Dark Burns

from Murmurations by Simon Balto

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lyrics

A razor day in eastern Minnesota
You pull a washed-out ball of paper from your coat
Page and page and page of scattered poems
A scripted life it seems that someone else wrote

The veins within your arms are like a roadmap
A cartography of places you've not seen
You'd give your kingdom for a vessel on the high seas
With no more faces, songs, or fever-cancer dreams

If the dark burns like cigarettes on the body
Goddamn, I'm sorry for the things I couldn't do
With every heathen's breath buried here in my chest
I will pray my best for you to get good again

And the sound within your ears is just an echo
A syncopated pulsing of your blood
The sound before your face is a man breaking
Prismed sunshine on an overwhelming flood

Like a quiet that stealths and latches on so tightly
Or a dark bird dancing while follow and sway
If it's true there's fifty ways to leave a lover
How come there ain't but one to drive this thing again

If the dark burns like cigarettes on the body
Goddamn, I'm sorry for the things I couldn't do
With every heathen's breath buried here in my chest
I will pray my best for you to get good again

If the dark burns like cigarettes on the body
Goddamn, I'm sorry for the things I couldn't do
With every heathen's breath buried here in my chest
I will pray my best for you to get good again

credits

from Murmurations, released August 5, 2016

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about

Simon Balto Indianapolis, Indiana

Alt-folk. Midwest. Big voice, full heart, can't lose.

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