JBM - STRAY ASHES (LP, 2012)


Ferry

Given all I can
For the last time
Find an easier branch
To hang your heart around
What are you standing there
Waiting for?
Given all your life plans
You should feel assured

In the balmy air
Everyone's around
Every young one that you've
Wrapped your arms around
In the fog on a ferry
Night ride to flee your shore
I wished not to you have known

Didn't it fail at the start line?
Don't we happen of the same kind?
Build your home on another fault line
And deal with your ashes there
And I'll here deal with mine

Only Now

Friend of mine
Where's your heart reside?
You were one day here
The next day gone
Disappointing nights
Of coming under your fire
I bid you my farewell

Brother, hold your heart in tight
It is one day here
The next day gone
You can toil all your life
In the winning of fights
I know the fault too well

Mother, is this how we lie?
Alone in our frozen beds
I am only now
And a long way out
Don't you feel it now more than ever?

And what then?
For all that changes, nothing
In the stick of kin
In the blowing of the wind
Are last living feelings
On account of what's to feel

You Always Keep Around

All the light
It seems to please you
Trailing mindless 
Rows of commoners on their knees
To praise your weakness
And your mind without a hold
Only feelings of a while passed
And falling in arms to keep you alive
All the lions on your leash
All their stains on your night dress
In your endless summer on the beach
You're a foal in a fortress
But there are maps to the roads
Plenty are your ways to get home
If the fog don't keep you out 

And you, you always keep around
You always keep around
Christ how you keep me down

The years have piled on
What feeling there was left
With all your running away
My faith has lost it's health
But in your time you'll know
Who fell away
The account recalled the other way
The fall of night
You left me there to stray

And still the loom
Of morning light leaves me blind
This falling out's reached it's time
Maybe I won't need you around
Maybe I don't need you now
To hold or to keep you fed

Winter Ghosts

By the window up in the bedroom
I can hear the storm come
From many roads away
And it brings the night
If the ones who died sit around me
I hope they're going to stay
And that maybe you'll arrive
In the rain that's rolling in
These summer nights
I feel you on my skin

Winter came as a load
Frozen down to the bone
I lived here half asleep
Walking nights to the road
Empty, drunk and alone
In hopes you'd come to me
Before the morning
Before you're running
But why are you running?
Where are you running?
Home?

Once I knew you
Lay my head upon your lap
Once I knew you
In your eyes a calming light
Once I knew you
And your hand upon my back
Once I knew you
In a life ain't coming back

Forests

Beast of the forest
Coward hid under the trees
Fate has it coming
For strangers so careless to be
In the palms of a famine
And imploding in sparks
In every failing a right
To cower in nights
And drown in them under relief

For all that it pains you
You sure count me out

Moving past the ballroom
A sea of lights I turned around
From the past ones I knew
Their faces blurring out
Another while again
To wait in there
For arrivals haven't even left
For the fall out with the strain
Here they laugh when you lay to die
You gave your whole life to fill a room
You gave your heart and fire
And what's become of you?

Years crawling by, straining by
Your youth,
This aged heart of mine
Still in line for you

Thames

Annie, you're drowning in your needs
Young flower in the reeds
Kiss everyone you meet
In that face there you found
It sure changed you around

And I've grown into a man
Who grew out of his feelings
Try to keep it in the dark
That we're living without meaning
Didn't I try like a fool
There ain't no counting on you

You've come a long way not to feel
We've come a long way, not for real

Moonwatcher

The wind blew down
Through the cracks of the home
And the frozen sides of it creaked
One day I'd of liked to see you come
Stay the night and fill me warm
With your sunlight
I just don't feel right

You sift through the trash
They've thrown in your lap
You're sailing past your feelings
But you can't ignore 'em
They'll again come around
I can see you drowning
In your orders assigned
In the falling in line
I wish for you not a window to crack
But for all of the sun and ground
For your feeling well

Stay your leave
The way you've turned isn't real
But I see it in your eyes
When you're calm
There's a leap in you
Face the blast
For all that you've been
What do you stand to keep
From running out the field?
There's only one way out
They'll wonder how it feels
When you wander out

Crooked Branches

In the afternoon of a summer day
I saw you walking in the lake
Yellow dress soaked up to your waist
Into the sun he led you by the hand
Smoothing for you out the sand
Nearly dying from the love he felt
But he smiled to be alive
And to know you're nearly dying
From it too

In your life gone ablaze
He held you high out of the flames
Heaven knows you've seen
The worst of things
But in his eyes the calm awakes
In you the child who lost it's way
To sail you from your
Growing up sea of pain
And I swear it when you smile
That you still look like a child to me

No matter if the rain falls on you

On Fire On A Tightrope

If you find your way
And get on your feet
One sunny day come walk with me
In lonely days
On fire on a tightrope
In dead ends I found a home

One new day off a crowded street
Above the rain began to freeze
And I watched your face
Alive in the first snow
In your eyes the light of home

In the morning tide
In a role that I had filed long away
I resolved in the deeps
In the hope to find a way
Did I become inane

Keeping Up

Stick around please
Wait out through the fall
I'm not right in the howling wind
An end tide around me
Has stayed in
The dream has not paid
I fall out of it falling weight
The faded ideals are gathering
In a walkabout tale
In a digging into dirt
I failed and returned
Flying through a fog
Peering through the cracks
For the moon
Or the fire of the sun
In reaching I've become a figurine

A calm around me
Stray ashes that fall
In low light through the backwoods
And fatal ideas that gather
In the corners while I wait
For the limited return of feeling
It ain't worth the hold out for it
Once you feel like you've become unreal
And collide which is what
I've strayed out through the fog
But I can't feel the sun or the wind
So come out with it once
In a straight action
Crawl through my window
With your heart tied to a stick
Come out with it once
I'm afraid I can't afford to wait