Sunday, October 28, 2012

Lucy Kaplansky "Guinevere" "10 Year Night" "Land of the Living"

Here are a trio of Lucy Kaplansky's best (in my humble opinion).

Guinevere



Guinevere in my castle in Normandy
Make a new home with me come follow me down
Guinevere all my honor and glory
Will just be a story of the fall of the crown

Am I some dancing Lancelot who only falls in love
With a woman who belongs to someone else
Is it just the blood of Paris running through my veins
That sees and takes a woman and myself I can't restrain

Is this knight of cups in his noble stance
Just a jack of clubs with an eye askance
On the queen of hearts in her royal blue
I may shield the poor but I can't save you

Guinevere in my castle in Normandy
Make a new home with me come follow me down
Guinevere all my honor and glory
Will just be a story of the fall of the crown

Golden apples on the mountain this one fell to me
We are planets in a heartless gravity
I never chose to make a choice
It felt like someone else's voice
Saying all those crazy things down on one knee

Cassandra never cast a shadow now it's heading to the shore
Oh the face that launched a thousand ships is sailing one more

Guinevere in my castle in Normandy
Make a new home with me come follow me down
Guinevere all my honor and glory
Will just be a story of the fall of the crown

+++++

10 Year Night



There is no one else around the road is quiet, the only sound
Is wind that sounds like cars that sound like breathing
The desert air is hot and dry two lanes weaving earth and sky
The stars are all that's keeping time till morning

And I turn and look beside me and you're sleeping like a baby
And you haven't heard a word that I've been saying
And the way you look tonight fast asleep in the dashboard light
Well I can't speak that's how I feel

Open your eyes and look at me and look at me
Open your eyes and look at me
'Cause I have and hold this love for you
Before this ten year night is through, I'm telling you
Take it from me, take it from me

We're ten years older, I know we are
Than the night we met in that downtown bar
You thought I was some kind of star
That's what you said

I felt your skin, I felt the heat
As you pulled me out into the street
And you kissed me there till I was weak
'Cause I asked you to

And later on your kitchen floor
Two flights above the grocery store
I felt things I never felt before and I still do

Open your eyes and look at me and look at me
Open your eyes and look at me
'Cause I have and hold this love for you
Before this ten year night is through, I'm telling you
Take it from me, take it from me

Going eighty on the highway
We're all rushing somewhere
But the way I feel tonight
It's like I'm already there

Open your eyes and look at me and look at me
Open your eyes and look at me
'Cause I have and hold this love for you
Before this ten year night is through, I'm telling you
Take it from me, take it from me

+++++

Land of the Living



Late afternoon back in New York town
Waking up as the wheels touch down
Pick up my guitar and walk away
Wish I was going home to stay

Line of taxis, I wait my turn
Tar and asphalt, exhaust and fumes
Beside the road on a patch of ground
Taxi drivers are kneeling down

Beneath the concrete sky I watch them pray
While the people of the world hurry on their way
I think they're praying for us all today
And the stories that fell from the sky that day

CHORUS:
This is the land of the living
This is the land that's mine
She still watches over Manhattan
She's still holding onto that torch for life

Back home fire's still burning, I can see it in the air
Pictures of faces posted everywhere
They say "hazel eyes, chestnut hair
Mother of two missing down there"

I pass the firemen on duty tonight
Carpets of flowers in candlelight
And thank you in a child's scrawl
Taped to the Third Street firehouse wall

There's shadows of the lost on the faces I see
Brothers and strangers on this island of grief
There's death in the air but there's life on this street
There's life on this street

CHORUS
This is the land of the living
This is the land that's mine
She still watches over Manhattan
She's still holding onto that torch for life

Then I got in a taxi, said "Hudson Street please"
He started the meter and he looked at me
I glanced at his name on the back of his seat
And I looked out the window at the ghost filled streets

I noticed cuts on his hand and his face
And I said "You're bleeding, are you okay?"
He said "I'm not so good, got beat up today
And I'm not one of them no matter what they say

I'm just worried about my family
My wife's in the house and she's scared to leave"
And I didn't know what to say
I didn't know what to say
But I said a prayer for him anyway

CHORUS
This is the land of the living
This is the land that's mine
She still watches over Manhattan
She's still holding onto that torch for life

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