I'm still having a rough time but my sister loved her suprise. So pictures coming soon. In the meantime I wanted to share with you a huge influence on my poetry, actually its an album of music. But i want you to read the lyrics (and maybe then youll go listen to the album, thats up to you). For each song I've included a link to listen to it on youtube and some of my favourite quotes from that song. This has been a huge influence since I was about 7. My dad played this album to help him cope with my sisters death. It reminds me of all the happiest and saddest things in my life, and it never fails to provide me with a voice. I really love two of their other songs that have the same vibe as this album, A Long December and Goodnight Elisabeth, so I've included the same for those. Enjoy, please, as I find their lyrics to be really powerful, beautiful poetry.

These are not the full lyrics but the youtube links have full lyrics, these are just little snippets of songs I love. They are in album order, not my preference. My favourites are Omaha, Anna Begins and Goodnight Elisabeth but I love every one of these songs. You will see the song Omaha is where I picked up my love of repeating the same phrase with tiny alterations.

August and everything after by Counting Crows

Round Here
<sub>Step out the front door like a ghost
into the fog where no one notices
the contrast of white on white.
And in between the moon and you
the angels get a better view
of the crumbling difference between wrong and right.
I walk in the air between the rain
through myself and back again
Where? I don't know
Maria says she's dying
through the door I hear her crying
Why? I don't know

she walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land
just like she's walking on a wire in the circus
she parks her car outside of my house
takes her clothes off
says she's close to understanding Jesus

she knows she's just a little misunderstood
she has trouble acting normal when she's nervous

Round here we talk just like lions
But we sacrifice like lambs
Round here she's slipping through my hands

She says It's only in my head
She says Shhh I know it's only in my head
But the girl on the car in the parking lot
says "Man you should try to take a shot
can't you see my walls are crumbling?"
Then she looks up at the building
and says she's thinking of jumping
She says she's tired of life
she must be tired of something (round here)</sub>



Omaha
<sub>Start turning the grain into the ground
Roll a new leaf over
In the middle of the night there's an old man
Treading around in the gathered rain
Hey mister if your gonna walk on water
Would you drop a line my way

Get right to the heart of matters
It's the heart that matters more

Start turning the wool across the wire
Roll the new life over

In the middle of the night there's an old man
Threading his toes through a bucket of rain
Hey mister you don't wanna walk on water
Cos you're only going to walk all over me

Start turning the girl into the ground
Roll a new life over</sub>



Mr. Jones
<sub>She's suddenly beautiful
We all want something beautiful
I wish I was beautiful

When everybody loves you, you can never be lonely

I will paint my picture
Paint myself in blue and red and black and gray
All of the beautiful colors are very very meaningful
Gray is my favorite color
I felt so symbolic yesterday
If I knew Picasso
I would buy myself a gray guitar and play

When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely

We all want to be big big stars, but we got different
reasons for that
Believe in me because I don't believe in anything
and I want to be someone to believe in</sub>



Perfect Blue Buildings
<sub>Just down the street from your hotel, baby
I stay at home with my disease
And ain't this position familiar, darling
Well, all monkeys do what they see

You got an attitude of everything I ever wanted
I got an attitude of need

Help me stay awake, I'm falling...
Asleep in perfect blue buildings
Beside the green apple sea
Gonna get me a little oblivion, baby
Try to keep myself away from me (myself and) me

I got bones beneath my skin, and mister...
There's a skeleton in every man's house
Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody
There's a dead man trying to get out</sub>



Anna Begins
<sub>It does not bother me to say this isn't love
Because if you don't want to talk about it then it isn't love

"If it's love" she said, "then were gonna have to think about the
consequences"
She can't stop shaking and I cant stop touching her and.....
This time when kindness falls like rain
It washes her away and Anna begins to change her mind
"these seconds when I'm shaking leave me shuddering
for days" she says.
And I'm not ready for this sort of thing
But I'm not gonna break
And I'm not going to worry about it anymore

It seems like I should say "as long as this is love..."
But it's not all that easy so maybe I should just
snap her up in a butterfly net-
Pin her down on a photograph album
I am not worried
I've done this sort of thing before
But then I start to think about the consequences
Because I don't get no sleep in a quiet room and...
The time when kindness falls like rain
It washes me away and Anna begins change my mind
And every time she sneezes I believe it's love
and oh lord.... I'm not ready for this sort of thing
She s talking in her sleep-it s keeping me awake
And Anna begins to toss and turn
And every word is nonsense but I understand and and
oh lord. I m not ready for this sort of thing
Her kindness bangs a gong
It's moving me along and Anna begins to fade away
It s chasing me away.
She dissappears, and oh lord I'm not ready for this sort of thing</sub>



Time and Time Again
<sub>I wanted so badly
Somebody other than me
Staring back at me
But you were gone, gone, gone.

I wanted to see you walking backwards
And get the sensation of you coming home
I wanted to see you walking away from me
Without the sensation youre leaving me alone
Time and time again

I wanted the ocean to cover over me
I wanna sink slowly without getting wet
Maybe someday, I won't be so lonely
And I'll walk on water every chance I get

I wish I was traveling on a freeway
Beneath this graveyard western sky
I'm gonna set fire to this city
And out into the desert we're gonna ride</sub>



Rain King
<sub>When I think of heaven
Deliver me in a black-winged bird
I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers
And all other instruments of faith and sex and God
In the belly of a black-winged bird.

And I said mama, mama, mama, why am I so alone
I can't go outside
I'm scared I might not make it home
I'm alive, I'm alive

When I think of heaven
Deliver me in a black-winged bird
I think of dying
Lay me down in a field of flame and heather
Render up my body into the burning heart of God
In the belly of a black-winged bird
Don't try to bleed me
I've been here before
And I deserve a little more

I belong in the service of the queen
I belong anywhere but in between
She's been dying and I've been drinking
And I am the Rain King</sub>



Sullivan Street
<sub>Take the way home that leads back to Sullivan St.
Cross the water and home through the town
Past the shadows that fall down wherever we meet
Pretty soon now I won't come around

I'm almost drowning in her sea
She's nearly fallen to her knees
It's almost everything I need

Where all the bodies hang on the air
If she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet
Either way now, I don't really care</sub>



Ghost Train
<sub>50 million feet of earth between the buried and me

She buys a ticket cause it's cold were she comes from
she climbs aboard because she's scared of getting older in the snow
love is a ghost train through the darkness</sub>



Raining in Baltimore
_{These train conversations are passing me by
And I don't have nothing to say
You get what you paid for
But I just had no intention of living this way}



A Murder of One
<sub>Blue morning Blue morning Wrapped in strands of fist and bone
Curiosity, Kitten,
Doesn't have to mean you're on your own

We were perfect when we started
I've been wondering where we've gone
All your life is such a shame
All your love is just a dream

I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow
Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there
counting crows

There's a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin
When you open up your wings to speak
I wish you'd let me in

Open up your eyes
You can see the flames of your wasted life
You should be ashamed
You don't want to waste your life
I walk along these hillsides In the summer 'neath the sunshine
I am feathered by the moonlight falling down on me
Change, change, change</sub>



A Long December (not from August and Everything After)
<sub>A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast

If you think that I could be forgiven...I wish you would

The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl

I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

It's been so long since I've seen the ocean...I guess I should</sub>



Goodnight Elisabeth (not from August and Everything After)
<sub>I woke up in pieces and Elisabeth had disappeared again

I hope that you're ok
I hope you're resting quietly
I just wanted to say
Goodnight Elisabeth
Goodnight Elisabeth, Goodnight.
Good, goodnight Elisabeth
Goodnight Elisabeth, Goodnight.

I hope that everybody can find a little flame
Me, I say my prayers, then I just light myself on fire
And I walk out on the wire once again

I'll wait for you while she slips in something comfortable
And I'll miss you when I'm slipping in between
If you wrap yourself in daffodils
I will wrap myself in pain
And if you're the queen of California
Baby I am the king of the rain</sub>