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Can’t you feel all the eyes fall upon you?
Shaking your hips and breaking every heart
Some broke in the dark
Cut from the pack before the migration
Locking up doors and barring up window frames
The more that you came
And there’s no use for words
Just show me that you love me
Every way it hurts
Could never be ugly
Now you’re breaking up beds like a crane operator
Quivering limbs and shaking free of chains
You gave it away
Built like a church for the man in the shadows
Deeper than bones till they’re crying out your song
To the breaking lungs
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It’s so hard to pick up the phone,
but I need to call my son again
and tell him he still has a home
as long as he don’t bring that Hell with him
I’m still his father
He’s still my son
His poor mother,
she don’t believe that he’s gone
For a while he could stay with his aunt
Until she came home to empty rooms
And now she’s set on saying he can’t
And now I don’t really know what else to do
And when he was a kid he would laugh,
but now he just sits in his darkened room
I tell him we should go for a drive,
but he says he’s got something else to do
Now nobody’s seen him in weeks
And the police all say we’ll be the first they’ll call
And every single day stretches on
And my wife breaks down in the upstairs hall
And now they’re filing into the church
And staring down at his sunken face,
but the tombstone don’t make the man
And that’s not how I choose to remember him
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3. |
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Be good to me
I’ll be good to you
And all we need is the love in between
I don’t care what you did
if you don’t care what I’ve done
And forgiveness is a powerful thing
It can be hard to admit we need each other so much
And it’s easy to get lost in the days,
but to open your heart despite all the pain,
well I just can’t do it any other way
Come close to me
I’ll come close to you
And we’ll hold each other all through the storm
You’re as pretty as me
I’m as ugly as you
And each path remains equally worn
And despite what you think
no life is complete
if it ends up exactly as planned
But I’ll show you my guts
If you’ll show me your guts
And somehow I think we’ll both understand
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4. |
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Dogs are drinking like love is over
I’m invaded
Call the waitress, please
Bring it back to me
Beaches burning black to hide her
Weighed and measured
You’re a keeper freed
Wouldn’t you agree?
It takes more than peace to keep a diving dove together
Tropicana birds are brighter
Growing dark for old contenders
Weak and heavy
Tile-virgins
Nights of drinking
Still a child
Climbing curtains, babe
The higher you go the less it’s safe
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5. |
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I’ve seen every good man walk these lakes of sewage,
buying souvenirs
But angels can’t sleep at night
or treat their bodies right
They’re ruined and yet adored
Baby, I’m a sinking stone
Sinking straight to the bottom of the ocean
And Heaven’s just a whistling tomb
So, woman, come and sing my doom
It’s easy
You know the words
So just open up your mouth and free the birds
You kneel and pray for grace
Just to help you shine your cage
But it’s endless if you want more
‘Cause every laughing king
promises the light they’d bring,
but it’s shadowed and obscured
...And you can only fall from grace if you were there in the first place
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6. |
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If one more day passes us by
with this void tethered to our lives
Then I will starve here in your endless wake
I’ll change my name and move out of state
If you don’t step on the brakes
Come inside
It’s getting late
And I’m dying for your love
No more tears
No more lies
Just you & me & time
And there’s no future without you here
Just bachelored rooms and pain and beer
And I’ll go on broken
I swear I will
But I won’t open and I won’t reveal
A heart that’ll never heal
And I don’t care if they think we’re wrong
And I don’t care if they hate this song
Let them paint the world so black and white
I’ll take the colors that make up our lives, and baby we’ll paint the night
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7. |
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Why are things so hard with the matters of the heart, dear?
You think it’ll be different, but it just isn’t
You come around like some lost and found baby cries
But still you hang from my head like some halo of dread
And we’re counting fingers and looking backwards
Till war is over and always forever amen!
‘Cause I’m down here lonesome dying in the street
Like the shadow of a better man has shadowed over me
And we make-believe on our hands and knees
‘Cause it’s ox to the cart and it’s bull to the butcher
And you sing a song like you can’t go on anymore
Come bring to me all the bells that ring
Just to stop carnations and send back flowers
‘Cause there’s a torch in my heart and soul burning on
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8. |
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Darling, I was drowning in a pit of snakes
Waking up alone like a castaway
Your acetylene torch in my bluest eye,
but don’t talk about death
he’s a friend of mine!
Get me to the church and I’ll ring your bell
I’m a man about town, darling, can’t you tell?
And I’ll clean your skirt in my dirty dreams
I’ll stand in your way so you’ll notice me
And I know you’ve got your choice of men,
but, baby, I’m a criminal
and I’ll steal your heart away from all of them!
And every day will be Halloween
I’ll be President Lincoln
You can be the Queen
And you can put a bullet in my northern skull
If you’ll lay down with me at the hospital
And if you go off with another man,
and name all of your children after him,
then don’t dim the lights ‘cause I’m breaking in
and taking you back home with me again
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9. |
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It’s a simple life if you’ll only listen
The tavern gets quiet some nights below the bed we christened
And they say it’s only time come eeking through the symptoms
But the remainder is divine like a soft baptism
And if you’re still the lonely one,
Oar the shore,
‘Cause you don’t need to cry anymore
And if you’re out there on your own,
hear these words:
Love is exactly what you deserve
Your shoes were left untied so I pictured you fallen
on your crystal-blooming skull, unshined,
left hanging from the curtains
And hearts leapt a steady beat of unwavering percussion
To untwist the mighty vines that have grown over your person
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10. |
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Been preferring alleys to roads
Only talking to people that I don’t know
It feels good to be a stranger again
To walk through the darkness
To hide from my friends
To look in on all your happy homes
like some starving rat bit with musical notes
A postcard from the gutter, I’m sure,
but I’m not the man that you see anymore
It’s been hard to wake up from this life of mine,
to heal myself a day at a time
And if tomorrow comes and you’re here by my side,
then my only wish made it through the night
And I wander these streets ‘til I’m lost
Got a room full of actors and no one will talk
I’ve been living off the things that you said
Been spending my nights just to bring out the dead
And then showing up when you think that I won’t
To lead you on outside and into my coat
To quiet the waters within
Curling up in some storefront just to hold you again
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11. |
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Before we’re bankrupt, crippled, and blind
and you die in your way and me in mine
Before the oceans swell black with blood
and there’s no one left around to love...
Just give me your nights
Just give me your days
Just lie and say we’ll stay forever this way
Before we utter every useless word
and they plant our bodies down in the dirt
Just place your head upon my heaving chest
and breathe me in until there’s nothing left...
Before they pave over our honeymoon
and smile at us through this broken room
and shove us down into our final bed
and steal your song from my weary head
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12. |
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A lanterned skull between your shoulder blades
where somebody gave you the blues
I’m telling the kids to follow their dreams,
but mine just took me from you
But you can’t go on without hurting someone
And I’m sorry, but that’s the way that it goes
and it goes...
The virgin lips of a McDonald's girl
As black as the widow was nude
They made me kill the way a butcher loves
I swear that I did it for you
The Lighthouse Man is a corrective shit
He casts his eyes to the shore,
but there’s a moment that comes when the evening is done
that he wonders what it was for
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13. |
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Nothing but empty roads
Houses but no one’s home
Except for the silence we bought
with that Hell we brought
A deer in a parking garage
nestles down to sleep
Where a lawyer once parked
Before the dogs barked
And there were so many people filling the world with noise
And I know you’ll be missing all the things you have destroyed
Maybe another place
Maybe another time
Maybe we could start again
This time we’ll do it right
A playground with empty swings
Flies in the ice cream
And a Lexus in ash with a tank full of gas
The crater is now a lake
from collecting all the rain
And animals come to drink
And their young follow in sync
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14. |
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Does my soul still sing?
Is it black as black can be?
It’s been so long out here
Where are the birds I heard?
Does my soul still sing?
Is it hanging from a tree?
Down the chimney there was gold
A quick cremation, now I’m broke
Is there a place to sleep
where the piano meets the bed?
Grandmother’s hands across the keys
And all the hating...
Quick! They’re escaping!
Does my soul still sing?
‘Cause it knows a forgery
And you can’t sell it just anything
Something truly precious
Oh, what have you left us?
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released February 16, 2013
All songs by Kye Alfred Hillig
Produced and Mixed by James Resch, August 2012-February 2013 at:
Sheridan House: Tacoma WA,
The Loft: Buckley WA,
Mastered by Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering in Seattle WA February 2013
Additional Musicians:
James Resch
Shenandoah Davis
Antonio Patrick
Doug Wohlfeil
Sarah Furry
David Britt
Emily Ann Peterson
David Bilbrey
Amy Thompson
Samantha Boshnack
Chris Wolfe
Cover Art (Nest) by Denise Nestor:
www.denisenestorillustration.com
Cover design by Barry Blankenship:
www.barrytheartguy.com
For show info and more, find Kye on Facebook at:
www.facebook.com/kyealfredhilligmusic