Lyrics from Cigarettes and Fireflies
- Revolve Part One (Instrumental)
- Margaret/ Worship the Perfect Human Machine
- Boo Snubs and Totally Squash
- Lessons
- Flavour of Night (Robyn Hitchcock Cover)
- This Maudlin Pagliacci (Instrumental)
- Revolve
- Black-Eyed Dog (Instrumental, Nick Drake Cover)
- Opals
- Revolve Part Three, The Other Side (Instrumental)
- It’s No Reason (The Church Cover)
- Ash
- Revolve Overture, Cold White Stare (Instrumental)
- Once in a Great While
- They Saw the Fat One Coming (Strawberry Alarm Clock Cover)
- Peridot
Margaret / Worship the Perfect Human Machine
Like those money shot angels from her dad's magazines
Photographic perfection mere flesh can't achieve
So perfectly carved, she was built to relieve
Those sweaty prayers whispered through clenched teeth
But Margaret again and again and again...
The lights brightly shining, her vestments unfold
The camera captures the worth of my soul
The flashbulb ignites; we fall on our knees
Worship the perfect human machine
Garters and stockings, perfume and lace
A black mini-skirt and a beautiful face
In the fruit lies more knowledge so beg for taste
Why ever give when there's so much to take?
And Margaret again and again and again...
The lights brightly shining, she's torn from her dress
To pay for the sins I will never confess
My heart's racing faster; I'm down on my knees
Worship the perfect human machine
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Boo Snubs and Totally Squash
to thread William’s arrow through Harold’s eye
With ten thousand chords and the Song of Roland
Like a wave of Panzers rolling over Poland
But the decades left only rusting Triumphs
groaning under the load of forty four stone lions
until what remains is what you’ve not yet lost
and that’s boo, snubs, and totally squash
Weren’t you going to be be the man
crush the A.O.R’s and big in Japan
Yeah, your chick was going to be the Queen of Mars
rocking a two-piece space suit like Stella Star
But come a foggy lotus-eater’s dawn
wakes a middle-aged sad sack singing someone else’s songs
and what remains is what you’ve not yet lost
and that’s boo snubs, completely, and totally squash
Would you still love me
If I were just a little Welsh Corgi
going for walkies
down to the monkey puzzle tree
after tea
The magician knows when his spell has failed
You can read his eyes as his face goes pale
in those last few moments up on the stage
trapped under water, locked in his cage
And your words to comfort the morning after
are drowned out by the memory of that awful laughter
’cause what remains is what you’ve not yet lost
and that’s boo snubs, completely, and totally squash
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Lessons
Those at rest tend to stay at rest
Actions yield opposite an equal reations
For every lesson, my love, there’s a test
There’s a test
These are the lessons that we learned
Disorder in a system only increases
Pressure rises in proportion to heat
Things fall apart in every tinier pieces
Your Etch-a-Sketch shaken by entropy
Rinse and repeat...
These are the lessons that we learned
They taught me that nature abhors a vacuum
Like the hole in my life shape a lot like you
But nature finds a way to fill the wide, open spaces
So I know I will find someone new
If you can, I can, too
Watch me burn up all these lessons that we learned
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Revolve
as he finds a path through a bloodshot day.
On her back she’ll find the things she could never hide
with a silver flask and a prayer for fame.
She’ll deny him three times ’fore the crow of the cock, then
spill out a little of her father’s scotch, then
the room begins to spin and her innocence falls.
Moments blur; we close our eyes then we revolve.
In a room he keeps the shadow of a broken wife
with the dusty souvenirs from the good old days.
In his cellar full of all the finer things in life
there’s a cheap wine only turning sour with age.
"Swear your faith ’til the end of time, dear."
"Of course," he says, but never with his eyes, "dear."
"Hold on one second, babe, I’ve got to take this call."
Seasons blur; we choose our lies then we revolve.
With a ring of gold called Waterloo,
a forgotten child, and a languid day,
there’s a sleepy place called Nothing-Better-Left-To-Do
where their favorite colors fade to grey.
"There’s no way out, is there a way in, then?"
He asked me, sinking in a sea of gin, then
he said he wasn’t crying as he hung up on the phone.
All we do is close our eyes then we revolve.
Why believe what you see?
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Opals
Sound the ancient bell to rouse our ghostly forms, entombed in dust
To rise and fall and rise again; heroic feats to complete the hours
While the hollow shell of a locomotive sleeps under a blanket of wildflowers
Is there nothing here but stillness? No song painted on the silence?
Fallen leaves obscure the path, we've no almanac to guide us
But moonlight burns like opals on the river
The moon reflecting in my cup; jasmine blooming in my head
Across the frets, her fingers dance; I listened to what Sara said:
"Forget yourself," she sings to me,"and all you think, own, feel, or do
For those things that distinguish life are also what extinguish you
Add nothing to the stillness, and add nothing to the silence
Emptiness conjures the spell and the melody will find us
For moonlight burns like opals on the river
Our cigarettes are fireflies in the distance"
But this was my home
From my cabin window through coal smoke and steam I watched the sunrise reveal the corn
Row by row like waking pews tithing crows up to the dawn
Where once a churning river boiled with vain attempts at sinlessness
Her music blacked the water still and passions fell to windlessness
For those who will find her opals on the river
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Ash
A torch to light a path from old to young
A grand crusade or a cheap apology
For what a cold sack of ash this thing is that you’ve become
A confetti rain of falling sparks
A parade of flames glowing bright as stars
Like a somersaulting blaze of dancing jewels
Burning white and burgundy; reeling to the mad calliope
In a lake of boiling fire unquenched by human fuel
Perhaps there was a wish or just a fantasy that holds your
Pale, fading youth hostage to its ransom
A dream picked out because it was too big too live
O, what a cold sack of ash this thing is that you’ve become
The eastern sky erupts into a dazzling display of colors
So painted by another breaking sun
’Til it drags its embers ’neath the earth and settles west
on what a cold sack of ash this thing is that you’ve become
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Once In A Great While
Strike land on dark seas where there’s none on the charts
Hope sails unbound, for a moment you’ve found
Some mystic cartographer’s map of God’s heart
What could dreams spun on falling stars possibly do?
But sometimes a horoscope seems written for you
And wishes on birthday cakes sometime come true
Once in a great, great while
Once in a great while you get what you beg for
There’s more matchsticks in your pockets than dollars
When some long shot comes through, now the drinks are on you
And for one priceless moment, the future is yours
What secrets could fortune cookies really know?
Still it seems sometimes spirits speak from the tarot
And perhaps someone finds the philosopher’s stone
Once in a great, great while
Once in a great while you get what you pray for
A path opens up where a mountain stood high
Though faith starts with the line, "once upon a time",
It’s the mountains that aren’t there that are hardest to climb
What could blessings and candles and prayers really do
But Ave Maria still sends shivers through you
Don’t give up on your fairy tales, they may yet come true
In a great, great while
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Peridot
"Your expert purveyors of pointless and random anomalies to the impossibly bored
In the case to your left on the uppermost shelves, we have anthracite candies in molybdenum shells
New on your right I most highly commend prosthetic devices for invisible friends"
Slowly she stepped from the silhouette, her neat uniform like no client of mine
She jotted some notes while inspecting my wares, peering over a pince nez through cold peridot eyes
"I have come, sir, to your humble Arbitrarium, performing this task on behalf of The Queen,
We'll measure your stock and hence verify great deviance from statistical mean
For the unlikely items Her subjects deserve fall outside the range of a rational curve
Pursuant to keep with Her Majesty's Law, our machines calculate what's officially odd"
Thus she commenced her analysis; stiff as a statue I stood paralyzed
Madame Inspector's test brought me no fear, but I was transfixed by those exquisite peridot eyes
"Welcome back to the Arbitrarium," I led the Collector to his usual chair
"I noticed your vessel last night in the port and set aside something especially rare
Fantastically useless, completely unwise, yet such skill it required to bring you this prize
Encased in fine crystal, hermetically sealed, taxidermic suspension via magnetic field!"
I placed before him the platinum box and lifted the lid to reveal its surprise
His face lit with childish joy as he beheld the curious beauty of those peridot eyes.
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