LYRICS > Extralife (2018)
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1. Extralife
It's over now
The flag is sunk
The world has flattened out
Under the underground
I've always found
A level further down
As I begin to lose hold of
The fiery flower beds above
Mushroom clouds reset the sky
Extralife
In the only game
I ever play
I am the ageless one
Another hunted bird
An arcade word
A living machine love
There must be something I’ve lost sight of
Starfree extradimensional
Superconductor up in the sky
Extralife
2. Singularity
Some day a shooting star is gonna shoot me down
Burn these high-rises back into a ghost town
Of iridium-white clouds
Matted close against the ground
While the sky hangs empty as a frame
See the reddening horizon line
Feel the planets pulling on the spacetime
All the way down Somerset
I take pictures of cement
For the history books on Mother Earth
To the west now it begins
In the sound waves in the wind
There is an echo going by me
Of the mountains caving in
And the potted roads and I
Knew that one day we would die
And become smooth and whole again
Like the ash that sweeps the sky
There's holy water lying in the crater well
Heavy metals, high-test gasoline
Blessed singularity
A telescoping memory
Where the sky still flickers through the leaves
3. Futures
A futuremoment disappears
A futureringing in my ear
I hear her calling, calling
Calling me I hear
Radio futurewaves transmit
My futureMrs President and she
Tries to tell me
It’s not ever too late
Through futureforests in the sea
My futuredog is walking me
I hear him calling, calling
From deep within the Thermocene
Bikini snow burns like acetylene
Under our feet
It’s not ever too late
The futuredawning of the day
It’s never here and never goes away
It’s not ever too late
4. Hold Your Head Up High
How it rambles round the moon
A let-go-of balloon
Nothing is forever, everything is soon
And my father as he stands
A perfect cartoon man
Heavy-sighed and open-eyed, I heard him speak
Hold your head up high
Rise it up, it’s fine to rain
A time will come again
And misery’s no rest for weary gentlemen
See the humankind is you
Like all the rest down to
The scratches on the album that you’re singing to
Hold your head up high
Through the light and through the shadow
I won’t wait it out
Hold your head up high
Biting clovers in the lawn
A solitary fawn
Underground the new life thunders up and on
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5. Eschaton
You, me, the Young Turks by the BU Bridge
All of the lines are fixed
We need to remember what happens, if
We don't write it who will?
Time, look at the time
And what we used to be
Signs, what are the signs?
Nobody here still reads
I hear the eschaton
I see our stripes on floating ground
No matter what we’ve been, we are the upshot now
They’re making martyrs out of tennis stars
Did you think they were ours?
There’s something in the water, byzantine
And everyone’s downstream
Time, they own all the time
And what we used to be
Signs, look at the signs
Tell me what you believe
I hear the eschaton
I see our stripes on floating ground
No matter what we’ve been, we are the upshot now 6. Old Friend
Old friend I
Think of you still sometimes
Sure as the oak is bending into the light
You and I
Looked for a compromise
When you said did I not believe in your heaven?
Old friend I
Think of you still sometimes
Sure as the river bends
Sure as the river bending into the light
7. Lindisfarne
Back on the growing line you were fine
Living a lone life on the vine
Enter the stranger’s arm, Lindisfarne
Who has the keys, why don’t we fight in the car?
Always see you through me I thought I knew
I guess a handle on anything isn’t a thing
At least not for long
Try it again again like old men
Manet, Degas, let’s keep the pin in the pen
Always see you through me I thought I knew
Always see me through you I thought I knew
The mountain-seeming way waiting lay opposite me
You look it right in the face
Always see you through me I thought I knew
Always see me through you I thought I knew
8. The Rabbit and the Pointed Gun
Hide away, the storm’s about to break
All of the branches shake
And the trail of Colorado comes awake
Fair enough, it took me by surprise
Just like the sun in my eyes
And I falter on the step before the lake
The thunder and the swallows dive
Right then I almost cried out
And the brush grows over, and the boot sinks in
Ground is underwater, water’s under wind
The rabbit and the pointed gun
I held them both in the sun
And I walked back home after the storm was done
9. Indian Orchard Road
Something is waking on Indian Orchard
Blaze after blaze through the woods along the road
Dragonfly dawn
Day gaining on
Shadows that lift off the bloom and the velvet
White gravel, crabapples black under the buzz
Shallow tracks switchback up to the spillway
Steady the silver line up into the sun
Shapes on the lawn
What’s waking on
Indian Orchard Road?
Something has changed since the very beginning
Bird in the bath making ghosts out of the blue
Melting field of angels in cool water
Cannonball through it all, I’m missing you
Hang glider dawn
I’m hanging on to
Indian Orchard Road
Something is setting on Indian Orchard
Making its way through the timber woods alone
Indian Orchard Road
10. Rita Hayworth
Crash course
American dark horse
Starfire Red® in a colorless sea
Checkmate
Incontestable mandate
Oh I want to know what it’s like to be loved
Like a heartbeat
Coco Chanel, Rita Hayworth
Mae West, Elizabeth Taylor
11. Orion
Santa Fe awake in the dark
Look at how uneasy you are
Curtains to the edges at night
The street is full of thunder and light
Sink into the infinite time
Trace it to the belt of Orion
And elbow out into the unknown
Everything in motion’s a domino
Go, are we gonna go?
The paint is peeling off of a dream
The pool is draining into the sea
Tomorrow is beginning to take
An equal and an opposite shape
The beach is just a line in the sand
The tide is in the palm of your hand
It's looking like the start or the end
Either way ahead is around the bend
Go, are we gonna go?
12. Best of the Best of Times
When the world speaks
It rattles to me like an antique
Or maybe it rings
Like an old bell
Wishing us some kind of farewell
A wave in the window
A beacon
The battened-down end of a season
Lullaby blue
It is two doves
Shot in the heat of the summer
And truer than words
We’re a long way from the best of the best of times
There’s a broken
Clock tower out in the ocean
Holding me under
The table
Tipping me down like a cradle
Drowning me out
With an amen
Heralding heaven and Auld Lang Syne
And “everything’s fine”
We’re a long way from the best of the best of times
And I wonder
Whether our days are unnumbered
If one is the same
As another
Whether we mistook the colors
For the real thing
If we’ll ring out
Brimming and broken and somehow
Truer than blue
And then come to
Pulled from the wreck in the daybreak
All equal and safe
We’re a long way from the best of the best of times