Okkervil River Album

Red is my favorite color, red like your mother's eyes after awhile of crying about how you don't love her. She says âЂŒI know I don't deserve supervised sight of her, but each day becomes a blur without my daughter.âЂќ Fall is my favorite season, like falling to reasoning why you crashed from on high. She says âЂŒWhy is my life so uneven, and what have I done right but given you your life if after I led you on into that bar room?âЂќ âЂŒYesâЂќ is my favorite answer. I took a dancer home, she felt so alone. We stayed up all night in the kitchen doing my dishes, on and on until the dawn. She said âЂŒI know it's easy to have me, but I have seen some things that I can't even tell to my family pictures,âЂќ and âЂŒI'm full of fictions and fucking addictionsâЂќ and âЂŒI miss my mother.âЂќ She'll never know I could never forget her. If I could write her a letter, I'd try with every line to say âЂŒShe still remembers your touch. And I know that it's not much, but you still haven't lost her.âЂќ

The river is deep and the river is wide, and the girl that I love is on the other side. She wants to move to Kansas City: âЂŒMove, pretty baby, where the sky is so blue.âЂќ She's walking down Ellum, turning down Main, trying to find someone to sell her cocaine. She wants to move to Kansas City: âЂŒMove, pretty baby, where the sky is so blue.âЂќ With a dayful of promises dead on her lips, Mark 15:34 tucked next to her hip, she wants to move to Kansas City: âЂŒMove, pretty baby, where the sky is so blue.âЂќ I jumped in the water and started to drown. I thought of her walking and turned back around. I want to move to Kansas City, where the sky is so blue. With her pair of old wings that opened just once, she can walk on two feet now, she can go where she wants. She can move to Kansas City, where the sky is so blue. And I'll tell you one thing that you should never do - never let a woman tell you she loves you. She'll call you âЂŒbaby,âЂќ she'll look in your eye, then she'll get on that airplane and wave âЂŒbye bye bye bye bye bye, baby.âЂќ And if I could believe what I want to believe, I'd hold you all close and take you with me, all of you to Kansas City, where the sky is so blue.

You can wash out your lying eyes in the bathroom down the hall. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I guess I didn't know you at all. I can picture you inside some stranger's house, inside some stranger's bed - you're trying to seem mysterious, the covers pulled over your head. It's all right, lady liberty, it's just too bad you couldn't do the same for me. You say you've been used, you've been betrayed. Yeah, and that old bed's been newly made. You just stick around awhile with me until you're strong enough to leave. And I can picture you the first time you decide to spend the night - you wonder if you should give me a call and ask me if it's all right. Yeah, it's all right, lady liberty, it's just too bad you couldn't do the same for me. Don't call me or send me any more letters, baby. I just can't stand to see your hand writing things that you don't mean. I waited, our faded love growing even more faded. The shades were down, I faced the wall, and I could hear you breathing. I tried to bring us back to life. I gave my heart so many times. And was it worth it after all? There is a bathroom down the hall.

Dear Mother, we've all got bad days, and I know you'll understand. Where we open up a foreign door with a pair of foreign hands. Where we find ourselves alone at the foot of a pair of foreign stairs. Dear Mother, you know how our bad days can catch us unawares. Dear Mother, we've all got bad days, and I hope that you'll agree. With a bottle filled up with Vicodin and a child who looks just like me. And a cellar that's as dark as winter's cold (with a hole in the stone of the cold wall). A child like me who's hiding, a child who can't hear your call. There's a string that runs through our bad days, and if you pull that string real tight, the days all crumple together and all that you see is night. And the doorknob becomes your enemy, and the window you see through a haze. Dear Mother, I wish you could stand inside and see all my bad days. My bad days all got together and they stood in a row for me, and I plunged deep into the row, and I couldn't hear and I couldn't see. And I came out after thousands rose and thousands passed away. Now I stand all alone at the foot of the stairs and I wait for more bad days.

I'm surrounded, each doorway covered by at least twenty men. And they're going to take me and throw me in prison. I ain't coming back again. When I was younger, handsomer and stronger, I felt like I could do anything. But all of these people making all these faces didn't seem like my kith and kin. Colin Kincaid from the twelfth grade, I guess you could say he was my best friend. He lived in a big tall house out on Westfall where we would hide when the rain rolled in. We went out one night and took a flashlight, out with these two girls Colin knew from Kenwood Christian. One was named Laurie, that's what the story said next week in the Guardian. And when I killed her it was so easy that I wanted to kill her again. I got down on both of my knees and....she ain't coming back again. Now, with all these cameras focused on my face, you'd think they could see it through my skin. They're looking for evil, thinking they can trace it, but evil don't look like anything.

Why must happy hearts break so hard, leave you curled up in the back seat of a car, staring up at the windshield? When will broken hearts learn how to heal? This boy I knew was five years older than me. His daddy'd left him when he was three. After we went walking by a stream, he held me down and made me feel as bad as he. Why must happy hearts break so hard, leave you standing in the darkness of the barn, staring at those rusty wheels? When will broken hearts learn how to heal? And everybody's searching for a place to put their love. See the people on the street? They go home and what do you think they dream of? Unconditional love. Why did you leave me? Mother, why do you sleep with him? He says he's smothering, then he comes back again, in our house for the weekend. Why must people's breaking hearts pretend? Why must happy hearts break so hard, leave you staring in the mirror at a bar? Leave you talking to yourself, because you can't talk to anybody else.

Sam, bless him, has died and left this home, the woodchucks running wild, the bushes overgrown. Slip unseen into the skein of trees, slide through dusky grasses and scatter his ashes. It's all over, he's never coming back. There'll be no more roaming. He was only here for fourteen years, and now the branches scratch my face and I can't hold back my tears. Long ago I'd see him running in the snow, he'd come in from the cold and he'd lie down by the stove. Pass along this loping road, the needley grasp of briars on the slope. He'd never been to church, so he doesn't have a soul. He isn't waiting at the place where all of us will go. But the woodchucks wouldn't run so wild, the bushes wouldn't be so overgrown if we were not alone. Bound unbound through the boundless air, remaining wisps of hair. Barking out through everywhere, the trees, the grass, the rain, and Sam in the air. He was in this world, by my side he was curled, but he came uncurled and this world holds him that much tighter.

Home is where beds are made and butter is added to toast. On a cold afternoon you can float room to room like a ghost. Take the cráЁche out and argue about who gets to set up the kings. And I know that it's home because that's where the stereo sings âЂŒI've got dreams to remember.âЂќ But not even home can be with you forever. It's Christmastime and the plane flies me over white hills to a town in a dream, where the sky is frozen and still, and a room (that's not mine but it's just like I left it before, with the wax from the candles all dusty and locks on the door) where I held you so tenderly, and where in summer I opened your letter to me. I'm standing where we knelt and a miracle mile now borders it, but if I turn my back and look at the field I don't even notice it for a second. There's a tangle of greenery where winter scenery ends. And I hear that song sometimes and imagine us much more than friends - like if we stayed in this town, bought the first house that went up on sale, and how each Christmastime would bring inlaws and snowdays and holiday mail. Your dad says you're living in Georgia since last September. Well, âЂŒI've got dreams to remember.âЂќ I've got dreams to remember. Oh Sara, come back to New Hampshire. We'll stay here forever.

Down by Okkervil River slow silent thick and black, I stared into the water, and the water it stared back. The night it fell from tangles of the branches on the shore as it had on Okkervil River before. Down by Okkervil River's cigarettes and rusty tires, we made ourselves an altar, we lit our nightly fires. And the smoke lay thick and smothered all the skunk cabbage and vines where Gods were born and Gods lay down to die. With your hand inside my pocket, you whispered in my ear âЂŒWe have come from ugliness to find some refuge here. With this bracken for a blanket, where these limbs stick out like bones, we have found a place where we can be alone.âЂќ And I tried to tell you, as I kissed your hard dry lips, all the things I dreamed about. I touched your bone white hips. Far away our parents slept in while we watched our fire burn. They dreamed of nothing and got nothing in return. And the water slipped on slowly past our bodies in the weeds, pulling plastic wrap and razors on its current through the reeds. Then I woke up one cold morning, felt an absence at my back, and I searched and stared but only the river stared back.