1. |
Wild River
03:37
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Failure I
Fear is the corners of yourself where you have brushed the tiny failures or abuses or “cannots” or “should nots” or “never coulds” and let them collect dust until it’s time to clean house or rearrange the furniture or move the fuck out and you find them (the fears) when you’re adjusting the couches and the bookshelves and you cringe a bit as you look at them, your instinct is to cover them up again or leave them in the one house and move to another but fear is karmic and until you pick that shit up and repurpose it or give thanks to it, it will haunt you from place to place preventing you from ever fully realizing your potential for the rest of your one tiny, precious life.
Wild River
I wanted to be the kind of lady
That twirls the room around her finger, fun loving But I like to clean the kitchen at parties
I like to stay in on the weekends
I thought I'd be something special but
Chasing my dreams always made me
A little too anxious and I never
Flirted with danger in fact
I have an arranged marriage
With the meticulous routine of
Rising each day before
6 o’clock in the morning and
I wanted to be wild river
But I’m a still country creek
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2. |
Emerald City
03:24
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I-90 West to Seattle
Rounding the curve straight into a canyon
Where the Earth briefly cracked open
Let us in on its infrared secret
All sapphire and spilled out
Glimmering like the way you look at me
When no one else can see,
When no one else can see
True and blue like the distance of the mountains
On the seam of the sky or the ocean from the airplane
You know the realness of it
But can’t ever grasp the infinite depth
Thus rendering that which is right in front of you,
Seeing into you and your tiny dreams and intentions
Somehow completely otherworldly
Pure and above it all the plans and the details
The missed opportunities
The voodoo of scheduling
If only the Earth right here right now
Would answer when I ask it
“Why can’t I have the things that I’m after?”
I think it might say,
“Look up you dummy.”
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3. |
Prayer for Lonely People
03:57
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I hope you’re happy
I hope you feel loved
I hope you find somebody
Who makes you feel like you’re enough
I know you get lonely
When you rest your head at night
Feel me hold you closely
Even when I’m out of sight
It’s always the little things
That keep us up at night
It’s always the little things
That make it right
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4. |
Failure II
00:38
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If I hadn’t failed you
I could sleep at night
If I hadn’t failed you
I wouldn’t eat so much
If I hadn’t failed you
I could be kind to myself
If I hadn’t failed you
my heart would be soft
If I hadn’t failed you
I wouldn’t be here right now
If I hadn’t failed you
I wouldn’t fail myself
If I hadn’t failed you
I wouldn’t know myself
If I hadn’t failed you
I couldn’t be this strong
If I hadn’t failed you
I wouldn’t see the beauty of failure
If I hadn’t failed you
how would I know I could survive it
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5. |
Blame
02:45
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Dreading the moment when
You inquire how the past few months have been
At the mirror practicing
How to trade a little fear for confidence
I’m doing the best I can with the hand that I dealt
I’m doing the best I can with the hand that I dealt myself
I’d say I was making do
‘Cause most of the time that feels like truth
Tonight I can’t shake the noose
Kicked the chair out from under the rest of my life with you
I’m doing the best I can with the hand that I dealt
I’m situating facts about the way that I felt
I’m trying to forgive myself for raising hell
I’m doing the best I can but I still blame myself
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6. |
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Everyday I think
This bed is a rented bed
I do not belong
The bed herself is
A fertile place for comfort
But I am barren
Took quite a while to
Come to this conclusion
Je suis arrivé
Je suis très sèche
Each night I dream heavily
I am full again
Morning splashes in
I wake gasping for air
Tiny and prune-like
Another day to
Wish there were no more days here
Somehow hold on
Everything you loved and miss
Will never be the same
As it was when you loved it
All I want to say
Is I never meant to hurt
You like I have
I only ever
Destroy the delicate things
Well I don’t mean to
I do it because
My mind is convinced I don’t
Deserve a mind
It has convinced me
I don’t deserve you either
So it pulls apart
Anything in sight
That presents like a stillness
Body of water
I don’t mean to be
So thirsty it is all
I have ever known
Everything you loved and miss
Will never be the same
As it was when you loved it
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7. |
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I think the last time I saw my father
Was at La Fogata Mexican in the Mile High City
He was afraid to drive past Happy Canyon Road
Where years before he was in an accident
Making it a not-so-happy canyon for him
I thought that endearing
My mother, less so but still she drove me
An hour out of her way to meet him at the restaurant
He had just gotten his license
After nearly fifteen years of being unable to drive
As court ordered by the state of Colorado
I am sure it was frightening – regaining such power
He wore a blazer – uncharacteristic
We squeezed into a circular booth
The table next to us was a family
Discussing sending their daughter to college
The service was terrible
But the two of us –
Both working in restaurants –
Were forgiving and anyway
Neither of us were strangers
To failure
We welcomed the extra time it took
For the dishes to arrive
Seeing as how little time we’d had together
Our whole lives
I don’t remember what he ate
Or what he said to me when we parted
At the curb side check-in
Or what we talked about
On the ride to the airport
I wish I had a transcript
Of the entire evening
The next ten months of conversations
I can hear his voice in my head
And I’m grasping at it
Frantically searching for some kind of
Neural lock box to put it in
So I don’t forget it
I feel it’s already slipping
And it’s only been three days
Since he died
Forty hours I lived a normal life
While his body lay lonely in a coroner’s – Drawer? Bag? Box?
I can only recall the sickly morgues of television crime shows
And episodes of the Twilight Zone
Which must be why I dreamt of a black cloud
– Ominously approaching –
The clouds not clouds at all
But swarms of the dead, mangled bodies of children
Forty hours he laid there
While the police went knocking on a door that
No longer belonged to me
And I made rice and scrolled through the internet
Like everything was orderly and still
I think my dad took me straight to the airport that night
Or we stopped for pie and coffee
I got key lime and a cappuccino
His favorite was key lime
I hated it as a child
It has near instantaneously become
My most cherished flavor
I’m not sure if that was the same night
But the brain is tricky this way Someone you love dies
Suddenly all of time is compressed
And every moment looped
The time at the train station,
the time at the bookstore, the
time we got coffee,
the time we went shopping,
the time we ate ice cream,
the time we ate sushi,
when was the last time my father saw me cry?
Nothing is insignificant any longer
The loop exists to keep someone as alive as possible
Their voice, the intricacies of their facial twitching
Their order at the Mexican restaurant
Grief is a grasping for the little things
In the end they are the only things
Everything.
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8. |
Orange Flowers
04:13
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Dear Daddy – I just want you to know I love you so,
I never doubted you’d make it to the other side
Dear Daddy – I’m still forming my personal beliefs,
For what happens to the people we love when they die
But I know you’re somewhere, warm desert air
Harley Davidson, midnight ride
Long hair again, flowing in the wind
Free of suffering, free of strife
Like the biker you always wanted to be
Like the artist you always wanted to be
Like the drummer you always wanted to be
Like the person you were that they couldn’t see
I know now, people don’t remain the images
Of their dead body you can’t free from your troubled mind
They become energy, the become light
They become orange flowers shining in the bright sunshine
They become that sweet smile, an affinity for drinking coffee
The significance of letting a grown man cry
Dear Daddy – I know you’re right here with me
Watching me singing, swelling with pride
Dear Daddy – thanks for never leaving me to wonder if you loved me
Or if you were proud I know ‘cause you told me everyday of my whole life
I just want you to know
I was proud of you too
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9. |
Monarch Butterflies
02:01
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I’m through with writing sad songs
About everything that’s gone wrong
What about the blue sky?
What about the warm nights?
What about the Monarch Butterflies?
They’re going up in numbers
Coming up from Mexico
Isn’t that enough?
Predict calamity in the news again
Our galaxy’s headed for a galaxy
It’ll crash, but when?
What about the blue sky?
What about the warm night?
What about the way you feel
When you first fall in love?
Isn’t that enough?
What about the coffee
Filling up my coffee cup?
What about the stranger
Smiling at you on the city bus?
Isn’t that enough?
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10. |
City Butterfly
00:30
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The butterfly don’t know how filthy it be out here
All it knows is riding on the wind
And how to find a flower where y’all
Could never think a flower to be
You are a miracle
Life is not a bitch
She is a mariposa
Rambunctious, elegant, free
Full of mystery and push through
Rich evidence that one could be goo
So paralyzed and broken
And wriggle out on the other side of time
A magnificence
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11. |
Failure III
00:07
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Everybody is a failer
Nobody is a failure
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12. |
Windy City
04:30
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Windy City
I-90 West to Chicago
The sun reaching down
Through the cloud coat
The sky looks at itself
From the wild river
On the side of the road
Asleep in the front seat
I daydream beside Lou
The smokestacks are rising
Out of sight in the rearview
I feel like a fool in everything I do
Still trying to push through
Just grateful to have you
‘Cause nobody knows me like you do
Knows me like you do, knows me like you do
Life is a Funny Haha
Have I become dull
To the wonder of the world?
I still marvel at the way
The blossom begins a bud
Becomes a flower
I still shiver at the sound
Of a heartbreaking melody
I still shake my head in disbelief
After eating a titillating piece of pie Is it not funny, life?
How even through all of it -
The breaking down
The mouth full of mud
The relentless shame and
Utter idiocy of being human
We still seek joy and find it
Over and over and over again?
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