Only Everything Below

(Album: La Dispute - 2008)

Both butterflies and dragonflies have wings like when you sing
i swear you hit two different notes but they don't harmonize as clean as
when you speak there is a rhythm in the scraping of your tongue along your teeth
that comes across as well as hell inside of heaven in a feast of flies
and anything with wings that tries to sing but where you ripped two different holes,
see, they won't cauterize as cleanly as you think and if you listen to the rhythm
in your sleep you can hear me speaking, "you are a wolf to me."

don't believe your ears nor trust your mouth i think that
every single feeble doubt-soaked promise of trust
had a mind to leave you
out in the rain with your hands to the train tracks,
pulling the ropes with your teeth,
but you're too weak and
you're too tired, child,
lay down--i will tear every ghost from your dream.

(oh, king, you've stepped on the wrong crack)

rejoice!
it is beating still.
still strong.
still thundering onward.
it turns it's palm up,
lifts it's voice up.
it speaks, says,
"i don't know."

he speaks with the speed in the clench of a bear-trap,
softly rebuilding the castles he'd kept,
says, "there is grace in a steeple collapsing."
straightens the sheets on the beds where they'd slept.
thinking his love was as passive as flowers,
planted a garden of lies in her chest,
says, "there is grace in a steeple collapsing."
pointing the calm in his eyes to the west to valinor,
where love was sent on airplane wings to shake and be shaken.

still, the flowers open as she passes,
and the birds they sing to greet her,
though she heaves blood.
there is grace in a steeple collapsing.
there is grace in a steeple collapsed.

and he said, "boy, get your things together,
make them wood and make them stone and we'll build you a house.
there isn't ever any shelter anymore."