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Poison Arrow Lyrics

Paintings they fall off the walls
When you come traipsing in with your horse
Your six string guitar is a mess
Silver bullets hanging off your dress

Now I remember what I meant to be
To replace your history
Who let that girl into this room?
So innocent, yet doomed

Who shot the poison arrow?

Here she comes
Yeah, she's playing hard to get
There she goes
A promise you can never forget

Mirrors, they black out and freeze
When you pull me in too deep
Everytime I handcuff you
I know I come closer to the truth

Now I remember what I meant to say
To count all my blessings today
Who let that girl into this room
So innocent, yet doomed

Who shot the poison arrow?

Here she comes
Yeah, she's playing hard to get
There she goes
A promise you can never forget
4 Meanings

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Cover art for Poison Arrow lyrics by Sonic Youth

The end of this song is plain BRILLIANT. It shows that no matter how inaccessible for the mainstream or far away from rock SY gets, you can still say they fucking rock.

As for the meaning, I'll see it later.

Cover art for Poison Arrow lyrics by Sonic Youth

I think that this is about falling for a femme fetale - who shot the poision arrow is a reference to cupid.

Cover art for Poison Arrow lyrics by Sonic Youth

live, Thurston introduced "Poison Arrow" as a "love song", but he might have said "Love song", as in Courtney Love. I don't mean to suggest that Thurston was ever romantically interested in Love, but just as the earlier SY song "Junkie's Promise" was at least partially inspired by Kurt Cobain, "Poison Arrow" could be a third-person observation of Courtney Love as a "femme fatale" (or trainwreck, depending on your POV).

Cover art for Poison Arrow lyrics by Sonic Youth

But, if it's a reference to cupid, why would the arrow have poison in it? Cupid didn't have that.

Cupid's arrow is poison IMO, because love is deadly. When you're in love you totally expose yourself to the person you love, you give yourself over to them and are completely vunerable! Especially when you don't want to fall in love, and you do anyway or when you willingly fall in love and you get your heart stomped all over.

 
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