Your Middle Name 6.11.16

Drunk on cheap wine like poison
On a rock by the ocean;
Your eyes are like sea foam
And I like the way

You smile at me like I’m something,
Like I’m not just a streetlight
On an empty road
With no one to guide home.

I feel your hands when I breathe in
I’m lost and I’m freezing.
Won’t you pull me to you?
Love pull me to you.

Breath out: you’re trapped in the seaweed
It’s ripping you from me.
Can you still see me
When you close your eyes?

I could say I love you, I’m sorry
They’re the only words I know to speak
And you’re the only part of me
Anyone could adore.

When I’m with you I forget that I’m bandaged
My skin isn’t ravaged
By the glass shards
The velvet lines.

How could I say goodbye?

Sea Foam 6.1.16

Full steam ahead
The lightning’s a looking glass
That bursts in your eyes.

I drove through the snow
I drove for two days
To see things change
To see how they rearrange.

Down at Wreck Beach
You let go of your winter clothes
And ran to the sea.

And by the bonfire
Your tan lines were glowing, love.
And isn’t it strange
How they change?
I find them beautiful.

Blue eyes on the bay;
What are you looking for?
Shifting ships with a sigh.

You picked up a shell
Said it looks like your birthmark
And you showed me its size
I said “That seems about right:
You were born in the sea foam”

The sky won’t frame you
The sun won’t shame you
Time won’t change you.

Wreck Beach 10.13.16

I limped low and lonely
Through the sand and through the snow
I walked into the sea
I tried to let it go
I tried to let it go

The moon spoke to me she said
"What do you know about love?"
Well I don't know much of anything but I
I take it as it comes
I take it as it comes

I will fall to see you when I rise
In the pink abbey light singing silence with a sigh

Sick cigarette in hand
I'd say it's time that's killing me
But if I'm still drunk on Monday morning
It's cause I'm lonely
I must be lonely

I will fall to see you when I rise
In the pink abbey light singing silence with a sigh

Aimi (Acoustic)

Lyrics

Do your lips taste like peach or more like rose?
Do you sigh in the sweetest notes?
I wanna know your name is it Suzanne or maybe Gwendolyn?
Are you another beginning or are you the end?

Could we slow dance in a parking garage?
Could you be everything that I'm not?
Could you paint the punctured moon pale pink?
Would you care that I can't sing?

Could I learn to love you?

Could I take a chunk of your left hand
To bandage mine at 3am?
Would you ward away the winds that wake me to shake?
Could you kiss clean my mangled mane?

Could you lose track of time
In the passenger seat going down I-5?
Could you look at the rolling hills of green grass
Know love is a pasture that we must pass?

Could I learn to love you?

Gwendolyn (Acoustic)

Lyrics

To the lilac light I rose from the slip-knot of my sheets,
Where I laid out in surrender;
(Bleed for me)
Wash your hands: don't bleed for me.

And I'll chase it through May--
Through all Mays if I must--
If you'll let me be your martyr.
(Made of dust)
If your martyrs are made of dust:

May the wind whip their eyes.

From forgotten night I fell to the slip-knot of my sheets,
To the ink-stains shaped like laughter;
(Laugh at me)
Will my laugh be what's left of me?

May the fall set me free.

April 22, 2017

Lyrics

Strut the spray-paint lines and road signs between MLK and the highway
Strung-out on the shattered lights, scratching at my tongue
This has gone too long
To carry on

I was sunburnt then at the twisted end of a beach towel, bent and brooding
I'd sink nine rhymes by the buoy lines, I'd torch the tenth away
I've been high too long
There's nothing wrong

Lovers in white kiss by candlelight in the causeways to the coffee shops
Where I sit and sigh and shave off time pretending to write
All the patrons look the same
But something's changed

Nathaniel Peden