Levi The Poet - Chapter Three: The Great American Game lyrics

Dear Diary

Grandfather's creaky as his front porch
Loads his shotgun
Beneath the awning, spittoon
Restless for rain, carpenter's
Chair against the whistling air
Rocking, back and forth
Rocking snap shot picture - worth it
Just like the movies

She said that he loved baseball
And James Earl Jones said that he's
Got god talking inside of his
Thoughts while he's rounding those bases
On his way back home

If you build it, they will come
(and baby listens to what the Lord say)
But, I've been getting pretty worn
Building for nearly a decade



In a perfect world we shouldn’t
Have been allowed to
Lose sight of what it means to love
Wholly i’ve got a Polaroid hanging on my wall
That a friend took of me and
My angel i remember the day like
It’s something I can touch
But it’s stuck in the
Square between the borders of the film, and I
Can run my fingers over our faces
But I can’t get back to the places we were

"You’ve got a pain deep in your bones
Son it compels you forward like
You’re tied to a slave master’s cruel hand
And it's the same pain
That drives that oppressor’s heart of stone
So you’ve grown to love the man you
Keep pouring yourself out, again and again
Into legible lines through a crooked pen"
Yeah, it’s painful, but
It’s familiar – so habit breeds comfort
And I don’t know what I’d do without him
So in the early morning, when you’ve
Fallen asleep in our home
I drift back into the memories
That I’ve claimed as my
Own, and wonder if tonight will be
A night I’ll hang on
My wall like I did before
We stopped taking photos
Out of the habit of being comfortable
With not trying at all

In a perfect world, we’ll have albums
Labeled Seasons, with chapter headings
And we’ll staple them to the cork-board
That hangs at the foot of the bed there’s
Longevity in a memory spilt out in pen
And if a picture is worth a thousand words
Then I’ve written down every one of them

I work hard, scarred
Toil through that soil for
The youth I see in my friends
But these journals are moments in time
Snapshots of our lives, and in retrospect
Age is an overexposed photo that
The memories can't mend

I know my sweet seductress
And her name is Depression i wrote
Best beneath that demon’s
Destructive oppression

In those Polaroids
She drove the ink into the canvas
Like a slave beneath his master’s
Cruel hand, and I hated that whip but
Always wondered what I’d do without it
So I grew to love the man

Oh, I wept for change! I begged for movement
And the good Lord, he answered my prayers
But, you don’t know how to breathe easy
When you let go of your habit's
Even if your comforts left
You gasping for air

Dear Time

Grandfather's as creaky as his front porch
Scent like oil in the gun barrel, dip-can
Kicked over the railing
Sandpaper hands stuck behind thumb tacks
On my wall i’ve
Got an ache in my chest for every
Season I miss and it gets worse when the snow
Starts to fall there are
Butterflies alive in that
Couple’s eyes a few years
Since forgotten by all
And sometimes, if the phone starts to ring
I can still hear their wings when you call

But, I begged for movement and I
Got what I asked for
And I can picture the answer
Like it came yesterday and in the land of
The gods, I think that things are timeless
But we are still prone to decay

You know I still lift up
Hope of certain smiles
In those photos for us when I pray

Time is a cruel lover
And she breaks her house apart at it's
Bones you know comfort is no
Good reason for standing still
And idle hands build nothing that
You can call your own