facades.ra (Real Audio format, 371k)

This was an attempt to write a song in a slightly more poetic mode than usual, and one without quite as many words as I usually attempt to cram in. Where its strangely dour tableau came from, or whose court it is, I have no idea. I'm also at a loss to adequately explain what the reference to owls is doing there, or what the owls are supposed to be avenging. If you have theories, please let me know. This song also highlights my seeming inability to write choruses that fall wholly within my vocal range, and has an especially inept conclusion. But I could listen to this guitar sound for days on end.

You gathered us all,
Recruited from beds and buses,
Extracted from stranded barges,
Torn from facades,
Pulled from the entrails of avenging owls
And the stinging wires of courtesy.

If a heart were a hand,
If we had any hands left, or hearts,
We might not be so fearless, or lost.

And in the court of your coronated gloom
We trade apostles for neglect,
Standards for certainty,
Breath for marble,
And livid indecision for
The chill shimmer of abandoned eyes.

If a heart were a hand,
If we had any hands left, or hearts,
We might not be so fearless, or lost.

10 July 1995

Return to the Birdhouse Writers

Return to The Birdhouse Home Page...