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lyrics

Eyes like Skyscrapers on Fire

For centuries we have slept in strange beds,
Gone digging for the stars in empty pockets
While unseen overhead
They came on like porch lights.
We have heard that voice from beyond the throat
Tearing out like a cello
At the frequency of cracking icebergs,
Shuddering for a response.

We have felt the edge of winter like a blade,
Held our bodies to the lions,
And through the darkness
That leaks from beneath the bones
To build the risen towers
Of our least credible dreams,
We have rampaged
And stalked shivering back,
With shells in our hair,
Sea-swallowed and hungry,
Blistered and broken,
Unceasing and unrelenting,
Toward the only thing that mattered:

Where your skin first touched mine,
Fire was born.
The city where we met still burns,
Look to the smoke and see.
For we are consumed with the flames
As in a lover’s eyes
And look you all the buildings do burn.
This is the blossoming of it all.

All the past has been just prologue to this:
On the night of the day that I first kissed you
I wore my lips like pearl handled pistols,
Walked with Mercutio’s swagger,
Held my head up as though it were the sky itself,
And proclaimed thus to the pigeons:

‘Buckle my knees and spin the world.
Give me the breath, the words, a thought.
Give me a mountain, a flame, a kiss.
A moment or eternity.
Turn the sky black in mid-afternoon.
Empty out my heart like an old purse
So I may fill it with you.
For I will know no more days like this one.’

One day our bodies will lie beneath this ground.
But dear heart, hear me.
As the redness drips every second closer to black
With the deep pounding,
Discovering you in the chaos,
Like a blaze in a blizzard,
Has warmed me.
When my eyes lose the power to see,
I will be glad they had the chance to fall into yours
And should I grow lost,
I will find my way
Through the kisses like light
That you toss for me to catch
As a hopeful bride does flowers.

We are made from pieces of all things
And one day our parts,
As scattered dust,
Will mingle above some far ocean.
And on that day,
Though we no longer have lips,
You will once again
Know my kiss.

credits

from The Way We Used To Talk You'd Think We Believed In Something, released May 27, 2011
Recorded by Eric Thiermann. Cover Photograph by Danielle Brennan

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Shimmy Boyle Oakland, California

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