Christmas In The Desert

(Recorded in July 2013 for the Local Shakedown on Radio 1190, Boulder)

Somewhere on the ragged edges of manifest destiny
Your heart expanded into mine as you lay next to me 
Horizon broken by telephone lines white jetstreams across the blue sky
Everything beautiful will change if you give it time

In any one of the Great Western cities the story will be about the same
I'll watch  you turn to dust and wash away in the desert rain
Nothing's so sacred it can't be cut down and chopped up and sacrificed
Nothing's so pretty it can't be packaged and priced and advertised

There's nothing so strange about living at the end of days
At the violent end of the Great American Plains
Where the ground once cracked and blistered into a new mountain range
All that's left to be expected is change

Somewhere on the 100 year floodplain we will lie the summer 
grass
Make love in the light July rain and watch the clouds blow past
It's not that I don't believe there's anything left worth it to save
It's just that I'm afraid its already too late. 

Floodplain w/ Myles Sloniker- Live on Radio1190

Half cups of coffee grown cold on the end table.
we all sometimes forget what we know.
it's a small small small world
and it's spinning around slow.
I straighten up, I do my laundry. 
I soak the mugs in the sink. 
I think about all the people that I used to know,
and then I try not to think. 

I've been leaving for a long time. 
I've left everywhere, everywhere I've ever been, 
and someday I will leave here. 
we could all use some practice at vanishing
because one day you too will be the vanisher. 

Catch a plane back to Colorado.
watch Denver get closer down below. 
all those long, straight straight streets,
as far as I can see out my window. 
You said not to be a stranger when I was back in town. 
but I'm afraid to call. 
bouquets left on the sides of highways. 
if you can't get lost in the west, then there's nowhere left to get lost at all. 

One at a time I will leave everyone, everyone I've ever known,
just like I left you here. 
I hope you will forgive me for vanishing,
because one day you too will be the vanisher.

I cut myself roses from your flower garden.
no one even noticed it was hardly light out in the morning.
when I go I'll return them to the underground,
down to where the sun goes when the sun goes down. 
out on the horizon, everything vanishes
into the darkness. it goes on forever. 
one by one we will have a turn
to vanish in the darkness, to be the vanisher. 

The Vanisher-Demo

I will go wherever you are.
I will drive as far as I need to. 
As the sun goes down, on Kansas or Arkansas,
I won't slow down. I'll drive the night through. 

It's just another sunset on my love for you. 

I know it's been a while, but I haven't forgotten.
I've thought of you everyday. 
My love goes on for miles and miles,
All the way west to the Great Salt Lake. 

It's just another sunset on my love for you. 
It's just another sunset, turning the Salt Flats blue. 

DowerTownes

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