Only Skin Ys Joanna Newsom Full song, not just the eponymous movement. Chord alignments to lyrics only approximate. You're going to need to study the whole seventeen minutes to even attempt the thing. F Am and there was a booming above you F Am that night black airplanes flew over the sea F Am and they were lowing and shifting like beached whales F shelled snails Am as you strained and you squinted to see F Am the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry Em D you froze in your sand shoal C Bb prayed for your poor soul Em D C Bb sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl and when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke F Am then there was a silence you took to mean something: F mean "Run, sing, Am for alive you will evermore be!" F Am and the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin' F has gone east Am while you're left to explain them to me F Am released from their hairless and blind cavalry with your hands in your pockets, stubbily running to where I'm unfresh, undressed and yawning well, what is this craziness? this crazy talking? you caught some small death when you were sleepwalking Am E D Asus4 it was a dark dream, darlin', it's over Am C Bb the firebreather is beneath the clover beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather F#m C#m F#m D but I took my fishingpole (fearing your fever) F#m C#m down to the swimminghole, F#m D where there grows a bitter herb F#m A D that blooms but one day a year by the riverside - Gm7(arpeggio up) I'd bring it here: F C apply it gently Bb Dm to the love you've lent me F Am while the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed F Am and the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze F Am and I watched how the water was kneading so neatly F gone treacly Am nearly slowed to a stop in this heat F Am G - frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath Am C Em G press on me: we are restless things Am C Em G webs of seaweed are swaddling Am C you call upon the dusk Em G of the musk of a squid Am C Em G shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib Dm F C Em rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes Dm F C Am I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it! Dm F C Em smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened Dm F C Am smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking C G C and when the fire moves away Am G F fire moves away, son C G C why would you say Am G F I was the last one? Am C Em G scrape your knee; it is only skin Am C Em G makes the sound of violins Am C Em G when I cut your hair, and leave the birds all of the trimmings Am C Em G I am the happiest woman among all women C#m and the shallow Fm water stretches as C#m far as I Abm can see C#m knee-deep, trudging along Fm Abm a seagull weeps; "so long" Fm I'm humming a threshing song until the night is over C# hold on! hold on! Fm hold your horses back from the fickle dawn I have got some business out at the edge of town candy weighing both of my pockets down 'til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them (and knowing how the common-folk condemn what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm being a woman, being a woman) but always up the mountainside you're clambering groping blindly, hungry for anything: picking through your pocket linings - well, what is this? scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus? I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain little sister, he will be back again I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin' silently from all the blooming cherry trees in tiny nooses, safe from everyone nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done be a woman, be a woman! Very fast: Fm though we felt the spray of the waves C# we decided to stay till the tide rose too far we weren't afraid, cause we know what you are and you know that we know what you are Cm awful atoll o, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow! C# bawl, bellow: Fm Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow toddle and roll; teeth an impalpable bit of leather while yarrow, heather and hollyhock awkwardly molt along the shore Fm C# are you mine? Fm my heart? C# mine anymore? F C#m etc. stay with me for awhile that's an awfully real gun I know life will lay you down as the lightning has lately done Fm C# failing this, failing this, Am G follow me, my sweetest friend F Am to see what you anointed in pointing your gun there C lay it down! nice and slow! G F there is nowhere to go, save up Am F up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream Am at the sight of my baby, out back: F Am F back on the patio watching the bats bring night in F - while, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white F Am wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped Em D C Bb last week our picture window produced a half-word Em D C Bb heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird Em D C Bb we stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake Em D C Bb and pant and labour over every intake Am E D Asus4 I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace Am C Bb then thought I ought to take her to a higher place said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you and though you die, bird, you will have a fine view" F#m C#m then in my hot hand F#m D she slumped her sick weight F#m C#m we tramped through the poison oak F#m D heartbroke and inchoate F#m A the dogs were snapping F#m D so you cuffed their collars F#m A while I climbed the tree-house F#m D then how I hollered! F#m C#m F#m A D Gm7 well she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two F C Bb Dm then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew F#m C#m F#m (while, back in the world that moves, often A D Gm7 according to the hoarding of these clues Em D dogs still run roughly around C Bb little tufts of finch-down) F Am the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland F Am but his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless F Am while down in the lowlands the crops are all coming; F we have everything Am life is thundering blissful towards death F Am Em in a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness Am C Em G you stopped by, I was all alive Am C Em G in my doorway, we shucked and jived Am C and when you wept, I was gone: Em G see, I got gone when I got wise Am C Em G but I can't with certainty say we survived Dm F then down, and down Am and down, and down C and down, and deeper Dm F stoke without sound C the blameless flames G you endless sleeper Dm F C Em through fire below, and fire above, and fire within Dm F C G sleeped through the things that couldn't have been if you hadn't have been C G C and when the fire moves away Am G F fire moves away, son C G C why would you say Am G F I was the last one? Am C Em G all my bones they are gone, gone, gone Am C Em G take my bones, I don't need none Am C Em G cold, cold cupboard, Lord, nothing to chew on! Am C Em G suck all day on a cherry stone Am C Em G dig a little hole, not three inches round Am C Em G spit your pit in the hole in the ground Am C Em G weep upon the spot for the starving of me! Am C Em G till up grow a fine young cherry tree Am C Em G well when the bough breaks, what'll you make for me? Am C Em G a little willow cabin to rest on your knee Am C Em G what'll I do with a trinket such as this? Am C Em G think of your woman, who's gone to the west Am C Em G but I'm starving and freezing in my measly old bed! Am C Em G then I'll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head Am C Em G come across the desert with no shoes on! Am C Em G I love you truly, or I love no-one C G C fire moves away Am G F fire moves away, son C G C why would you say Am G F I was the last one? last one F Am clear the room! there's a fire, a fire, a fire F Am get going, and I'm going to be right behind you F Am and if the love of a woman or two, dear, F Am couldn't move you to such heights, then all I can do F Am is do, my darling, right by you