lyrics from Songs for Gonners

when I went to meet my father
he did not know my name
but found the face was so familiar
he let me in the game
I told him I was very dry
and so he filled my cup
and dealt his five card hand face down
and dealt me mine face up

so I felt like I was drowning
in his poker eyes
then he asked my mother's name
and I was forced to lie
his old hand was shaking as he
reached down for his gun
but I beat him to the draw
and there the game was won

him laid out across the table
green felt stained with red
I mumbled it is finished
and went upstairs to bed
to lay upon his ghost white sheets
there to dream and swoon
about a bull the color of gold
drinking in the moon

disharmony and the fear
that I was under water
then the moon gently kissed me
and turned into my daughter
i said, "I don't know you." she said,
"For your sake...
you had better tell the truth
or you will never wake"

the music that used us
that in time refused us
as the vision and thirst
of the ground

loved the bright feather
whether or not
a breath drawn alone
makes a sound

and the vessels so broken
are still as the shadow
perfect and joyously thrown

now in their gambols
of fancy and fact
looped from the lost
to the known

blue grows the wood
that finds it's a fiddle
the reel of a name
with a trill

of badges and bandages
favored and stranded
in grace to a powerful will

and the music that used us
with rhyme will reuse us
turn to the hooded and bow

that that excecutions
excused by the sky
a breath drawn alone
must allow