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An Old Struggle. A long and lasting ache
Sun slants in the window
There’s waking in your eyes
A few moments without sorrow
No remembrance. No reliving
Then Like a wave on a sharp rock breaking
This long and lasting aching
settles in
It is an old struggle.
It has always been with us.
It is with us now again.
Ankle deep in the drifts of a bitter long winter.
Seems foolish to think on the spring
Like Mother Mary beset by Good Friday
alone at the end of the day.
its an old struggle
This long and lasting ache
The doors are closing
one by one
The toll its taking
can’t be undone
as familiar as heartbreaking
The long and lasting aching
comes again
It’s an old struggle.
It’s always been with us.
It’s with us now again.
Neck deep in the mess of the big muddy muddy
It don’t matter if you can swim
It’s a high wire act
It’s a complex bouquet
It’s a bitter herb that you learn to embrace.
its an old struggle
This long and lasting ache
This must end, and this too shall end, and all things are passing away
I hope there’s one grain of sand that Is
one that Was
One grain of sand that is yet to come.
one match to strike, one candle to light
silhouettes in this drafty old cave
its and old struggle
this long and lasting ache
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2. |
Charybdis & Scylla
02:35
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Charybdis & Scylla: Labor Unloved
Haven’t got the Means to Pay
Dogs Caught the Scent of Weakened Prey.
A Debtor born, a Pauper's Grave
On Pain of Death we Walk the Plank
of Acadeem or unskilled labor
Artistry Fell out of Favor
Sacrifice to Industry
They’ll Break your Back or Bend your Knee
How Do you feel?
Buddy, How Does it feel?
Just a Spoke in the Wheel.
For Shame.
Oh None of this is Real.
Just a Shuffling of Evil
Charybis and Scylla
Same Same
In Such a Maze we Find Ourselves
House Ablaze. The Kindness Shelved.
a Poisoned Well. An Ax. A Tree.
an Open Wound, the Old Dis-ease.
Neighbor turned against his Neighbor
Friendly Fire Denominator
Half a Mind to Weep and Crumble
Half a Mind to Tear Asunder.
Chorus
We Don’t Need Nobody, We Don’t Need NoBody
We Don’t Need No One
To Lead us Astray.
Seek Ye Freedom from Fear?
Seek Ye Freedom from Tyranny?
Find a Good Mother
to Show us the Way.
Blessed are the Meekly Feral
The Fisher King, those Sieged by Peril
Blessed Thee the Remnant Scattered.
They the Mice who Slipped the Trap for
They’re the Mice who Tricked the Trapper.
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3. |
TIMSHEL: Flowers Pressed
03:35
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TIMSHEL: Flowers Pressed
Swift the shadows on your face
Demure the whispers in words place
Billows the Soft wind through hair unlaced
Ever I am there
Traipse the woodlands unending
Gold Fern with Sharp light ascending
Soft needled pines make fine bedding
though sleep be far from mind
At the end this could mean everything
All these memories gathered closely, pressed like flowers in newspaper
Oh! what alchemy from straw to gilded gold
The spinning wheel doth weave our thread. This tapestry of moments spent.
Our colors twined
Purple and scarlet red
Seven years or a lifetime
Too few by far. Far too few
These albums captured the still frame of
crystal Ambered love
Thou Mayest. Truly Thou Mayest
The skin the fruit and the kiss
Thou mayest Ask of me any thing
And know my answer’s yes
At the end this could mean everything
All these memories gathered closely, pressed like flowers in newspaper
Oh! what alchemy from straw to gilded gold
The spinning wheel doth weave our thread. This tapestry of moments spent.
Our colors twined
Purple and scarlet red
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4. |
So You Say
04:51
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So you say, this land will shelter our family
So you say, here we’ll make our home
A decade later we laden with ruin
This tumble-down vision took a turn.
and there’s so much yet left to learn
So you say these trees will take root and ripen
you surveyed, and saw it heavy with fruit
Well water tables rise, and all lost their footing
A fell wind blows, A felling takes.
And it’s all so hard to save.
So you say, my love will always be with you
A legacy. of Salamanders and Bees
A brushfire blaze, a lantern raised
A written phrase too choked to say
As you’re now so far away
As you say, this handspun yarn of your telling
Tethered straight to you through space and time
This burden great. A dream worth dreaming.
So you say
So Say We All.
So you Say
So Say We All.
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5. |
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6. |
Orchard Song
04:15
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Orchard Song: The Voice of Reason?
Your list is never ending
Ten dozen projects pending
Not a one gets justice done
Your head so full of feelings
Old trucks that you might fuel with
Vegetables and stubborn will.
Well You dreamers aught to wake up every now and again
Call the scrap yard and admit that that old Engine is dead.
Dreamers aught to wake up now and again.
You procrastinate when
You’ve got papers due and
You just sing and bide your time
What will you amount to?
Your orchard never bore fruit
Wild. Neglected. Overgrown
All you dreamers aught to wake up every now and again
Quit interpreting the clouds. You’ve got a garden to tend (old fences to mend)
Dreamers aught to wake up now and again.
Keep this up and what will you
Have to show when your check comes due
Poetry don’t pay the bills. Don’t…
Delude yourself with grandeur
Your scruples’ll only last ‘til
You’ve a few more winters lived.
Dreamers aught to wake up every now and again
This here worlds got enough clowns, trying not to fit in
Dreamers aught to wake up now and again.
All your wasted time. Your wasted mind. such sin.
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7. |
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…Things out of your grasp (Mein Oma’s Fanne Kuchen soupe)
To spend your thoughts on the unknown
To ream against unchangeables
To agonize over hearts that broke
To meditate on living slow
To fell some tree. Or let it grow.
To list the things you’ll never know.
To pine for flavors of your youth
Mien Oma’s fanne kuchen soupe
To make a path where there was none
To spin a tale from damage done
That lifts the eyes, that heals a wound
That tapes a torn page worn with use.
To finally be the “least of these”
be clothed in light as the lilies
To see in spectrums yet unknown
To sing a tune once young and old
To bind yourself to clay and sand
And clover in your fathers land
To hope for things out of your grasp
To love as though this too shall last…
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8. |
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9. |
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Grieve Well and Grieve Long
Sit and I stare at the blank page
Stale air
Escaping from my lungs
Try as I might
My mind ever so slightly enfogged
Cat’s got our tongue
And the old ache that love
Leaves when sure and swift
Night comes
And that place by our bed
Where she’d stalk...
the impressions left
So if you go on before
Wait for me.
If you go on before
Wait for me.
I’ll be soon at the gates
And I’ll crave company
upon that journey long
Your numbers still saved Like a hole in our day
Like a ghost, a Missing frame
Ten years of grief. Wound still too raw to speak of aloud
Perch on my pillow
Claw at my passing
Bloom all my flowers
Ever be Laughing
I pray that you’re watching,
I hope you’ll be haunting
awhile.
Chorus
This is where it starts
this breath the cosmic spark
deep well from which we’re all drawn
grieve well and grieve long.
You can feel time dilate
and shift tectonic plates
the universe expands on
Grieve well and grieve long.
And if through some sacred physics
That moment still exists
Encased within amber
Unending, unhampered
Still breathing, still being
Well, I would exist Everthere
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10. |
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Fire was burning cross this wild land.
All of the flesh layeth bare.
The glorious depth of our failures and successes
Tells of The image impressed…
The divinely unearned yet possessed.
on the cycle of birth and redeath
There’s Samsara in every breath
When did we last truly hunger?
Suffer ideals apertif?
Comfort arrives, then comfort abides,
And like vermin relentlessly breeds.
Like quackgrass, thistle, bindweed…
And erodes all you swore you believed
as we wander the world aimlessly
with samsara dust on our feet
Surely the state of our union rests
Akin to the state of our hearts.
Open surrender. Perennial death.
And Revival carnally.
Meets your incarnational needs.
there’s samsara in your disease
though it don’t come naturally
as the wheel wills the wheel weaves
Tenets to treat like a venomous snake
Tenets to firmly embrace.
Fully Sinner and Saint. Blessed virginal taint.
Lay me on your alter. Lay. Lay me on your alter. Lay. me on your alter lay.
there’s samsara in our veins.
Liebhaber, wo bist du? verstehst du mich nicht?
Liebhaber ziehen mir nahe.
Som Donner Wetter nuct ein mal
und das ist willkommen. Ya das ist willkommen.
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11. |
Seared Stones
04:04
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Strum that golden desperation
Warmest sadness spun like yarn
Oh remind us. Oh return us
To our homesick memories worn.
Sorrowfolk, that sound so honest
Birth-pains of a labor love
Final groan before beginnings
Like a knife to cut the cord
Oh my brother let it crack you
Oh let it touch your eyes
Oh once I swear I saw it
Waits the world for you to smile.
With these seared stones all around us
Memory warmth of signal pyre.
Daylight masketh. night revealeth.
Revelations of sweetbrier
Always heart-full, always thought-felt
Dared to tread the dark held truths
Mending harsh the throes that bind it
Like a suture for the wound
Oh my brother let it crack you
Oh let it touch your eyes
Oh once I swear I saw it
Waits the world for you to smile.
So sing that loaded gospel
Ghosts and angels share your choir
That haunting lamentation
Lifts the Rent and Riven higher
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12. |
Sick & Low Part II
07:26
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Well I have my eyes
I have my eyes on you
On my prize
And I tell you
I take it day to day.
And I try to try
To stay in the light of you
My shining night
And some days I win
Some days I lose.
Come down and meet your brother
Although the weight of the world is hovering
On his shoulders, on your shoulders
Heavy lies the breaking of the world…
And we know that, yeah we know that
Our hands have wrought our just rewards…
But I keep wandering home, keep wandering
I keep stumbling low, I roll with the blow.
And I’ll be back again for more…for sure
It don’t feel the same, don’t move me
I keep whispering, seldom listening,
But I keep wondering what you have to say…
Can you make me what you wanted? What you wanted me to be?
I would be what you wanted, what you saw in me.
Fear in the eyes. Holding tight to the
World on top of Atlas’ shoulders
Endlessly fighting men
I dreamt of you all.
And the world grew tired of all we’ve done
The Mother cried to see her sons
And a violent rain
Fell down to cleanse the soil.
And where the tears rest the garden grows,
Where once bare feet tread now rivers flow
And the dust becomes the mud becomes the loam
And I see and sense that it’s so complex
And I want so badly to find my place.
But left to my own, I’m only going down.
‘Cause I been slumbering long
Been stubborn, been wrong
I long to wake and take this
All Away, all away…
Would you take me?
Far away. Far away…
Would you form me in your hands like earthen clay?
Can you teach me a new song?
I’ll sing along
I’ll tell you what our father was like
Good gifts and voice a thundering
Don’t be low, you. He’s below you too.
Welcome inside.
Can’t you hear the trumpet sounding?
Ye dead Arise!
Cant you hear the trumpet sounding?
King Has arrived…
Cant you hear the trumpet sounding?
She’s shining bright…
Cant you hear the trumpet sounding?
Welcome inside
Cant you hear the trumpet sounding?
You make things right.
Cant you hear the trumpet sounding?
She’s shining bright.
Cant you hear the trumpet sounding?
Ye Dead Arise!
Can’t you hear the Trumpet Sounding?
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Thom Alan Lansing, Michigan
Michigan Based: Singer, Songwriter, Farmer, Carpenter, Landscaper, Gutter Cleaner, Adventurer, Generalist. Avid Podcast Listener, Comic Book Reader, and Celebrator of Good Meals. Rumored to sing Disney Songs while Mowing the Lawn ("I've Got No Strings"). Not yet too old for the Mosh Pit at a Slayer Convert. There's music in these bones, and I'm just getting started. ... more
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