You Left Me By The Chapel

You ripped the pages out of the book
We used to read together.
A heart beat in a cannon ball
Hot as asphalt and sour as regret.
Spit out your bitter leaves and
Cover our heads in gasoline.
Set these brains to burn and
Maybe these memories will go with them.

You pack the bags and
I'll tell your mama I'm sorry.
An unbegun family set back in time,
A gold clock rewound.
Who knew brown eyes could be so blue.

Your breath is a tick of a hand,
Once my ears were the only ones that could hear it.
An iron tongue sharpened with years of anger.
I was a fool to think I'd escape it's blade.

I taught myself how to sit so very still while The world disintegrated
You were the tornado showing me that there Is no place like home.
So lace up your boots,
Board up the windows.
Because now begins forever
And forever is a sorrowful storm.

Vasthouden

Gaping eyes, hold your fear.
Full heart, keep it hidden,
Tight and true.
Steady now, you aching hands.
Though your sinew may be made of trembling,
Hold fast.
This wind and it's switchblades,
They will try to gut you.
Leave you rotting like a hog
In the hot and bloody mud.
But you must not waiver.
Refuse the sea when she comes
For the breathe in your lungs.
Because there is luck on the sleeve of a patient hand,
It takes wisdom to navigate these waters.
And the hope that you keep in the locker
By the foot of your bed,
Wait for it, it will emerge when the moment is right.
And still, there is time for everything.

Slowharm

Slow harm. Slow sun.
Your wild lions are crying.
Give me back my heart.
Give me back what I was born without.
I make these steps so lightly,
As if they could never leave behind the proof
That I was once standing upon your ground.
And I run in my sister's shoes
That she left on my bedroom floor so long ago.
She is gone now like I wish that you were.
I pull these laces tighter as you pull me closer.
And I learn to run.
But not too far, I could never leave you,
For you are the gravity that pulls me back before the bend.
I circle, then fall and skin my hands and knees.
This hour is barely creeping on
With its slow harm and molten sun.
Still I break the neck of the day
And run.

Be Gentle With Me

Be gentle with me
For my eyes hold more than they'll let you touch.
Be gentle with me.
I have waged the wars in lost love's wake.
I have aged with immovable stone and unending fire
And felt in my core the cold of darkest night.
Be gentle with me.
I have stared my most terrifying mistakes in the eyes
As they came down with gnashing teeth.
After these increments in time,
I will find a place for wounded wings in sleeping eggs.
You don't have to be the arms of safety,
But if you come this close and this far in,
Please, be gentle with me.

Hard Wounds

We were too tired to fight.
Too close to death to dig out of the cave
We'd holed up in.
We laid our limbs down,
Stacked upon each other
Like sticks for a fire.
And darling, we did burn,
Brighter in the cold and
Deeper in our hearts.
With our Oedipus hands
We took such sharp knives to each others eyes.
I thought we'd never learn to see again.
And when the devil's work was done,
The lull came.
It was such a terrible stillness,
Each of us weary and indifferent to movement.
Now the moon in all her lonely beauty watches us
As we still sit here,
In this darkness,
Eyes bleeding out and yearning to feel the morning,
Or just anything but this.

"But don't forget the songs that made you cry and the songs that saved your life..."

This isn't a list of my favorite songs that came out this year, but the songs that had the most meaning for me in 2011.


The Ticonderoga -Bowerbirds
"Old friend, give me back my hands. I'm the crutch that's missing, and you're the crippled little lamb. Those claws will get you; those teeth will take your life, but you wont know what's missing. This gift ain't giving. This wolf ain't worth the fight"

I remember listening to this song over and over for several days straight sometime in January. It was at a time when i felt i needed to say goodbye to someone who had a very present role in my life and it really moved something in me.

About Today (Live Version) -The National
"Tonight you just close your eyes and I just watch you slip away"

This song has always been such a simple and beautiful song to me that I've felt so vividly and it sang me to sleep many nights last winter. It's about the end of something being near, and knowing it.


Last Of The Famous International Playboys -Morrissey
"I never wanted to kill/ I am not naturally evil/ Such things I do/ Just to make myself more attractive to you/ Have I failed?"

I just love this song, through and through. Any time I hear it i lose myself in it and forget whatever happens to be on my mind and I end up belting it out. And probably dramatically dancing too. There were many times this year when i just wanted to forget things for a few minutes and put this song on. It also reminds me of a very dear friend who has a similar reaction to it.

New Orleans -Former Ghosts
"If you leave this city/ Take me with you/ Or don't look back"

I used to listen to this song laying on the floor of my dorm room until my roommate would come home and tell me to cut it out and "stop listening to that song, it isn't helping you". She was right, i eventually stopped listening to it but for a period of time last winter I'd sulk inside of that song.

Barnacles -Ugly Casanova
"I don't know me and you don't know you/ So we fit so good together 'cause i knew you like i knew myself/ We clung on like barnacles on a boat/ Even though the ship sinks you know you can't let go."

Knowing something isn't working but not being able to let go. I've had such trouble with that and it influenced a lot in 2011. This song always got to me.


Just Like Heaven -The Cure

"You/ Soft and only/ You/ Lost and lonely/ You/ Strange as angels/ Dancing in the deepest oceans/ Twisting in the water/ You're just like a dream..."

This song. It was the eye of the storm for me. I'm not sure if I love the song or what I associate with it more. There was a time last spring where listening to this song made me so happy but I can't listen to it anymore because it is reminder of what has been lost.

The EP -Owen

I couldn't pick just one song off of Owen's The EP. I remember a lot of special nights that happened with Owen as the soundtrack and I hope I never forget those nights.

From Russia With Love -Fences
"Somewhere there's an in between place/ A place where my face hasn't been erased"

I don't think there's anything special to me about the song itself but more of the memory attached to it. A night last spring when i wanted to get away from everything was spent in the back of my car with the heater on and that song stuck on repeat. I loved that night.

Atlantic City -Bruce Springsteen

"Now our luck may have died and our love may be cold/ but with you forever I'll stay/ We're goin' out where the sands turnin' to gold/ so put on your stockin's cause the night's gettin' cold/ and maybe everything dies/ That's a fact but maybe everything that dies someday comes back"

This song is so hauntingly beautiful to me and it's my favorite Springsteen song. This summer I listened to it for three 24 hour periods and i sat and played it on my guitar for countless hours. There were some dark days this summer where i rested in the arms of that song. I don't believe I'll ever wear that song out.

Lucky Clover Coin -Rocky Votolato
"There's a world I wanna leave behind/ Where a sunset in a constant bloody winter/ Gives the only light"

There was a night this fall when my old ghosts got to me more than they usually do and someone very dear to me played this song for me and this song will always remind me of them/that night.

Do I Wait -Ryan Adams

"I could stay forever if I tried/ surrounded by things like a shadow in the light."

Ryan Adams is an artist who has meant something substantial to me since I was sixteen years old and sorting out all sorts of confusion. When Ashes and Fire came out this year I was a little aprehensive about it. The whole album could've been absolutely terrible but i wouldn't have cared, this song would've made it wonderful. There isn't anything remarkable about this song, it touched on something that was very real to me at the time. I couldn't stop listening to it.

I Don't Want To Grow Up -Tom Waits
"When I'm lyin' in my bed at night/ I don't wanna grow up/ Nothin' ever seems to turn out right/ I don't wanna grow up/ How do you move in a world of fog/ That's always changing things/ Makes me wish that I could be a dog/ When I see the price that you pay/ I don't wanna grow up/ I don't ever wanna be that way/ I don't wanna grow up"

I don't want to grow up. I don't. And there's somethign beautiful about an old man who is still saying that.

Sister K -Kelli Schaefer

"It might seem like we've no use for nostalgia/ I think you're right/ So we pull the anchor plot the course."

Kelli Schaefer's 'Ghost Of The Beast' came out this summer and it ended up being one of my favorite albums of 2011. There isn't a song on that album that I don't love. This song encouraged me to try to let go of something that I wanted to cling to and felt very sentimental about.

The Gaslight Anthem/The Horrible Crowes

These two bands, I don't even know where to start. Everything that TGA has done and 'Elsie' have been the soundtrack to my year. This is not the time or the place for me to express my love for TGA but it is there.

Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes/Monsters of Folk

I liked Bright Eyes back in highschool but Conor's writing took on a whole new importance to me this year. A lot of what he's written became very meaningful to me because of where I was at in life philosophically, spiritually and emotionally. His voice became a dear friend to me through many sleepless nights.









This was more for me than for you.

Set This On Fire

So I guess I'm supposed to forget
About you.
Is that what people who once remembered each other
Do once they decide they don't want to
Remember each other anymore?
I don't know.
I have no idea.
Maybe it's one of those things that's
Supposed to "get better in time".
Bullshit.
How can the loss of someone who once
Lived in the spaces between your breaths ever be reconciled?
Someone who unpacked the cardboard boxes
In your heart.

You let the sunlight in and it felt like
An honest to goodness smile.
The kind that can't be forced, it just
Knows how to spread itself out.
You woke me up.
You were ice water on my face in the
Groggy morning.
An urgent dream that struck me with a
Beautiful fear.
And the hushed but present glory of it
All was you didn't even have to try.
You left your seal on my letter of a
Heart and I will never be quite the same.
I suppose I should thank you for that.
But I can't talk to a ghost
And there are no ears to hear on the
Cold side of a bed.