1. |
When the Flood Came
03:45
|
|
||
|
WHEN THE FLOOD CAME
When the flood came I wasn’t ready
After years of thinking I was free
Traces of former lives (neatly folded, forgotten clothes,
loved-out books, broken at the spine)
Safely tucked away in precarious boxes
When the flood came I wasn’t ready
Just when I’d started going through the motions,
A ritual cleansing of biblical proportions:
Henry Miller paper boats
On a calm, muddy sea,
The ink of old letters bleeding out from shoeboxes
In a hopeless, blue murder scene
Our lives framed in by these small disasters
When the flood came I wasn’t ready
|
||||
2. |
The Year in Review
03:12
|
|
||
|
THE YEAR IN REVIEW
So let this be a document
Of this moment
In time, the testament
Of another placid year
And maybe it’ll only become clear
When we are no longer here
That none of this had to matter—
Everyone has dreams of surrender
For your sake I holed up in this town
Just for your sake
So let this be a document
Of this moment
In time, the sweetest fruit
Always turns the sourest
The tinny scent of rain,
A harbinger so clear
This buzzing in your ear
Numinous as a ghost train
Open the windows and let the world in
None of it is ours to keep
|
||||
3. |
Busy Bee
03:09
|
|
||
|
BUSY BEE
Busy bee, busy bee
We could have lived quietly
Busy bee, busy bee
On wild fennel and clover honey
Busy bee, busy bee
I’ve been waiting patiently
Busy bee, busy bee
Only your sting can set us free
|
||||
4. |
Tangiers
04:13
|
|
||
|
TANGIERS
If he can wait another five or ten years,
She will meet him in Tangiers
There used to be, between them,
A quiet respect
Based mostly on patterns
of fear and restlessness
And now he can barely remember
The way mountain air
Made her New England cheeks blush
If he can wait another five or ten years,
She will meet him in Tangiers
Life is short
But the days are long
And she has just been running
To catch up with hers
So until then he’ll try
Everything that he can
To find some meaning
In the angle of a building,
The singing of the band
They waited close to ten years
To meet in Tangiers
But time makes no allowances for the meek,
the resigned, or the weary:
When the plane touches the dark waters—
A first kiss between two strangers—
She’ll remember these things:
-The touch of her mother
-The smell of winter
And when she doesn’t materialize on schedule
(something he half-expected),
he will chalk it up to circumstances or,
weather permitting, her notorious fickleness,
and turn away, smiling,
|
||||
5. |
|
|||
|
(MIS)UNDERSTANDING ENTROPY
From oak to acorn
And acorn to oak
The dark fields cloaked
In winter’s coat
April truly is the cruelest
Our paths, a yearly palimpsest
The promise of greater clarity
Never just one thing, as it tends to be
Like that night,
we huddled close in an alcove
Escaping the wind,
the rush of it
While next door
a movie played
To a roomful of strangers
And how at home, after,
We already missed
What had barely come
To pass
From ashes, cities will rise
Our hopes and aspirations
Dwarfed by their size
The cat is always either dead, or alive
|
||||
6. |
|
|||
|
THE MODEST TRIUMPHS OF A LIFE EXAMINED
Restless July
With back stuck to bedsheet,
The house a fishtank,
Inescapable
They’ve expanded plans for the highway
Through pristine farmland
(the uxorious man always forgets
his own hand)
The ink of impossible wars
And market disasters
Is spread thin
On our brass knockers
And I’m still looking for
Something that will move me,
Some kind of levity,
Like the loon on the docks, in the rain
Vernal longings
Turn to summer warnings
Fire will spare no one.
|
||||
7. |
Remnants
02:24
|
|
||
8. |
From Here to There
03:20
|
|
||
|
FROM HERE TO THERE
A sudden, slight coolness in the air
awakens us
to the truth of our condition
(I am here and she is there)
And there’s little we can do about it
To start thinking of the house
As a home
To learn to live there alone
(I am here and she is there)
And there’s little we can do about it
The poetry of motion:
she, leaning her weight
into the glass door,
in the middle of the night
Even in our basic form,
we are seldom more than an amalgamation
of small spaces: recesses
piled upon one another,
from here to there
|
||||
9. |
|
|||
|
A UNIFIED THEORY OF EVERYTHING
The leaves rustle past
Down Church Street
Staring at your feet, I thought:
If time could only stop
Rainy days in Vermont
And the feeling
That nothing this good
Can ever last
I looked at you and said:
“You have to put your trust somewhere,
‘Cause we’re hurling through space
And nobody seems to care.”
|
||||
10. |
|
|||
|
WE MAY AS WELL HAVE BEEN KINGS
The streets are empty
And the evening is dark
So pretend this is a movie
And that you fit the part
Later, I’ll make paper cutouts
of the roads we walked
And, for you, build houses
Out of cardboard boxes
I’ll talk about Charlie Parker
And you’ll touch your crooked finger
To mine and say: “I had a dream about this,
you fell asleep on the roof.”
Or “there must be chaos,
before any semblance of order.”
Sputnik Sweetheart
Can you see in the dark?
Cause from where we are
Every spark looks like a star
I’ll talk about Charlie Parker
And touch my crooked finger
To yours and say: “We’re nowhere closer
To any kind of understanding
But tonight, dear,
We may as well have been kings.”
|
||||
11. |
|
|||
|
WHEN IT BREAKS, IT BREAKS
It’ll happen anywhere;
you’ll be in the underground station,
waiting for your train,
or under a striped Paris awning,
trying to dodge the rain
It’ll hit you like middle age
with no concern for convenience,
skins peeling wildly, everything
down to the first sign of language
It’ll happen anywhere
because there’s a bit of you in me,
and in both of us, the rest of history
I’m in the underground station,
waiting for your train,
you’re under the striped green awning,
trying to dodge the rain
|
||||
12. |
Bowhead Song
00:53
|
|
||
13. |
Longanimity
04:57
|
|
||
|
LONGANIMITY
‘Seeing you I want no other life,’
Spelled out in a book
How quietly the thought will disappear,
I need a new dream
This one has grown old and faded,
All frayed ends and tattered corners,
We used to wait
We no longer wait
We used to listen
We no longer listen
Once we were lovers and
Danced in the shadow of the tamarind tree
You sang an Indian love song,
held your shoes in one hand
Then, the squeaking of chairs, grinding of coffee—
sounds and smells of morning ritual—
I could get used to this, I thought
We used to wait
We no longer wait
We used to listen
We no longer listen
I need a new dream
This one will no longer carry me
on its shaky stilts
|
||||
14. |
You Looked So Small
03:03
|
|
||
|
YOU LOOKED SO SMALL
Early yesterday coming down the stairs
trying not to wake the baby (creaky floors)
I sat and wrote in my notebook
Voices, pictures, records
A list of things I would miss
A moment later you appeared, too
looking so small against the morning sky,
your ankles frail,
the shimmer of your summer dress
What hubris to think all that was missing
was the part of me I couldn’t find,
as if despair ever revealed more than
the limits of our imagination
Then later still, outside,
overwhelmed by the simple fear of loss
we stood in silence
while smoke rose from the factory’s chimney towers
like thin wisps of cloud-like regret
And at midnight, the birdsong
|
||||
Jake and the Leprechauns Sherbrooke, Québec
Jake and the Leprechauns are now known as Harvest Breed
www.harvestbreed.com
The Factory Session on Youtube: live versions of "When it breaks, it breaks", "Tangiers" and "Desolation Sound"
www.youtube.com/user/jakeleprechaun
... more
Jake and the Leprechauns recommends:
Everything Changes
by Harvest Breed
Debut record out April 2012!!
go to albumIf you like Jake and the Leprechauns, you may also like:
Thoughtful and poetic folk with a Cosmic Americana flavor from the Brooklyn singer-songwriter.
go to album
Downey to Lubbock
by Dave Alvin
Soulful guitar interplay form the heart of this lovely Americana collaboration from Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore.
go to album
Realize
by Tumbleweed Wanderers
Epic, folksy psych-pop, diligently crafted from sessions recorded in a beach studio and an old San Francisco mansion.
go to album
24th Street Blues
by Tom Heyman
Tom Heyman documents life in San Francisco circa 2023, refusing to succumb to easy characterization & instead capturing the city’s nuance.
go to album
Fear of Frying
by Eggs Over Easy
In honor of the band’s 50th Anniversary, Yep Roc have reissued the 1980 album by pub rock pioneers Eggs Over Easy.
go to album
