Three Songs I Wrote

This is old news to the blog, but I posted three songs I did a while back on Facebook for the first time, so I'm keeping a record of it here too.

In 2010, I released an EP called Great Western Skies (which, as you've figured out by now, was just a burned CD and cut-out pieces of paper). It had four songs, an it was pretty darn fun, even though I can't really sing or play guitar all that well. I worked on a follow-up of four more songs, and it's been left undone for going on three years.

Well, one of the songs has actually been near completion for a while. It's kind of inspired by Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes ("Autumn Magician"). Maybe, one day, I'll finish the other three songs, release another EP, and mail it to you. But, until then, I recorded two other songs last year, one when I accidentally got drunk in the ol' basement with Grant, who wrote and read poetry on the spot ("Darling") and one when I stayed home sick with a supremely wild fever and tried to learn Ritchie Valens ("Olly Olly Oxen Free").

The songs can be heard here:
https://soundcloud.com/jake-kilroy

And the lyrics can be read here:

SONG #1
"Autumn Magician"
by Jake Kilroy

Hey, autumn magician, when will the spooky winds come?
I've got questions for pagan gods
about youth, nostalgia and love,
and I'll ask them without
jokes, poetry, sarcasm, threats or irony.

Which rituals do you think involve broken hearts and lovers' blood?
What spells do we try to make ourselves in basements and backyards?

Memories are like old movies,
playing on a rusty projector
until it's just you, cold and asleep,
in the empty theater.

Think of carnivals and tattoos,
and wonder which better represents you.
You can't have both, which you probably know,
sustaining some laughter and growth.

Which rituals do you think involve broken hearts and lovers' blood?
What spells do we try to make ourselves in basements and backyards?

Surely, you've tasted the salt of summer skin,
just to spit it up after too much rum
that went straight to your new autumn head
as you were finding balance in a winter bed.

Which rituals do you think involve broken hearts and lovers' blood?
What spells do we try to make ourselves in basements and backyards?

SONG #2
"Darling"
by Jake Kilroy and Grant Brooks

It was the week I couldn't sleep.
You were out of town and the dog kept me company.
I slurred my words as I cooked with wine.
Sometimes, I can't stand this heart of mine.

Darling, I built a fire for you
with hands that do shadow puppets too
as well as hold candles, cup water, fix cars,
stir pasta, wash windows, and point out shooting stars.

Let me whisk you away
to the same fields that you grew battled up on.
Let me build us a house from the trees
that cracked during your favorite lightning storm.
Let me burn those bridges of friends
that forget your birthday every single year.
Let me mouth off to the men
who said you'd look good as someone else.

From the steeple I built in my room,
I prayed to myself for the answers to unasked questions.
I wrote about my hands shaking before,
and I wrote about my heart breaking as a kid.

But my eyes have grown weary of the lines in the road.
I'm having such a hard time finding way my home,
not that I ever had an idea of where that was.
I never raked the same yard twice.

I kissed girls on nights I should've stayed in,
and I shared glass bottles with friends
that were out looking for the same sea-lost ship.

I spent those early days like how a heavyweight
spends the hours leading up to a fight,
sleepless and wistful.

Give me the wood pirates. Give me the flower boats.
Give me the Holy Grail, filled with the blood of youth.
Smear it across my mouth like a clown grin.
Put me in a tux and tell me where the party is.

Let me whisk you away
to the same fields that you grew battled up on.
Let me build us a house from the trees
that cracked during your favorite lightning storm.
Let me burn those bridges of friends
that forget your birthday every single year.
Let me mouth off to the men
who said you'd look good as someone else.

SONG #3
"Olly Olly Oxen Free"
by Jake Kilroy

Roll out the red carpet tongue to lick wounds,
filled to the salt-encrusted brims with doom.
I've got a mouth of hot teeth laced with swears,
a throat graffitied with words like a junkie prayer.

But you...you were gorgeous,
whistling dixie on the porch of America,
and me with my fever,
it just wasn't enough to remember you.

No more barley wine or royal bloodlines.
She told me that I had a smile like a jack knife.
I said, "Your black dress keeps me honest."
She said, "You act like you could keep a promise."

Hey, you.

Debutantes in mini skirts
that want to take a thrashing and give a beating,
they put their lips together and they whisper,
"Every charming man's renaissance is fleeting."

I'll never forget when I dressed well
and posed as a pioneer out on the rails.
When spring came, I pulled out my heart
and drank its insides so I wouldn't starve.

Hey, you.

Are we really looking for Christ at night
or do we just want a drinking partner that'll tip right?
Sing me a tune, precious atrium rib cage,
because we can't sleep and we won't change.

Hey, you.