I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not.
My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has … coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to.
I can't call them linear narratives, and I can't call them chronological in a traditional, classical sense; I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I borrow more from William Faulkner than William Shakespeare. I just find it funny that at this point, we see a collection of highly charged, highly potent symbols as referring back to a classical aesthetic, because to me they seem deeply connected to the pedestrian actuality of real life.
We sailed away on a winter's dayAnd the nautical, as all things, fades.
And a thimble's worth of milky moonCan touch hearts larger than a thimble.
And all that we built, and all that we breathedAnd we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.
And the love we hold, and the love we spurn, Will never grow cold, only taciturn
Go to sleep, you stunning sky, gently creep, cunning byHold your breath and clasp at Cassiopeia.
While yonder, wild and blue,by roads, by songs entombed.
I do as I please.and you are starry, starry, starry...
Emily, I saw you last night by the riverIn a mud cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror.
And everything with wings is restless,All my bones are dolorous with vines!
We could stand for a centuryUntil we don't be
Now her coat drags through the water,Balletic and glacial, of Bear's insatiable shadow.
Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision'Hold me close', cooed the dove, who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds.
And though our bones, they may breakwhy the long face?
Picking through your pocket lining, well what is this?Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?
Well I'm starvin' and freezin'or I love no-one)
Water were your limbsWhen you get there?
Have you come, then, to rescue me?"by which one comes to know such peace.
We are blessed and sustained by what is not said
By the time you read thisAm I to be expected to stay?
We broke our hearts,I'm inviting everyone.
But it can make you feel over, and old till I can't remember my own name.
This is the song for Baby Birch. there is that knowledge of you.
held her there, as they're liable to do.
And if you come and see me,you cross the border of my heart.
A feather of a hawk was boundThe eager little vultures pecked
Wolf-spider, crouch in your funnel nest.have I had a hand in your loneliness?
With the lonelinessof that loneliness.
And, when the bulbs do flash,like an electric storm.
Driven through by her own sword,summer died last night, alone.
I may have changed, it's hard to gaugeWho says that leaving keeps you young.
In this life, who did you love,that barrenly bore our rations?
Hung from the underbelly of the EarthFalling silent as gavels in the snow.
It is too short — we commence with our dying.
Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere;of how easy I was not.
It does not sufficeas those who love each other do.
The tap of hangers,and only yours.
But inasmuch as that light is loaned,
In the folds and the branches,