1. |
My Heart
02:03
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My heart holds a lot of happiness
My heart holds a lot of pain
When my heart is stone dry and dusty
It opens up and lets in a little rain
My heart is built like a well
Deep down into the rock
My heart holds six feet of water
Be on guard you don’t fall into my heart
Tall in the field around my heart
Grows the seven sycamore trees
When I need to see the seven roads to heaven
I climb up, see everything for free
In a far off country
Lives a man with a daughter on his knee
Early in the morning when the bluejays meet the sunshine
They make up whatever words they please
(Cold is the water around my heart
far from the old sunshine
cool to the lips of the petrified
sure to all immobility belie)
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2. |
The Scarf
03:47
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Troubled, troubled sleep
Wake with heavy, heavy eyes
Dream after dream dye the dark water
Now streaks of light thread eastern skies
Here on the fringe of night and day
So many fears are woven in
To the strands of solid thought
Finally consciousness wins
Peaceful morn, mind at ease
Walk to work through cool clean air
Each familiar tree and corner
Knit a warm and woolen layer
Yes, peace of mind in certainty
Guarantees of a safe passage
No crimson wool wound in the weave
From birth to death, the sweet hereafter
Look at them now, the colours are beautiful
So beautiful when you cease to fight
You put on She’s So Unusual,
Listen to “All Through the Night”
This is how it goes -
you weave in you weave out
you weave until the pattern shows
This is how it goes -
you breathe in you breathe out
you breathe until the heartbeat slows
This is how it goes - colour enclosed a picture show
This is how it goes - above all else, protect the throat
Last night I dreamed a yellow field
A man therein with arms wide open
A myriad cardinals circled round
Suddenly were gone, enter the raven
That dark bird lit on the man’s shoulder
Whispered in his ear
A scrap of cloth took from his throat
Then arose and disappeared
Sing take this scarf and let it hang
On an old familiar hook
Then walk away new wool in loom
Move into an unwritten book
Look at them now, the colours are beautiful
So beautiful when you cease to fight
You put on She’s So Unusual,
Listen to “All Through the Night”
This is how it goes -
you weave in you weave out
you weave until the pattern shows
This is how it goes -
you breathe in you breathe out
you breathe until the heartbeat slows
This is how it goes - colour enclosed a picture show
This is how it goes - above all else, protect the throat
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3. |
Down Juan
05:23
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Don’t let me down Juan, we need you tonight
I’ve come seeking pathos ‘neath the halogen light
Estrella, your mistress, has cued the machine
Your niece is in from Austin, she’s lost to the scene
I and my party have just settled in
Pray happenstance deliver us inviolate
From this wasteland of dreams
Hammered-tin Mexican Jesus
Skeletons playing guitar
Busts of writers and drunkards
Dust fallen mutes the bazaar
There are crosses and candles
And swords without handles
Plastic camels bear wise men from afar
Antlers deer parted, souls referenced and carded
What are we doing here?
Don’t let us down Juan, we need you tonight
We’ve come seeking pathos ‘neath the halogen light
Estrella, your mistress, has cued the machine
Your niece is in from Austin, she’s lost to the scene
I and my party have just settled in
Pray happenstance deliver us inviolate
From this wasteland of dreams
Saints caught in acts sacred deifying
Technicolor prints on the wall
Rebels with their mustaches and rifles posed
Solemn for martyrdoms call
There are buckets for nothing but roses that are dying
Banners for causes long withered in the trying
In the windows the stained glass is quietly crying out
‘What are we doing here’
Don’t let us down Juan, we need you tonight
We’ve come seeking pathos ‘neath the halogen light
Estrella, your mistress, has cued the machine
Your niece is in from Austin, she’s lost to the scene
I and my party have just settled in
Pray happenstance deliver us inviolate
From this wasteland of dreams
In a cardigan borrowed from Rimbaud
Clutches the microphone stand
Though his body and his mind speak otherwise
His eyes gleam as an eager young man’s
There’s a song on his lips, a mid-century tango
Speakers turn out a recording he’ll sing to
Though nothing here crackles like a thundering revue
There’s no disputing the fact that we’re here
So don’t let us down Juan, we need you tonight
We’ve come seeking pathos ‘neath halogen light
Estrella, your mistress, has cued the machine
Your niece is in from Austin, she’s lost to the scene
And I and my party have just settled in
Pray happenstance deliver us inviolate
From this wasteland of dreams
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4. |
Two-Step
03:51
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A little slice of heaven
Adelaide you’re making me laugh and I don’t even know you
But I’m guessing that the things you like,
Butterflies and hollowed wood blowin’,
Are pretty much the same as mine
Along the line a warbling bird
Your uncle calls from Red Deer just to hear you
Dabble away in the water of words
While the 59th Street Bridge Song is dancing with the
Summer breeze, a two-step if you please
Why is it everyone that I know
Is just a little down, a little concerned over what they don’t know
Like will there ever be a frontier?
Looking for a place where our dreams
Can have it out with our fears
There’s a colour that I’m thinking of
You can spot it yourself with a keen eye and bent for blue sky
An appaloosa that knows her name
A verandah with an upright piano rolled out on Sundays
Along the line a warbling bird
Your uncle calls from Red Deer just to hear you
Dabble away in the water of words
While the 59th Street Bridge Song is dancing with the
Summer breeze, a two-step if you please
Adelaide the phone is ringing
I gotta go answer to everyone, they’ve got my number
But in the quiet that I leave behind
you can spy with your eye a footpath through the aspens to the pasture
Along the line a warbling bird
Your uncle calls from Red Deer just to hear you
Dabble away in the water of words
While the 59th Street Bridge Song is dancing with the
Summer breeze, a two-step if you please
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5. |
The Slide
03:10
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As I sit by my window
On a warm November day
Boys on BMX’s
Wheel their worries all away
On the steps of the tabernacle
They’re rolling up a joint
They might not remember what they learned today
But what they learned is ‘What’s the point?’
Of relying on hope
In this wavering time
Relying on a plastic bag instead
Trading crime for petty crime
With five in your pocket
You can always get by
You can always paint your name on a concrete wall
And let the troubling slide
The water mains lay belly up
Gaping grave at my feet
Layers of asphalt now reveal
The traveling history of my street
That which we don’t want to recognize
We slip into the ground
If we bury the troubling deep enough
We can barely hear the sound
Of a whimpering hope
In this wavering time
To be left in a ditch in a plastic bag
Hardly seems an earth-shattering crime
With five in your pocket
You can always get by
You can always paint your name on a concrete wall
And let the troubling slide
The sun was uncommonly bright today
Autumn leaves flakes of gold
She pulled one down to reminisce
As if she’d suddenly grown old
I’d seen her shine on a high school stage
It was Remembrance Day
She made me remember
All that glitter’s real
Sunlight on a grinnin’ face
And a flicker of hope
In this wavering time
Believing that the plastic bag we are thinking of
Bears a lesson to be cashed in rhyme
With five in your pocket
You can always get by
You can always paint your name on a concrete wall
And let the troubling slide
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6. |
Fade Away
04:17
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I’ll rise up
In the morning
Early morning
To be with you
Dressing comes
A little bit easier
A little less fuzzy than
It did before
I am forty
Half of eighty
One third of one twenty
Don’t the numbers look pretty
There’s a cow at the auction
Standing with the others
Then her number’s called
And she says goodbye
Trouble is
There is too much thinking for the day - hey
Trouble is
There is too many things to put away - hey
Colour wheel
Spinning so fast it turns to grey - hey
And fades away
I know this man
He lives in an outpost
A long way from trouble
A long way from town
In the morning he wakes up
There’s no movement in his legs
He says, ‘Don’t it look like I’m staying put today.’
I’ll rise up
In the morning
Early morning
To be with you
I will pray three times a day at my window - hey
Snow will fall in a line hard past my gable - hey
A chair, wood floor, a solid table - hey
Fade away
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7. |
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She left home in an overcoat
Married in a storm
Laid her first child down
In a bank of drifting snow
Carry on Heather, carry on home
Carry on wondering why the ties that bind
Have left you all alone
Well you carry all the drawings you loved
‘Til you carry them no more
Settle near a water source
Lay off your walls and floor
Carry on Heather, carry on home
Carry on wondering why the ties that bind
Have left you all alone
Lifted trusses heavenward
Draw, quarter the sky
Foundation stops the easy shift
Of dirt and embrace the lie
Carry on Heather, carry on home
Carry on wondering why the ties that bind
Have left you all alone
With every window pane
There comes a darkening shutter
Every stray shaft of light
The shadow and a mutter
Carry on Heather, carry on home
Carry on wondering why the ties that bind
Have left you all alone
These elastic consequences
They lose their meaning over time
Collapse, constrict the heartbeat
A sort of treason of the mind
At night just to let the blood flow
You loose the throat and let the wine go
Down, down, down.
Consider now a mantle piece
A transom bearing stone
Cross member with a heavy load
Now on a pillar left alone
Carry on Heather, carry on home
Carry on wondering why the ties that bind
Have left you all alone
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
She said :
I will build us a home
In the back of a converted bus
With plenty of windows to let the light in
A mansion of rivets and rust
Gardenias will be our official flower
Whippoorwill our bird
We’ll take as our own the songs of Bob
And Whitman as our word
As the dusk hovers on the hood of our home
We raise it plain to the god of comfort and plenty
And in the tradition of the great ascetics
Let our rhapsody stand for the many
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8. |
Tired Horses
04:29
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The sound of rolling rippling bells
Tumble off the tower to the plaza below
These doves, they know the dawn
With them she awoke
Lying still for a long time listening,
Picturing the village dogs
The scarves of the market
The carcasses carved up
And what she might take across
Miriam raise the shade
The orioles return to the trembling ash
Morning has fallen, the moment incarnate
Has paused at the window then passed
Breathing, “I believe I’ll revisit these tender memories...
Draw them deep within my eroded chest
Flesh out the beloved, their scents and their touch,
Speak to them, invite them across.”
Miriam to where’d you disappear?
Your evening nurse arrives with a vial of ease
This bed, but for your night clothes
Is empty for the first time in years
Thirteen stables too lie empty
Slanted light streams in the door
Dust still settling to the floor
While out on the level,
The great plain below heaven
A dust cloud ushers them across
Finally, by the riverside she lies,
Traces etched in clay, take this cup
Mourning doves, they know their song,
On cue they erupt
Sun eclipsed by the horizon,
Eyelids forever closed to tears,
Fallow deer from willow groves appear
Thirteen horses kneel in communion, drink the river
Song of loss, a lone swallow dips, wings a soul across
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9. |
Black Water
03:20
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Oh Regina, you’ve got a hold on me
Half of the good that’s happened
Out here arose in your womb from a seed
Planted by windstorm
In a late April shower while the Cheyenne sang “Ça Ira”
Oh black water glistens on the street
Where the light falls and bleeds
Death is a reflex, life is a footstep planted on a sidewalk uphill
En route to anywhere marigolds bloom
Or Jedara in the second century
The horse and the rider have drowned in the sea
No need looking back for your enemy
Don’t cry for your young, they’re caught up in the rye
The street leads to the sweet bye and bye
Oh Regina, you virgin queen
When the hobos spilled over the tops of your boxcars
You slaughtered with an innocent ease
Deliver me an anthology of poetry inspired by,
Or a painting like Goya’s to really see
Oh black water, runs in my soul as I watch the boys bleed
Holden’s arms open, while Moses emboldened
Rages over the molten beast
Pray tell an intercessory that might cross my lips
A melody keyed for the spirits release
The horse and the rider have jumped in the sea
No need looking back for your enemy
Don’t cry for your young, they’re caught up in the rye
The street leads to the sweet bye and bye
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10. |
Fly Away (Helicopters)
05:25
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There’s a lotta water here
runnin’ down the drain
low in my back
where I keep all that worries me
I can feel the strain
Helicopters ferrying
bodies and logs away
and I was taught by a hidden camera
all I saw was okay
And in the meantime, I’m lingering
In the young sounds on a summer day
Meager remains of milk and honey now
If they could they’d all fly away
Digital tundra underfoot
they can’t close their eyes
lest they lose sight of pictures meant to blind
so they close their minds (and)
Ride the big top jungle beats
let them carry you away
on a swirl of neon strands of happiness
through the darkness of another day
And in the meantime, I’m lingering
In the young sounds on a summer day
Meager remains of milk and honey now
If they could they’d all fly away
Madeline and a motorbike,
it’d seem to be all I need
to leave the trucks and the circus behind
even then the choppers need to feed
And in the meantime, I’m lingering
Here on a bus hound grey
And when the nun leaves the Citroën
The blue girl’s hat blows away
Everything moves in circles
even as it runs down the drain
except maybe light and the distance between
the things that blow away
Helicopters they never see
what becomes of the sun
on the face of Madeline in the evening
loveliness Da Vinci
And in the meantime, I’m lingering
In the young sounds on a summer day
Meager remains of milk and honey now
If they could they’s all fly away
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11. |
Ravenna
03:56
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Lastly, I trundle off to my pillow
Night sky a stone’s throw from my mat
I work on raising your image up to my mind’s eye
Thinking it’d be nice to drift off with you in my sight
A satellite is what I’d be if I circled round now
A shooting star if i plummeted to burn at your feet
Instead I’m a red tailed hawk ridin’ lift in the afternoon
Whether I descend is a matter of diminishing winds
Still there’s no reason to believe I’ll be home soon
I rise to a bell that beckons in a foreign tongue
The women of Ravenna pray in dim light rooms
As do you my long suffering one
“I, to, have been in Ravenna
it is a little dead city that has churches and a good many ruins,”
Not my words but the poet who calls out from my pack
My shoulders are sore from the weight of his words on my back
You wrote in your electronic mail that I should come home now,
As the candle you left in your window has sputtered and died
And in the event that I’m gone longer than six months
You cannot guarantee a lock’ll remain on your love
Still there’s no reason to believe I’ll be home soon
I rise to a bell that beckons in a foreign tongue
The women of Ravenna pray in dim light rooms
As do you my long suffering one
Lastly, I pray for your safety
It is a sentiment culled from a flowered and passionate past
As for now I lie alone wide open to the night winds
The most I can afford, a drifters benediction - Amen
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Roger Dean Young & the Tin Sea Victoria, British Columbia
Roger Dean Young is a singer-songwriter sprung from the foothills of Alberta and deposited on the West Coast of British Columbia.
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