Andrew Bird

Bored holes through our tongues
So sing a song about it
Held our breath for too long
‘Til we're half sick about it
Tell us what we did wrong
And you can blame us for it
Turn a clamp on our thumbs
We'll sew a doll about it
And tell us all about it

How ‘bout some credit now
Where credit is due
For the damage that we've done?
Wrought upon ourselves and others
With a slow and vicious gun
And although pratfalls can be fun
Encores can be fatal
And then I hear you say

"Thank God it's fatal
Not shy
Not shy of fatal
Thank God."

Wait just a second now
It's not all that bad
Don't you count out the sun.
You're making mountains of handkerchiefs
Where the mascara always runs
So be careful when you're done
You're bound to get post-nasal
What, did I just hear you say?

"Thank God it's fatal."
We don't want to hear the sound of a door
And we don't want to read the signs that you bore
You know, the kind of sign you hang on the door
Saying, "we'll be back"- what a crack
Now don't you think we might have heard that before?

Bored holes through our tongues
So sing a song about it
Held our breath for too long
‘Til we're half sick about it
Tell us what we did wrong
And you can blame us for it
Turn a clamp on our thumbs
We'll sew a doll about it

Reuben, Reuben, I've been thinking
Said his wifey dear
Now that all is peaceful and calm
The boys will soon be back on the farm
Mister Reuben started winking and slowly rubbed his chin
He pulled his chair up close to mother
And he asked her with a grin

Chorus (sung twice after each verse):
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'
How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin' the town
How ya gonna keep 'em away from harm, that's a mystery
They'll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'

Rueben, Rueben, you're mistaken
Said his wifey dear
Once a farmer, always a jay
And farmers always stick to the hay
Mother Reuben, I'm not fakin
Tho you may think it strange
But wine and women play the mischief
With a boy who's loose with change

Chorus (sung twice after each verse):
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'
How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin' the town
How ya gonna keep 'em away from harm, that's a mystery
Imagine Reuben when he meets his Pa
He'll pinch his cheek and holler "OO-LA-LA!
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm
After they've seen Paree'?

Oh, sister, when I come to lie in your arms
Please do not treat me like a stranger.
Our Father would not like the way that you act
And you must realize the danger.

Oh, sister, am I not a brother to you
And one deserving of affection?
And is our purpose not the same on this earth,
To love and follow His direction?

We grew up together
From the cradle to the grave
Died and reborn
And then mysteriously saved,
Oh, sister...

Oh, sister, when I come to knock on your door,
Don't turn away, you'll create sorrow.
Time is an ocean but it ends at the shore
You may not see me tomorrow.

This isn't your song
This isn't your music
How can they be wrong
When by committee they choose it all?
They choose it all

Chin chin
Chin chin

You're gonna grow old
You're gonna grow cold
Bearing signs on the avenue
For your own personal Waterloo
You're bearing signs on the avenue
For your own personal Waterloo now

We'll fight we'll fight
We'll fight for your music halls
And dying cities

They'll fight they'll fight
They'll fight for your neural walls
And plasticities
And precious territory

This isn't our song
This isn't even a musical
I think life is too long
To be a whale in a cubicle
Nails under your cuticle

Chin chin

You're gonna grow old
You're gonna grow so cold
Before this song can deliver you
You're bearing signs on the avenue
You're bearing signs
For your own personal Waterloo now

We'll fight we'll fight
We'll fight for your music halls
And dying cities

They'll fight they'll fight
They'll fight for your neural walls
And plasticities
And precious territory



to mooonn6pence from papayeverte

You were right
There was never reason to worry
Money made your eyesight all blurry
Making lists of pacifists
Recalcitrant poses
Can't you see how dangerous
The one you chose is
Which brings us back to
Might makes right
So we learn from Wars of the Roses
Pain was only fear kneading your toeses

Making haste to spite your face to cut off your noses
Convince yourself and others that these
Fish smell like roses

Can't you see how dangerous
When you're too content to make a fuss
Can't you see how dangerous

Squint your eyes and see
Elephants, sycophants, elephants

Squint your ears and hear red-faced rants
Pleated pants
Sycophants
That's what you are

Can't you see how dangerous
When you're too content to make a fuss

This is a story, some kind of a story
this is a story about about a boy and girl,
a girl and a boy, a boy.

( ), only fighting.
that some boy in the dark while he held joan of arc
inverted crystal mountain kind of a story.

this is a story
man, about the serifs and ciphers that the scholars deciphered
translations of sanskrit
just as my handwritten story.
this is a story

where the singers begin to appear
in the spaces between all the dashes and braces
in the mothbitten story - of getting left behind.
this is a story

some kind of a story.

with the pages distressed sins you held to your chest,
they were mangled and dog eared, while the rest were just mangy and gory.

this is a story about the memory of water
translating the sound of the traffic.
remember the traffic?
it's making you carsick all along southfield freeway.

and translating mistakes and the trees and the stake
and the trees for the woods and the sound of the trash
for the sound of the blowing leaves along the southfield freeway.

my name is a blackbird, (breast is a) two tone.
feathers are warm in molasses,
twisting the words from the silence to gases.
now i don't have worry (of making it)
it's so unclear.

am i dead or am i dying
or am i simply tired of crying?

my name is a blackbird, (breast is a) two tone.
feathers are warm in molasses,
twisting the words from the silence to gases.
now i don't have worry (of making it)
it's so unclear.

am i dead or am i dying
or am i simply tired of crying?

my name is a blackbird.

I knew this one girl
Drowned in her own curls
Candy colored swirls
That never seemed to end

I could not comprehend
Half what she said to me
So casually
All our tender ears would bend

Tales of ritual self-torture
She's making you abort your
Most carefully laid plans
To make a final stand
The rest threw up their hands
Scoreless victory for serendipity

Tales of ritual sef-torture
She's making you abort your
Most carefully laid plans
TO make a final stand
The rest threw up their hands
In scoreless victory for serendipity

I dreamed you were a cosmonaut
of the space between our chairs
and I was a cartographer
of the tangles in your hair

I sighed a song that silence brings
it's the one that everybody knows
oh everybody knows
the song that silence sings
and this was how it goes

these looms that weave apocryphal
they're hanging from a strand
these dark and empty rooms were full
of incandescent hands

and awkward pause
a fatal flaw
time it's a crooked bow
oh time's a crooked bow

in time you need to learn to love
the ebb just like the flow

grab hold of your bootstraps
and pull like hell
‘till gravity feels sorry for you
and lets you go
as if you lack the proper chemicals to know
the way it felt the last time you let yourself
fall this low
time
oh time
it's a crooked bow
time's a crooked bow

fifty-five and three?eighths years later
at the bottom of this gigantic crater
and armchair calls to you
yeah this armchair calls to you
and it says that
some day
we'll get back at them all
with epoxy and a pair of pliers
as ancient sea slugs begin to crawl
through the ragweed and barbed wire
you didn't write you didn't call
it didn't cross your mind at all
and through the waves
the waves of a.m. squall
you couldn't feel a thing at all
you're fifty-five and three-eighths tall

time

when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
light will fill our eyes like cats

and they shall enter from the back
with spears and scepters and squirming sacks
scribes and tangles between their ears
faceless scrumbled charcoal smears

through the coppice and the chaparral
the thickets thick with mold
the bracken and the brier
catchweed into the fold

when our mouths are filled with uninvited tongues of others
and the strays are pining for their unrequited mothers
milk that sours is promptly spat
the light will fill our eyes like cats
cataracts

When I was just a little boy
I threw away all of my action toys
While I became obsessed with operation

With hearts and minds and certain glands
You gotta learn to keep a steady hand
And thus began my morbid fascination

Tore the spines from out of all of these self-help books
Made myself a gun that not only shoots but looks
So real
It shoots through steel
With rays of dark matter

Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location
And does the thought of bile that's red and black
The thought of tongues that taste you back
Fill you with a naus-eous-eous sort of elation

A noose is loosed around our necks made of DNA
And every day it's growing tighter no matter what they do or say
And you can shoot right through it with rays of dark matter
Just before they kick out the ladder
With rays of dark matter
Like something catching fire

Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location

Dear Dirty, I'm a man strong and {n/a}
And I live in a cave, using my blood to draw,blood to draw
And I live in a cave, {n/a}
Something I come up to, something I come up to
Something I come up to, using my blood to draw
the blood to draw animal,like the bull
Dear Dirty,
Then I go to find more things,
Go for walks to find things I,
I can use to make the tools to kill
all these animals, or all these things
Dear Dirty

Turnstiles on mezzanine
Jet ways and Dramamine fiends
And x-ray machines
You were hurling through space
G-forces twisting your face
Breeding superstition
A fatal premonition
You know you got to envision
The fiery crash

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
Face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
Just as you were starting to say
Something apropos I don't know

Beige tiles and magazines
Lou Dobbs and the CNN team
On every monitor screen
You were caught in the crossfire
Where every human face
Has you reaching for your mace
So it's kind of an imposition
Fatal premonition

To save our lives you've got to envision
And to save all our lives you've got to envision
The fiery crash

It's just a formality
Why must I explain?
Just a nod to mortality
Before you get on a plane

Oh close your eyes and you wake up
Face stuck to a vinyl settee
Oh the line was starting to break up
What was that you were going to say?