1. |
Domestic Violins
01:36
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You told me
I sleep
Like my heart was breaking
The patterns in my breath
The way
I moan and shake
My darling, my darling
Oh Russian Red
The color of your lips
And fingernails
In the shadow
Of a lack of evidence
I would keep my mouth shut
I would hide the bruises
That you beat
Into my ribs
Go ahead!
Swing your bag of oranges
Just in case
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2. |
The Paper Brothers
02:06
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I was born
In a paper boat
A simple sinking vessel
A single piece of paper
With crisp white creases
Water filled the quarter deck
Washed away my company
And with no one
Standing next to me
I became two different species
One that swam away
And one that looked for my crew mates
Off the upper deck
Off the starboard bow
Off some river's edge
You and I
We are brothers
Only you fell from the sky
From the ill-proportionate wingspan
Of your paper airplane
We've fallen off the same cliffs
We share the same blood
So let's drink until the morning
When we'll both feel insane
And we can swim away
Or we can look for our crew mates
Off the upper deck
Off the starboard bow
Off some river's edge
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3. |
Someone Page The Guard!
02:44
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A summer storm
In the thunders
Of our hands
How my fingers
Stretched and pined
Under most unfortunate skies
And the Nor'easter
Took my favorite clothes
It took so many showers
To wash my bones white
Never did I plan
To burn down houses
Never did I want
To walk away
You are the quiet
And simple honesty
That I've hidden for so long
From everyone
Someone page the guard!
There's a bad dream
Waiting in sheep's skin
The door becomes
A monument
Resounding the doom
Written plainly
On his Stroke
Someone page the Guard!
Someone please page the guard!
Never did I
Want to believe
In something
More than now
More than for myself
For everyone
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4. |
Two-Thousand
03:20
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I built a house
Out of the ashes
Of the West coast
And every room
We pass through
The doors
Don't seem to close
And every second second
Is a second not to lose
Let not these minutes
Pass beneath our shoes
I know all your secrets
I know just what you're feeling
The words you use when you're upset
Well, don't you worry darling
You are not alone
I've travelled
Two-thousand miles
To find everything
I've ever wanted here
And even if I can't stay
And you can not love me now
I know
Where my heart will always be
And are we cruel
For Doing this to ourselves
When I felt your foot
Brush against my ankle
I felt the whole world
Split in two
And I sang it to the clouds
That now hang over both of our heads
That even if you hadn't felt the same
You'd spend the rest of your days
Knowing all my secrets
Knowing what I'm feeling
The words I use when I'm upset
See I told you darling
You are not alone
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5. |
ISL
03:13
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I
Don’t think that you have cried enough
Because
You didn’t go out sailing
You didn’t even try to drown
But neither of us want to admit
That we were wrong
When your body stopped
Reacting to mine
I knew the cancer would spread
To your tongue
And that my bones
Would break from the inside
Please stop
Coming through my door
Now sick is less than the fevers that are eating me
And hardly keeping me from burying myself
In your leftovers
And snaring myself
In the traps you lovingly left for me
Would you pack your shit
and just let me die alone
Let me move on
Let me throw away everything
I’ve never wanted but kept for you
Those nights I slept on the couch
Well they were your fault too
Please unplug my wounds
Let the bruises fill with blood
Let open gashes in my knees get gritty in the mud
And one more thing
Oh would you please
Stop sleeping in my bed
Now I’m praying for a flood
That will swallow your victories
I don’t want you back
I just want you to leave
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6. |
Idlewild
02:48
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This is not wishful thinking
I swear that I'm lying
On the edge of my bed
My hands holding my head
Rekindling hatred over and over
Forgiving all evil-doers
Just trying to remember
What I did
When I was sober
Cause this is the place I want to be
This is the place
That I choose to die in
And the sky never looked so pretty
As when it opened up and ate me
Spit me out on the street
Where I splattered like a glass of wine
I just cleaned my body
So when someone finds me
I will not be dirty
Just ugly and empty
I'm going out tonight
The stars are way too bright
They're burning up the sky
It doesn't matter
If I live or die
And if I make it home before morning
Then I will
Have made it home alive
And the lines of the highway didn't take me
Nor did the rocks
Under the bridge
I must have realized I was happy
Because I'm where I want to be
And the sky never looked so pretty
As when it opened up and ate me
Then spit me out on the street
Where I splattered like a glass of wine
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7. |
A Conjuring
01:26
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You are a ghost
Rest in peace
Oh would you please.
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8. |
A Ghost
05:46
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Like flags on falling tides
You grow colder as I grow more alone
These windows across your apparent chest
Pull me down like shifting riverbeds
I gaze into your emptiness
Looking with my eyes
Looking for a fire
You twirl, oh how you twirl
You dance, oh how you dance
and you wane
As you tip-toe across the tombstones
You come to me in my dreams
You call my name from thickest fog
Go ahead and boil these words down
Just to tell me what I really mean
But I know the winter’s coming
And the snow will show how off-white you are
I can smell you on the breeze
Moving across the open and empty half of the closet
There are footprints as in dust
Where your things are now just indents in the carpet
I don’t miss your voice
I just miss my haunted house
Where things moved when I wasn’t in the room
And where I could see you in the corner of my eyes
I don’t miss you I miss your ghost
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9. |
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I’ve invested everything
In lame and legless horse racing
And if I could wage my losses
I would win them back and more tonight
Now clear with understanding
With faith and will I’d double-down
That if I was any other boy
You would look at me the same way!
The pillow in your lips runs parallel
With my sealed and callous heart
I read the twisted echo
Of sleeping light in empty bed sheets
In the loving words you carved
In the trunk of my tree
The window panes that I look through
Are not the same ones growing in your belly
I backed up slow as you reached out
Shaking tears out of insecurities
My reflection in your eyes
Said I want you but I don’t need you
You screamed your copper vows
And bleated ‘I-love-yous’
What do I and the other boys
have in common
Except our bodies?
Now when I hear a whispered, “I love you”
I am deafened with, “I’m lonely.”
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10. |
Barbara
03:13
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Go pick up my gun
It’s up above the fireplace
Hold it firm in your clutch
They’re coming from the dark
And whose house is this?
Whose hands can she still feel?
Who sleeps between these sheets
Between her body and yours?
No one should ever know oh, oh
Oh no one should ever know
But I do
Oh Barbara get the keys
Take my car to town
Buy yourself a nice dress
And wear out through the seams
And whose mistress are you?
For I have no one for me?
And I would put all I have into you
For your lips they look so sweet.
No one will have to know
Oh no one will have to know
About us
A band of morning workhorse
drawing in the faint light
Passes like the leaves
the cavalcade has come!
Because nothing changes here!
Oh we shoot what we can kill
And if you cross our paths
Of your meat we’ll make a meal.
And the sea will ride the tides
Oh the sea will rush to shore
Once more
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11. |
The Flood
04:30
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When the icicles
Melted away this year
The top of that tree
Was the water line
The spring was so cold
The ice melted so slow
No one saw it coming from below
Oh wave goodbye
Take me away
We stood silent
And we stood still
As the flood rose above our ankles
As I floated into a dream by my bedpost
I woke choking in my sheets
Weighted and freezing with water from the flood
Oh wave goodbye
Take me away
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12. |
Mouth Trumpet OMG!
03:32
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I think I've fallen down the wrong hole
This one's darker than before
I can't see the mouth to match with voice
There are warnings all around
The water's rising to my shoulders
This morning I woke up in an ambulance
Speeding down familiar streets
I couldn't see any faces
But like in a dream
I knew you were there
I don't think I've ever seen you in this light
The circles spin and swallow
Your hands seem desperate
But your fingers are just too scared to hold on
Our bones
are split
and the lines
are drawn
Weapons
Are met
With weapons
And red
(The fevers
burning bright like stars
On summer nights
in broke down cars
The fevers
Spreading wide like scars
On little wrists
in small-town barns)
In the density of our consonance
You could taste our wicked dissonance
A residential partum founds
The stone and wall of distances
(Though held strong by hands
Through storms they do not part
These are words between friends
That divide houses in their hearts)
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13. |
Firmament
01:14
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Dance with me
My darling here tonight
To the quiet song of the universe
We are to rejoice
The dotted sky of twinkling light
As if it brought our hands together
If you see the stars before I do
Please tell me where to look to see the same
And if I spot the oncoming traffic
I'll grab the wheel and steer us out of the way
As I sit burning holes in the carpet
You brush your stray hairs from your eyes
And a finger for every year I spent without you
Finds it's way between my fingers intertwined
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14. |
Blood Spattered
04:39
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Clues strewn back and forth
across the white carpet floors
That I could see up your skirt in the red pools
That reflect the laughter of party guests
I catch your stale glances like a sickness.
Through the dust
I can see your lipstick, smeared
From the last time I felt like this.
I could ask you the questions
That could gut me on their answers
Or I could just stagnate
Under the shadows of these dancers
Hang me on my cross
In the middle of your stage
Throw at me your pity and your dollars
And your first born daughters
I could ask them the questions
That could gut me on their answers
Or I could just stagnate
Under the shadows of these dancers
Drenched in the low light
Of a cheap motel
In fact you never sleep alone
And I’ll never tell
And if this drink doesn’t kill me tonight
I’ll quit drinking again
And if I don’t die in my dreams tonight
I’ll start sleeping in
In this soft forgiving light
It almost looks like I love you again
But I can’t love you tonight
Because you didn’t love me then
And I will never love again
No I will never love again
And I will never love again
No I will never love again
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15. |
Desert
03:06
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16. |
Statue
02:26
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These tools
I've gathered
Are nothing more
Than relics
Of time gone-by
and going to happen
But not in this lifetime
I'm growing old
The clay is growing dry
I'm only beginning to use my voice
In this light
I can see through
The blue
of her dress
Where the rocks dug
Into her knees
When she fell weak
And tore her jeans
(She's a statue underwater far from here and that's all)
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17. |
Brisingamen's Curse
04:22
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We built a fire here
Long before we had eyes
Under the blanket of formlessness
We found our way into the light
Everything was growing
Up from underground
Just like new-born babies
Know their mothers by their sound
I could hear your voice
But I didn’t know you from the trees
So I starting chasing everything
Until I got burnt by the fire that we made
There’s a gilded noose around my neck
And it’s far too thin to see
It’s tethered to and between
Everything I want and me
On a collision course with split-ends
I walk it like a tight rope
Finding my conclusions to be nothing
But another fork in the road
But I read the rules
And I know just how it ends
When my luck runs out and the slack is cut
I’ll be hanging by a thread
I could upturn every single stone
But I would never find anything
Because it’s not how or where I’m looking
But how I see what I already have
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18. |
The Fox-Boy's Revenge
11:40
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In the ditch where I found your bones
And the letters I wrote to them
Is a stream so cold
The water is solid at it’s source
I am lonely thinking about your ghost
Where she wanders and where we used to go
I make my way through the burned down town
To the darkest of my dreams
I lose myself to these trees
Gathered in prayer to cast their spells
And oh boy do I feel their sway
When I’m hiding in their shade!
I AM THE FOX
UNDER THE GREEN
PRACTICING MY
INVISIBILE ROUTINE
I AM THE IRON GHOST
OF THE MOUNTAIN
I AM THE HAMMER
OF THE STORM
THE BURNER OF CHARIOTS
THE WAX WINGS OF FAILURES
I AM THE QUICK
BUT CARELESS SOUL OF THE FIRE
A LOVER
A THIEF
A DESTROYER
AND A LIAR
Like thick black smoke
In a hall of mirrors
We can only hope
To get out of here
They don't make 'em like they used to...
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19. |
Trumpet
03:31
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Forced to the trees
The orange-faced choir
With pale and failing voices
Huddle around the campfire
To hum low like machines
On this winter’s night
They recall when they could sing in the light
I want to see the forest
I want to see the doors of Boston
I wish my tongue was worth more
Than a trumpet played for the first time
There was a time before
Any of us knew that they were there
As apparent as a shadow
But as important as the sun
They sang the soundtrack to our days
The only reward was our boot-mark
For we tossed no coins we just walked by
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
I want to see the train smoke
I want to kneel to new altars
I want to raise my bones
Like hands to the sky
I want to see the desert
I want to see Parthenon
I want to feel the power
Of an unknowable spirit
Because right now I can’t tell a storm from a star
And everyday I have to ask where we are
And your voice sounds better
Than a trumpet played for the first time
I mean really, really played for the first time
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Ian Miles Spokane
Ian Miles is an independent singer-songwriter based out of Spokane, WA.
His Music has been described and "a
little cool and a little weird – in a good way" and "very story-telling".
Sometimes mellow and bittersweet; a songbird at your window sill and at other times a thunderous full-throated roar of emotive stomping and hollering like a wild preacher of the end-times!
... more
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