DESCRIPTION:
Artist: Dan Mangan & Shane Koyczan
Album: Roboteering EP
Album Release Date: March 10th, 2009

Lyrics:
Used to anticipate
The sign of the coming day.
And all through winter's decay,
You just mark the way.
We worry what people would say
If we upped and walked away.
I swore we had a place to stay.

Stay.
That's what mothers say
When their sons and daughters go away,
They say stay.
My mother said go.
So I wasn't there
The night she fell out of her chair,
So frustrated that she amputated her own legs,
Or rather tried to
With a steak knife.
Her life leaking out on the white floor,
Blossoming like roses in the snow.
Our relationship was an anthem composed of words like "gotta go".
So we went.
And sent our regards on postcards
From other places we'd been
With stories about all the things we'd seen,
That's how it was with you and I.
Why say good bye
When we could still write?
And then it took your hands.
We should've practiced our goodbyes,
Because then it took your eyes.
And I was somewhere in the middle of nowhere
Watching the sun rise over a stop sign
Placed down the centre line of a highway
Filled with sudden turns for the worse.
Running back home
'Cause I gotta play nurse.
Gotta figure out
Which pill alleviates which pain,
Which part of your brain is being used for a
Boxing bag as your body became a never
Ending game of freeze tag,
Taking place in an empty playground.
I was left looking for your limbs
In a lost and found,
And I couldn't set you free.
So we just sat there.
Our heads bent towards each other
Like flowers in the small hours
Of the morning, while
Light wandered in like a warning that
Time is passing and you right along with it,
Bit by bit, every day.
And all I could say is
If I could I would write you some way out of this,
But my gift is useless.
And you said no.
Write me a poem to make me happy.

Over the hill and gone.
And I'd never been that far.
Some boy along the way
Taught me to play guitar.
And you said that you'd read to me
If I fell asleep.
Rock me awake again,
Promise me.
But you make such beautiful words.
You make such beautiful words.

I wrote 'Move Pen Move',
Write me a bedroom where cures
Make love to our cancers
But my mother just motions to a bottle full
Of answers and says "Help me go."
And now I know something
Of how a piano must feel
When it looks at the fireplace to see
Sheet music being used for kindling,
Smoke signalling the end of some song
That I thought it would take
Too long to learn.
So I just sit here watching you burn away
All those notes I never had a chance to play
To hear the music of what you had to say.
I count out the pills just to see if I can do it.
I can't even get halfway through it
Before I turn back into your son and say
Stay.

I need something to lean against.
I think that's okay.
'Butterflies,' you read to me.
They all flew away.
And I'm saddened by the thought
And sometimes I think too much
And though I'm happy right here,
You know that I'm really not
It's distracting.

I could hook up my heart to your ears,
And let my tears be your morphine drip
And maybe it's easier to let you
Slip away than it is to say goodbye.
So I hold my breath.
Because in the countdown to death
The question of 'Why?' melts into 'When?'
How much time do we have left,
Because if I knew what I know now then,
Move pen move.
Write me a mountain.
Because headstones are not big enough.
My mother says stop it,
Write me a poem to make me happy.
So I write this.
Stay.
She smiles and says, 'Gotta go.'
I know.
Goodbye.

And over the years it seems
That aging's just not for me.
Though I ache just below the knees
And it flows to my heart
And all through the hearts I need.
It's not how it ought to be.
It's not how it ought to be.
It's not how it ought to be.
You're falling away from me.
And it's just not right.
Falling away from me.
It's not right.
But you make such beautiful words.
You make such beautiful words.
Oh, now it's trying.
Oh, now it's trying.
Oh, how it's tragic.
Oh, how it's tragic.
But you make such beautiful words.