Round white tables line gymnasiums
Your wife dances with the weight of a decade on
Depressed by diamonds, anniversaries
Class reunions mark another few years gone
Slipper-creak-steps once she's gone to sleep
Basement lights stock your poetry like arms
Holding glasses for the theatre crowd
You are a salesman who knows nothing but dead lawns
The path you blazed was paved over as soon as you began
Glass-eyed lovers so polite to fuck
Like shaking hands, she used to shake you to the bone
At the cross streets, eyes reflected red
Broken ballets in the violence of smoke
In the arches of a burning bank
Ideas of power charred down to a corner stone
A memorandum in the face of flames
Save your symphony before you end up a drone
You trapped yourself inside
The house of a villain, eating from the enemy's hands
Crawl back to your side
Reclaim your battle cry
And swing until those fiends are up and off of your land
Flail until they meet all your demands
Charge until their blood is on your hands
But you've never been so bold
Years took some tread off the wheels
You could shake the snow but where could you go
Not any place around here
Say we leave tonight
See those Northern Lights
Starving sunrise doesn't break your gaze
Bleeding steady for the first time in the light
Sign your transfer, mark and empty stage
Blocking scenes that will take you across state lines
Intimate strangers agreed to kiss the same
Inclinations that this is a last goodbye
Girl on the platform, smiling in the rain
The train is leaving at the same time you arrive
credits
from Balletesque (2009),
released September 21, 2007
written by Julian Saporiti
The British-Somali poet draws upon everything from leftfield folk to minimalist spoken-word, bound together by simple-yet-cutting wordplay. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 28, 2021
Tele Novella continue their mystical journey to the heart of lovelorn country & western on their upcoming Kill Rock Stars full-length. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 29, 2023
Crafting powerful songs about commitment and love, the Nashville singer-songwriter channels and subverts ’70s country and folk tropes. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 7, 2022