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In the Palace of Green Porcelain

by Helen America

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1.
Cicadas 03:13
I thought you said when you left my house that that pickle-jar was for collecting flies so don't you turn your delightful head on bugs with smaller eyes We sailed tiny ships made of popsicle sticks with our hearts in our mouths with our teeth and the water so clear you could see the spines of the translucent fish underneath So peel a leaf into a skeleton hand and hold its shadow up to my face this armature is for the dawn to obscure and not for your fingers to trace Saw you pulling fuzz from the bellies of bees did you think you would furnish a nest? only lay out the wings of your animal dead the cicadas will swarm for the rest You were a rose painted on my mouth and flowers on my knees but the day will come my friend when all that we are is a buzzing in the trees
2.
Two-headed turtle nuclear friendling soft folds of eyemilk that portend the ending clouds of white phosphorous gather above you and break into seedlings so why do I love you The skin on your brain coarse and arid as emery its oils entangled in fractals of memory I trace my whole life on your fractured enamel your eyelids in dreaming you wander so far there is no taste sweeter we live on a star The quiet machine takes its heart to the ocean I try to remember the patterns of motion I spend all my money on buying you lettuce we hide in my room where no noise will upset us Worn cloudy like seaglass our angles have softened we look out the window not terribly often
3.
Play at the sun green glow-worms twinkle on their strings in your light ribbons hanging from my bones and I am you a jellied chrysalis untouched by the frost of the sun Open your hand you are paper in the rain a singing bell I can’t tell if holes were made by birds or stones would you hide the veins of sugar in your eyes in your hands Look at the sky there is something in the light that makes me cold see how crystallized our bodies would decay not knowing what the sky looked like before we knew it was a sky
4.
Saint Acedia 02:13
I love to sleep all day since I read your poisoned letter my father says it's not a sin but I know better under the apple trees where the worms consume their tokens I sleep like rotten food in the scent of sweetness broken you said you loved me so you would almost die to hold me your tongue rots through with holes from the saccharine lies you told me I saturate my heart with the drowsy blood of sleeping but in my quiet dreams like a worm you're always creeping darling I know you are tired and dull but the knife in my pocket is sharp and it shines like the white harvest moon in your eyes come lay down here with me listen to the insects crawling the dried decaying leaves can you hear extinction calling deep in this endless dream you would cruelly have denied me from this sweet moment on you will always sleep beside me
5.
Cowboy Song 02:28
I was walking on my hands in the windless canyon lands seeing gold in all the bruises of the sky Smoke was rising from the south and the blood inside my mouth found its hollow in a red and lonesome sigh Painted like a headless clown takes so long to spiral down and the smile dries hard on my skin I've been running for so long don't know where I first went wrong Left holes every place that I've been Took a walk up in the sky stepped upon a butterfly he spit on my boots and he said This is no place for you if your eyes are still blue I said mine for a long time been red In the smoky cotton skies those are pearls that were his eyes can't go home with a brain drowned in gin And I hear the singing birds and they hear my flightless words And I'm back on that dead road again
6.
This is not my blood ascension dying in your bed nothing hot can penetrate the cotton in your head but how can you face the staring eyes outside the door don't you know your face is open as a running sore No you cannot stay the night I have enough to hold you would take away my blankets if your nose got cold I have no talk with the protruding fingers of your spine please don't hold your stomach full of ashes close to mine and why did you let me take off your glasses frosted your skin running sweet like molasses The sky is full of far too many birds with hollow bones I gave you one of my eyelashes in an amber stone you turn into the window when the rain is on the grass smiling spinning blood behind a face of sugar glass and why did you let me push you away when the stars in my eyes were melting the snow is turning grey
7.
aspartame my aeroplane leave my hands behind the grain arthur blurred the softest word chewing cream of pickle bird evergreen my turtle bean I unglove my smile machine perfidy and entropy perforate my alchemy and when I find you what kind of dress will you be eating come up behind you don't drop the eggs that you are beating oh little goat eyes and cloven toenails shiver when I whisper now it's time to go harlequin ex-capuchin sweet acetaminophen carbonade your escapade carbonate your lemonade atrophy my enemy little sea anemone yellow bees with lung disease leaf through aristophenes and when I find you you will be caroling for petals and I will wind you snakelike around a rod of metal draw you out of the wound where the flakes of mustard settle and now its time to go
8.
Elsa and Boris knew all of the pink feathered hives wrapped in their cellophane blues limpid with preciousness my true love waits washing the dust from the shivering house watching from cloudtops the flight of the envious bees Elsa and Boris fly holding their heads on their strings wearing the weather like raincoats and buzzing diaphanous wings I tell you I know where the waterbugs go when your eyesight begins to grow dim you tie the white sail to your anklebones and you ache like a phantom limb Back in the darkened tree deep in her moss-quiet eyes he finds a boat and an ocean leaving the anchor behind us we sail out to the foam at the edge of all light no cobweb no parachute last freed itself from blue
9.
Birdflesh 02:28
Here's a table in the garden Pretty bird now drink your feathers Pretty thing you are so pretty Talk to me about the weather I have wings and I have whistles I make noises like an airplane You have eyes like honey buttons If I ate them would you complain (Occupy your shaking mouth All you need is gin and tonic I would swallow rope and light bulbs Though my love is embryonic) If you blinked into my waistcoat I would leave a blueish stain And bite through all the icy fibers Of your little frozen brain (Now my friends and mutilations Listen to me spit through silence Wrapping butterflies in metal Nothing's more sincere than violence) Butter spread between your eyebrows Here's a napkin for that mouse ear Yes the sky seems greener lately I know you must like it too dear
10.
oh my little twin bird don't hop so far you know that my wings are small and my breath is here in the willow flowers in the birch trees fingerbone and brown in the hollows of tufted eiderdown lepidoptera hotly shadowed here like the warm air in your little ears you know every word I know white throat full of water pale green of the underleaves in your haunted eyes open recklessly here the dandelions blow sweet the breeze in their grains of white-yellow euphonies oh my precious one how can you not see you are wanted here let us be the broken dead moss cooling your forehead you never were meant to be unwarm and touched by machinery now I walk with you only in my bones there is broken glass there are pelting stones and now death is the only rock I hold and how could you not even wait for me

about

Helen America's delicately-crafted, profusely literary songs evoke fairytale worlds laced with menace - her haunting lullabies for two-headed turtles and murder ballads have a crystalline purity that belies their obsessive intensity and sometimes grotesque imagery. 'In the Palace of Green Porcelain' has been described as "the sound a butterfly's heart would make, if butterflies had hearts."

credits

released December 4, 2009

Produced and recorded by Helen America
(p) (c) 2009 Helen America, Strawberry Ghost Songs (ASCAP) all rights reserved

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about

Helen America Seattle, Washington

Helen America is a singer/songwriter, cartoonist, and multimedia visual artist. Her music is deeply personal and passionate avant-garde indie-chamber-pop, with the dense lyricism of Joanna Newsom, the visionary weirdness of Jeff Mangum, and the raw emotional energy of Patti Smith. ... more

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