Owen Pallett Album

Cross her off the shortlist.
My blood is a red-winged bird.
The way will be lit by the bridges we burn, oh.
And come, tornado!
Carry me away from the croft.
Ruffle my hair, bear my body aloft, oh.

As the cutlass came down on a Saturday night,
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
Called away into service, for a clerical life.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.

Thought I was a sad-boy.
Now I know, I know, I know I was wrong.
Since you came along, I can see how content I had been.
It'll drive a man crazy to age from the outside in.
But I have a plan, it's a trick with a prick of a pin.

And as the cutlass came down on a Saturday night,
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.
Called away into service, for a clerical life.
Left an un-planted field, left my daughter and wife.

For a man can be bought, and a man can be sold,
And the price of a hundred thousand unwatered souls
Is a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a bit of meat and a bit of coal.
It's a little bit of meat and coal.

My body is a cage.
This union is cage about a cage about a cage.
And this, and this town too.
I'll see you once in a while but I can't be seen with you.
This place is a narrative mess.
The floor a tangle of bedsheets and battered sundress.
The ink has dried in the well.
The journey once was consequential,
Now: sequential, sequential, sequential, sequential.

When will you silence your hounds?
The eldest sons to the altar of the Eternal Sound.
Their blood is spilled at the dawn.
A nation bound to your will, still, the violin plays on.
Plays its devotional song.
Once it was, once it was so essential,
Now: sequential, sequential, sequential, sequential.

Lead on, oh horse of mine, we will climb the side of Alpentine.
Lead on, oh horse of mine, we will voice our satisfactions.
Karma is the concatenation of your actions.

I'd been living through days
Carrying no burden
But the shit of cattle
And my resignation

Until the sun rose crimson
Crept across my limbs and
I saw that they were earthen
That they decay and worsen

And from my ginger chest, there
Came the sound of thunder
I am not a father
I am not a farmer

I tremble to speak of it.
Held her in my arms and
Pressed her to my heart and
Pressed my hand o'er her lips

I murmured words of his love
I will be his baron
With him I have an ending
With him I have completion
And the cover of night

I got a message for the acolytes.
I am your man in a bloody fight.
I got a thirst for liquid gold.
I'll bludgeon 'til the body's cold.

The stony hiss of cockatrice has cast us into serfdom.
I close my eyes, and spur Imelda down the mountainside
For a liberated Spectrum.

I took No-Face by his beak and broke his jaw, he'll never speak again.
I took No-Face by his beak and broke his jaw, he'll never speak again.

My every move is guided by the bidding of the singer.
The night is split by the whistle of my amber whip
And the fire from my fingers.

Talking, what's it good for?
Absolutely nothing.
Wrestle, let's wrestle.
You can pin me to anything.

Thought I saw you in my tea leaves.
Thought I saw you in a forest flame.
I'll fill up the silence with the sound of your holy name.

Knowledge of the sea-ways, knowledge of how the water flows.
Whoever coined the phrase has never had to brave the snow.
I climbed the shroud to the top-sail and I peeked through the glass.
The curvature bisected by a wintry mizzen mast.

The scar upon my stomach, I call it my Flying V.
And every time I show it, I can feel your eyes on me.
How many islands will surrender to the blunderbuss?
And how long must we sail before you show your face to us?

Followed him out to the end of the pier.
"Don't come any closer," he cried, "I am afraid
Of the man I'll become if I lay my
Life down for a people who I don't even care for."
Face to his face, I put my
Hand into his and I tried to tell him, "No,
I've seen his work upon the panes of cathedrals,
In the sweat of the workers and the flight of the seagulls."

My words were drowned out by the sound
Of the motors and rowers, the ship as it ran aground
And from the trees came a thousand soldiers.
I went down on my knees with a spear in my shoulder.
About face, about face, I swam back
To the Victoria. I shiver with the
Memory, memory of the island dwellers
And the indifferences of the Storyteller.

The stars collected.
Each world accounted for.
Freed all the children.
Seems there's nothing more.

If I only had a rowboat, I would row it up to heaven.
And if heaven will not have me, I will take the other option.
I will seek out my own satisfaction.

From the wight lying in the barrow,
To the priest with his broken arrows.
There's a method to the madness.
They will feign an expression of sadness.
A concatenation of locusts,
And the farmers are losing their focus.
On the pitch of the Avenroe grasses
I will sing, sing, sing to the masses
Oh Heartland, up yours!

The hollow voice of our 14th century.
Too much assumption to be taken seriously.

Oh, you wrote me like a Disney kid, in cut-offs and a beater
With a feathered fringe, it doesn't suit a simoniac breeder.
Doesn't work, doesn't fly, doesn't handle.

From the wight lying in the barrow,
To the priest with his broken arrows.
There's a method to the madness.
They will feign an expression of sadness.
A concatenation of locusts,
And the farmers are losing their focus.
On the pitch of the Avenroe grasses
I will sing, sing, sing to the masses
Oh Heartland, up yours!

My homeland.
I will not sing your praises here.

As soon as I got on the horse, I forgot about the math.
Forgot about the odds against an adolescent standing up to all of Owen's wrath.
The heat of prairie summer, impossible to take.
I grab the hem and lift the fabric over my sweet head.
I know what you're looking for, and I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.

Government rule established by a dazzling light show.
A hegemony armoured with a thousand-watt head and seven inches of echo.
I keep up my velocity, my spurs are in her sides.
I don't know what I'm doing, and it is the only way.
Toward the range I'll ride, singing, I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.

"I am overrated," said the sculptress to the sea.
"I've been praised for all the ways the marble leaves the man,
And I was wrong to try and free him."
And as for me, I am a vector, I am muscle, I am bone.
The sun upon my shoulders and the horse between my legs,
This is all I know.

My senses are bedazzled by the parallax of the road.
I concentrate to keep contained the overflow.
My knuckles grip so tightly, my fingers start to bleed.
If what I have is what you need,
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.
I'm never gonna give it to you.

The wella woods of Belvedere.
The peat and moss of Avenroe.
St. Germain's canaries.
The fortress of Alpentine.
Oh my soul, my loyalty is to the East
And Spectral man, and bird, and beast.

Red soil for the taking.
Ruddy women for your brides.
All good men of valourous heart,
Consider a new start and sail today for the Heartland.

Boys run like water from the barrel to the trough.
They'll never stop their running.
Gunning for their brothers.
This house is a hostel.
It is peaceful, but it's always emptying.
Boys all want to be someone.

Haven't you heard? I am a flightless bird.
I am a liar, feeding facts to a false fire.
If pathos is borne, borne out of bullshit--in formal attire,
I'll score you a string ensemble.

I saw my son at seventeen,
The shutters made projections on his naked frame.
Now at twenty-five,
He simply cannot stay away from the ketamine.
With makeup on his sores,
He spends an hour a day composing little eulogies.
Sometimes he sends me letters,
But it's mostly garbled phrases and apologies.

But haven't you heard? I am a flightless bird.
I am a liar, feeding facts to a false fire.
If pathos is borne, borne out of bullshit--in formal attire,
Cue the Bulgarian men's choir.

I stumbled on the summit's path.
Clumsy, clumsy.
No paragon am I.
I can't even keep my shoes tied.

I've been in love with Owen ever since
I heard the strains of Psalm 21.
Standing between the choirs,
As they sang, "Laudate Dominum, Laudate Dominum".

Damn, I wrote it down, but I left it in the pocket of my other jeans.
Scrawled across the foolscap: "I don't know what your devotion means,
I don't know what your devotion means."

And up, upon the summit I can see
The one I worshipped as a boy.
The Creator, The Great White Noise.
The Great White Noise.

Charged and charging up the ridge.
The chests are empty, the coffers too.
They float in the flood, and so will you, I swear, so will you.

"Your light is spent! Your light is spent!" I cried,
As I drove the iron spike into Owen's eyes.
The sun sped cross the plains like that cinematic moment where
Humanity and nature collide.
When you think, "Everything's gonna be all right,"
Just before the hero gets a bullet in his side.

Whizzing off the clifftop,
Listening for the spatter, thirty floors below.
Down come the vultures.
I will not be your fuel anymore.

Now the author has been silenced, how will they ever decipher me?
I hope they hear these words and are convinced
You never even knew me.

I draw a bruise on your brawny shoulder,
Scratch my fingers over your tattoos.
The author has been removed.

The difficulties of my story:
Despite discomforts, despite myself, I
I reaffirm my endless devotion
To the belief that we're all of value,
We're all of virtue, and so inclined we
Fill up our cups and toast to each other,
And though I listen to the arguments
That most divergent systems employ to

Debilitate us, delineate us,
Repackage our words, demystify us,
I unceasingly affirm my love can
Cannot be measured, cannot be altered.
I know, I know it, I do affirm it
With overzealous obscurantism.
With every word and with every gesture,
I must express it. I can't define it,
But all the same I know I can describe it:

I walk o'er bridges and see the river.
A marble statue the sun has weather'd.
The stubbornness of the overgrowth and
The old memorials covered in snow. We've
Written the way the universe will go.
A righteous white horse, a man with a bow.
A sharpened bit of the mistletoe.
Scissors of fate or the fire of Surtur.
Though we're divided, the force of nature
Will put us all in the ground together

This morning I must get up
To see the world around me.
Right away, what I forgot
In seeing ourselves as words upon a paper.

The sun is up.
My arms are wide.
I am a good man, I am yours.