album artwork by Soren Iverson ( www.instagram.com/soreboar )


“Island Lovers”

To say I miss you’s not unfair
I just wish you were here with me this year
On this island you cannot drown
No matter how hard you try, there’s no easy way out

I could have won
If only I’d been more far apart
If only I’d been more

(On the island runs a single panther
On the island)

Turns to me with threatening jet-black holes for eyes
Glittering in the new moonlight, she says “Boy”

Dark skin in the mud with the blood dried in her hair
She says “Boy”



“Your Flowering Ring”

All my good life I was alone
Not enough, never enough

In your hands I was mad, I was brilliant
Everything then had a million-dollar glow
I was manic, I was loving, I was mean and forgiving
I didn’t know how to slow

All my good life, all of it’s gone to bust
Countries between us
And in my head there’s a promised land
In twenty years I’ll be yours, man
If the joke we made
If the joke remains

With my green metal sweater and your flowering ring
In the New Haven air in the night on the streets
I took up your story and folded a wing
So when we died out we could once again meet

All my good life, I was alone
All my good life, I was at home



“Bombay Gin”

Where’d you go, my love?
It’s been a long year alone
Bombay gin and money on my rug
Nothing not even time to hold me up

Never been so drunk
All of it turning so fast inside my cup
Listen, babe, I made up a story for us
You can be Adam and I will betray your trust
You’ll come to know the temper I’ve come to becrutch

In silence and darkness of night, in the door to my locked relief
I shudder and whisper and open the blinds and I beg myself not to leave
Out the window I speak it low
Say “Fool, do you think you could make it?”
Then the voice I crave will echo it back
Say “Your cowardice now controls you
“Your paralysis self-imposed
“Your extravagance might behold you
“But lastly observe what’s already happened
“Alone, you are your own captain.”

I never been so drunk
All of it turning so fast inside my cup
Listen, babe, I made up a story for us
Now you be Adam and I will betray your trust
You’ll come to know the temper I’ve come to becrutch



“All Down Elm Street”

I don’t have words to fill up the space you carved
You wouldn’t believe how hollow my heart’s become

And in my darkest times I’ll go out
Out beyond the city line
Back when I was drunk
And you were my vision

I think I see a sail on that horizon
I think I see a life on empty ocean
I think I hear you calling me from Boston
I think it’s time I seal this up

All down Elm Street with the looking-glass we shared
Fire, fire it loud! and the gunshots aired
With that final farewell for the altar
Next I see you we both might be altered

So here’s to that little past




“Snake-Ring Emma”

I was a fallen boy, naked in the wilderness
I couldn’t see a way to get to the streets again
Suddenly smelling a furnace I ran for the light:
A cabin on top of the hill lit up like Paradise

I saw it burning and it burned to the ground
Right then, in the embers, I saw walking out: Emma

Emma then had spread out her arms to the sky
She opened her mouth and emitted a bloody cry
“Father forgive me,” she sang as I crawled toward her feet
She stood on my neck then and started to weep
“You boy saw this and now must die
“I don’t want to kill you but I need this alibi
“Two of my sisters were inside of the house
“And all of my brothers are nothing but ash now.”
Right down on my head she brought down her mantlepiece

This song I’ve been singing for twenty-three years
I’m just wondering if I could get someone to hear
O Purgatorio isn’t as bad as they say
They feed me well and don’t ask me for pay

For Emma’s soul I beg you pray
I’ve done my part, that’s all I’m gonna say




“How Ridiculous”

Anything goes when all my love
Pours through the hand of my four drugs
Nothing is straight now, and I’ve lost touch
Even my pain now pretends it’s my crutch

How ridiculous I do feel when the light won’t start
How ridiculous I do feel when the lead sinks in my heart
Oh together, I’ll get it together some day

The redneck souls are laid out flat
Catching the sun while the shore underneath them cracks
All of their shoes collect like dust
They leave me alone, so sing I must

How ridiculous I do feel when the light won’t start
How ridiculous I do feel when the lead sinks in my heart
Oh together, I’ll get it together some day



“Kill All Birds”

“Watch, do not follow,” the white man says
And the holes in his legs, they prove to me he won’t live
I’ll take his gold and I’ll bury it deep in the rift
And someday years from now, I shall return for my gift

And his wife I’ll see in the darkness
In the shadowy porch of the English home she lives in
“New widow,” I say, “I beg do not ask questions”
She turns from me, slamming the door to teach me a lesson

Returning to shore, I find I’ve moved
I fear no longer the deafening question
And the sea upon which I am living now
Does not need his blessing

But the next man in the graveyard
Looking around, it appears this crew is a young one
“No graveyards exist,” said the man, “in the sea or the jungle”
And I count on my hands the years from which I now stumble

Finally breaking land on the foreign shore
Dark soil in my boots, I seek for the way we came before
And hunting that rift I encounter the same killer
Who says to me “Son, I’m sorry, but now I must leave”

He hands me the gun and runs away from me
And screaming back tells me that I now guard the trees