Written in 2011. Phalangerer recounts the futile feeling that comes when relationships and music cross paths - and boundaries.

Lyrics:
I don’t care if anyone
Hears a single note
The very core of my soul
Is every page he wrote

I won’t play for anyone
‘Cause I play for him
His flood waters and frozen winds
My burning summer skin

I love what I do when I’m with you
I’ll always respond to your furrowed brow
Forceful fancy fluttering
Phalanges
I love when your fingers linger around

I’d like to get away
And lose myself
Forget and change my name
Love someone else

Then I’ll play for everyone
For any pay
But his flood waters and frozen winds
I’ll never break his chains

I love what I do when I’m with you
I’ll always respond to your furrowed brow
Forceful fancy fluttering
Phalanges
I love when your fingers linger down

I love what I do when I’m with you
I’ll always respond to your furrowed brow
Forceful fancy fluttering
Phalanges
I love when your fingers linger around

I love what I do when I’m with you
I’ll always respond to your furrowed brow
Forceful fancy fluttering
Phalanges
I love when your fingers linger down

Written August of 2023. When we step into our own power, though changes can be overwhelmingly positive, there is equal and opposite consequence.

Lyrics:

I’ll be the happy man with you someday
I’ll be the happy man with you I’ll find a way
If I try
If you die

Spent a wild night out with my Romeo
Kissed his lips and poured my poison down his throat
Looked in his eyes
I watched him die

Struggle is the price I paid for love
Ecstasy laced with troubled prayers for luck
When I rise from the rubble won’t be left with much, oh no
Somebody lock me up

They called me Juliet bedecked in white
The virgin garter on my knee it held the knife
It’s all a lie
A waste of time

My name’s Ophelia, how do you do?
The river’s calling me to come back to my tomb
I’m just his muse
He can’t refuse

Struggle is the price I paid for love
Ecstasy laced with troubled prayers for luck
When I rise from the rubble won’t be left with much, oh no
Somebody lock me up

Lock me up
Lock me up
Lock me up

I’ll be the happy man with you someday
I’ll be the happy man with you I’ll find a way
If I try
You know I’ll try

Written in August of 2023, Eusebius describes love in its most intimate and visceral moments. In this charming and personal vignette, our protagonist fawns over Eusebius; a mysterious and poetic, albeit tortured lover. In the end she is reminded of the fragility of love, and leaves us with the lyrics “Paper thin, paper thin, Eusebius.”

Lyrics:
My dear Eusebius 
Sullen slight and serious
Where have your handsome blue eyes been?

You paint a tragedy 
And spin my yarn so easily 
Engrave your darkness on my skin 

Paper thin 
Paper thin 
Eusebius 

Your hands are kind
Your lips they taste like dandelions
You smell like leather, love and sin 

You’ve got a way with words
A process by osmosis so absurd
Your turns of phrase they’ve got me pinned 

Paper thin 
Paper thin 
Eusebius 

Carry on your way
Kiss me in the grass, take me in the leaves  
Be still, my bitter beating heart 

Carry on your way 
Dress me up in filthy fools gold chains 
Your savory stares light up my stars 

Paper thin 
Paper thin 
Paper thin 
Paper thin 
Eusebius

Written September, 2023. Florestan is a search for a perfect love.

Lyrics:

The sourness of wanting had me running for the door
Fawning for that funny face I recklessly adore
What I thought was conversation was a self-created war
An inner-monologue and nothing more

Could not believe my eyes when I saw his ashes rise
Ascended from the grave and shed his ridiculous disguise
He would not reveal the secret cities in his hands
You’re a perfect little puzzle, Florestan.

He’s a painter and a poet, he’s a soldier made of lead
An architect, a prophet - lacking basic common sense
And every conversation cost me all my self-respect
Dauntlessly I’m drowning in his debt

Could not believe my eyes when I saw his ashes rise
Ascended from the grave and shed his ridiculous disguise
He would not reveal the secret cities in his hands
You’re a perfect little puzzle
A perfect little puzzle, Florestan.

What’s the point in talking?
I’m not listening anyway
I love to over-complicate
The simple things you say

The second-handed dialogue
Is enough to drive me mad
I walk this tangled rope without a net

Could not believe my eyes when I saw his ashes rise
Ascended from the grave and shed his ridiculous disguise
He would not reveal the secret cities in his hands
You’re a perfect little puzzle,
A perfect little puzzle
A perfect little puzzle, my Florestan.

Written September, 2023. Master Raro is about fulfilling inner purpose and the mistakes we make along the way.

Lyrics:

Stars above me
They’re trying to crush me
Musing maladaptive melody

Saints adorned me
Their watchful eyes warned me -
“Don’t fall in love with poetry.”

I stood on the edge, blank burdened and bent
Waiting for color and heat
Perfectly pressed my pink painted skin
My tired eyes drifted to sleep

And how the night grew with the most precious blue
Framed in abandoned descent
That old paper crane was calling my name
To ancient prairie’s lament

Stars above me
They’re trying to crush me
Musing maladaptive melody

Saints adorned me
Their watchful eyes warned me -
“Don’t fall in love with poetry.”

Plebeian hands
And the scent of the dead
Was my paravent shield
From the chips on my heels
And the whispering wood
And the blood of the good
Soaked the soles of my shoes
Now they’re frozen in blue
There’s a wing in the sky
Brushed with rose-colored lye
A fragmented corpse
Filled with shame and remorse
When the ashes arrived
On my doorstep tonight
All that sulky smoke cleared
And it shattered the mirrors

Have you ever seen a windmill die?

Stars above me
They’re trying to crush me
Musing maladaptive melody

Saints adorned me
Their watchful eyes warned me -
“Don’t fall in love with poetry.”

Written October, 2023. This song is for a resentment I kept near and dear to my heart for a long time. In my efforts to bury my own pain, I buried myself. Gravedigger was written to dig up the hurt of the past and reclaim my own identity.

Lyrics:
Six by six by six
I dug myself into a pit
You came before I finished…it

And one by one I swallowed
Every lie I ever borrowed 
And smeared upon your sultry shadowed lips 

You stood naked in my kitchen
And sang your song into my ear
Then took it back and braided it
In her perfect, yellow hair 

What a lovely predilection 
For the simple and demure
Everything I cannot be so you love me nevermore 

I’m a gravedigger
Awakened at the will of the dead
The starlight lingers
For me 

Knocked out on the hardwood floor
By a bloody, splintered two by four 
The hand I thought was yours was mine             

So at quarter past the witching hour 
Bedecked in wedding jewels and flowers 
I rose to meet your tired, grieving eyes 

Carried by the cold wind
And fated to the fall
Your handsome hands left fingerprints on my bitter sallow heart

What a lovely predilection 
For the simple and the dull

Certainly you cannot be at my tawdry beck and call

I’m a gravedigger
Awakened at the will of the dead
The starlight lingers 
For me

The roots upon my ankles
Exhausted with decay
Shackled to your side and died 
By tender dawning day 

Forget me not 

Six by six by six
I dug myself into a pit
You came before I finished…it 

Written July 2024. “Suffer” is an ode to the closest friendship I have in my life. Often our dearest friends suffer through the biggest hardships alongside us. As tough as we try to be, our best friends see through our walls and love us through the darkest times. “I won’t let you suffer” is to say, “You are never alone.”

Lyrics:
Sit and ruminate
Under the copperplate
Let the barricades crumble and fall

I’ll be running late
Sipping lemonade
God, give me a break from it all

For I have suffered
Suffered enough
Learned my fair share of lessons
For all the miles I walk
Deep undercover
So tough
I still never listen to the saints when they talk

And talk, and talk.

See you sitting there
In your TV chair
I can’t help but stare into space

It’s too much to bear
To watch you pull your hair
Over empty prayers keeping you awake

Oh how you suffer
Suffer so much
Thickened your skin
For every mile you’ve walked
Deep undercover
You’re so tough
I still never listen to you when you talk

And talk and talk

Give me your burdens
And turn out the light
Let’s dance with our demons
Make friends with the night

We’ve been here before
In a thousand past lives
In all the worlds between
Let me say it this time

God, let us suffer

I won’t let you suffer
(Sit and ruminate under the copperplate)
I won’t let you suffer
(I’ll be running late sipping lemonade)
I won’t let you suffer
(See you sitting there in your tv chair)
I won’t let you suffer
(It’s too much to bear I can’t help but stare)