In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
I was a quick wet boy
Diving too deep for coins
All of your straight light eyes
Wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair
I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog eared map
And called for you everywhere
Have I found you?
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big bill looming
Now I'm a fat house cat
Cursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats
Curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean
Blood of Christ mountain stream
Have I found you?
Flightless bird, brown hair bleeding
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big bill, stuck going down
Diving too deep for coins
All of your straight light eyes
Wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair
I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog eared map
And called for you everywhere
Have I found you?
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big bill looming
Now I'm a fat house cat
Cursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats
Curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean
Blood of Christ mountain stream
Have I found you?
Flightless bird, brown hair bleeding
Or lost you?
American mouth
Big bill, stuck going down
Lyrics submitted by campfirestring, edited by studaman, bjhudson, quickwitboy, charlieother, Borderline7, frayedktulu, Noskalsa, Eminemmy, JAlPrufrock, emnem
Flightless Bird, American Mouth Lyrics as written by Samuel Ervin Beam
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
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I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
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This song is written as the perspective of the boys in the street, as a whole, and what path they are going to choose as they get older and grow into men. (This is why the music video takes place in an orphanage.) The seen, and unseen collective suffering is imbedded in the boys’ mind, consciously or subconsciously, and is haunting them. Which path will the boys choose? Issac Hayes is the voice of reason, maybe God, the angel on his shoulder, or the voice of his forefathers from beyond the grave who can see the big picture and are pleading with the boys not to continue the violence and pattern of killing their brothers, but to rise above. The most beautiful song and has so many levels. Racism towards African Americans in America would not exist if everyone sat down and listened to this song and understood the history behind the words. The power, fear, pleading in RZA and Ghostface voices are genuine and powerful. Issac Hayes’ strong voice makes the perfect strong father figure, who is possibly from beyond the grave.
It wounds me that they used one of the most lush, deep, symbolism-laden songs of the year, a eulogy of aching, helpless nostalgia and growing disillusionment with American culture, for a movie extolling the shallowest, silliest parts of said culture. When I first discovered the song's placement on the soundtrack (during a prom scene, no less), it was just a bit too much bitter irony for me to handle. I had naively hoped that its inclusion would inspire young fans to look a little deeper into the song, but seeing a few of these replies...I guess if one can enjoy a book series about an obsessive, stalking, dangerously co-dependent relationship as a sweet love story, then Flightless Bird can be enjoyed as a simple ballad of Vampire and shallow, personality-void human love. Doesn't make it any less tragic.
As for the song itself...
"I was a quick wet boy Diving too deep for coins All of your straight blind eyes Wide on my plastic toys"
This is us when we are young, and a young nation. Our life is in our hands, we live by what we can dive for, and if we go too deep it's nothing to be afraid of. By living with death right there, we are also right next to life. This feels a lot like what we see in Boy With A Coin, with all the life and death images right next to each other.
With the chorus, I go two different ways. On one hand, the options are finding the flightless bird and realizing our own frailty, or losing the American mouth and silencing ourselves about it. On the other hand, it could be that we are unsure whether we have lost or found this one entity, the bird with the voice. Either way, the choice is heartbreaking.
"Pissing on magazine photos Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ mountain stream "
This line is so, so dense it leaves me gasping for breath every time I hear it. I think it unravels as the Blood of Christ Stream... the living, passionate, life-saving water coupled with the soul-saving blood, reduced to a carbon-copy, mass-produced, glossy advertisement for /lures/, which is then thrown away and used as litter...Everything that we were as quick, wet children, living immersed in the water and with death at our heels, has been lost and flattened and is used as nothing more than advertisement and cast aside, and our basic humanity is lost in its pages. There is just too much to this song. God, I love it.
Thanks for everyone posting the lyrics and thoughts on the interpretations of this lovely song. However, ABookOnAShelf, I am always amazed at pseudointellectuals presuming to tell the rest of us how inane we are. Regarding the placement of this song in the movie Twilight, since when do teenagers listen to song lyrics at a dance? This is a moving, beautiful slow song, and so well suited for that point in the movie. It's clear that whatever the song's meaning, it is a lament and so fits the mood of the scene also. The lyrics are irrelevant to the creation of mood. Did you actually read the book series, or are you just making off-the-cuff remarks about something you know nothing about. Amazing how you can describe a simply beautiful and passionate love story as "an obsessive, stalking, dangerously codependent relationship". Either you have no personal concept of a "soulmate" or you simply don't believe in the existence of that concept. Either way, how sad. I'd hate to have to go through life just settling because you have no idea of what a truly great and complete romantic love relationship is.
Aw. I'm sad for you ABookOnAShelf. You'll never know what its like to have "an obsessive, stalking, dangerously codependent relationship". Its actually quite wonderful to have someone feel that way about you and vice versa. It makes me happy. After all, what does life matter if you aren't happy? You are WAY too serious, dear. Please, let us commoners wade in our ignorance.
ABookOnAShelf, I completely agree with you. Twifangirls who don't know what real literature is are obsessed themselves with what they perceive to be a "beautiful" relationship when in reality, it is all the things you described. SMeyer came out and said it was her fantasy (basically telling the world she created a Mary Sue character) and even Robert Pattinson has come out saying he hates the books and he thinks the fact that Smeyer is so into it is creepy. +1 Rob Pattinson!<br /> <br /> BTW, I have read all the books, AND seen the movie. I do this so people can't say "oh, well you just don't know because you haven't read the books" when I debate its status as an over-hyped piece of nonsense. A decent read in some parts till it becomes completely ridiculous toward the end. JKR : Now there's a great author who knows how to work a plot. SMeyer wouldn't know a literary device if it smacked her in the face.<br /> <br /> However, I do agree that the song lyrics don't really need to be present, in the movie it was just a background song, so the gorgeous melody and refrain are all you really heard (or need). There was dialogue over it, so the lyrics weren't directly referring to the scene.