1. |
January
04:24
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Cold wind blows, and yesterdays go/Those, I know, can't become today like tomorrow./Another sky turned grey and lavender/Another page turned on my calender//Oh. It's January./It's January, and everything is new.//I said your name; you gave me mine(,) and everything/I am today a lesser shade of day 'cause I shouldn't taste, I couldn't take/Another sky gone grey and lavender/Another year gone by - another calender//This life is always taking/Again and yet again/But I've died and now I'm waking/And it feels like breathing in.
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2. |
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//What she said went over my head/Like love's more forcing a smile than a compliment written in red/I won't play along/To the chords of a second rate love song (without a heart or head)//
//Always thought that the worst thing that could be/Was a song that I didn't mean/I would trade my own hands or my two feet/To just have a heart that beats/And when it comes down to it, this isn't all that great/It's just another song I wrote with words I tried to cram into 6/8/-Not a poem or puzzle per say,/Just a tribute to 29 days/It's slow and it's fast/I don't remember when we started this or when I stopped looking over my back/Now, I'm falling into glass//
//Everything is complicated/Economy's inflated/I don't know what they did/But I sure do hate it/Cause I gotta take it takin up my time
Shade don't make/the sunlight go away/Like Ace don't take away the pain/Or monuments, the grave/There's nothing I could ever say to make what I did right
Only reason we're dead or ok/Is what burns behind the grey//
//The life I've lead/ Paths better un-tread/I've come down with a cancer/My prescription is written in red/I'm indicted/But when it's not my fault, I can't keep quiet//
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3. |
March (Sunny Rain)
04:57
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She opens Her eyes and lets flow to her sister below/She opens her fists in the cold. Give it up, let it go//Everything I know finds me/Sunny rain is all I pray I’ll ever see/Whatever I can’t, I know that you will/My mind can’t un-want what is easiest and well-paved is the freeway to hell//I open my eyes in the cold in a shock of unknown/I built a safe heart out of stone just to crumble and fold/There’s something in the color of the sky/There’s something in the way(;) we’re not together/Would it be better? Could it be…//The sky is a Juliet/And there’s something about me that’s not fit for her yet/I am broken, I am frozen, I am underneath, I am underneath//Re-breaking a bone’s the most terrible feeling/You’re the pain that I want when the world has no healing///
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4. |
April (More on Rain)
06:48
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I had a pencil that I used to use/With a white eraser and a clip that was blue/Used it to write down everything that I wanted to do/Oh, I wish it was easier to talk to you/Can't stomach my pride or ignore my strife/Can't wave a white flag when love is a fight/So I made a leash - a lifeline/To keep me in your sight/I want to do more than I've ever done/I want to fly close as I can to the sun/I want to see clocks strike on the two a little closer to one/Oh, I wish it was easier to get this done/You know I want success, and, baby, I want fame/I spent the better half of youth trying to make a name/And my pride could paint a portrait/But time's such a little frame//Slow down, I/Slow down, I/Slow down, I/Slow down I/etc.//This is how – this is how ground washed under my feet/This is how – this is how/This is how – this is how I'm the partner of Eve/This is how – this is how//Does it have to tie together?/Do I have to sound like I care?/Should I wonder at the weather/Or whether or not I'll be prepared/This flesh and blood can't inherit anything, Eirene/This seed can't ever be anything green/The rains a mystery: we're underneath, but we'll be free in a moment/In a moment///
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5. |
May (Blue)
03:25
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Backbone - I ain't got no backbone/Just a cell phone/You should know - my heart is a loadstone/For anything that I don't need - that'll kill me -that I put in my bloodstream//You underestimated me/There ain't no amount of fresh green listerine that could make my teeth gleam/But her eyes are a different mood of blue in spring/She makes gold may flowers want to bloom for me//Peace - don't let it come to me/My life isn't fit to be chill though I desperately try to be/Please - I've had enough rain it could last me for weeks/But ain't bartering pardon cheep?//He'll fly on by and say hello/But quicker still, he'll up and go/At least that's just what I see from my worm's eye view/Under covered blue//
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6. |
June (Part I)
03:53
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Late nights and fights between my belly and my head./My end's to loosen up, but I tangle them instead./I've struck upon a whitewashed avarice of late,/And it's gunning for the things we'd love to hate.//June/You've been getting me so confused/I don't know what I want, but I need it real bad./But it's used,/And there's nothing new in news.//I'm losing track of what goes on beneath my skull,/But when light and time abound, I can sense a funeral./I've swallowed sawdust and some meat I can't afford./Save heartburn and regret, most middle functions are ignored.//Oh, how long/Do I pretend to think the words of this song?/I'm sorry/I don't feel you anymore/Anymore/I'm losing/My composure beyond these doors/On safer shores/I've failed you//June/You've been getting me so confused/I want to wake up but I'm living my dream/It seems/To some they've been redeemed/But those like me that we've believed///
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7. |
June (Part II)
05:42
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Ink/Gathering/In a stream /To the sea/I believe you/I believe the bloodshot reed's a truer quill /Than my pure intentions to mark my deathly will/You grant me/To keep ajar the door that lets will free?
//Don't let it close or everything changes - everything changes/Though this grid of bones is crueler than a cage is, I won't disavow and change it.//There's freedom in the air/There's freedom in the sea/There's freedom in the phrase "you're liberating me."/But the shackles won't release till my sentence is complete/Forty years of wind-burned heat stand in between/Though the hinges turn and swivel free,/Still I'd rather sit inside - my options open/Dischoosing chosen./I've compounded pressure for release/And tried to swap a doorstop with a key/But trouble's truest when it leaves us weak./I'm supposed to break in forty years of propping open open ocean//Don't let it close or none of this changes - how monotonous and ageless./These weary bones are pigeonholed as cages, but everything changes.///
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8. |
July (My Honey)
02:39
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There's an empty slot that I've got in my hand, and I think it's shaped like yours/Did that bear steal your name tag, or is that just my honey sitting there in the pantry door?//What an empty hive I'll be/When next year you leave here for the city/And I'll drift back slowly through the trees/Like a bee without my honey//Well, you know I love my cornbread like it were my life, and if life were it, I'd need/Somebody like you to come be my honey 'cause you're the sweetest thing I've ever seen//There's an empty slot that I've got in my hand, and I think it's shaped like yours/Now would you stay and take it up? I'll take your hand over my honey sitting there in the pantry door/Would you stay and take it up? I'll take your hand over my honey – now will you take mine before the train to New York?//
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9. |
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Summer Sailed away this eighteenth August/Of misunderstanding what it was to give/After leaving me a thicker-woven harness/Miscommunicating what it is to live/I've been holding on to every/Every little passing year./Each one dies a little younger/Each repetition's less revered/I closed my eyes and saw in vivid color/I drop my hands and suddenly they steer/They try to tack; my belt loop pulls me under/Hooked on a box of everything I fear/Everything is turning/everything is turning round/I think about how lonely/Pray about solid ground I ain't found//Over the ocean and off the edge of West with a heavy chest/Loss is a tribute to all that we love best till we need it less/Till we need it less//When we get our papers, we'll be graduators, but that won't happen for quite a while later/Don't know how to say it or how to explain it, got Pokemon Go but don't know how to play it/Out of all the things I don't know how to do, why do I have to not be able to float or to lose//I can't stay alive out here, and I can't choose to leave/My eyes see a graveyard, and my chest, just a sea///
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10. |
September (Unprepared)
04:15
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I see only some of the leaves on the trees know just where they're to go/Most smile and wave in the breeze, evergreen till they're clipped in the cold/Fall is the last breath out and September's not ready for it/Neither am I - Lord, no, neither am I/We breathe one-directionally and the leaves in the trees won't survive/It's hard to believe in need when it's easy to be alive/I hope that there's more than green and there's more than brown/In spring only half of the colors came; summer was a three-month drought//Rain is the sun on the cold of the death of this seed that I've sown/Hope the green knows to break through fresh splits in the stone at the mouth of my rattle-boned soul/My country is more than a home/My America won't die alone/Lord, let us be thankful for what you have grown and the good life we're supposed to let go//I see only some of the leaves on the trees know just where they're to go/It's hard to believe what I see will give way to my weary soul./I need to give up what is lost and relinquish these borrowed rights/I need to be watered and tended and strengthened to let it die//
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11. |
October (My Dreams)
04:00
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“I'm sorry– ” such an ordinary phrase is keeping me fake from day to day./But night to night, I'll say everything with honesty and hate./Whoa, oh wouldn't it be better if I believed–/If everything I did, I could do in my sleep?/But I killed you in a dream like I robbed her on a screen./My innocence is cheap, obviously/You haven't heard the worst from me/Dark will be the day when what I think is what I say,/So here's to you: I hope my dreams don't come true./Beep beep beep. We speak/By beep beep beep, in code./Whoa, beep beep beep, we're freed/By sleep alone./It's dark but more for sure and with a dream, a metaphor:/I'll wake away in a common place made more./Whoa, oh wouldn't it be better if I believed/Everything I do and all that I see?/Pray I don't say just what I mean!/Pray I don't see the things I dream!/Don't let my acts be what I think!/Liberty's no daughter of entropy./But nature lives by death,/And these colors mean there's little left./Lord haste the spring granting green again./Lyres, sound o'er the sea/When the sirens sing at me./It's blood on the beach or my dreams.///
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12. |
November (Cora's Song)
05:20
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She blushes red just right before her color drains. It's her wedding day./First from her fingers, then right out of her face – her color drains.//Isn't this earth? Isn't it just earth?/Isn't this hurt? What is it all worth?//The ground was hungry for the sweetness above and the innocence of love./The ground was hungry and he swallowed her up – she's so pretty and young.//Isn't this earth? Isn't it just earth?/Isn't this hurt? What is it all worth?/Under the sun who never fell from his course,/Most of the world's under a spell; most of the young are under the world.//There's a steady, west-bound breeze/Coming quietly with the cold/She's a maple losing leaves/Please don't go. Cora, don't go.//Stories say she'll come back up to the light – wouldn't that be nice?/Sometimes I like to make believe that they're right (they're right).//But isn't this earth? Isn't it just earth?/Isn't this hurt? What is it all worth?/When under the sun, she's losing blood to the wind,/And under the wind, she's losing life in her limbs,/My sight line goes back over the east./The sun will sail over the sea
And color this weather-worn tree.///
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13. |
December [Live]
05:38
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Winter, why the cold and distant stare?/Fires glow and laughter fills the air./Springtime, why the dark and cloud and rain?/What is buried will be green again.//“Peace on earth, good will to men” is ringing through the cold./And what has passed these last twelve moons will only be a story told./Ev'n amidst the growing dark, the sad will come untrue./The truly dead will come alive, the penniless will purchase food.//Summer, why the endless, raging heat?/Be still in life and color oh so sweet./And Autumn, why the tears and falling leaves?/Rejoice in ecstasy for what you've reaped./And why, oh man, do you labor in vain? Why do you stand alone./Your maker, he is born today as one with skin and bone.//“Peace on earth, good will to men” is ringing through the cold./And what has passed these last twelve moons will only be a story told./Ev'n amidst the growing dark, the sad will come untrue./The truly dead will come alive, the penniless will purchase food./Dark, cold, pain, and enmity give birth to life by war/With hope and love and joy and peace. Today, a child is born.///
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Compton McMurry Memphis, Tennessee
Compton McMurry is a Memphis based singer-songwriter who captures listeners with imaginative lyrics and a soul-tinged folk-
pop groove. Reminiscent of John Mayer, The Shins, and Gungor, McMurry is a songsmith who fuses sugary pop hooks with timeless stories and raw, acoustic textures.
Debut Album, East is set to release in May, 2020.
... more
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