To The Boneyard

(album: Whole Damn Body - 2021)

Respite in twilight, space in the cavity
Wall at grandparent's house behind the apple tree
Where once you sang with your siblings now
Watching bodies bobbing down the stream, leaving the town

I'm a picture of no flesh, only bones
As we're stripping off my skin to run it up the pole
And salute the breeze that ripples the sheath
Of the skeleton that's trembling on the ground beneath

Walked your entire country up the central reservation
Take me to the boneyard, baby
Take me to the boneyard, baby
The deadest stare, the slackest hair, the saddest conservation
Take me to the boneyard, baby
Take me to the boneyard, baby

We rifle through piles of bones
For something to chew on, for something to own

Through my teenage years at my mother's house
Every evening, six times, there comes a phone call to ask
"Where's my daughter gone?" She moved six years ago
Now receiver's cold, the phone calls dry, there's no one home
And that is what we feared the most

Walked your entire country up the central reservation
Take me to the boneyard, baby
Take me to the boneyard, baby
The deadest stare, the slackest hair, the saddest conservation
Take me to the boneyard, baby
Take me to the boneyard, baby

We rifle through piles of bones
For something to chew on, for something to own
We rifle through piles of bones
For something to chew on, for something to own

And so we stitched our eyes and mouths closed
Lest we open them
Breaking the seal that our bodies have formed
As a natural defence just to hold back the sorrow
That friends made today will be deaths mourned tomorrow