HOLDING PATTERN
Sunday
Sunday could not come soon enough | The plan was set into motion | And I thought I’d do it differently | And you thought I would, too | I hear you | I listen carefully | When you speak, it goes right through me | And I think we’re saying the same things | And you think we are too | The truth is | It’s never black and white | Because love is a soft gray
Acadia
Acadia | Because there inside you was a heart | That echoed through you in the park | Like a dove lost | Acadia | I saw it first | Somes Sound shone through upon the rocks | Beehives and sun and broken docks | Like a rope tied | Acadia
Holding Pattern
Took a picture of burned out paper mills | I make nothing but still it crumbles | Threw a brick through every car window in the mall parking lot | It’s a holding pattern, now | Now we’re older and everything’s the same | Hear it come from the speakers | Every sordid detail about the villains in the city hall parking lot | It’s a holding pattern, now
The Death of Terrestrial Radio
Gallantly streaming | I will subscribe to | The death of terrestrial radio | Retire the call letters | Bring back the bands | And bury the cans | Go get some files | Compiled in Xs, 0s, and 1s | Inside the houses | They’re bending antennas | Counting the seconds | And stacking the tiles | Gallantly streaming | I will subscribe to | The death of terrestrial radio | Compiled in Xs, 0s, and 1s
Regret
When I exploit my talents and I hold my breath | While life hangs in the balance and I’m cheating death | When I am old or lonely or I’m stopped in my tracks | You would have known this only if you had the facts | We hatched a secret scheme | I fell so fast for you | It was a sweet dream and the love we had was true | But our lives were barely harnessed while the pages turned | And though the shine was tarnished and hard lessons learned | I regret almost nothing
Common Wall
The common wall | We bested them in the middle there | The science falls | Invested time in the middle of the war | Then we get older | The teachers teach but the books decay | The summer is colder | And we can’t reach them in the middle of the war | So let us know now | How it used to be and how it really is | Prepare the throne | The power is yours now or is it really his? | The common wall | The science falls | The books decay | The summer is colder
Flattened Out Like The Lake In The Morning
All his demons were hiding inside every box he put into the attic | Box of cameras | Telescopes and maps of the stars | Magnify the places we will someday get to | It’s a long drive | Too much time to plot it out | What are we supposed to do with all of this? | Keep on task, feeling smaller | The endless begging for time | On a hilltop | Or the firmament | Or the cloth you burned in the fire | Or the love and the valor | Or the pills you swallowed in full | Ending up like some cliche |Flattened out like the lake in the morning
I Don’t Want To Decide
All the beauty that surrounds this city | In the tall trees when you’re walking with me | Is there a way to slow down time? | I don’t want to decide | Past all the churches where good people bow their heads and talk to God and feel some comfort | Is there a way to slow down time? | I don’t want to decide
The Violet Light
In the violet light | You will figure out the words | When it all turns black | It has always happened to you | Holding up the world | It’s the season to commit | To the violet light | When the blood gets drawn | And they wrap you up with fear | And you cannot stop | ‘Cause it happens every year | So much more to say | Than you ever did confess | When the blood gets drawn
Doubt
As soon as you’re born, you’re dying | The stuff in between is just trying | And it takes a lifetime to figure it out | If you want honesty or if you want doubt | Because we are connected, we are to blame | Jealousy, passion, empathy, shame | And it takes a lifetime to figure it out | If you want honesty or if you want doubt
APHERESIS
Spires
The cell phone towers look like crosses | So count your blessings and your losses | The spires | They’re just trying to keep you home | So manage all those expectations | Parlors in the brownstone buildings | The windfarms are just like a beacon | To support another dream | The spires | They’re just trying to keep you home
Fourth Floor
Waiting for my blood transfusion lines | It’s Christmas Eve now | Dark and alone | Here but alone | My dreams were shattered | But it didn’t matter to you at all
Mirror
The only consolation was the New York City skyline | With one eye toward New England | The other is off in space | Change is for the better | Right now I couldn’t feel worse | The New York City skyline is fading in my mirror | I’ve given up my dreams before | That is nothing new | Did you ever know that? | Did you even care? | Because you couldn’t see me hiding | I never admitted I did | I won’t forget the parking lot | Saw you crying in my mirror
Committed To Tape
The picture I found in my former apartment | The note on the door as I left in a shroud | Of discontent and the time that it bought me | Was much like the picture I found | Each task in my mind was the legacy that I built | The time that was left and the songs that I wrote | Got committed to tape so I could quell the worried thoughts of friends | And all of the doubt in their minds | In my mind, too
Little Black Boxes
Little black boxes | Stacks of letters I sent | White car in the driveway | Two men and a flag | Within “The Days Ahead” | And I try to smell him | But they washed all his clothes | And sealed them in plastic | In little black boxes | Within “The Days Ahead”
Storm Of The Century
City drowns you out | Call me in the snow | Walking midnight | Frozen in time | The timing is so close | The storm of the century | And maybe he’s just coasting | Smoke and broken mirrors | And a secret code | They just walk on water | Older, next to me | The timing is so close | The storm of the century | And maybe he’s just joking until you believe in me | Why would they want to see me fail?
Pulverized
Every pane in this glass house | Feels like it’s under attack | And I feel like I’m losing this | But I won’t realize the fact | That I’m proving it shouldn’t come back | All my words will lose their weight | Pulverized like each crumbling stone | And I’m giving up growing | All those seeds | Seeds that I’ve sown | Yeah, I’m questioning all that I’ve known
Flowers On The Fire Escape
There are things I can’t get out of | Flowers on the fire escape | Tires on the hillside | Fires in the crown | And I will never get it right | I will never understand | This crippling debt I can’t get out of | And flowers on the fire escape | It towers to the sky
You Were A Cynic
You were a cynic when I knew you long ago | But since then, things have changed somewhat | Some years have passed and now you find yourself alone | Your time at home is bittersweet | In time, the failures that you hid inside yourself | And hopes you have will coexist | But every hourglass you smashed against the wall | Has somehow failed to prove your point | Has somehow failed to prove your point
Fight Or Flight
Yeah, there’s safety in numbers and comfort in things you know | And you’re part of the pack now | Starving yourself to survive | But it isn’t right | Because whenever it’s fight or flight, you never fight | And they’re biding their time | We still wait for your voice to be heard | And all those questions in vain are the ones that you’ll never get past | But it isn’t right | Because whenever it’s fight or flight, you never fight
The Gatekeeper
When everything was about to burn to the ground | I didn’t think I would stand all the expectations | Because I’m the gatekeeper who keeps my old life from my new life | Keeps my old life from my new life | Negotiations fell through and my body fell numb | To a room full of mirrors and unanswered calls | Because I’m the gatekeeper who keeps my old life from my new life | Keeps my old life from my new life | Keeps my old life
Salt
When all the walls that you had built | Could not protect you from the guilt | The secrets hid behind the eyes | Were darker than your safest lies | And when they come they bring you down | They crush the peace you thought you’d found | But we’re deciding who’s at fault | We stand the breeze and taste the salt