All Things Must Pass

by George Harrison

A sunrise doesn't last all morning
A cloudburst doesn't last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It's not always going to be this grey

All things must pass
All things must pass away

A sunset doesn't last all evening
A mind can blow those clouds away
After all this, my love is up and must be leaving
It's not always going to be this grey

All things must pass
All things must pass away

All things must pass
None of life's strings can last
So, I must be on my way
And face another day

Now the darkness only stays the nighttime
In the morning it will fade away
Daylight is good at arriving at the right time
It's not always going to be this grey

All things must pass
All things must pass away

A Dream Without Pain

by Nicole Atkins

I woke up from a nightmare to a dream
I've been known for singin in my sleep
It's all been such a blur
The devil's had his turn
May my path be lit up by the bridges that I've burned

Say goodbye to Santa Fe
You and I will never be the same
Bye to sorrow and to blame
I want a dream without pain

I woke up from a nightmare to a dream
Riding shotgun in the mercy seat
It's all been such a blur
And now I've found the nerve
May my path be lit up by the bridges that I've burned

Ellum's deep and Austin's low
You can stay there but I have to go
You can stand there in the flames
I want a dream without pain

I woke up from a nightmare to a dream
The most beautiful dream

Surrender Under Protest

by Mike Cooley

From the comfort zone of history
On the lips of trusted loved ones
To the wounded fragile minds of angry youth
No sooner was it over
Than the memory made it nobler
A selective means by which to point the view

If it's all you can remember
Then it's been that way forever
And for six long generations it's been told
That among the fallen was tradition
That tradition was the mission
That the wrongness of the sin was not the goal

Does the color really matter
On the face you blame for failure
On the shaming for a battle's losing cause
If the victims and aggressors
Just remain each other's others
And the instigators never fight their own

Compelled but not defeated
Surrender under protest if you must
Compelled but not defeated

Less Like Scars

by Sara Groves

It's been a hard year
But I'm climbing out of the rubble
These lessons are hard
Healing changes are subtle

But every day it's
Less like tearing, more like building
Less like captive, more like willing
Less like breakdown, more like surrender
Less like haunting, more like remember

And I feel you here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful
It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
Look less like scars and more like character

Less like a prison, more like my room
It's less like a casket, more like a womb
Less like dying, more like transcending
Less like fear, less like an ending

Just a little while ago
I couldn't feel the power or the hope
I couldn't cope, I couldn't feel a thing
Just a little while back
I was desperate, broken, laid out
Hoping you would come

And I need you
And I want you here
And I feel you

And I know you're here
And you're picking up the pieces
Forever faithful
It seemed out of my hands, a bad situation
But you are able
And in your hands the pain and hurt
Look less like scars
And more like character

Trading Away

by Mark Linsenmayer

One leads to another
And the passing of days
Not too easily lived through
And then traded away

When you struck out in anger
When you were silent and cold
When you were walking with eyes closed
Where did you think you would go?

One thing led to another
Another led you astray
And you were left where you're standing
With no reason to stay

When you're pushing words at them
They don't believe what you say
Can't you see it in their eyes
As they're backing away?

Twisted up like an oak tree
Standing in open air
It's like you're trapped 'neath something heavy
That's no longer there

I guess you thought you'd have other days
You never knew you were trading away

One thing leads to another
Another leads you astray
And you're left where you're standing
With no reason to stay

Speed Trap Town

by Jason Isbell

She said, 'It's none of my business, but it breaks my heart'
Dropped a dozen cheap roses in my shopping cart
Made it out to the truck without breaking down
Everybody knows you in a speed trap town

It's a Thursday night, but there's a high school game
Sneak a bottle up the bleachers and forget my name
These 5A bastards run a shallow cross
It's a boy's last dream and a man's first loss

And it never did occur to me to leave 'til tonight
And there's no one left to ask if I'm alright
I'll sleep until I'm straight enough to drive, then decide
If there's anything that can't be left behind

The doctor said Daddy wouldn't make it a year
But the holidays are over, and he's still here
How long can they keep you in the ICU?
Veins through the skin like a faded tattoo

Was a tough state trooper 'til a decade back
When that girl who wasn't Mama caused his heart attack
He didn't care about us when he was walking around
Just pulling women over in a speed trap town

But it never did occur to me to leave 'til tonight
When I realized he'll never be alright
Sign my name and say my last goodbye, then decide
That there's nothing here that can't be left behind

The road got blurry when the sun came up
So I slept a couple hours in the pickup truck
Drank a cup of coffee by an Indian mound
A thousand miles away from that speed trap town

This Peace

by Sara Groves

So many words to say
But I'm opting for silence
So many days to live
I thinking I'm sitting this one out
'Cause something I've been chasing
Finally stop to let me catch it
Something I've been longing for
And dreaming about

It's a whisper in my ear
It's a shiver up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel
For all that's right
It's a mystery appeal
That's been granted me tonight
This peace

It's something so elusive
Something close but far away
It's the home that I can't live in yet
Somewhere in outer space
And sometimes I barely miss it
When I walk into the room
The curtains are still swaying
And I feel the air move

It whispers in my ear
And it shivers up my spine
It's the gratitude I feel
For all that's right
It's a mystery appeal
That's been granted me tonight
This peace

No time to grab a camera
No time to write it down
Just time enough to breathe it in
And linger

Tonight, Tonight

by Billy Corgan

Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave
Without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change, the less you feel

Believe, believe in me
Believe that life can change
That you're not stuck in vain
We're not the same
We're different tonight

And you know you're never sure
But you're sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade
In your city by the lake
The place where you were born

Believe, believe in me
Believe in the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe
There's not a chance tonight

We'll crucify the insincere tonight
We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight
We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you tonight

Here's a New Thing

by Paul Weller

The dreaming mind is always sweet
It's wonderful and time to agree
Here's a new thing
Got to change it up
Got to let go of the past
For a new thing
For some new ground
Only change will make it last

The hardest thing is letting go
But once you do, life starts to flow
Here's a new thing
Got to change it up
Got to let go of the past
For a new thing
For some new ground
Only change will make it last

Kindly Spring Is Here Again

by John Newton

Kindly spring again is here,
Trees and fields in bloom appear;
Hark! the birds with artless lays
Warble their Creator’s praise.

Where in winter all was snow,
Now the flowers in clusters grow;
And the corn, in green array,
Promises a harvest-day.

Lord, afford a spring to me,
Let me feel like what I see;
Speak, and by Thy gracious voice,
Make my drooping soul rejoice.

On Thy garden deign to smile,
Raise the plants, enrich the soil;
Soon Thy presence will restore
Life to what seemed dead before.

America

by Paul Simon

'Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together
I've got some real estate here in my bag'
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies
And walked off to look for America

'Kathy,' I said, as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
'Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I've come to look for America'

Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said, 'Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera'

'Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat'
'We smoked the last one an hour ago'
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field

'Kathy, I'm lost,' I said, though I knew she was sleeping
'I'm empty and aching, and I don't know why'
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for America

Little Gidding (Pt. III)

[Pt. II here]
by T.S. Eliot

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between
                     them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life,
Being between two lives—unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past. Thus, love of a country
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
And comes to find that action of little importance
Though never indifferent. History may be servitude,
History may be freedom. See, now they vanish,
The faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved them,
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.

Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
If I think, again, of this place,
And of people, not wholly commendable,
Of no immediate kin or kindness,
But of some peculiar genius,
All touched by a common genius,
United in the strife which divided them;
If I think of a king at nightfall,
Of three men, and more, on the scaffold
And a few who died forgotten
In other places, here and abroad,
And of one who died blind and quiet
Why should we celebrate
These dead men more than the dying?
It is not to ring the bell backward
Nor is it an incantation
To summon the spectre of a Rose.
We cannot revive old factions
We cannot restore old policies
Or follow an antique drum.
These men, and those who opposed them
And those whom they opposed
Accept the constitution of silence
And are folded in a single party.
Whatever we inherit from the fortunate
We have taken from the defeated
What they had to leave us—a symbol:
A symbol perfected in death.
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
By the purification of the motive
In the ground of our beseeching.

[Pt. IV here]

Reluctance

by Robert Frost

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept
The end of a season?

Already Yesterday

by Steve Kilbey

It's already yesterday
We're off the calendar
I heard the sirens play
Just like an orchestra
Mechanical bird of prey
Sing for your emperor
Last broken flash of love
Still in the camera

We don't feel those locks and chains
We won't listen to the lizard part of our brains
Giving the orders
Another morning we'll be gone
I start the car for Ten Mile Beach
And maybe Avalon across the water

It's already yesterday
And nobody's answering
Disconnected, drift away
Nobody's questioning
Head silver, feet of clay
Who is surrendering?
They fall in our heyday
I am remembering

We can't feel those aches and pains
We won't listen to the voices in the city rain
Giving the orders
Another morning I'll be gone
I start the car for Violet Town
And then to Babylon, over the border

The Dry Salvages (Pt. III)

[Pt. II here]
by T.S. Eliot

I sometimes wonder if that is what Krishna meant—
Among other things—or one way of putting the same thing:
That the future is a faded song, a Royal Rose or a lavender spray
Of wistful regret for those who are not yet here to regret,
Pressed between yellow leaves of a book that has never been opened.
And the way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.
You cannot face it steadily, but this thing is sure,
That time is no healer: the patient is no longer here.
When the train starts, and the passengers are settled
To fruit, periodicals and business letters
(And those who saw them off have left the platform)
Their faces relax from grief into relief,
To the sleepy rhythm of a hundred hours.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past
Into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left that station
Or who will arrive at any terminus,
While the narrowing rails slide together behind you;
And on the deck of the drumming liner
Watching the furrow that widens behind you,
You shall not think 'the past is finished'
Or 'the future is before us'.
At nightfall, in the rigging and the aerial,
Is a voice descanting (though not to the ear,
The murmuring shell of time, and not in any language)
'Fare forward, you who think that you are voyaging;
You are not those who saw the harbour
Receding, or those who will disembark.
Here between the hither and the farther shore
While time is withdrawn, consider the future
And the past with an equal mind.
At the moment which is not of action or inaction
You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being
The mind of a man may be intent
At the time of death"—that is the one action
(And the time of death is every moment)
Which shall fructify in the lives of others:
And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare forward.
                              O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination.'
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
                                   Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

[Pt. IV here]

Teen Age Riot

by Thurston Moore

Everybody's talking about the stormy weather
What's a man to do but work out whether it's true?
Looking for a man with a focus and a temper
Who can open up a map and see between one and two

Time to get it
Before you let it get to you
Here he comes now
Stick to your guns and let him through

Everybody's coming from the winter vacation
Taking in the sun in a exaltation to you
You come running in on platform shoes
With Marshall stacks to at least just give us a clue

Ah, here it comes
I know it's someone I knew

Teen age riot in a public station
Going to fight and tear it up in a hypernation for you

Now I see it
I think I'll leave it out of the way
Now I come near you
And it's not clear why you fade away

Looking for a ride to your secret location
Where the kids are setting up a free-speed nation for you
Got a foghorn and a drum and a hammer that's rocking
And a cord and a pedal and a lock, that'll do me for now

It better work out
I hope it works out my way

'Cause it's getting kind of quiet in my city head
It takes a teen age riot to get me out of bed right now

You better look it
We're going to shake it up to him
He acts the hero
We paint a zero on his hand

We know it's down
We know it's bound too loose
Everybody's sound is around it
Everybody wants to be proud to choose

So who's to take the blame for the stormy weather?
You're never going to stop all the teen age leather and booze

It's time to go round
A one man showdown, teach us how to fail
We're off the streets now
And back on the road on the riot trail

Like a Rolling Stone

by Bob Dylan

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, 'Beware doll, you're bound to fall'
You thought they were all kidding you

You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hanging out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it

You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say, 'Do you want to make a deal?'

You never turned around to see the frowns
On the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're all drinking, thinking that they got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you'd better take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe

You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal

Elephant

by Jason Isbell

She said, 'Andy, you're better than your past'
Winked at me and drained her glass
Cross-legged on a barstool like nobody sits anymore
She said, 'Andy, you're taking me home'
But I knew she planned to sleep alone
I'd carry her to bed, sweep up the hair from her floor

If I'd f—ked her before she got sick
I'd never hear the end of it
She don't have the spirit for that now
We just drink our drinks and laugh out loud
And bitch about the weekend crowd
And try to ignore the elephant somehow

She said, 'Andy, you crack me up'
Seagram's in a coffee cup
Sharecropper eyes, and her hair almost all gone
When she was drunk, she made cancer jokes
Made up her own doctors' notes
Surrounded by her family, I saw that she was dying alone

I'd sing her classic country songs
And she'd get high and sing along
She don't have much voice to sing with now
We burn these joints in effigy
And cry about what we used to be
And try to ignore the elephant somehow

I've buried her a thousand times
Given up my place in line
But I don't give a damn about that now
There's one thing that's real clear to me
No one dies with dignity
We just try to ignore the elephant somehow

Lay My Burden Down

by Aoife O'Donovan

Going to lay my burden down
Lay my body in the ground
Cold clay against my skin
I don't care at all

Can't seem to find my piece of mind
So with the earth I'll lay entwined
Six feet underground
My feet are warm and dry

When I get to the other side
I'll put your picture way up high
But I'm not coming back to you
It's just too far
It's just too far

If I was cast out on the sea
Would you come and look for me
Or would you just let me sink
Beneath the waves so blue

What if I had learned to fly
I'd fly all night till day drew nigh
I'd perch down upon a branch
And scan the crowd for you

When I touch my feet on the land
I'll kiss your face and take your hands
But you know I'm not here to stay
It's just too far

Can't you hear me cry?
My bones are broke, my tongue is tied
The moon is swaying back and forth
Against the navy sky
It's all that I can see
My body's trembling on my knees
Have a little mercy on me
Run away and hide

When I sleep the angels sing
But I cannot hear a thing
Eyes closed
Dreaming of the better days gone by

When I wake the trumpets play
And I'm standing at the gates
Fall down in joy
I know my race has just been run

When I was young my mom would say
Life is hard, but that's okay
If you can make it through the day
It's not that far
No, it's not that far

Shadow of the Sun

by Paul Weller

Do you still feel the same way about it?
Like you always said you would
Or has time rewritten everything?
Like you never dreamt it could

Remember when we wanted to fly forever
On a magic carpet ride
Forever seems a long time
Cutting us down in size
No matter how hard we try

I could see all I had done
Just chasing dreams across the fields
In the shadow of the sun
I plan to have it all while I'm still young
And chase the fields across my dreams
In the shadow of the sun

Once upon a time I might have told you
But now nothing seems that plain
However much we're changing
There are some things the same
And those same things still say

I could see all I had done
Just chasing dreams across the fields
In the shadow of the sun
I plan to have it all while I'm still young
And chase the fields across my dreams
In the shadow of the sun