1.The Valley
Watch the sun switching in the sky, off and on,
Where our friend stands bleeding on the late summer lawn,
A slicked back bloody black gunshot to the head.
He has fallen in the valley of the rock and roll dead.
I hear a breeze that wheezes through the tips of the pines,
Where there's laughter and there's screaming to rafters in the
night.
The moon rolls dreaming through the late spring sky,
Where our friend lies bleeding through his jacket and his tie.
A slit throat makes a note like a raw winter wind.
We were piled at the river with the rock and roll skinned
Times ten
Like the water loves lapping at the skin of the shore,
Here our friend comes tapping at the latches on the door.
Like a foot slips, slapping on the ladder's last rung,
We were thrashing in the clatter of the rock and roll hung.
It's just a loud crowd crush, just a thrush seen flying
Through the late autumn dusk for the very last time.
It's just a busted-up body in the dust of the last road
Out of the city, when the city explodes.
Light grows, and the light grows bright, and red-tinged.
We were fallen on the border with the rock and roll singed.
Times ten
Times ten
Times ten, ten again and another ten million
Fallen in the valley of the rock and roll dead
Times ten, ten again and another ten million
Fallen in the valley of the rock and roll dead
Times ten, ten again and another ten million
Fallen in the valley of the rock and roll dead
Times ten, ten again and another ten million
Fallen in the valley of the rock and roll dead
2.Piratess
Who wrote those lines on the wall？
Let's retrace where they scrawled ancient characters.
It's 2：00, and your sister's slip it falls,
And the afternoon crawls across the room and tackles her.
I don't think that you would sink that ship that's only passing
through,
Cause I don't believe that you might be a murderess.
But I saw inside each small, dark eye, as it was turning blue,
All the strength inside to do just what the captain says and
hang the rest.
Moved by the rhyme in the psalm,
We agreed that it was wrong, and to believe in it.
Ooh, swooned the wall all night long,
But a lie's a lie, no matter what guy's breath's in it.
I don't know that I would go that far down some dark avenue,
With a whispering crew of shadows all protecting it.
But I saw inside each small white lie, as it was turning true,
The ability to do all things expected of it.
I don't think that you would sink that ship that's only passing
through,
Cause I don't believe that you might be a piratess.
Did you hide inside inside each small white lie, before it
turned it's true,
The ability to do what things the captain says
Oh, murderess, in the wilderness,
With your victims all around you.
Their combined love forms a pool your knife's reflected in,
And now I'm ready, too, with my throat to you.
On this mountain. By this moon.
What I want the most to do is prove I'm not like them.
3.Rider
Baby's ball is all blood red of flayed pigs
And silk soft little things
Fill a house hung from strings
And I fly out on my silver, scissoring wings
With the other sardines
Over cities of things mommies need
Light as gas, and half-assedly free,
Like I was in nineteen ninety three.
Over the ruins like we're staggering apes.
What we get's what we take
In a split open place where a man can get kinged
In a palace of panic and flames
Where nobody gets blamed by the tired,
And broke down, and beat.
In sunken gardens where there was a street.
West over water I rambled and paced,
And the blood river raced like the sweat down my face.
And the stadium roared, and the warriors embraced.
And the golden shore groaned beneath the weight of my tastes.
And I blazed in the last orange hours of the day,
Until the dust hazed and hid us away.
Little baby, be brave.
I see your dad riding over the rise,
Crashing his whole cavalcade through the crowd.
Watch them run on all sides.
The neon white branches,
And the carrion fly
On a congressman's eye
I have wrapped up for you in some old autumn leaves,
And left under a rock out on Rockaway Beach, beneath the trees.
I have laughed my best hiss to the whistling breeze.
There's a hole in my throat.
You can note my last wheeze if you need.
Then take hold of the rope
And down we scream.
4.Lay of the Last Survivor
She went out and found her father
Face down on the ground
Out in the cold.
Walked her way around a hill
With the sun sinking
Down into the snow.
All the whitecaps of the waves
Slap like last hand-claps,
And the dark water dies in a crash,
Is sucked back with a moan.
The smoke on the coast
Oh, piled fathers,
Soft, sighing daughters,
Where does it go？
It's a dream, now, I'll describe
Let your mind drift on down, like so,
To when the world was young.
A big sky, blue of a dead bachelor's tongue.
A new bloom on the rose.
So some line someone told says
Even light can get old.
Oh, slobbering lovers,
Drink-clinking brothers,
They don't have to tell us, because we know.
What a way down.
What a ride.
What a slide spin-around.
What a life to have known.
What a time, and how I was singing out
In a crowd of the thousand
Most frightening faces I've known
When the lighthouse
Lending us sight finally went out,
What a fright we felt
In that night, friends
Just shout it out,
All the whys and don't knows,
All the cries in our throats,
And how right we felt,
With our eyes tightly closed,
Holding something we broke
And then, whimpering sisters,
Sobbing well wishers,
Well it's over.
Just let my hand go.
5.White Shadow Waltz
Abandoned by all her admirers,
Wild White Shadow Waltz
Stands alone on a stair down the hall,
Just one slip from a trip and a fall.
In a cold morning, holding her lighter,
Wan White Shadow Waltz
Stirs, sputters, and stalls.
Then wakes, wavers and walks
Right through her prison walls.
She says, 'The doorbell is ringing.
Go see who it is.
Our little island's sinking into mist...'
A day came. A night went. It lightened.
An animal broke his way out,
Moped through a scattering crowd,
And crawled back to his circus shell.
And circling the zoo's screaming clients
Was White Shadow Waltz,
Deaf to their torn breaths and calls.
(Wait, take a look closer... he's hardly moving at all.)
She says, 'Someone is knocking,
Go see who it is.
Our little world is shaking...
I guess our little world is breaking...'
In the presence of all our despisers
We'll falter and crawl to our bed.
The world is a black shadow bled.
And what is this tune in my head？
She says：
'It's just the white wind when it whimpers.'
'It's just the black rain when it squalls.'
'It's just white meat whistling a waltz.'
'It's just nine hands wiping a white shadow off of the walls.'
6.We Need a Myth
We need a myth
We need an amethyst bridge
We need a high hanging cliff
Jump, fall and lift
We can make it
We need a myth
We need a path
Through the mist
Like in our beds
We were just kids
Like what was said by our parents
A myth
I guess What we're after is just this
A myth
I guess What we're after is just this
We need a myth
I feel my heart's like a fist
Words spilling out
From the blessed lips
Of any prophet or goddess
I need a myth
Brought back to life by a kiss
Scrape away grey cement
Show me the world as it was again
As it was in a myth
A red ribbon to reconnect
The lady's head to her neck
And to forget that her throat
Was ever slit
I guess What we're after is just this
A myth
I guess What we're after is just this
Oh and I'm sick
Of all these picture books that try
To steal some old reflections for their light
But desperate measures point to desperate times
And that's why
We need a myth
We're cut adrift
And we need a mass uplift
The world is trembling and weeping
Just at the point of believing
In a myth
The sun that shines on my head
The moon that lights me to bed
Were two identical twins
Inside of a myth
I heard the voice of a friend
On Lethe's banks
Wading in
And he said
Before I forget
We need a myth
As we lean in to kiss
To get two nails
Through the wrist
To get covered in blood
And to get covered in spit
And to forgive.
And if all we're taught is a trick
Why would this feeling persist？
And with the truth closing in
I must insist
We need a myth.
7.Hanging from a Hit
What this night wants is what it gets,
Strung in silken knots,
Lit by cigarettes flaring side by side,
With the streets all wet,
As the only thing that's bright.
And I don't need to cross that bridge.
I find I'm swinging or sailing
Over the pit tonight.
I'm hanging from a hit
Tonight was wild enough
To order up and toss across my lips.
What's making all my tears
Is taking all my fears away.
But I don't need to cry,
Cause now I'm clear.
A moth that's swerving through the sage.
A creature crashing from a cage.
A shadow vaporized by a new sun ray.
A day she spends the night, and I can hear her sighing
As she's almost asleep on one side,
I lie back on my pillow and ask what her husband is like.
And she says, 'I smile polite,
And I tip and tithe,
And I see the sights with a well-trained eye.
But I calmly cry,
Cause I'm too much mine without him.
I lie, reclined where the room is quiet,
And it's quiet at night.
The soft silk is fine
And the waves are white,
But the wind has died without him.
And I scream my smiles,
And I want my wires and I need my stripes.
And I read the lines until I lid my eyes,
And I'm losing time without him.'
And she says, 'I ignite inside
And I flash with fire
And I limp from life
And I'm blazing blind
And I'm surging live
I give up my mind
When with him.
And then every dream inside turns to flames,
Fades to grey, and is dying.
And the smoke rises into a white, blank, bare, broke-open sky.'
8.Show Yourself
And I will skim, my little sail,
My friends all shivering on the rails.
Show yourself.
Show yourself.
Floating ten feet above the ground,
Twelve millionaires coughing up clouds.
Get them out.
Show yourself.
Train across the island spitting steam.
Six stations of a snowy screen.
Show yourself.
Show yourself.
Outside the fields of silver trash,
The city trembles all when slashed.
Come on out
Show yourself.
I've had enough.
I can see him almost now.
There is no one there to help you.
There is no one there to hold you, let it go.
I've felt enough.
Can't really feel it anymore.
And I know I'm closing off as it gets colder.
Can I call out like before？
Show yourself.
9.Your Past Life as a Blast
Okkervil River - Your Past Life As a Blast
Your life, back in a banner year.
A blast of light, a brace of cheers.
A house of wild accolades
Evaporating on an August night
I'm looking out into the sound,
I'm breathing deep, I'm turning around.
I'm saying,
'Do you want to swim out to that island？'
I'm thinking,
Touch my wrist - it's shaking
Just like someday baby when we're older.
I'm wishing
Cash will be inside our kisses,
Someday, maybe, baby when I'm gold.
Your hair is thin and light
As a white forest fire in summertime.
Your throat, where it's exposed, looks like a crime,
I'll sneak-up slow and whisper quiet.
Your pretty face looks like an island
Rising from a sea that's slowly drying.
When I'm saying,
'Do you want to sail out in the silence？'
I'm asking,
'Will you come over here and do me violence？'
Press your ear up to my wrist
The blood is racing some way, going wherever,
I'm saying,
'Will you stand up tall and be my shelter？'
How will we go, what do you think？
Into the dust？ Into the drink？
You slipped your fears into my head,
Some midnight freeway ride along with Jennifer.
Hotels, jails, hospital details.
The highway hugs the water.
I had to cross a field of screaming fire
To see the moonlight on the river.
I'm saying,
'Do you want to come and make me shiver？'
I'm thinking,
Squeeze my arm and feel it pull away like
Someday, baby, when we differ.
I'll tell you what I didn't say.
I'll tell you about the way I really miss him.
You tell them what you want to tell them.
Tell them about the way you really loved her.
And we'll shake it, shake it,
Shake it off, and take another,
Cause no one, no one
Is gonna stop me
From loving my brother,
Cause no one, no one
Is gonna stop me
From loving my brother,
No one, no one
Is gonna stop me
From loving my brother,
No one, no one
Is gonna stop me
From loving my brother,
No one, no one
Is gonna stop me
From loving my brother,
Not even my brother.
10.Wake and Be Fine
Someone said to me, I'll come into your dream and speak it to
you.
I already knew. I found her in an attic where, dramatically,
She leaned in to me, and she whispered these lines：
Wake and be fine. You've still got time to wake and be fine.
Embracers meet with more embracers on the street.
Say, Hold me, dear stranger. Grab on to me.
We're carrying our years around us, or they're chasing down us.
We're all here at the same time. Can we wake and be fine？
We still got time to wake and be fine
Villains on the creep and killers in the crowd are carving apart
our childhood house.
Lovers in their sheets, dreaming lovers sweetly turn in their
sleep all under sunbeams.
Everybody's crashing, running, calling out the coming of things
they kind of can see.
Someone said to me, It's just a dream. Why don't you wake up
and you'll see？ It's fine.
In those miles racing over endless fields of snow you already
heard, you already know,
The rescue party finally lost their hearts, and then they
shattered their bones, and died all alone.
The ships all float from beaches by themselves away from hot
afternoons. Goodbye, you balloons!
Adrift above indifferent clouds our hearts are crashing loudly
on some rocks where the gulls whine, to wake and be fine.
You've still got time to wake and be fine.
11.The Rise
All the riders on the rise
And circlers from every side.
All the riders on the rise
And circlers from every side.
Eyes up!
Light floods around in a yellow shadow
After night comes down
I a ground-whirl fall
Into a dull dumb swipe.
And all's white.
Fire painting on the pines,
Hawks above the timber-line,
Water weeping from the ice.
Fire painting on the pines,
Water weeping from the ice.
Heat is lost.
Winter rocks into a lonely boxwood grove.
And quiet snowfall smothers all of the lawns
Where the ladies coughed and cried,
'I don't want to be there when it's time!'
The dying stag is on his side.
The hunters are hiding, up on high.
The wind is beating through the briars.
The dying stag is on his side.
The hunters are hiding, up on high.
The wind is beating through the briars.
Waves on the graves of the saints.
Dull grey as the sea pushes land away.
Dull ache when you wake.
Grey smoke shows the way you walk
Down by when it's time.
I don't want to be there
When it's time to go down,
Down, I don't want to go
Down there alone.
Down, down, I don't want to go
Down there alone.
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