LA DISPUTE LYRICS

1. Shall Never Lose Its Power

the lion isn't sacred when not sleeping near the lamb,
it is evil when it eats unless it's feeding from the damned,
all the children painted diagrams of god upon their hands,
hoping somewhere on this shaking earth they could find a place to stand.

it's a tyrant to the foreigners who've never seen the land,
they feel safer than a statue when they've got a spear in hand,
it is pregnant with the fury that the pain in life demands.
yes, it's fear--but it's a fear that understands.

and what's left is a heartbeat, speaking,
"hands off your fate, child, you'll bury yourself in mistakes."
like a dream that i had of lost faith it fades away but still thunders onward.
every pulse was a hand with its palm up,
fed with bodies and bread soaked in blood.
somewhere, someday, it'll leave but tell me, someone,
where does it go?

what tied our hands tight to the train tracks, then backed off slowly?

what does the heart say? "see the reverse. there's an answer there."

i am the moth-drenched love of dead mules,
as stable as sand in a windstorm. and i shake like a spider in the rain
when you say,
"my, my, the ways i've changed since then--the ways i've changed."
and all i ever say is,
"i'm..."

and it hits like a brick to the back of your head. like, goodbye, five times.
one for each finger.
and you say,
"my, my, the ways i've changed since then--the ways i've changed."
and all i ever say is,
"i'm tired."

we turned our water into whining, shouting, "let us be like christ."
but then the whining turned to wonder, and the wonder turned to ice.
once, we were graceful steeples, hands held upward and eyes wide in suspense.
now, we are tangled like intruders in the wires of the fence.

for a fence is built to protect what lies inside of it.
do you still feel sick? because i do.

2. Only Everything Below

both butterflies and dragonflies have wings like when you sing
i swear you hit two different notes but they don't harmonize as clean as
when you speak there is a rhythm in the scraping of your tongue along your teeth
that comes across as well as hell inside of heaven in a feast of flies
and anything with wings that tries to sing but where you ripped two different holes,
see, they won't cauterize as cleanly as you think and if you listen to the rhythm
in your sleep you can hear me speaking, "you are a wolf to me."

don't believe your ears nor trust your mouth i think that
every single feeble doubt-soaked promise of trust
had a mind to leave you
out in the rain with your hands to the train tracks,
pulling the ropes with your teeth,
but you're too weak and
you're too tired, child,
lay down--i will tear every ghost from your dream.

(oh, king, you've stepped on the wrong crack)

rejoice!
it is beating still.
still strong.
still thundering onward.
it turns it's palm up,
lifts it's voice up.
it speaks, says,
"i don't know."

he speaks with the speed in the clench of a bear-trap,
softly rebuilding the castles he'd kept,
says, "there is grace in a steeple collapsing."
straightens the sheets on the beds where they'd slept.
thinking his love was as passive as flowers,
planted a garden of lies in her chest,
says, "there is grace in a steeple collapsing."
pointing the calm in his eyes to the west to valinor,
where love was sent on airplane wings to shake and be shaken.

still, the flowers open as she passes,
and the birds they sing to greet her,
though she heaves blood.
there is grace in a steeple collapsing.
there is grace in a steeple collapsed.

and he said, "boy, get your things together,
make them wood and make them stone and we'll build you a house.
there isn't ever any shelter anymore."





LA DISPUTE LYRICS