Quasi-Hymns, Murder-Ballads, and Tales of How the Hero Died (2013)

A Streak of Bad Luck

So we tossed words around like a flickering flame.
Yesterday wild, when my fortunes felt tame.
If it feels like a chore to remember my name,
I hope you’re still copin’.

Leave it to frozen hard facts just to keep a kid warm.
There were 30k slain on the day I was born,
four clean decades before that mean south-eastern storm.
Whoever could’ve known?

Took the embodiment of a catamaran blown.
I’m ever fastened onto the trappings of the suits.
I noted every notch in the capsized boat I saw.

And I was outlawed like a thief with a pocket-less cloak
with blood in my veins and my head full of smoke--
to be choked in a glove
and to call the thing love like the punch of a joke.

Rush the waters, oh my soul.
I’m getting old and fragile.
Stones and valleys break me.
Consecrate me all the while.

Rush the waters, oh my lord.
I’m getting bored with this pattern.
Stones and static break me.
Consecrate me all the while.

I’ve the hope of a newborn child
or a ghost in a burned-down house.
If it be the damage far forgotten,
I noted every notch in the capsized boat I saw.

You smile; disaster.

What fractured?
Your broken jaw, or the last straw?

Rush the waters, oh my soul.

It’s getting old.

credits

from Quasi-Hymns, Murder-Ballads, and Tales of How the Hero Died
released May 10, 2013
Words and Music written by Alex and Emily McCollum

license

<<< Back to Lyrics