Before I Leave Seattle

from Weddings, Birthdays and Funerals by Scott McRae

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about

Written in 2019

lyrics

Au revoir, California, bonsoir, hornet in a can of tuna, stings my ankle while hallelujahs, ring so faint and casually.

An elegy, for Osaka, mes amis, City Pop and Frank Sinatra tangle passages in Astoria, colliding in lighthouses, scaffolding, fickle colossus, to the tsunami that’s been promised before I leave Seattle

Speeding through tunnels and railroads, stranded like statues in paint, testaments to transit and leaving, that linger like sculptures and stains, cranes won’t collapse, despite all the rising.

Bundles of rain obscure our path while signs beware of boulders ahead, this anxious relapse, the numbing subsiding.

Sleepless, sunken vessel, after the stations shut down, the tension in my muscles won’t be relieved for another town.

Always depart, but never arriving, a benign, familiar dread from when I was six, it snowed on the gravel, rose from wood-chips towards heaven and meadows.

With the hinges breathing, I felt my legs slowly cramp, ear lobes, purple and freezing, I’d have been bored and damp among the clouds.

Streetlamp blinks while the others shine, programmed for work at a quarter to nine, to stay awake through the evening, motorist drives by half-past five, his engine like the earthquake we wait to arrive, the circuits and pistons sustain speaking.

Spiderwebs are bridges, crows are watchers, window-washers hang like a vision of Tibet in a Montana sky.

credits

from Weddings, Birthdays and Funerals, released November 6, 2020
All instruments, lyrics and vocals by Scott McRae

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Scott McRae Portland, Oregon

A dude who makes tunes and writes things sometimes, follow me on the grum for song posts and letterboxd for movie thoughts. Also comprises one half of Ishroyale.

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