Strung - Joe Henry

I keep wooden boxes like traps strung with wire

In the light of old tires, piled on the fire

Wearing their smoke like a flower in bloom

Cut like the thread in a pipe fitter’s room;

I dig in the dirt and yank at the root

Of the shadow’s dark vein in a story gone mute

Till it sings with the blue of a hangman in time

And I give away what never was mine

I’ve set a snare for the prey on my tongue

The mean feral song still yet to be sung;

The one with your name called out in the street

That with or without me will always will repeat

Like a coin in the mirrored jukebox machine

Can set a world spinning like cheap gasoline;

Sending up sparks in the air, how they shine

And I give away what never was mine

I give away what never was mine

The god of all truth, of darkness and sleep

Plays like the arc of a lamp and for keeps

Dancing with fury, heat in both hands

And welds me to you in the place where I stand:

In love with your doubt, deaf to my own

Awake to the hole in the heart of my bone

As I shake and sing, beating out time

And I give away what never was mine

I give away what never was mine