grandeur
A sieve for the stuff you’d regret
What pittance would you tender
For those precious pieces that you don’t own yet

Train me
On your cruelty
Hit with the absence of touch
More air for you when I enter the room
Your loving costs too much

Say, “Whoa you! Yeah we know you!
And how have you come to such harm!”
Well what else could I owe you
My sentience those pearls decorating your arm

Rock me
Like a baby
Tell me you love me and such
Read the last page of this story called home
Your money costs too much

Last gorgeous page of this story called home
Your money costs too much

3. Still For You

Naked at the bottom of the well
Only warmth the lie that I still tell
You’ll bring me home soon
There’s an April moon tonight

You took my life in our unconscious
And made this crude attendant goddess
I dreamed surviving wouldn’t end us
And now I rummage here in the remains
For who I am without you

Even as my straining eyes don’t see
Wrinkles as emerged humanity
You’re my one true love
I’m your mourning dove for good

You took my life in our unconscious
And made this crude attendant goddess
I dreamed surviving wouldn’t end us
And now I rummage here in the remains
For who I am without you

Any semblance of worth in me
Any good thing I’ll ever be
Is still for you
My captor, you
Tormentor, you
Pretender, you

You took my life in our unconscious
And made this crude attendant goddess
I dreamed surviving wouldn’t end us
And now I rummage here in the remains
In these hinterlands of our remains
I’m believing now that what remains
Is who I am without you

4. Hold Me In The Dark

I can’t begin
To tell you where I’ve been
My best sentence lacks the words
For what I learned to see

I meet my death
In each resuming breath
And move to its violent voice
Still calling inside me

Turn down the light
Let go the fight
Before you say goodnight to me
Would you hold me in the dark

We’ll go to sleep
Two divers diving deep
And find with the eels and whales
Sunk schooners in the sand
But would you dare
To scour the wreckage there
And surface with arms too full
For anything we’ve planned

Turn down the light
Let go the fight
Before you say goodnight to me
Try to know me in the dark

I’ve had forever, now, and never
I’m setting like the pale moon

Before you say goodnight to me
Would you hold me in the dark
Would you hold me in the dark

5. Little Bit Of Bad

Pull my boots and belt so tight there’s no room left for you
And underneath this flower dress my own dragon tattoo
Cause I’m done with the crying
And compassion undying

You want what you ripped asunder
Now’s your chance to practice hunger
Well I gave you good with all the strength I had
Since you think I owe you more
Here’s a little bit of bad

Every word I read a thirsty tick under my skin
But I can tear your letters up before they burrow in
As you saw by the stage light
I’ve been sleeping the whole night

You want what you ripped asunder
Now’s your chance to practice hunger
Well I gave you good with all the strength I had
Since you think I owe you more
Here’s a little bit of bad

There is a time when love itself’s a crime against the earth
And I’ll have to go to places I won’t know to claim my birth

You want what you ripped asunder
Now’s your chance to practice hunger
Well I gave you good with all the strength I had
Since you think I owe you more
Here’s a little bit of bad
Little bit of bad
Little bit of bad
Little bit of bad

6. Woman Who Remembers You

Was there a major chord
Before your car spun round
A Gibson twelve string playing
Your distance to the ground
Was Gordon singing strong
For early morning rain
And did you want to tell him
You’d jumped your own jet plane

I can’t know who you were through the mist of the long lost brother
Just cause two people lose doesn’t mean that they gain each other
And though you were finished before your wheels touched down
I’ve become a woman who remembers you

Like you my body’s weak
And yeah, I like to sing
My fingers play piano
Like missing nylon string
That’s Arlo on repeat
And I’d swear you’re in his band
I got your old guitar back
I keep it close at hand

I can’t know who you were through the mist of the long lost brother
Just cause two people lose doesn’t mean that they gain each other
And though you were finished when I was still a girl
I’ve become a woman who remembers you

Now if it’s alright
For every midnight
There’s some of your light
In how I see
My hands are less small
I took a hard fall
So your last phone call
Can be to me

Dear Paul I’ll keep living what life of ours remains
And I’ll be a woman who remembers who
I will be a woman who remembers you

7. String

It took a long time to let your lips know
More than the words on the page
It took some more time to sense the soft glow
From every year of your age
But you can’t seem to recall
The moment you watched as all
Of life’s sweet love got blown past the horizon

You lost everything
To the winds that you weathered
But you found a string
Good for keeping you tethered to the world
This precious world
Go on and try the world

It wasn’t you ever-orchestrating
Some friends just needed to leave
It’s not your self-doubt makes you amazing
It’s more your largesse to grieve
And like luxuriant spring
Permission isn’t the thing
You need to have to blossom in the sunrise

You lost everything
To the winds that you weathered
But you found a string
Good for keeping you tethered to the world
This precious world
Go on and try the world

And sweetheart that there’s the ground
And darling that there’s the sound of the birds by your side
Now swoop a little bit lower
A little bit lower

You could repeat their perfected story
On every step toward the light
And be the right girl in all her glory
For so long since you’ve been alright
They trained you always to give
But you think you’d like to live
The doctor sighed, “We’ve got ourselves a heartbeat”

You lost everything
To the winds that you weathered
But you found a string
Good for keeping you tethered to the world
This precious world
Go on and try the world

Wild winds that you weathered
Now you’re gonna keep tethered to the world
This precious world
Go on and try the world
Hold on and try the world
You’re here to try the world

8. Demeter’s Dream

I began like a closing fan
Colors kept from her vision
Then the stream of my perfect scream
Drained her well of emotion

Left the fields for a gated garden
Wild flowers of her self forgotten
I was sure I would think of her
Tending her isolation

If that God gave His deadly nod
Bore her down to His chamber
Thin legs spread on His flame-forged bed
Tear-stained skin for His pleasure
I would rise in my grief and anger
Starve the earth with four months of winter
But it’s clear that she’s been right here
Only I could have raped her

At last this nightmare has woken me
Made me see her face
I’d hurt her more just to sleep again
Keep her in her place

I would rise in my grief and anger
Starve the earth with four months of winter
But it’s clear that she’s been right here
Only I could have raped her
Only I could have raped her

9. Last Goodbye (Persephone’s Dream)

In the dream
I see your face inside my mirror
Feel your body warm inside my bed
I could scream
And match the volume of my terror
But the loudest sound won’t turn your head

And it’s true
I start before you end
But then you
Still see how much more I’ll bend
Just how much I will pretend for your love

So sweet
You call me sweetheart in the morning
I’m your Lord of Death by afternoon
And repeat
As if the kindness were the warning
Half the year our fields too cold to bloom

This my Hell
Men’s shadows all I see
As I tell
The good parts of your story
That’s how much you mean to me, dear Mamma

Kill me slowly
Break me until I see
All that I am as a dirty lie
Come to sift through
What could be left for you
Have me again
One last time for our last goodbye

10. Until She Tries Her Heart Again

Soft as the sand
In drifts where she lies
Serene beneath the star-streaked skies
Pure as a girl
Undesigned to men
Until she comes to try her heart again

He loved her like guns
Haphazardly shot
So sure he was he’d not get caught
She’ll redress the wound
If and only when
She’s called upon to try her heart again

She kissed goodbye
And with one sigh
This other ever after
She’ll say hello
It’s all hers to know
Her light, her love, her laughter

She’ll bear herself now
That God will grant her then
The sanctity to try her heart again
Until she tries her heart again
Until she tries her heart again

11. Home To Me

I remember the evening
With slight hesitation
Details one at a time like waves cresting at sea
I remember the feeling
A light-headed hoping
For the last day of a long stay
As you found your way home to me

I befriended the knowing
Of four in the morning
Like the darkness held everything that I could be
I arrived there believing
But stayed there like praying
For the last day of a long stay
You lost on your way home to me

I sat so still by the door to your room
Counting each thing that I knew
In that vast silence I learned to presume
I stood up, I entered, I loved you

I remember the feeling
A light-headed hoping
For the last day of a long stay
As you found your way
As you found your way
For the last day of a long stay
As you found your way home to me

3. Love, I Think It Can Wait

I'd have thought I'd be seventeen
Enchanted by your charms
You'd become a man beside me
I'd survive my youth in your arms
Time has passed, I was burned to ash
Then rose up like that bird
Flew an ever growing distance
To unlearn the lies that I'd heard

So you've missed a lot and
Oh guess now I've got just
Far too many things to tell you

But anyway
Love, I think it can wait 'til morning
Pull the curtains away and let the summer night come in
Love, your kindness is late but warming me again

So let's walk through this gallery
And force ourselves to see
All the portraits of the other girls
That I was fashioned to be
Next to each in a gaudy frame
Imposing and askew
Hangs whatever man I'd found to give me
What I thought I was due

Those the quiet years I
Chose to hide those tears and
There, I made it all seem alright

But tell you what
Love, I think it can wait 'til morning
Pull the curtains away and let the summer night come in
Love, your kindness is late but warming me again

Love, I think it can wait 'til morning
Pull the curtains away and let the summer night come in
Love, your kindness is late but warming me again

4. Anyway

Helpless princess
Delicate flower, swiftly unfurled
Flaunt your weakness
Like I have the power to shatter your world
It's a hard fight to do right
As your favorite villain

I see, baby
I'm in at zero counted with you
Impossibly
I'm also your hero, incumbent to do
All your biddings and worse things
Your crimes and your penance
Marking without tears the long years
Of your lifetime sentence

I could tell myself I need you
Starve myself to feed you
Find new ways to stay
I could chain myself to trying
But for all my dying
We'd lose each other anyway

You know it's so
Single intention for every move
You strike new low
And I'll never mention, but yeah I could prove
What went down here on Cape Fear
In Southern Amnesia
How all my snow drifts in night shifts
Weren't quite anesthesia

I could tell myself I need you
Starve myself to feed you
Find new ways to stay
I could chain myself to trying
But for all my dying
We'd lose each other anyway
This time I'm just gonna say no
Find out what comes after I just let go

Your bouquet of lilies and lies
Sublime, picture me in Bourdieu
Sky above me star streaked like a Van Gough
And the future back in my eyes
I could tell myself I need you
Starve myself to feed you
Find new ways to stay
I could chain myself to trying
But for all my dying
We'd lose each other anyway

I could tell myself I need you
Starve myself to feed you
Find new ways to stay
I could chain myself to trying
But for all my dying
We'd lose each other anyway
We'd lose each other anyway
We'd lose each other anyway

1. Angel No More

You loved the girl I was for you
Since we’re trying out the truth I’ll say I loved her, too
All fear and sadness steeled away
And she heard you call her angel almost every day

And still she’s the only one who can comfort you
As I’m shattering your world

For the first time I put myself ahead of you and
For my next crime I tell them what you liked to do
And though you stick me to the climb
It’s you who knocked me down
Now I’m falling falling all the way home
I’m your angel no more

Your books of how they injured you
Though I chose one every night for each you gave me two
Those vile shows you made me see
Well now you’re trapped in that attentive crowd beholding me

And just for old times let’s call it consensual
The accouterments of love

She shot it so it seemed allright
Disgusting but in better light
A profile view of who you’d like to be
But let us say her soul chose birth
Divinity gets sick on earth
Now every breath she takes is one from me

For the first time I put myself ahead of you and
For my next crime I tell them what you liked to do
Now all the bells of heaven chime
It’s you who knocked me down
Now I’m falling falling all the way home
I’m your angel no more
I'm your angel no more
I'm your angel
I'm your angel no more
I'm your angel
I'm your angel no more

2. Terrible Thing to Dream

Can't believe that I am sitting here
Embers of my eminent career burning
Dropped my pennies in the wishing well
Spent more than I'd ever care to tell yearning
This is not my name, is not my life, my happy ending
It's the worst thing
It's a terrible thing to dream
To dream

All the tricks to life I thought I knew
Ends up that no matter what you do you fall
Smile each time he cares to make a pass
Mind and soul are lips and tits and ass, that's all
There's a life that's good, a life that's mine, I'll never know now
It's the worst thing
It's a terrible thing to dream
To dream

I've come looking for the safest place to hide from what I fear
There's no love to fill this vacancy inside
And yet I'm home
Here to stay

This is not my name, is not my life, my happy ending
It's the worst thing
It's a terrible thing to dream
To dream

Worst Crime
Closing Day
Enough
Mourning Dove
Put Out the stars
Marigold
Beautiful Day
Too Soon
Lost Year Slow Dance

1. Worst Crime

Travel the night
Set for the landing
I won the fight
But you’re the one standing
I never knew of the love you gave me before
I could be true to you if you had any more for me

Wind from the bay
Rustles the mountain
Mute when you say
Scream when you listen
I never knew of the love you gave me before
I could be true to you if you had any more for me

So it begins
Walk me the distance of your worst crime
Kicking the leaves
I could stay happy in the meantime
So it will end
Lead me to someplace I could not fathom I would be
Without your love or my own
Never so lonely alone

Retire the part
Savagery pending
Loss was our start
My life is our ending
I never knew of the love you gave me before
I could be true to you if you had any more for me

I would pull through for you if you had any more for me

2. Closing Day

Day becomes the evening
Sea becomes the sand
I become this letter in your hand
Sent without a message
Signed a different name
Everything recedes to where it came

I could hold my breath another day
I could hold the space to love you anyway
Not ever of you, no longer with you
Still

Wait another moment
Wait another year
Hide your tired mind from what you hear
You, the wisest teacher
You, the truest friend
Further from your god than from our end

I could hold my breath another day
I could hold the space to love you anyway
Fix your broken heart with balls of clay
Not ever of you, no longer with you
Still here, now
Yours until the closing day

3. Enough

Who would I have had to be
For you to find your love for me
What would I have had to say
For you to make your way
And what would I have had to do
To constitute enough for you
To give my life back to me
Back to me

Is God above or all around
Or with me on this hardened ground
Did He intend to find in me
A light I didn’t see
Or did He mean to take away
The promise that I felt that day
To give my life back to me
Back to me

Can you see her through the window laughing
Shattered glass of what you almost had
Cool movie screen
Depicts what you’ve seen like it’s romantic
The drama of your love

The summer sun upon me now
Like all has been revealed somehow
The flowers grow, bloom, and bend
To life that didn’t end
And I’m alone with what I lost
No currency to pay the cost
To give my life back to me

What would I have had to do
To constitute enough for you
To give my life back to me

4. Mourning Dove

I know that I must offer myself absolutely
So that which I love can open its blossoms to me
I’m here and I’m yours
Peaceful surrender
Forever your mourning dove
In the time before we start to be in love

I’ve traveled so far searching a space to be lonely
Ravished at last, I’m breathing you in like a drug
Breathless desire
Breathless ambivalence
Fitting me like a glove
In the time before we start to be in love

I hear you like whispering leaves as the Fall settles in
I want you like shimmering starlight collapsed to begin
I’d hold you if ever you’d suffer my arms to be right
I’ll leave you to romance my absence instead tonight

I’m sorry I can’t help but imagine the satin
Permission to kiss, the clarion ringing of bells
I’ll wed my desire
Lay with it under a darkening sky above
In the time before we start to be in love
Take your time with me, my love
I can wait to be in love

5. Put Out The Stars

Stop the clocks and turn off the fountain
Hold my illusion close to the ground
Split the rock that dreamed of this mountain
Sing my seclusion, stifle my sound

I could have held you
I would have tried to
Summoned my strength again
Though your past carved circles on me
You never fought it,
Fixed, or forgot it
Gave me the night and then
Your love had flown
Left me alone in the dark

Name the pain that beckoned me to you
Gripped at my reason, sails in the wind
Hard as rain and cursed to undo you
Loveliest season I’d love to rescind

I took the first kiss
I bent to bear this
Brandished my heart again
While you drained your soul of longing
Dead on the side
Hell that you dared hide
Gave me the night and then

You put out the stars

6. Marigold

I learned the cadence of your laughter
I touched your arm when you cried
I mapped the contour of your body
Set sail in the ebb of our tide
Peacefully
Just as you’re telling me forever
I have every reason to know
But love like it doesn’t end
Except for the day that you let me go

Day tells the story of the evening
In patterns of light on the bed
Pale greens and purples of the covers
Awash in the words that we said
Haltingly
Here in the shadows of your failing
The woman I’ve suffered to be
Will die as you walk away
But harken my innocence back to me

Softly, slowly
My marigold blooms just outside of these walls

Just as you’re telling me forever
I have every reason to know
But love like it doesn’t end
Except for the day that you let me go

I’ll love you like it doesn’t end
Except for the day that you let me go

7. Beautiful Day

You are so peaceful in the morning
Light as a day without its evening
Look at me, I am the single thing to see
This is the beautiful day of your life

I am as constant as the ocean
Harbor the currents of my passion
Brave and true, and now I give it all to you
This is the beautiful day of your life

Tell me friend, will you make it in the end
It is so lonely here without you
And tell me true what our time has meant to you
Another tragedy about you
And me no longer happy
Will I be easier to leave
No

I’m not ashamed of what I carry
I don’t regret and I’m not sorry
Gave my best and while you scavenge for the rest
This is the beautiful day of your life

Look at me, I am the single thing to see
This is the beautiful day of your life

8. Too Soon

Like a bud in the springtime
A dream of pink and blue
A heart unwitnessed
A poem unfinished
By me much less by you
I’m as still as the daybreak
As pallid as the moon
I thought you would never touch my skin
Then I let you in too soon

Sing the ways that you kept me
Thought you yourself were gone:
Your halting weakness,
The skill of your fist,
The love you’d take ’til dawn,
The convulse of a rhythm
Dissevered of its tune,
Your one contribution conceived in sin
When I let you in too soon

What could I give to you
When failing’s the one thing you’re willing to do
Take your hit; break your fall
Forget what I saved ’til I find that you’ve squandered it all

I could not have imagined
All that I’d be to you:
The death of music,
Broken tables
A promise you withdrew,
The delight of a sunrise —
Oppressive heat by noon,
The love of your life that you lost to win
Cause I let you in too soon
I let you in too soon

9. Lost Year

In my lost year I kept my options open
With a held fear
A grief without the pain
It takes a life to stay
Or an hour to sail away from you
In my lost year I found that I had nothing left at all

In my lost mind the darkness was my shelter
I could gaze blind at what should make me go
But while it shielded me
There was so much more to be and feel
In my lost mind I found that I had nothing left at all

Say that you know and tell me you see
All that I’ve been and what I can be
Find us a way, no matter the cost
Love me today thought life is an endless moment lost

In my lost life forgot to say I loved you
With a dull knife I cut against our tie
And though I longed for you
There was nothing I could do to change
In my lost life I found that I had nothing left at all

It takes a life to stay
Or an hour to sail away from you
In my lost year I found that I had nothing left at all

10. Slow Dance

Another cup, another preface to a letter
Our time is up and still I wish I knew you better
The wind inside my curtain
Like words I’ll never hear you say to me

Love consume me
Move to me like a slow dance
Hope submit me
To anything you can
Life presume me
Beautiful as my romance
Don’t permit me to settle for my death again

I search the floor, I search the length of what I’m choosing
My stones in store, my deepest love in what I’m losing
I read you like a story
I hoped you would come true for me someday

Love consume me
Move to me like a slow dance
Hope submit me
To anything you can
Life presume me
Beautiful as my romance
Don’t permit me to settle for my death again

You are a motherless child
You are a brotherless child
You are a fatherless child
Going home

Crescent Moon
Happy Ever After
Tell Me What You See
High Tide: August 2005
Romancing Tomorrow
A Fool Could Find A Way
Before I Fall In Love
Dance Me Around My Room
Who Knows My Secrets
My Heart Is Doing Fine
(Thanks For Asking)
Another Way To Be In Love
Four In The Morning

6. A Fool Could Find A Way

I’ll never tell you why
I thought to look around me
While you contrived your love upon my skin
I’ll let you have your lie
You leave me as you found me
The only thing I feel is where you’ve been

I think I’m alive but I’ve got to be sure
I’m paying the price of being sweet and demure
Now I’m leading a siege against your love without the hint of a sound
Well you push me away so you can track me down again
And you’re lying when you tell me that you want to be my friend
A fool could find a way to turn it around

It is a woman’s crime
I wish for you to know me
The hidden rooms of all that I can be
Been raining all the time
Since you commenced to show me
The limit of the love you have for me

I was hoping to see the love last
But I left my script at the station
Here’s to looking at you, my new past
While alone I find my way around Manhattan

I think I’m alive but I’ve got to be sure
I’m paying the price of being sweet and demure
Now I’m leading a siege against your love
Well you push me away so you can track me down again
And you’re lying when you tell me that you want to be my friend
A fool could find a way
If a fool could find a way
Are you ever gonna find a way to turn it around

7. Before I Fall in Love

I have noticed the flicker of your light
The hollow of your absence in the pain, in the fight
Shout or whisper, recover what is wrong
Stories like the layers since the night you were born

You are with me as images of sleep
As creatures of the shipwreck, life in love, dark and deep
Form your sadness even as it dies
Colors the reflection of your past in your eyes

Before I fall in love I want to know, how you gonna love me
Before I fall in love I’ve got to know, how you gonna touch me
When the wind blows and the leaves fall all around me

You who’ve been here a hundred times before
Witness to my passion and the night and the door
I will stay here as though I have the choice
Come again tomorrow, bring your past, bring your voice

Before I fall in love I want to know, how you gonna love me
Before I fall in love I’ve got to know, how you gonna touch me
When the wind blows and the leaves fall all around me

8. Dance Me Around My Room

Laughter to charm you
Touch to disarm you
In the calm of your repose I will alarm you
Quiet your reason
If you’ve seen it all before, look again
It’s the single night of your life
Try to finesse me
Pause to assess me
In the tyranny of time move to undress me
And discover me here as an orchard in bloom and
Just dance me around my room

You could resist me
Soon as you’ve kissed me
Cast a hundred other nets, proof how you’ve missed me
You could just have me
Inconsequential thing ‘til it’s not
We are daffodils in the rain
Dare you to try me
Lover untie me
I’m alive here for you now, choose or deny me
If the motions of love are too much to presume well
Just dance me around my room

I’m a garden before you
I was made to adore you
Take my hand and a step and begin
Sweep me ‘round past the window
An impossible tempo
Feel the breeze like my breath on your skin
On your skin

Can you perceive me
Power to grieve me
In the still of what I am, hold or bereave me
As you stand here with me on the edge of my doom and
Just dance me around my room

9. Who Knows My Secrets

Calm as I seem
Feel that this day is a dream that I’m living
Afraid that I’ll never wake up
For all that I’ve heard
I’m come to examine the words that were spoken
Like leaves at the end of my cup

Like water you drew
What I remember of you is your absence
The way that I longed for your touch
A plotline to trace
The drama unfolds in the space of the silence
The characters spoken too much

Who knows my secrets
Stuff of my life through the lens of your lies
Who knows my secrets
I need to know when to avert my eyes
Weren’t you the one to say you’d never make a sound
Well who knows my secrets now

The bourbon you drink
Discolors the thoughts that you think as you’re walkin’
The eighty-nine steps to my door
In sadness sublime
Consider that all of this time you’re approachin’
The failure you fashioned before

10. My Heart is Doing Fine (Thanks for Asking)

My heart is doing fine, a sign it’s good we’re through
I watch the news at nine, I hardly think of you
I look upon the stars above and sense the love
That you are said to feel but never really do

I paid my rent again, six-ten with gas and heat
I’m radiating Zen to everyone I meet
I don’t expect a call when I begin to fall
And now that you are gone I’m mostly on my feet

Well life is the truest art
And life got a funny start
And love’s the wicked part of everyone I know, I know

I’d like for you to know, although I think of you
The memory is slow and slightly faded too
You are the stuff of dreams and always were it seems
The simply most banal in Technicolor blue

Well life is the truest art
And life got a funny start
And love’s the wicked part of everyone I know, I know
So stay while the music’s low
And stay in the afterglow
Before I stop the show and find the words to say today
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah
Thanks for asking

1. Crescent Moon

Seems like I’ve been here before
Covered with smoke what I saw
I could show you these maple trees naked in the cold

Morning arrives like a dream
Asks me to call it by name
I could show you these maple trees naked in the cold
And I would give to you green and blue stories I have told

Light of the crescent moon
Pallid and clear
I don’t remember you
But I like to think you were there

Time put the crack in the wall
Traded the dark for the girl
I could show you these maple trees naked in the cold
And I would give to you green and blue stories I have told

Light of the crescent moon
Pallid and clear
I don’t remember you
But I like to think you were there

Well don’t you stand watch for the sun
The moment it drops from your view
I see you there holding the phone
You’re framed by the window
Alone though you said so
A dead line to what you think you know

Light of the crescent moon
Pallid and clear
I don’t remember you
But I like to think you were there
You were there

2. Happy Ever After

Pick one rose from the vase of flowers before you
Pick one more, pick two, you owe me a lot
Pick one thread of a lie that’s started to bore you
Pick one trait of a self that’s all that you’re not

Twenty-eight years and I will reimburse you for the confidence I’m feeling
Living the crime day at a time in my happy ever after
Summer alone courting a stone as I wait for something new
Casting aside years that I tried and I trade ‘em for the laughter
Starting to see pieces of me in the life I’m leading in the darkest season of you

I can see through the blinds your daughter of fortune
I can hear through the words that crack in your voice
Let me let go this kite tail of your distortion
Let me still live in a world that offers the choice

Hang up the phone before I ask for anything you never knew to give me
Living the crime day at a time in my happy ever after
Summer alone courting a stone as I wait for something new
Casting aside years that I tried and I trade ‘em for the laughter
Starting to see pieces of me in the life I’m leading in the darkest season of you

If I reject the way you hold me after all this
Would you recall the times you told me
Not to trust a world that knows its end from its cruel beginning

All of my life so I can stand before now and tell you that I’m broken
Living the crime day at a time in my happy ever after
Summer alone courting a stone as I wait for something new
Casting aside years that I tried and I trade ‘em for the laughter
Starting to see pieces of me in the life I’m leading in the darkest season of you
It’s just the life I’m leading in the darkest season of you
I’ll take the life I’m leading in the darkest season of you

3. Tell Me What You See

Thank you for your silence but still I cannot speak
Aftermath of violence imparted to the weak
If you would be my witness, tell me what you see
I still could not permit this, imprisoned yet I’m free

If the rain came down to wash Them away
My love revealed for a day
Yours to hold, would you show me the Fall
Clear and cold, would you know me
Would you know me at all

Listen to your lover across a different wall
Devotion under cover and trembling in the hall
She wrote of all the ages she felt herself to be
And now I find the pages withheld again from me

If the rain came down to wash Them away
My love revealed for a day
Yours to hold, would you show me the Fall
Clear and cold, would you know me
Would you know me at all

4. High Tide: August, 2005

Summer’s skin to winter’s touch
Seabreeze breath into the curtain
Like a fugitive I hide inside what I know

Here my words can mean so much
What is poetry is certain
Feel the beauty and the pain as rain falling slow

Tell me I am lonely
Here in the dying of the day
As the tide is creeping in
Give it to me only
I can perceive that there’s a way
That the wave will break again

Bits of driftwood on the shelf
Life of hesitance in motion
I collect what I can’t lose, I choose what I see

Tell me I am lonely
Here in the dying of the day
As the tide is creeping in
Give it to me only
I can perceive that there’s way
That the wave will break again

Every word I told you
Here in the dying of the day
As the tide is creeping in
Breathless I unfold you
I can perceive that there’s a way
That the wave will break again

Beauty’s been alone so long
Lost her will to see
Beauty knows that she’s been wrong
Promises to be undone

5. Romancing Tomorrow

Romancing tomorrow and the words left to say
The motions of sorrow by a heart made of clay
I did not think to ask for more
Now I wait on another shore
Romancing tomorrow for a dream of yesterday

The hills are still golden, the sky is still blue
I linger beholden to the promise of you
I’ll defer to the scenery
But it all looks the same to me
The more that I come to be the woman that you knew

My love is a rose that only I can see now

I did not think to ask for more
Now I wait on another shore
Romancing tomorrow for a dream of yesterday

What I know
Close Your Eyes
Fast As I Can
Say Goodbye
Sentimental Love
An Afterthought (Melting To You)
Same Three Things (Quiet Girl’s Blues)
Underneath the Moon
Goodnight My Dear
Help Me Down
Solstice

6. An Afterthought (Melting To You)

I can hear you calling me down to see you
I remember this still I go for you
How have you been
So calm as I try to forget you?

I was lost in overused words one time
I woke up this morning and they were all mine
How have you been
So calm as I try to forget you?
And how have I been
So fierce, so tender
Melting to you?

How can you stand
To witness all that we have been through?
And how have I been
So fierce, so tender
Melting to you?

7. Same Three Things (Quiet Girl’s Blues)

November’s disappeared
With its dispassionate rain
When I feel my life begin I know what I should do
But this is you
So I drink it down again

I learn the same three things a hundred times
And I’m living three lives inside of my mind
I learned this thing but not with you
Guess I forgot who I was talking to
Keep me talking

I may be old for this
But I’m just too young to care
This want’s the dress I wear

Cool femininity
Taunting me
Tangled in my hair

Oh this is not to say
I’ll always feel this way If I could find the words
Maybe someday I could be with you

8. Underneath The Moon

You know I’ll meet you in the afternoon
You know I love to see the lilac trees in bloom
But now the evidence of love is clear
And as the evening sets you move to draw me near

Underneath the moon
Tell me all your secrets won’t you soon
Speak to me before I slip away
Guide my heart into another day
And I will stay with you
I could stay with you

This is the romance I’ve been dreaming of
Rewrite my history of so much wasted love
You know I love it when you say my name
The way I hear your voice is never quite the same

Want to stay with you
I could stay with you

9. Goodnight My Dear

Underneath your weight
I could crawl inside you
Stretched across the night
Voiceless in your breathing
Fierce as I have been
I can still remember
This is her same mind
This is her same body

You know after all this closeness
You must leave me tangled in fear

I can’t understand
Closeness turns to absence
I believe it is
My own words that haunt me

You know after all this closeness
You must leave me tangled in fear
Here’s my sacrifice to history
I’ll kiss you goodnight my dear

10. Help Me Down

Careless I smile at you
Gesture to be with you

If you knew how
Would you help me down
To the love I hold inside of me?

You are so sweet to me
Behold what’s good in me

All I know now
Is emptied into the past somehow
And all I’m left with is longing

Let go the precious things
See what the quiet brings

If you knew how would you help me down
And if I knew how would I climb on down
If I told you how would you help me down
To the love I hold inside of me?

11. Solstice

Thirteenth of a January
Eighteenth of the coming June
I am here
If I could be there too

To heal is a promise broken
To hurt is the coldest storm
I heal strong
Hurt like the falling snow

The storm is ended
But I am still
Tangled in branches under the ice
I hear her calling
Or is that the wind?

What history thins my conscience?
What present would dare endure
She’s a girl
Snowflakes too young to know

There is not one new life within me
Well tell me what the other women do
This year the solstice passes
And still I’m trying to see this through
For the ones who came before me
And told me to pretend
That I could live without her
As I have lost her again and again and again

The storm is ended
But I am still
Tangled in branches under the ice
I hear her calling
I hear her calling
To me she’s calling
Or is that the wind?COL 2

1. What I Know

You say they never were your words to speak
Alone, apart is where you find your peace
You trace the moon along a frosted road
And find the shadows pictures of your need

Build yourself in silence before you make a sound
Sympathy or pretense I’m going back to see her
And I’ll protect and tell her what I know

I’ve read the books of words that is your life
I’ll be the place where girl and woman meet

Build yourself in silence before you make a sound
Sympathy or pretense I’m going back to see her
And I’ll protect and tell her
How I have longed to help her

2. Close Your Eyes

The colors that bloom with sunrise
Do not themselves bring morning
I step outside in darkness
The streetlight marks my longing

Evening explodes with thunder
Falling shards of white noise
People below are listening
For clues of what they know they love

Cause it’s easy now
To trust what can’t hurt you
And it’s easy too
To see this as simple
But in the quiet of your room
All this red can fade to blues
Close your eyes baby close your eyes

Tell me about your passion
I’ll reconnect the splittings
A movement in desperation
Is blinded by the light of war

3. Fast As I Can

Now that I speak
Loose a little breath with each word I say
I’m turning back
Find myself inside my silence again
Woman bleeds twice
Every time she gives herself up to love
What did you do
Morning of the evening that you were loved?

Crossed I fracture the distance to who I am
Fast as I Can

My moon is new
Any other light would give me away
Passion or blues
Try to live a lifetime every day

Crossed I fracture the distance to who I am
Now I’m building the great wall to let you in
Fast as I can

4. Say Goodbye

There is a road
Clearer in the dark
But where do you start when it’s the end?
Call to me loud
Absence brings the edges out around me

Summer comes to tell you that she loves you less
Summer goes before she tells you why
And though you beg for the mercy of restlessness
The night is setting in
And I am setting in
To show you I am brave and say goodbye

What I have lost
Comforts me like rain
And all I have gained just watches on
Think of me then
She’s the one you’ve broken to understand

And though you make me a gift of your helplessness
The night is settling in
Like night I’m setting in

To show you I am brave and say goodbye

5. Sentimental Love

How many ways do I know him?
Strong like the promise of time
Once more he tells me
What he can’t show me
Gentle without confidence

Sleep is a sweeter submission
Take me away from this bed
Dreams of another
Walking together
Sunrise like a memory

I’d come undone
Or choose the one who would not hold me tighter
A sentimental love

One minute longer to see him
Rest in the edge of his smile
Call me a woman
Sister to someone
Cooler than my innocence