The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
Set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport over the pharaoh
A little while later the Pharisees dragged comb through the meadow
Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?
There is a rusty light on the pines tonight
Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
Down into the bones of the birches
And the spires of the churches
Jutting out from the shadows
The yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
And everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
In the mouth of the south below
We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away
From that snow in the night time
Just going
And going
And the stirring of wind chimes
In the morning
In the morning
Helps me find my way back in
From the place where I have been
And, Emily - I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever,
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror
Anyhow - I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I‘d set them to verse so I’d always remember
That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee
You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I’m in
Threw the window wide and cried; Amen! Amen! Amen!
The whole world - stopped - to hear you hollering
You looked down and saw now what was happening
The lines are fadin’ in my kingdom
Though I have never known the way to border ‘em in
So the muddy mouths of baboons and sows and the grouse and the horse and the hen
Grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen
And the mail is late and the great estates are not lit from within
The talk in town’s becoming downright sickening
In due time we will see the far butte lit by a flare
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the night time
Gone healthy
Gone healthy all of a sudden
In search of the midwife
Who could help me
Who could help me
Help me find my way back in
There are worries where I’ve been
Say, say, say in the lee of the bay; don’t be bothered
Leave your troubles here where the tugboats shear the water from the water
Flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper
Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter
And I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I know you better
What they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter
Let us go! Though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
There is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning
Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
Peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
Hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up-a their brow
And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
The butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines
Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
The way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
Squint skyward and listen -
Loving him, we move within his borders:
Just asterisms in the stars’ set order
We could stand for a century
Staring
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don’t keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don’t be
Told; take this
Eat this
Told, the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee
And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to theeJoanna Newsom, Emily
Joanna Newsom - Inflammatory Writ
meandjuliodownbytheschoolyard:
Live track of Look and Despair by Joanna Newsom.
I don’t care what anyone thinks of her. She’s lrivajr;ewirjefahef;wfhbeautiful!
The cause is Ozymandian.
The map of Sapokanikan
is sanded and bevelled,
the land lorn and levelled
by some unrecorded and powerful hand
which plays along the monument
and drums upon a plastic pan.
The brave men and women so dear to God
and famous to all of the ages ran.
Sang:
“Do you love me?
Will you remember?”
The snow falls above me.
Around the hand, the rerounders.
The event is in the hand of God.
Beneath a patch of grass, her
bones the old Dutch master hid.
While elsewhere Tobias
and the angel disguise
what the scholars surmise was a mother and kid.
Interred with other daughters,
in dirt in other potters’ fields
above them, parades
mark the passing of days
through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel,
where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall
and the causes they died for are lost in the idling bird calls,
and the records they left are cryptic at best,
lost in obsolescence.
The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal
with any fluorescence
where the hand of the master begins and ends.
I fell, I tried to do well but I won’t be.
Go tell the one that I love to remember and hold me.
I call, I call for the doctor
but the snow swallows me whole with ol’ Flory Walker (?)
and the event lives only in print.
He said:
“It’s alright,”
and “It’s all over now,”
and boarded the plane,
his belt unfastened;
the boy was known to show unusual daring.
And, called a “boy”,
this older man, confounding Tammany Hall,
In whose employ King Tamanend himself preceeded John’s fall.
So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest so may repair,
to which a hunter,
a hundred years from now, may look and despair
and see with wonder
the tributes we have left to rust in the parks,
swearing that our hair stood on end
to see John Purroy Mitchel depart
for the Western front where work might count.
O mercy! O God! God,
I will the hunter to decipher the stone,
and what lies under the city is done.
So look and despair.
Look and despair.
I mean, when you spend all your time writing lyrics like this and composing music to set it to, maybe the Dick in a Box guy does acquire a kind of subversive allure
Only Skin — JOANNA NEWSOM
I have got some business out at the edge of town,
Candy weighing both of my pockets down
‘Til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
(And knowing how the common-folk condemn
What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm—
Being a woman, being a woman…) But always up the mountainside you’re clambering. Groping blindly, hungry for anything:
Picking through your pocket linings—Well, what is this?
Scrap of sassafras, eh, Sisyphus?
I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain. Little sister, he will be back again.
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain! Spiders’ ghosts hang,
Soaked and dangling, silently from all the blooming cherry trees
In tiny nooses, safe from everyone—nothing but a nuisance;
Gone now, dead and done! Be a woman, be a woman!
this is not my favorite song of hers, but these may be my very favorite verses.
Natalie Reed, in conversation with me on twitter, on the sexist, infantilizing, and reductive media narratives about Joanna Newsom. She brilliantly synthesizes what we have been saying at Blessing All the Birds since the beginning.
I also think the “fey” words are code for “we do not want to actually engage with this music because doing so would actually mean acknowledging a woman’s words are powerful and intellectual and thus, threatening to patriarchy in music (and the world).” Those words, most importantly, bespeak of the fear of Newsom’s intense and subversive femininity.
(via allthebirds)
Joanna Newsom - “Sadie”
Sadie, white coat, you carry me home
And bury this bone and take this pine cone
Bury this bone to gnaw on it later
Gnawing on the telephone
Until then, we pray and suspend
The notion that these lives do never end
And all day long we talk about mercy
Lead me to water, Lord, I sure am thirsty
Down in the ditch where I nearly served you
Up in the clouds where he almost heard you
And all that we built and all that we breathed
And all that we spilt, or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns ‘til the silence crept over me
And bless you, and I deeply do
No longer resolute, oh and I call to you
But the water go so cold
And you do lose what you don’t hold
This is an old song, these are old blues
And this is not my tune, but it’s mine to use
And the seabirds where the fear once grew
Will flock with a fury and they will bury what’d come for you
And down where I darn with the milk-eyed mender
You and I, and a love so tender
Stretched on a hoop where I stitched this adage:
“Bless our house and its heart so savage”
And all that I want, and all that I need
And all that I’ve got is scattered like seed
And all that I knew is moving away from me
And all that I know is blowing like tumbleweed
And the mealy worms in the brine will burn
In a salty pyre among the fauns and ferns
And the love we hold, and the love we spurn
Will never grow cold, only taciturn
And I’ll tell you tomorrow
Sadie, go on home now
And bless those who’ve sickened below
And bless us who have chosen so
And all that I’ve got and all that I need
I tie in a knot and I lay at your feet
And I have not forgot, but a silence crept over me
So dig up your bone, exhume your pine cone,my Sadie
one of my weird death hills concerns Joanna Newsom fans who are extremely resistant to the idea that “Baby Birch” is about an abortion, and who write lots of words about how this song is OBVIOUSLY about lots of things like… things (maybe she’s just really sad she broke up with a dude before they got to make babies :( did you ever think of that) and it’s JUST SO COMPLEX NO ONE CAN ASSIGN A MEANING, IT’S UNPOSSIBLE and how dare you imply my fragile ethereal elf queen might write anything that reaffirms abortion as a necessary choice sometimes blah blah blah
I mean, have you even read the lyrics? it’s not vague at all, you’re just really fucking resistant to the idea that abortion could inspire a complex, emotional song that simultaneously examines regret about limited possibilities and offers no apology for the decision made, because you’re choking on pro-life propaganda that implies that no one could think about an abortion for two seconds and go through with it, much less produce art about it
long story short, these fans can kiss my ass
Ribbon Bows | Joanna Newsom
How my ears did ring at the municipal pound
From that old hangdog to which I was bound,
Curled ‘round the bottom rung: does nobody want you?
Well, come on, darlin’, I could use someone like you around.
Joanna Newsom - Emily
We could stand for a century
Staring with our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy, landlocked
In bodies that don’t keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don’t be
told
Take this and eat this
(via amanda-gayfried)
I’ll tell it as I best know how,
And that’s the way it was told to me:I must have been a thief or a whore,
Then surely was thrown overboard,
Where, they say,
I came this way from the deep blue sea.
It picked me up and tossed me round.
I lost my shoes and tore my gown,
I forgot my name,
And drowned.
Then woke up with the surf a-pounding;
It seemed I had been run aground.
Well they took me in and shoed my feet
And taught me prayers for chastity
And said my name would be Colleen, and
I was blessed among all women,
To have forgotten everything.
And as the weeks and months ensued
I tried to make myself of use.
I tilled and planted, but could not produce -
not root, nor leaf, nor flower, nor bean; Lord!
It seemed I overwatered everything.
And I hate the sight of that empty air,
like stepping for a missing stair
and falling forth forever blindly:
cannot grab hold of anything! No,
Not I, most blessed among Colleens.
I dream some nights of a funny sea,
as soft as a newly born baby.
It cries for me pitifully!
And I dive for my child with a wildness in me,
and am so sweetly there received.
But last night came a different dream;
a gray and sloping-shouldered thing
said “What’s cinched ‘round your waist, Colleen?
is that my very own baleen?
No! Have you forgotten everything?”
This morning, ‘round the cape at dawn,
some travelers sailed into town
with scraps for sale and the saddest songs
and a book of pictures, leather-bound, that
showed a whale with a tusk a meter long.
Well, I asked the man who showed it me,
“What is the name of that strange beast?”
He said its name translated roughly to
He-Who-Easily-Can-Curve-Himself-Against-The-Sky.
And I am without words.
He said, “My lady looks perturbed.
(the light is in your eyes, Colleen.)”
I said, “Whatever can you mean?”
He leaned in and said,
“You ain’t forgotten everything.”- Joanna Newsom