Thumbsucker

(album: The Practice Of Love - 2019)

Come with me
Fall into the wildscape
Reverse the church bells
Swiping in the mud
With two fingers
And one in your mouth, wandering

I was a thumbsucker, what am I now?
I was a thumbsucker, what am I now?
Am I a traveller, was I ever?
Or do I just colour 'round the clear lines?
Do I just turn away from every confrontation?

Biting until bleeding
She says she knows
This is my strange voice
She say she's close
Once I was a thumbsucker
Doesn't say to what
Once I was a runaway
The forest is all sorts of forests
Hid in tight places and World War II bunkers
It seems to be adapting itself, she says
Found secret tree huts, spiralling
Alternating between mountains and marshland
A self-harming vampire, she always says
Of the tender kind, she always says
A compensation, she always says
For something too wild, for something too wild
For something too wild, something too wild
For something too wild, for something too wild
In this way
Alternating mouth and thumb
Forest and human
Both transforming
Forest and humans
Producing nothing. Until
Are equals

I got afraid that I'd dug too deep
Stirred up something in the body
The glands of instinct, fear and desire
Clanking from a distant engine
Iron shafts and idler-wheels
And then there is release
Whatever it is you are doing to yourself
You are always performing some kind of internal construction work

I was a thumbsucker, what am I now
Am I a runaway, was I ever?
It's all in the wrist
Sketching out the wildscapes
Sucking on the church bells
The hunger of the clappers
Withdrawing word by word
Back into the rabbit hole