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Carbon to Carbon

from Blood & Sand by Jade Sylvan

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lyrics

You flew through the front door, the screen door came crashin
when I tried to follow you home.
You can’t remain whole if you mingle your ashes.
Each phoenix must burn up alone.

By the time I met you, you’d already died
a dozen or two times or so,
and I had grown tired of all that I’d tried
a hundred and two years ago

So I set your wing, and gave you a name
and dressed all your blisters and burns.
But I never followed you into the flame,
I just waited for you to return.

I told you how all the world’s primitive cultures
worshipped the sun as creator,
and I told of the stars’ churning furnances
how all of our matter was made there.

We followed the path, the feathery traces
like lines of a lyric poem.
It looped and we doubled back on our paces
till we found ourselves back home.

A phoenix should not be a low-flying bird
but sometimes you doubt your own wings.
The moon, you could make in a day and a third,
but the sun is a whole different thing.

By the time you left me, you’d already died
enough times for me to learn
that phoenixes, like the moon and the tide
move in circles, so I let you turn.

I told you how all the world’s primitive cultures
worshipped the sun as creator,
and I told of the stars’ churning furnances
how all of our matter is made there.

I’ll burn our image in one thousand fashions
till the sun takes us back in --
carbon to carbon and ashes to ashes,
we’ll be together again.

credits

from Blood & Sand, released April 5, 2011
written by Jade Sylvan.
geetar and vox by Jade Sylvan.
keys by Lee Wizda.
strings by Jonathan Cannon.
backing vox by Ian Harper and Alana Sacks.
produced by Lee Wizda.

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Jade Sylvan Somerville, Massachusetts

Jade Sylvan is a poet-turned-songwriter living in Somerville, Massachusetts. She fled her native Indiana shortly after graduating college to pursue dreams of becoming a writer. After getting her first book of poetry published and touring the country in 2009, she came home and began writing songs, which garnered instant attention in the famed Cambridge folk scene for their lyrics and melodies. ... more

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