YouLyric
Sign in
Sign up for free
Anticon
Share
The Pedestrian
What's this song about?
Generate meaning
1
1.
2
A dead man's tag on the electrical box;
3
through which god's hand this hell of naming?
4
'Till its black birdcall is let from its locks:
5
a thrown shadow of a thornbush hanging,
6
to lure with its lines this volume of doubt:
7
Do the bees brew honey in the lion's head,
8
or is one, in fact, crowned among the fowl
9
convened curbside for a bag of old bread?
10
Between a climbing sun and a sinking one,
11
the world, it intervenes; "Can any be saved,"
12
the tag, it asks, in a tongue so church
13
that all sing who pass to quell a moment
14
the lowing lawsuits of a boneyard's throat.
15
And when the rap ceased, to which was said,
16
"You was let down, at least, with a golden thread."
17
O let me down, at least, with a golden thread.
18
2.
19
The spell of remembering, sung by the left rear wheel
20
of stolen shopping cart on the shadow banks
21
of a gravel lot, that dark-brushed blot
22
on the haunted catscan of a mapmaker's skull.
23
And beneath its pulse-rattle, a vox humana demanding
24
"Do you rest each moment in the palm of the beginning?"
25
Have you washed body and all in the blood of sirens?"
26
A cart-driver, one smashed heel in either world,
27
black tarp lined against the wind like the flattened husk
28
of the dark that falls behind him,
29
in a city settled by a gold rush,
30
cold renning razors down his lung's length.
31
III.
32
Meanwhile, in the eye of a sinking second,
33
the renegade province of a lone leaf,
34
an omen drowning out a song's demands
35
with it's private weight against a brittle stem
36
drifts into it's whole self
37
on a desert stretch of charnel concrete.
38
4.
39
"When is the time to pursue a life of adventure rather than
40
a life of maintenance? How about right now? Welcome to
41
passion, profit, and power..."
42
Imagine my embarrassment
43
on Take Our Daughters To Work Day:
44
this dollar book of selected Lorca,
45
the office of grass in Oakland
46
where she might watch a bum move ten feet
47
every two hours to stay sleeping in the sun
48
(because his crushed can caravan carries the night).
49
Will I point at the ledge of the Hotel Nash and say,
50
"Line-break in the cloud-book,"
51
or at an old man in a window,
52
"Single drop of bottled father"?
53
5.
54
Some things leave for which there is no comeback tour,
55
things this humble album of hours
56
cannot hope to record, cannot help but record.
57
And this,
58
is this a test press of wet flesh?
59
Or the release date of a breastplate's shallow breath
60
billowing a shrink-wrap net
61
blown by the aspirate at the head of the deathless,
62
"What's next?"
63
Noting my share in a subsid of Sunset Casket Outlet,
64
I ask aloud, "Is a record label not a miracle yet,
65
with all the mortal prayer, furta sacra, and forgery
66
you'd expect it to beget?"
Pedestrian At Best - Courtney Barnett
155 views
0 meanings
Go Pro
Unlimited meanings · Priority generation
Upgrade
