Joanna Newsom - Only Skin lyrics

And there was a booming above you

That night, black airplanes flew over the sea

And they were lowing and shifting like beached whales

Shelled snails, as you strained and you squinted to see

The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry

You froze in your sand shoal, prayed for your poor soul

Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl

And when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke

My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke

Then there was a silence you took to mean something

"Run, sing, for alive you will evermore be"

And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulking has gone east

While you're left to explain them to me

Released from their hairless and blind cavalry

With your hands in your pockets, stubbly running

To where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning

Well, what is this craziness? This crazy talking?

You caught some small death when you were sleepwalking

It was a dark dream, darlin', it's over

The firebreather is beneath the clover

Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever

A toothless hound-dog choking on a feather

But I took my fishing pole, fearing your fever

Down to the swimming hole, where there grows a bitter herb

That blooms but one day a year, by the riverside, I'd bring it here

Apply it gently to the love you've lent me

While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed and the string sobbed

As it cut through the hustling breeze

And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly, gone treacly

Nearly slowed to a stop in this heat in a frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath

Press on me, we are restless things

Webs of seaweed are swaddling

And you call upon the dusk of the musk of a squid

Shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib

Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes

I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it

Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened

Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking

And when the fire moves away

Fire moves away, son

Why would you say

I was the last one?

Scrape your knee, it is only skin

Makes the sound of violins

And when I cut your hair and leave the birds all of the trimmings

I am the happiest woman among all women

And the shallow water stretches as far as I can see

Knee deep, trudging along, the seagull weeps, "So long," humming a threshing song

Until the night is over, hold on, hold on

Hold your horses back from the fickle dawn

I have got some business out at the edge of town

Candy weighing both of my pockets down

Till I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them

And knowing how the common folk condemn

What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm

Being a woman, being a woman

But always up the mountainside you're clambering

Groping blindly, hungry for anything

Picking through your pocket linings, well, what is this?

Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?

I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain

Little sister, he will be back again

I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain

Spiders' ghosts hang, soaked and

Dangling silently, from all the blooming cherry trees

In tiny nooses, safe from everyone

Nothing but a nuisance, gone now, dead and done

Be a woman, be a woman

Though we felt the spray of the waves

We decided to stay, till the tide rose too far

We weren't afraid, cause we know what you are

And you know that we know what you are

Awful atoll, oh, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow

Bawl bellow, sibyl seacow, all done up in a bow

Toddle and roll, teethe an impalpable bit of leather

While yarrow, heather and hollyhock awkwardly molt along the shore

Are you mine?

My heart?

Mine anymore?

Stay with me for awhile, that's an awfully real gun

I know life will lay you down as the lightning has lately done

Failing this, failing this, follow me, my sweetest friend

To see what you anointed in pointing your gun there

Lay it down, nice and slow, there is nowhere to go

Save up, up where the light, undiluted, is weaving

In a drunk dream at the sight of my baby, out back

Back on the patio, watching the bats bring night in

While, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white

Wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped

Last week, our picture window produced a half-word

Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird

We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake

And pant and labor over every intake

I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace

Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place

Said, "Dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you

And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"

Then in my hot hand, she slumped her sick weight

We tramped through the poison oak, heartbroke and inchoate

The dogs were snapping, and you cuffed their collars

While I climbed the tree-house, then how I hollered

Well she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two

Then saw the treetops, cocked her head, and up and flew

While back in the world that moves, often, according to the hoarding of these clues

Dogs still run roughly around little tufts of finch-down

And the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland but his hand

In my hand, made them hale and harmless

While down in the lowlands, the crops are all coming, we have everything

Life is thundering blissful towards death in a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness

You stopped by, I was all alive

In my doorway, we shucked and jived

And when you wept, I was gone

See, I got gone when I got wise

But I can't with certainty say we survived

Then down and down and down and down and down and deeper

Stoke, without sound, the blameless flames, you endless sleeper

Through fire below and fire above, and fire within

Sleep through the things that couldn't have been if you had not have been

And when the fire moves away

Fire moves away, son

And why would you say

I was the last one?

All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone

Take my bones, I don't need none

Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on

Suck all day on a cherry stone

Dig a little hole not three inches round

Spit your pit in a hole in the ground

Weep upon the spot for the starving of me

Till up grows a fine young cherry tree

When the bough breaks, what'll you make for me?

A little willow cabin to rest on your knee

Well, what will I do with a trinket such as this?

Think of your woman, who's gone to the west

But I'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed

Then I'll crawl across the salt flats, to stroke your sweet head

Come across the desert with no shoes on

I love you truly or I love no-one

Fire moves away

Fire moves away, son

Why would you say that I was the last one?

Last one

Clear the room, there's a fire, a fire, a fire

Get going and I'm going to be right behind you

And if the love of a woman or two, dear, could move you to such heights

Then all I can do is do, my darling, right by you