Blood-stained sumac and goldenrod
bend in the wind as sundown slips behind me
If every thief leaves scattered fingerprints
perhaps there’s a chance you might come and find me
Our wreck was pulled from the old ravine
but the sirens never stopped
The echoes sweeten the memory
like Patsy Cline on some jukebox feeling crazy
I should have known when I first saw you dance
there weren’t enough hands on the clock to hold you
Huddled in our haunted apartment
burning sage like smoke could somehow raze a statue
The dreams you float while in your bed
and forget when morning hits your eyes
are collecting dust on a Greyhound bus
while you walk around surprised as a newborn baby
In the morning light
I saw a ghost reflected in the mirror
and drank a toast to things which disappear
In the morning light
I heard a faint knocking at my door
and turned away from those coming back for more
She said deja-vu is worth repeating
Cigarettes, sunsets, and the smell of gasoline
I want to hear ‘That Old Time Feeling’
and hang from the words into the spaces in between
We were laughing around the campfire
but isn’t ash all we really left?
It’s thoughts like this which make me wish
all my cards weren’t tattooed to my chest
They’re talking Civil War blues on my radio
as mother earth broadcasts the fall of man
The Devil won’t be there to see us go
and I guess God has no use for idle hands
The poor and injured lean on matchsticks
but at least the flags burn at half-staff
and soon the papers will be backdated
to protect the future from the past
In the morning light
I saw the spider’s web tucked in the chandelier
and confronted what’s never quite as it appears
In the morning light
I watched a hornet trapped inside the window screen
and walked away from those exactly as they seem
What happens to a Rembrandt
torn to pieces and left drinking at the bar?
How can this candlelight be counterfeit
when it captures wounds as open as you are?
Camouflaged in the thickets
you slipped away from me again
but in dreams you’ll come to visit
another cardinal sitting on a barbed wire fence
Across my hallway hear the old man
His lungs rattle with a cough that’ll make you shudder
Like the earthquake on the last line
of that novel I’m trying hard now to remember
When I flip back through our old pages
time seems to vanish with your eyes
green as the veins in the kale leaves
and open like the curtains for sunrise
In the morning light
I saw a train hauling timber through the mist
and let go of things too restless to resist
In the morning light
I watched a flock of geese return from the northern sky
and I welcomed those too faithful to deny
credits
from Songs from a Stolen Guitar,
released May 20, 2022
All songs by Simon Joyner
Cowardly Traveller Music, BMI
A dreamy improv-folk collage from Toronto multi-instrumentalist Clara Engel, who plays cigar box guitar, talharpa, melodica, and many more. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 20, 2022
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