REM Cycle
"Dear Emmi"
Lyrics by Shannon Brennan
Music by Kat Devlin
Dear Emmi,
I haven’t checked your status lately.
Dear Emmi,
Don’t tell my girlfriend cause she’ll hate me.
Dear Emmi,
I’m spring cleaning in the middle of July.
Dear Emmi,
I found a notebook where we’d written out a fight.
Dear Emmi,
It was hot all summer through
and there’s sweat on my words,
but I can read me fall in love with you.
Closed umbrella in my hand, I struck you,
said I love you, let me –
Dear Emmi.
There was coffee,
and we had talked out all your voice,
and you were coughing.
You were writing I can’t make that choice,
and I was swearing
in an inky, scrawling hand,
and I was baring
some kind of soul that I forgot I had.
Dear Emmi,
It was hot all summer through
and there’s sweat on my words,
but I can read me fall in love with you.
Closed umbrella in my hand, I struck you,
said I love you, let me.
Dear Emmi –
Oh, Emily, you left unfinished poems.
That choice you didn’t make, do you still know him?
You never cross my mind, but you double-crossed my heart,
And you were never quite mine, but these letters say you are.
"Adirondack Day"
Lyrics by Charlotte Becker
Music by Kat Devlin
How the snow on the summit
Refused to be melted
Though the sun shone kind
In your eyes
And how I never worried
That I wouldn’t love you
Among trees new-anointed
With green
On that Adirondack
Sweet Adirondack
Spring on the mountain
White trillium bloom
Dappled muddy and rushing
And you were the best thing
That Adirondack day
How firetower’s silhouette
Stood a gaunt watchman
And your arms kept me close
And alive
The high peaks rose aloft
In a holy cathedral
And you in communion
With me
On that Adirondack
Sweet Adirondack
Spring on the mountain
White trillium bloom
Dappled muddy and rushing
And you were the best thing
That Adirondack day
How we rushed down the path
Each armed with old snow
And the startles of chill
That we threw
In our fearless elation
From snowballs in April
Leaving Eden without
Looking back
On that Adirondack
Sweet Adirondack
Spring on the mountain
White trillium bloom
Dappled muddy and rushing
And you were the best thing
That Adirondack day
"4 o'clock light"
Lyrics by Shannon Brennan
Music by Kat Devlin
You’re cute well, that’s an understatement:
Crow’s feet smiles and thoughts, you’re making
Everybody want to see your mind get naked –
Cause the way you hold your head could start a traffic jam,
And the things you say in crowds could change the way I am;
You could be the one I didn’t know I should wait for,
And it couldn’t matter less if I loved you more.
I’m watching as you’re walking towards me:
Foot turned out every step a new V,
Like the sign in photographs for peace or victory –
And the way you hold your head could start a traffic jam,
And the things you say in crowds could change the way I am;
You could be the one I didn’t know I should wait for,
And it couldn’t matter less if I loved you
Cause it’s a big, bad world out there.
Aside from my mom and my dad, who would care
If I tremble for you? The Earth’s trembling anyway,
Either way.
My morning coffee and a paper,
The forecast tragic as an angel,
Even if my fingertips could brush your face.
REM Cycle #3
Lyrics by Shannon Brennan
Music by Kat Devlin
You say things better than a movie.
Inside of your lashes, I watch you holding me,
And you flicker the lights when you’re blinking.
We’re both awake now, but soon we’ll be
tripping it as we go
on the light fantastick toe;
the man in a tuxedo’s
playing cello, our libidos
quietly insistent
as we’re flying – in an instant
i’ll be slipping helplessly
from REM Cycle #3.
I wake to the a.m. station,
Wear the jacket with the patches so you’ll touch the embroidery.
You’re listening to Pandora,
I think that sweater’s angora. Hey, how about we
try tripping it as we go
on the light fantastick toe;
the man in a tuxedo’s
playing cello, our libidos
quietly insistent
as we’re flying – in an instant
i’ll be slipping helplessly
from REM Cycle #3.
You’re the prettiest thing on 2 feet.
If you’d come home with me, I’d never go to sleep.
Help me get past hellos
And remarks about clothes
And we’ll be all each other could need.
Cause when I fall, I fall deep.
So, how about dinner and a movie?
Chop Suey? That’ll be the subject line.
Your long back to the door frame says see ya tomorrow,
And I think: Tonight…
try tripping it as we go
on the light fantastick toe;
the man in a tuxedo’s
playing cello, our libidos
quietly insistent
as we’re flying – in an instant
i’ll be slipping helplessly
from REM Cycle #3.
"Our Brooklyn Place"
Lyrics and music by Kat Devlin
The kissing and whiskey isn't helping
I’m sweltering, swaying, and stilled by the yelling
The silhouette song by Iron and Wine
the one you played in our Brooklyn place all the time
We'd only leave to get food and beer
We'd never get dressed
That apartment was such a mess
You broke your glasses ages ago
Squinting through a blurry world every light a halo
In March you got lost walking home to me
by May you could see clearly
Told me you loved me, that you'd never let me go
We'd never get dressed
That apartment was such a mess
The party's over I'm back to lonely
Maybe I shouldn't have said stay over
Maybe tomorrow, maybe you'll call
A year and three months without you waking beside me
I forgot why I said I was leaving
Now I see clearly you don't see me at all
"Big Ivan"
Lyrics by Shannon Brennan and Kat Devlin
Music by Kat Devlin
Once again, girl, I’m on the tile:
Red-faced, hiccupping like a child.
Towel wrapped around me, I’m whispering threats
To you in the bedroom: What if I left?
To you in the bedroom…what if I left?
My friend, Jen, said she’d lend me her bed
If I needed a place for my head.
And I sure like her. She’s mellow and sweet.
Strong as her coffee, her hands say to me.
Strong as her coffee, her mouth says to me.
And I’ve been told there’s much more to life
Than love like Big Ivan and sweet, sleepless nights.
I’ll take my bicycle, leave you the car.
Leave you your ardor. I’ll take my guitar.
I can call my sister, leave out my mom –
She’d say We were the best thing. What did I do wrong?
You were the best thing I didn’t do wrong.
I’ve been told there’s much more to life
Than love like Big Ivan and sweet, sleepless nights.
Twelve feet from me you’re dreaming your dreams.
If I know you I know they’re about me.
Maybe we’re prowling through cellars again.
Who’s gonna hold you when you’re trembling?
Who’s gonna hold you when you’re trembling?
"A Song From Shannon"
(lyrics by Shannon Brennan)
Up by the speakers or down by the bar if it’s Wednesday she’s probably been drinking / She’s pale and she’s smiling or if she’s not smiling she’s holding her breath and she’s blinking / Cause she knows that a tear at a bar in a beer looks like sadness so she plays it cool / And she’s wondering real quiet if I know she’s sighing, and I do, I do and I do
[Chorus] Katy please make lyrics out of these so you can say yourself what I’ve been thinking / When I hear I know that you’re aware that it’s better than a song to hear you singing
She just started smoking this year when she broke up with someone she loved quite a bit / Now her high notes are weak and she stops when she speaks just to see if her breath smells like shit / But when she’s at my house or she’s close to my mouth she makes sure she has plenty of gum / Says I’m no good with chords I’m much better with words and I’m wondering if you’d sing me some
[Chorus]
Cause your voice is like your hands, the way it moves the place it lands / Makes me tremble like an angel passing over / But you’re no celestial being. You’re the person that I’m seeing / And I’m seeing you so hard I can’t recover
[Chorus]
Up by the speakers I look to the bar while refraining my name like she wrote it / I catch her green eyes and her lips move with mine so I know she knows that I know it
“Touch of a Girl”
(lyrics by Kat Devlin)
The voice of my guitar everything I play those songs it reminds me / Of notes strung together forming memories that play on repeat in my mind / A soundtrack of moving reels of days and days and days gone by when I was where he now stands / Opposite of you, learning love kissing you too young to know too young to understand
[Chorus] And the skies they broke from that first kiss / ‘Cause my body never knew it could feel like this / Way up so high in a different world / I guess all I ever needed was the touch of a girl / And I thank you … for making me gay
Never will forget how it felt that night when your hands wrote the prologue to the rest of my life / Fingers over trembling skin never felt so right and our fumbling hands roamed until it was light / Followed by months and months of sweet discovery, two bodies, four hips and lips sensations I could not believe / Chapters of ink flowed free by kisses burned to memory the brightest whitest flame that you ignited in me
[Chorus]
My history reversed in me / Realizing I had to rewrite dreams / Recognizing what I could be / Making them see that it’s alright, I’m okay, I’m happy
We rode the waves unaware of dark below before innocence got lost in life’s flow / When always meant always, forever meant longer, and eternity of time to grow / Now definitions change, words fade away and tomorrow is just another promise we make / But it was you in the first place, the place and time I can’t escape the naivety and honesty this world could not take
[Chorus]