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The Wilds of Your Heart

by Nick Stiner

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1.
Well I came out screaming Like everyone the same I took my mother’s looks But I got my father’s name I wasn’t baptized like my brothers But what can I say No coat of water will ever Hide that devil’s face I shook off some bridle But still taste that bit That past that lasts in my teeth No matter how much I spit But if I should wander and never plant my feet Leave me with these strings and another dream I got this skull so ancient Still can’t contain the sky Just some fond old renderings That deceive the memory of my eyes So I got hungry for visions The glitter that calls crows Cause I wanted to hold this earth Before I gave it my ghost But if I should falter, if I should fail Dig a hole in the garden and place me there.
2.
Torch 04:18
I divorced the shadow of my shape From the huddled herd of murmured names To count my bones in the cover of the brush In the tangle mass of hair I’d find Seed of grass and climbing vines And the scent of smoke, from that fire gleaned Where we sang our songs on granite beds And ate our bits of unleavened bread With the tattoo of the stars across our shoulders I catalogued the blood that bled From kin and myth on fields of red So I could hold that weight of terror in my veins The dust of days and the names through age Held down firm from those heavy rains Pressed like petals beneath my page I beg for water from bended bough And those lovely trees would tip their crowns So I could live my royal life for one more day ‘cause I arose without a noble birth But I know just what my life is worth The only thing I truly ever owned But those trade winds try and keep me tau(gh)t Between what I need and what I should want All that fiction feathered from the steel that scrapes the sky Cause they dreamt gold for me in the gilded age But I woke to work at a lower wage When all I wanted was a peace to call my own There’s forgotten gods in our shattered blood Held by threads of a single sun Still poised to burn this stage from out your eyes The actors will sing of a lion’s mane And a fractured pearl on the abyssal plains And a thousand sweeping visions to hard to hold In these hands I got, that are hardly grown They clasp and scratch, but cannot hold A single second swollen in this space So I’ll chase that color back through the prism To find the light that bore the beginning And touch the flame that hunts the vernal bloom Cause this dust contains every beating heart Like hooves of horses dancing through the dark, We’ll carry that torch just to see how far.
3.
You keep on pulling upon your hem Showing those men just how you’re made You say, “I don’t wanna hear your blame You know we all just gotta get paid” And “their ain’t no messiahs here But some clowns with a 2 bit act If you’re really looking to ascend They’ll sell you something in the back” Everyone has their reasons And they’re not hard to find I know you got yours love, But that don’t mean that they are mine I see a heart full of fear and love Down upon their knees Supplicating to the shepherd Because they believe they are just the seed Their only wish is to kiss the hand With which that they’ve been sown But I fear if you don’t stand up You just might never grow And bend a little closer So I could hold you in the light You say” I have found what is wrong here But, lord knows if I know what’s right I can smell the sweat on the restraints And I can hear that crowd roar They tasted just a bit of you blood But they still want more You say, “if I could only suffer this weight If I could only suffer their glance After they asked me to sing After they forced me to dance Do you think that would solve this Do you think then they’d see: The flesh and blood that made them Is the same as a man like me.
4.
Climb in to this crucible of daffodils and rust Where spring is born from winter’s war And summer’s fevered blush We’ll lose our names among the grain Like gravel in the grass But this branch of blood and this rutted mud is the mettle of my cast With barb wire and bailing twine, I’ll tie my voice in to this verse Like a troubadour with those songs of lore- Of Love, loss, mirth. Cause I was filled with wine and wanderlust As I wandered down this road Honey on my tongue, this song in my lungs, I let that feeling go; So it could rise-rise-rise ‘til it filled your eyes, until it filled these skies but I’m a gear fixed between the engine and the steam my furnace heart could ignite the spark in this dynamo of dreams but I get tangled in the gossamer of my mind and modernity my graffiti thoughts on these vacant lots where labor was left to bleed when the pistons seize I retreat across these suburban plains where my hand can graft this withered path in to the ancient orchards veins trampled grass and apple cores, and days stained by maple pitch if this fabric of time could be only mine I’d take it stitch by s t I t c h So I could lie-lie-lie Beneath the shawl of night In this tapestry of light
5.
Wild! 03:35
We kept our simple faith But discarded all the names Sloughed like skins across these western plains We’ve forgotten all our shame Standing Naked and unafraid Sayin’- let the worst be devoured by that flame Because we were magnified in the motion of the sun With the moon subdued it showed us where to run Cause we were wild Wild like the wind And I know that it’s seen war But what else are these bodies for? As our vagrant eyes fell across the eastern shores We would gather up debris That the tides would leave Some forgotten shipwrecked offering We receive them like a prayer That we sift like seed across the open air Cause we were wild Wild like the wind
6.
The Hunt 04:23
I was tall as young timber in the old growth of your eyes Compressed and stretched in vectors, and smoothed by steady time But my heart would mimic phrases; old rhythms born upon the tides It was a stampede of autumn leaves, gunshots, and swinging scythes But like a tear inside the tide pool or a seed swallowed by the sand My voice grew weary in the caverns of a man So hide me in the hoof prints, in the hollows of this path Because I am the story, not the page in which it’s passed I run with the foxes on the hillside, with the horse and hounds! I’m that shadow moving like a worship across the grounds You can cast your curses, you can forge your prayers But I’m that spirit moving without the fear of all those snares. But our memories are soaked in kisses and kerosene Light the match and this all is but a dream But craft for me this covenant from all the burdens we have shared To lift the beast above the whips that fills the air But you can dress yourself in fine furs If you think that would save you now Remember my darling there’s no safety in that crown You’ll feel the slack grow so loose against your rei(g)ns You’ll hear the concert in the shaking of those chains Cause I run with the foxes on the hillside, with the horse and hounds With that mighty huntress, who casts aside her shroud With the band of brothers who toil hard in the noonday sun With truth outspoken in the barrel of your guns.
7.
Feral Scream 03:21
You fostered a feral scream in the bones that framed your breast And your heart resounded like a drum that pounded The skin stretched across your chest Your blood would wind in cursive lines Until it spelled the flesh of your motion Like the wind on waves should spread the rays of warmth across the ocean Til it settles on your foreign land, til it gives the strength to your hands You say I’ll burn this bridge and sleep in the ditch But I won’t construct that dam or I’d be dammed So the river ran like a hundred hand trying to feel the face of that floor But you know that face would be erased And one day be restored Because those sediments lay like tenements all sprawled across the ground They all dissolve and re evolve In this timeless passing sound Oh my bride of May! Your vows like outstretched snakes So sovereign and solemn Like ivy up the column, begging for the fall Because all those moving lips Seemed to form some judas kiss And Samson’s final act Was your only growing wish In the din of days and the nights that ached, you tried to preserve your shape Like a reed in water or the blade of slaughter- Without fear and without faith Then in the failing light you gave a savage cry among the multitudes of mouth It sung like a thunder cloud so low and loud While the birds all headed south For fear of rain.
8.
Kiss Flame 02:25
Kiss me like a flame Keep me like a name Caught inside your throat Waiting to be spoke Then lose me like a dream One that troubles you in sleep Those wolves with hungry mouths That feed upon your doubts I’ll fashion us a blade One that cuts away all faith Leaves you naked in the flesh The way I love you best Then we’ll both go up in smoke Giving up our ghosts The jewel inside this absence Is the ember in the ashes
9.
You say you’ve seen the light But you know your jesus was not white He was darker than the sands that cover these lands As I cry out in the wind If we pulled the rafters from our eyes We could see this soft and splintered light I could hold your sight to the sky as the chemical trails pass by But you say “oh Jim Crows died”, But he wears a suit and now he dons a tie And I ain’t saying your to blame for this shame, but be aware of how you’re made Because you know these stripes and stars Can come to look like prison bars When your down below in that hole where the stars can hardly glow How quickly we forget the past And how swiftly it will come back And I aint no prophet, nor priest just a man who’s seen defeat At the hand of those who draw the line Those that write the crimes And all those eyes cast down while this war is all around I ain’t got no redeemer So I lay beneath these cedars Where the theater dies down and my mouth can make an honest note come out A thin voice in the choir A spark inside the fire That could range so wide and swallow this night, then the dawn would burn so bright
10.
There was pollution in my veins So I cast off from these shores Left those chimes beneath your window So you could remember me in storms And the cold wind would blow, shaking them like so many bones And while that breeze would conjure waltzes Singing dance macabre dance I’d two step by the devil with That fiddle in his hands I would fall across the fault lines I felt that fire breath my name It said, “son you can run, but one Day you’ll come to sleep within these veins.” So I felt the brand of vices And the virtue of the scars My life was speckled moments Like the night littered with stars I would chase the moon in circles To hold its fullness in my view But it undressed inside the darkness And that is when I knew; That the resurrection of my love Would come barren and unbound That I would have to lose myself If I was ever to be found And the shadow of my desire I should keep within my hands Til it can shine like diamonds across this land So I held these arms abandoned Like the winter’s naked branches Waiting on the skyline For the blossom and the balance And when that spring sun shown And laid a fever through these trees I released a handful of violets My faith just blowing on this breeze I said so summon up those storms, Those spring symphonies Put that thunder in mind And lay that lighting at my feet We’ll promenade through prairie fires As the rain would crash like castanets And from the quiet hiss of cinder Our tender secrets grow again If you can’t reconcile the tame and wild Lose the lever on this cage With tethers untied our fledgling flight Would be weak for all its age But with these open doors You could explore the wilds of your heart And there my lover, we shall start.
11.
If you domesticate these wild eyes And lay all the tall grasses low And hide all that’s shown well oh my my And lionize these warrior cries And put a heat inside this blood As if there wasn’t enough all my life Then you’d make this war Between these glacial tides and these traffic lights My motion finally comes to rest Wire-drawn by footsteps to spell my time If I save some seeds and a few good teeth And put some kind words on my tongue I hope that’d be enough to get me by So I could lie, so I could just abide In the last of this fading light

about

Recorded in a crowded apartment over the long Vermont winter, Nick's third album is finally complete! You may hear room mates, the jangle of Magellan's collar, water pipes, trains, and F-16's, but for the most part it's music. Thanks to all for listening.

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released May 15, 2013

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Nick Stiner Burlington, Vermont

For more information on Nick, his shows, and his music, please visit his official website (link below).

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