{Verses 1-9: Charles Bissell.}
[Verse 1]
Mineral spring road
A house for 13 grand but more is probably owed
Market isn't fair
To row over row of red houses there
[Verse 2]
Children with chalk
Trace squares around discarded lotto cards on the walk
Someone's losing bet
(a)fraid you're not leaving old Reading yet
[Verse 3]
(for) years keeping track
Of every slight, family slap & secret attack
More like rebel war
As shell follows round to the second floor
[Verse 4]
Oceans rose up
A warning left in leaves left in Eirinn Go...[thumb-worn] cup(s)/
Of d**h as stick-up man
Bearing (your) ashes to ocean by coffee can
[Verse 5]
(from) pain as you stood
To Conal asking if your turning yellow's for good
Tests showed what they could
One thing, another, but neither's good
[Verse 6]
An uncle flew up
In time his own decline would have begun in the gut
[2008:] to end in hospitals
While I stood at Reading with Okkervil
[Verse 7]
Shillington's hills
As Alps we ran each week to fill an Rx for pills
Morphine's drop is steep
One(‘s) lit in your hand while you nod asleep
[Verse 8]
Reading ran out
No exit from the sign for Hope(, PA) to center of Doubt(, PA)
“West, out West we'll run”
(you) can't run out d**h, he's already come
[Verse 9]
(our) farewell, packed the house
Thinking how Kim's dog had sensed the cancer roiling right through your blouse
(a) banshee's-coming sign
(that) the trap's snapping shut and it's really time
{Kevin's song break: Kevin Whelan}
{Whelan's lyrics aren't printed, so these are all guesses.}
You said you wanted me
Without a sound
You came around and laid down again
You wait for none
You ain't the same {?}
You laid down the fall and break all the same{?}
When all the weight
The rain goes down
My own{?}
All the time{?}
That you could ask{?}
{Verses 10-14: back to Charles Bissell.}
[Verse 10]
[2003:] (in the) break room we cry
[1969:] for winter days of rain right after Christmas, at (age) 5
To sleep safe in the back (seat)
(while) parents drove & smoked with the windows cracked
[Verse 11]
[2003 on..:] (you) spring up from the sea
In dreams when you're real young and like a sister to me*
(or) the dream (where) I threw a drink
And the one where you come as Persephone
{note from Charles: *thanks, Will}
[Verse 12]
In each I beg please mother, please
A reprise, a restart before my own rising seas
(you(‘ve)) raised a bailed man
A 50-ish kept boy in a touring van
[Verse 13]
[2013:] screening the roughs
A thousand photos in, (a) million isn't enough
Not to capture this
To slow each frame down and/or fasten it
[Verse 14]
Into something lit up
Looked at late
Year-to-date
Still in film I shoot the children grow up
[2003] won't* play brides and grooms
Because it ends with realtors walking empty rooms