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  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    High-quality limited edition hardbound artbook with John William Carroll's poems typeset and 13 original illustrations by Reuben Butchart. Book contains over 32 pages and compact disk.

    Also includes immediate download of 8-track album in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.
    ships out within 5 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $12 USD

     

  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
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      $1 USD

     

lyrics

Falling water wash my ear.
There's no song pure enough
if water will not love.

I went to the pond to rave.
I tore at a tree and kicked.
I wept in a handful of leaves
and called these shenanigans prayer.

I begged a bush take fire.
"Lead me up," I cried
"to an ambiance rarer than air,
to the wide awake light I desire."
But lightening forked no stair;
no bush burned.

Falling water wash my ear.
There's no song pure enough
if water will not love.

A tree shook a fist. The fist turned into a face
and an owl opened like a book
to the place marked death and dropped.
In a small thing, mousing beneath, light stopped.

I sat by the water to stare –
to star at the water's stare.
I built a stout ship with a leaf and a twig,
freighted her with prayer,
and launched her over the dam.

Something the color of pond bottom leaped
and pulled something asleep from the sun.
A bird screamed mine, mine, mine!
Time, like a shaman, danced around me
rattling his dry pods.

Everywhere mind ate mind.
My heart beat like to die –
a fish in a dry boat bottom;
a mole in the mouth of the cat.

Falling water wash my ear.
There's no song pure enough
if water will not love.

A log counted out turtles;
like doubloons, they slipped through its knuckles.
A stick winked in the duckweed.
A newt spread her perfect toes.
What do the cold-bloods know?
Couched in the nonce of their pulse,
they measure primordial rhythms
with the strictness of a waltz,
singing ecstatic hosannas,
singing turtle-dumb.

Falling water wash my ear.
There's no song pure enough
if water will not love.

The current that flagged my reflection
didn't spirit my spirit away.
Water divided a reed;
I knew the reed to be whole.
Shadow blackened water I knew ran clear.
A ripple marbled a cloud.
I peered through my funhouse reflection,
down through the black of one eye.
A fish eddied up and kissed me
and somebody laughed out loud.

Falling water wash my ear.
There's no song pure enough
if water will not love.

A sumac stripped of leaves
made a bird's nest easy to find.
Somebody went away.
I slipped it into my pocket,
feeling left behind.

Nary a thing I spoke to that day
would give me its promise to stay.
Hell, I've watched stars die out of the world
too quickly to think up my wish.

I sat very long, very still.
I did not come to believe;
but to listen to light and to breathe.
Being was my belief
as I breathed with more mouths than a tree.

Falling water wash my ear.
There's no song pure enough
if water will not love.

©2011 John William Carrol

credits

from Nameless and Awake: Eight Poems by John William Carroll, released January 1, 2012
John William Carrol: Poem
Reuben Butchart: Voice, Piano, Electric Guitar
John Bollinger: Drums
Matt Darriau: Kaval Flute, Low Whistle, Clarinet, Bass Accordion
Jason DiMatteo: Electric Bass
Katie Down: Slit Drum, Flute, Xylophone
Noah Hoffled: Cello
Kevin McWha Steele: Voice
Mark Robert Jackson: Voice

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Reuben Butchart Brooklyn, New York

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