Okkervil River Album

[No lyrics]

Wish I could remember
why it mattered to me.
It doesn’t matter to me.
It doesn’t matter to me
anymore.
Now that you’re
feeling fine,
I’ll admit that – though

I know it’s coming down,
and see it shattering me
- it doesn’t matter to me,
and I’m not sadder for
seeing it come.
I’m not going to run.
I will just come
when I am called.

You want to cut me off
because I took too much,
but don’t leave me alone
Take off your scarves,
your winter coat.
The night’s too cold.

When we met I should have said
you’re like a sister to me,
how all that kiss her just seem
like puny suitors I can see through,
how none will do,
no not for you,
how it might as well just be us two.

And when I pulled you by the jacket
from the clattering street,
you started flattering me,
you started saying I was so strong.
String me along,
but I can’t become
all that I’m called.

And I can’t claim to know
what makes love die or grow,
but I can still take control
and so refuse to just go home,
back down the hall.

And as I crawl,
as finally all
the false confetti blooms
up in this attic room,
I’m going make my stand.
I want to see both of your hands
put down the phone.

I won’t let you go,
although
the moment stole
my self-control
from us all
and now it can only end
end with a fall.

Oh, my enemy,
you’ve got company,
you’re not alone.
They’re watching over me
while each town you pass
fades as it folds.

So in the night
we might get lost
lost in our fright.
So in the day
softly we’d flow,
floating away.

And it pours
from the faucet’s mouth
like our fortune
comes flowing out
- every word of which,
without a doubt,
will find us together
and together bring us down.

They’ll tie us down
with those fine thin threads
and run their knives
up and down our skin,
until what was in
will be out again,
above the sea
on that sunny ledge.

And in the day
softly we’ll flow,
floating away.
And in the night
we will get lost,
lost in our fright.
La la la la la la.

Safe, safe - enjoy your time feeling so safe,
and treasure that smile on your face, okay?
Because time will see that it's replaced in a while.
So go on, smile.
And handshakes all around: that's your style,
and no one would call it denial,
for you're not even sure what's in store.

And it's more
than you'll be able to take standing up straight.
And it won't be okay.
And you won't be somebody who it's just happening to,
because it's a trap that you, and only you,
have laid. Laid with a towel up over your face,
in your armchair, just lying in wait,
waiting forces were gathering outside your door.
They sharpened their knives
and smiled with no smiles in their eyes,
a little bit larger in size
and a little bit hungrier for that tiny prize.

And my mother once said
âЂŒSon, remember this, no matter what someone did:
that they once were just a kid at breast and in bib,
in blanket and crib.
So just reach inside yourself
and find the part that still needs help,
find that part in someone else
and you'll do good,âЂќ
so I thought that I would.

Hey - I love you,
it goes without saying.
I would give you the world on a tray,
though they're already tracing a line across your throat.
Far too late in the game you'll find that you have been betrayed:
propped up and pushed into your place.
I could claim that it all would go great,
but the reason I came
is to say that it won't.
You should know that it won't,
and so, Phillip, let go.

The heart wants to feel.
The heart wants to hold.
The heart takes past Subway,
past Stop and Shop,
past Beal’s,
and calls it “coming home.”
The heart wants a trail
away from “alone,”
so the heart turns a sale
into a well-worn milestone
towards hard-won soft furniture,
fought-for fast food,
defended end table that
holds paperbacks and back U.S. News.
The mind turns an itch
into a bruise,
and the hands start to twitch
when they’re feeling ill-used.

And you’re almost back now,
you can see by the signs;
from the bank you tell the temperature
and then the time,
and the billboard reads some headlines.
The head wants to turn,
to avert both its eyes,
but the mind wants to learn
of some truth that might be
inside reported crimes.

So they found a lieutenant
who killed a village of kids.
After finishing off the wives,
he wiped off his knife
and that’s what he did.
And they’re not claiming that
there’s any excusing it;
that was thirty years back,
and they just get paid for the facts
the way they got them in.

Now he’s rising and not denying.
His hands are shaking, but he’s not crying.
And he’s saying “How did I climb
out of a life so boring into that moment?
Please stop ignoring the heart inside,
oh you readers at home!
While you gasp at my bloody crimes,
please take the time
to make your heart my home:
where I’m forgiven by time,
where I’m cushioned by hope,
where I’m numbed by long drives,
where I’m talked off or doped.
Does the heart wants to atone?

Oh, I believe that it’s so,
because if I could climb back through time,
I’d restore their lives and then give back my own:
tens of times now its size
on a far distant road
in a far distant time
where every night I’m still crying,
entirely alone.”

But the news today always fades away as you drive by,
until at dinnertime when you look into her eyes,
lit by evening sun - that, as usual, comes
from above that straight, unbroken line,
the horizon
- its rising
is a given,
just like your living.

Your heart’s warm and kind.
Your mind is your own.
Our blood-spattered criminal
is inscrutable;
don’t worry, he won’t
rise up behind your eyes
and take wild control.
He’s not of this time,
he fell out of a hole.

Loosen the wire, your time has expired,
the only word left is "goodbye."
In my new dream the light's shining on me;
little needles of sodium unstitch the seams of the sky.

Hold your head higher, the heavenly choir
is settling in for the night,
and where I had friends, I am left with loose ends;
four hours of vision exchanged for four hours of fright.

But enough of "the fight,"
enough "you and I,"
enough of "prevail" or "walk in the light."
While the angels stand by I get high as a kite.
I'm too tired to smile
or know that I'm right.
Am I right?

And all our best-laid plans, well, they crumbled in our hands;
the Progress of Man.
You held in your breath long after projections of death,
you sat in the waiting gasping and rasped for a fan.

But the audience is tired; we've had enough fire,
we're entereing the age now of ice.
And I, feeling older, pull off to the shoulder
and wonder, with my head in my hands, should I call my wife

and say "enough 'you and I,'
enough of 'the fight,'
enough of 'prevail' or 'walk in the light.'
While the angels stand by I get high as a kite.
I'm too tired to smile
or know that I'm right."

And when the spacecraft came down
I was left on the ground.
Will you keep me around,
will you help me survive
after my time?

And we have fun – we go laughing and running
down to the water, there by the sea
where the body just floats like a rowboat
and the moon’s like a harbor light lit in the sky.

And this picture’s got a woman who looks like you
and a guy who looks just like someone I’ve seen.
When it turns out, I hope that it turns out
I hope that it turns out the way that you dreamed.

Embarcadero train station’s empty,
and I just cannot believe how long it takes
to go all the way home through the city.
And everyone’s looking - at least, it’s nice to believe that everyone’s looking.

And this picture’s got a woman who looks like you,
and a guy who looks just like someone I’ve seen.
When it turns out, I hope that it turns out
I hope that it turns out the way that you dreamed.

Ghostly faces at my living-room window
aren’t scared of me because they know I can’t hurt them.
They press up and see, in the lamp-glow,
all of the hurt and the love inside of me.

It’s their final duty
to see right through me.
I tell them “twelve hours until the dawn,
but we’ve got to hold on.
Hold on to me,
because we’ll be running
down to the water this morning.”
Well, nobody waits for you to believe
in ghosts, lit by moonlight or dawning,
or in this picture of you and me.

To cheat
on Maine islands
- days of laughter,
nights of sighing.
To love
without ceasing
- flowering orchards,
salty sea-things.
To say
without shyness
“unreal city,
you have killed me.”

When you walked
out on her love
was it easy?
When I left
him while sleeping
was I dreaming?
We take
each night’s journey
to the hotel
in a hurry,
where we love
without worry
on a bed that’s
five days dirty.
And we read
without irony
from a book my
husband bought for me.

When I fell
on the concrete
it was lovely,
because you could see
what’s been running
so hot in me.
But when I fell
on the concrete,
you went white as
a sheet
and wished that nothing
in this world
would ever hurt me.
Well, keep wishing.

Because when I look
in my future,
I don’t see you
and don’t wish to.
Idle talk made
when I’m lying
by your side on
some Maine island
is too funny
to me, honey,
so let’s drop it.
If you really
want to love me,
well, then do it.

He cut your strings so that he could float
- lit by lights, lifted by alcohol
- over acres of loving coast,
far away from your lonely ghost.
Now he’s cool and all,
floating anchorless. Ports of call:
where it’s fabulous, after all
of this watching himself just crawl.

Think you see him?
He’s not there,
that’s just light
that’s not yet dead.
Wait two hours
and watch what’ll be there instead.

Was he small and cold,
like a ring you call up from home,
held so tightly his limbs went numb,
worn away between your finger and thumb?
Well, now he’s bought and sold.
Cry his call number down the phone,
he can’t hear you – he’s on his float,
waving down to the folks at home.

Think you see him?
He’s not there,
that’s just light
that’s not yet dead.
Wait two hours
and watch what’ll be there instead.

As the cameras love all of his faces,
they hide all the traces of you in his heart.
Stand in line to hold forth on his grace,
but you won’t even get a head-start.

As his close-up comes
cascading down from above,
the eyes of a nation in love
are looking on all of their hopes
held up.
And the words that some
screenwriter counted and chose,
and then set in their sequence and froze,
unfreeze on his tongue as he speaks
for all of us
but one.
And honey, he’s gone.
And baby, he’s everyone’s.
In the dark sky tonight,
cast your eyes
on the dim light
that he will become.
You’re like everyone
who thinks they see him.
He’s not there,
that’s just light
that’s not yet dead.
Wait two hours
and watch what’ll be there instead.

You can only talk so much about things
that are never, ever going to happen.
My brother’s at home with his dog and his cat
and his wife is at a friend’s.

You can only go on so long about feelings
that never, ever actually touch you.
No matter how much she told him “I love you,”
he found it would depend

on the gifts that he bought her,
or how badly she was hurt
when the boss was cruel at work.
But he’d just say
“I love you,”
and he’d reach out to her.

He was feeling like shit when I came to visit
and walked through the door of his tiny apartment.
We went for a walk through the park by the market
so we could get some air.

And I told to him all things intended to help him,
especially that, simply because it was ending,
that that didn’t mean she was always pretending.
Real happiness was there.

I could see and I could tell:
it was real love that they felt.
And I’m sorry it didn’t end well,
but some things
they just don’t - that’s life,
and you shouldn’t blame yourself.

And all of these things, well, I truly believe them.
Our paths and our futures are hidden in mists
that are stretching out over impossible distances,
totally obscured.

And I really do think that there’s probably more good
than anger or selfishness, sickness, or sadness
would ever completely allow us to have in this life,
I think I’m sure.

But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.
We were walking towards our dad,
while getting out of that school bus,
and he just said
“I love you,”
and he reached out to us.

The ladies in my dream are so obliging.
They come on down to do the things I need.
Whether skies are calm or cut apart by lightning,
they’re always there to minister to me.

And at break of dawn
they’re sweetly shining,
and at quiet of midnight, cold and dim,
they say “don’t harm him.”
And when I wake
just as their eyes are crying,
I see that bed
and I just want to climb back in.

But let’s gather up your friends
and drive up to that country inn.
We can stay there, feeling water
warmly wash across our skin,
giving back all of our tears
so that we can cry them again.

You want to tell your dad you can’t believe he’s dying,
but let’s just walk on down the hall and shut our mouths.
The AM radio is broken down and crying
as on this hour drive we’re silent to ourselves.

Let’s go back up to your house,
And take our clothes off,
and just push and pull ourselves
until we’re deep inside of sleep.
And with your body next to me,
its sleepy sighing
sounds like waves upon a sea
too far to reach.

But I’ll gather up my men
and try to sail on it again,
and we’ll walk and quietly talk
all through the country of your skin,
made up of pieces of the places
that you’ve dreamed
and that you’ve been.
We will sleep outside in tents
upon this unfamiliar land,
and in the morning
we’ll awake,
as a foreign dawning breaks,
my men and I
we will awake
let’s try again.