In California

Album: Have One On Me (2010)
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  • My heart became a drunken runt
    On the day I sunk in this shunt
    To tap me clean
    Of all the wonder
    And the sorrow I have seen
    Since I left my home

    My home, on the old milk lake
    Where the darkness does fall so fast
    It feels like some kind of mistake
    Just like they told you it would
    Just like the tulgeywood

    When I came into my land
    I did not understand
    Neither dry rot, nor the burn pile
    Nor the bark-beetle, nor the dry well
    Or the black bear

    But there is another
    Who is a little older
    When I broke my bone
    He carried me up from the riverside
    To spend my life in spitting-distance
    Of the love that I have known
    I must stay here, in an endless eventide

    And if you come and see me
    You will upset the order
    You cannot come and see me
    For I set myself apart
    But when you come and see me
    In California
    You cross the border of my heart

    Well, I have sown untidy furrows across my soul
    But I am still a coward
    Content to see my garden grow
    So sweet and full of someone else's flowers

    Sometimes I can almost feel the power
    Sometimes I am so in love with you
    Like a little clock that trembles on the edge of the hour
    Only ever calling out "cuckoo"

    When I called you, you, little one
    In a bad way
    Did you love me?
    Do you spite me?
    Time will tell
    If I can be well
    And rise to meet you rightly
    While, moving across my land
    Brandishing themselves
    Like a burning branch
    Advance the tallow-colored, walleyed deer
    Quiet as gondoliers
    While I wait all night, for you
    In California
    Watching the fox pick off my goldfish
    From their sorry, golden state
    And I am no longer afraid of anything
    Save the life that, here, awaits

    I don't belong to anyone
    My heart is heavy as an oil drum
    And I don't want to be alone
    My heart is yellow as an ear of corn
    And I have torn my soul apart
    From pulling artlessly with fool commands

    Some nights I just never go to sleep at all
    And I stand
    Shaking in my doorway like a sentinel
    All alone
    Bracing like the bow upon a ship
    And fully abandoning
    Any thought of anywhere but home
    My home
    Sometimes I can almost feel the power
    And I do love you
    Is it only timing
    That has made it such a dark hour
    Only ever chiming out "cuckoo"?

    Cuckoo, cuckoo, koo

    Cuckoo, cuckoo, koo

    My cuckoo, cuckoo, koo

    My cuckoo, cuckoo, koo

    My heart, I wear you down
    I know
    Gotta think straight
    Keep a clean plate;
    Keep from wearing down
    If I lose my head
    Just where am I going to lay it?

    For it has half-ruined me to be hanging around
    Here, among the daphne, blooming out of the big brown
    I am native to it
    But I'm overgrown
    I have choked my roots on the earth, as rich as roe
    Here, down in California Writer/s: Joanna Newsom
    Publisher: ROUGH TRADE PUBLISHING
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

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