Small Fortune Lyrics – Annie Gallup

Small Fortune

The Sky At Night

So much I’ve done in my life when my heart wasn’t in it
I tell a brave story, I know how to spin it
You moved me through the open door, out past the cars and the lights
There’s nothing in this world big as the sky at night

We were a match made of matchsticks and sulfur
We burned our own house all the way down to the ground
And then built it again in a thunderstorm with a key and a kite
There’s nothing in this world big as the sky at night

It’s an old story, told over and over
Blurring the words, bending the cover
Between beauty and truth, no distance at all,
So why do the stars seem so small

I’m drawn to fiction more than to fact
Because somebody went to the trouble to dream up all that
And I like the blank page almost as much as the story I’m going to write
There’s nothing in this world big as the sky at night
There’s nothing in this world big as the sky at night

Memory

Memory is fluid. It’s not absolute
What you see as true shifts every time you think back through it
I remember you, absolutely, at least I think I do
But maybe I’m losing what was true by not forgetting you

The city streets held the heat, you were cool and out of place
With your broken English and your broken in suitcase
On a different street, on a different night, I might have turned away
Afraid of what the cruel world would say

In this city of strangers there was no place we could go
where we wouldn’t be seen by somebody that somebody knows
We were underground and bound together by the same force
that makes diamonds from coal: the weight of the world.

But every time I think of you my memory drifts
I lose you just a little bit

In the end, I chose you, in the end you couldn’t choose
which, in the end, is choosing, so I cut you loose
Then walked away and walked all night
Heat still rising from the streets, at first light

But every time I think of you my memory drifts
I lose you just a little bit

The Names That They Call Me

The names that they call me aren’t names
And the way I react is… I don’t react
I walk under clouds that look like cement
On a road that is made from cement, in fact
The names they call me aren’t names

You are too trusting, said my mother
and she was not wrong. Even she had my trust
My mother created me in her own image
and never let me forget I am made out of dust
You are too trusting, she said

He was not beautiful, he drew beauty to him
I loved his hands, they knew how to make things
He was not terrible, terror ran through him –
I feared his hands, they taught me to break things

I chose an oversized raincoat for the mystery
But then I grew into it, and then it rained
So I looked like everyone else on the street
Purposeful and overexplained
an oversized raincoat

He didn’t need anything from anyone at all
I envied the freedom and power it gave him
He never was mine but I hung around
Half hoping his heart would fail so I could save him

The holy terror of poetry
not the recklessness of being honest and brave
but reading the pages I left for eternity
feels like I’m hearing my voice from the grave

The names that they call me aren’t names

Harvey Moved To Queens

It was the year of living beyond our means
Rent was through the roof, work ran out, we needed things
We needed better goods and services, the best wise machines
But when it all came down I fled like a ghost to the cool blue coast
And Harvey moved to Queens

Harvey moved to Queens

What about my cousins and the downtown scene?
We were good at tipping bottles by the neck and acting mean
But we couldn’t make the leap to solitaire and touch screens
so when there was hell to pay I caught the first train to the last stop in Maine
And Harvey moved to Queens

Harvey moved to Queens

Would you imagine? No, I never would guess
that this house of cards could devolve to this mess
Did you ever dream? Never in this life of mine
I know I should be mad as hell, but trouble is I’m fine

Somewhere in the past we sang as sirens screamed
We knew our way around the town, we knew black cabs from limousines
But we didn’t know that what we knew was never torn at the seams
So when it came undone the band played on
But I was already gone
And Harvey moved to Queens

Harvey moved to Queens

She Lived With Her Mother

She lived with her mother
So you had to pretend
You’d come for the weekend
As a family friend

Her mother made dinner
Dinner was delicious
You made conversation
You helped with the dishes

They showed you your room
Turned down the cover
Thank you, you’re very kind
of course it’s no botherO
Left you in the dark
Hey you were born to suffer
Then she’s slipping in beside you
Hush, you’ll wake mother

Sunshine in the kitchen
Listening to Brahms
A pretty girl in slippers
Sipping coffee with moms

And if you have a prayer
Of getting her alone
You’re going to have to find
A place of your own

As a minor poet
You know how to impress
You script the scene
She slips off her dress
It works on the page
In life it’s a mess
You’re a disappointing lover
And a lousy guest

Lovely to see you
Have a good week
Give mother and daughter
Matching pecks on the cheek

Boot heels on the sidewalk
Stairway to the train
Already scheming
how to see her again

Murder Ballad

Mother sang a murder ballad as she rocked me in her arms
a song that she learned from her mother who learned from her mother who learned from…
Mother sang that endless song, back and back, on and on,
blood runs deep, go to sleep

Doors that opened closed behind me, couldn’t go home if I wanted,
at least that’s the story I tell myself so I won’t run back to mother where it’s safe and haunted
rockabye, close your eyes, you can’t outrun it
Blood runs deep, go to sleep

High on a hill, sun through the leaves
I’d never believe
that trouble would ever come find me here, no
but it can and it will, sang the carrion crow

Mother rocked me in her arms and sang that endless sonnet
That led me through a field of flowers, fertile from all of the blood spilled on it
and I grew like a weed, reaching down
Blood runs deep, go to sleep

In The Wing With The Rothkos

When they landed art lost its value
They took over the planet. Beauty was wasted
Schools were abandoned, museums dismantled
There was outrage and panic and nowhere to go

When they landed there was no warning
they were heavy handed, crushing city blocks
Refugees stranded, store looted and ransacked
What we took for granted uprooted and gone

But I’ll remember you in the wing with the Rothkos at the Whitney Museum
We’d traveled all day just to see them
So much depends on what came before and what comes after
What you can’t see until you stand at the center, you said
And we did. And it mattered.

When they landed we were defenseless
Governments disbanded, every soul for themselves
We bargained, demanded, made the sign for peace
But they didn’t understand it, there was no peace.

When they landed I took notes in black crayon
I painted on canvas, I carved it in granite
I witnessed it happen
I was here…

Remembering you in the wing with the Rothkos at the Whitney Museum
We’d traveled all day just to see them
So much depends on what came before and what comes after
What you can’t see until you stand at the center of it all, you said
And we did. And it mattered.

Magnetic

I didn’t know I was magnetic
My father was ice
My mother glass
My sister was good
Because she was carved from wood
They could not prepare me
For how it would feel
To be drawn to a man made of steel

For my father and mother
What drew them together
Was that they shared a love of whisky
Yeah, or at least they called it love
There were no clues
To how it would feel
To be drawn to a man made of steel

What brings us together babe, is elemental
The laws of physics are unapologetic
I can do nothing at all, have it mean something real
You’re steel
And I’m magnetic

Raised in a world of copper and plaster
Stone and cement, lead and synthetic
How would I know I was magnetic
I never imagined the power I’d feel
Over a man made of steel

Birds of Prey

She’s not the kind you think of as pretty
But there’s something about her gets under your skin
She moves like she hears music no one else can hear
And you want to listen in
You’ve been watching from your seat in the back
She’s all in black with a black beret

Birds of prey

Of course she’s been with a lot of guys
The ones everyone knows, and those her art implies
Still she’s forthright and free, a bird on the wing
Breakable and wise
And you want to be the one to break her
Shake her, take her breath away

Birds of prey

You want to know how she knows
How to turn a word into a double edged sword
And how she knows exactly how to turn
A phrase like a knife, and strike a dark chord
You’ve been watching from your seat in the back
You judge because you have nothing to say

Birds of prey

Killing Time

He had sharp eyes and a cold stare from his past life as a raptor
Loving me was how he was killing time until he could start his next chapter
He had sharp teeth and a cool head, he had the instincts of a criminal
He was killing time until he could start life over as a wild animal
Not something high on the food chain, no he wouldn’t be a wolf or a human being
He would be reborn as the sort of creature who stays alive by being mean
Something quick and sharp like a mink or a stoat, like a weasel or a badger
Something you might want to make into a coat to possess its beauty and its anger

He was killing time by loving me but I was going somewhere
At least I thought I was going somewhere but he was just killing time

We were killing time at the coffee bar, the one with the bottomless coffee cup
The waitress had a tiger tattoo above her knee that you could see when her skirt rode up
There were so many people coming and going, hunting and gathering, springing for the twenty ounce
I was watching him watching everything, circling, circling, coiled to pounce
It was killing time and I was easy prey. I thought that love meant “sit! Stay!”
But he was wired to hunt, to catch what runs, to chase the one that got away
Of course I knew all that, but what did I know? He was killing time until his time to go
And it’s my own fault, at least that’s what I thought, yeah, I was born to get caught

And he was killing time by loving me but I was going somewhere
At least I thought I was going somewhere but he was just killing time

We were caught in traffic on the seventeen, he was killing time eviscerating Nietzsche
The meaning of life is staying alive and that’s it, he said, flashing sharp little teeth
We were killing time in the traffic crawl, while the fuel ran fumes then sputtered and stalled
Don’t underestimate the zeitgeist, he said, apropos of nothing at all
There was a black cloud dropping little drops of rain, a black crow kicking at roadkill in the breakdown lane
Let’s just say indiscretion got the better of valor, he chased down a rusty old impala
And got in, never seen again, eat the bones and skin, he left nothing behind
Except an overdue copy of Human, All Too Human in the backseat. I returned it and paid the fine

He was killing time by loving me but I was going somewhere
At least I thought I was going somewhere but he was just killing time by loving me

Like Audrey Hepburn

She looks like Audrey Hepburn from the back
That’s what everybody told her, and she took it to be fact
Long after anybody else remembered when
It was close enough to true to be convincingly pretend

   She holds the hand, the card to play
   She’s going to look like Audrey Hepburn as she is walking away

Everybody at this party has something to prove
Some are howling, or crying wolf and some are cryptically aloof
And somebody turned the music up, no one can hear a thing
but what they’re saying is loud and clear in the push and posturing

   She holds the hand, the card to play
   She’s going to look like Audrey Hepburn as she is walking away
      Walking away
      Walking away

She had no cause to doubt him and no reason to trust
You can’t be a truth teller and fortune teller at once
If he expected alchemy it’s not her fault
But she’ll turn water into whisky, with a grain of salt

   She holds his hand, the card to play
   She’s going to look like Audrey Hepburn as she is walking away
      Walking away
      Walking away