Up In The Rafters/Bird Balloons

(album: Mammoth Swoon - 2010)

[Up In The Rafters]

I want to love you like the monster loves a flower
Disarming as a bird flying backwards
And my heart is a pomegranate
And how long have I ached for your hands on my stomach?
I want to love you like the monster loves the flower
Tenderly
I want to know you like the clock knows the hour
I want to see you with both my eyes forward
In the fields of rye and up in the rafters
Hungrily

And oh, to know the nape of your neck:
It would be the length of my whole self
To swoon if for to stretch beneath a fleshy ground
Peacefully

Into a blood-red sea
In the wax of a whale
Oh, meet me down there, deep down
Where I am dark and pale

This longing I inherit, how it makes me shameful
This armor how I wear it 'till I can no longer
And all the while in your blue so sallow
As bitter as the snake that craftily crallows
On the cracked tongue of the quake in the shadows
Silently

I am a ribcage, I'm a sailor, I'm an arrow
I am a monster with the wings of a blind sparrow
And I want to touch you like the sea touches the soil
I want to hold you like the milk holds the spoil
Sing to me
Cling to me

And what of this cacophonous these broken strings?
And what of this, the blood red kiss, the beast in the sea?
I'll hush it now and I will sing it songs to put it to sleep
And leave it there without a care that it might know a dream

[Bird Balloons]

I'm a ghost, and you all know it
I'm singing songs, and I ain't slowing
It was a fragile thing, and I goddamn dropped it
I picked the pieces up and put them in my pocket

And I ain't gonna try to win your heart this time
I've had space to think, and I think that I've grown a little wiser
I'm looking for a new muse, you have only made me tired

Call your bluff up on the telephone and jam-jar my blood
This is my loss of limb, my loss of love
Call your bluff up on the telephone and jam-jar my blood
This is my loss of limb, my loss of love

It was so cold you could see both sets of ribs almost escaping your skin
To fly south, south until the springtime
Your hips stood out like confidence
You were naked as a newborn in the snow, and you wanted it so
That's precisely how you wanted it

And now your love is writing words on the wall with the meat of a nectarine
That she picked earlier that morning in the orchard
And you are on the street, a chest of drawers, free
While the skeleton parade marches past you
Carrying bird balloons, they fly backwards and forwards
The streets can be eerie, streets can be dreary

It's as if leprosy, it landed on the moon
And it cast a filthy glow in the world and in my room
It's as if leprosy, it landed on the moon
And it cast a filthy glow in the world and in my room
It's as if leprosy, it landed on the moon
And it cast a filthy glow in the world and in my room
It's as if leprosy, it landed on the moon
And it cast a filthy glow in the world and in my room

So how about I play the harp and you play that piano
Pull the curtains shut and nest like little sparrows
My limbs, my love, are lost on you
My limbs, my love, belong to you

I remember that night in the woods on the hidden balance beam
Made of a long wooden board with a barrel underneath
We laid on either end, and we couldn't quite knack it
After many attempts and many minutes of silence
Until we did
And our breath caught, and we looked up
And the stars, they were so still
And the stars, they were so still
Both our hearts, they were revealed
Our hearts, they were revealed
And you were my friend

You were my friend
You were my friend
This is my loss of love, my loss of limb
You were my friend
This is my loss of love, my loss of limb
You were my friend
You were my friend
This is my loss of love, my loss of limb
You were my friend
You were my friend
But now

I'm a ghost, and you all know it
I'm singing songs, and I ain't stopping
My hair grew long, so I fucking cut it
And when you looked away
I snuck those trimmings in your locket
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha