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Mission Bells

from The Great Make Believer by Chris Robley

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Sometimes when I hear church bells I think about how they were once used to regulate daily life, marking the hours, calling folks to mass, signaling lunchtime and the end of the workday. A vestige of another age. Now when they’re ringing in the distance, I feel a kind of disconnectedness and longing in the sound… the way we keep wanting things we can’t have, or that had us once and won’t have us back.

'Mission Bells' is a lovelorn song set in a church, which I thought was a funny place to have someone consecrate themselves to ‘the Flesh,’ as you might hear it called in some creepy Catholic litany, forever and ever, amen.

lyrics

One early Sunday morning we both felt the spark
So we snuck back in the churchyard after dark
There beneath the silent stars
we drank white wine from mason jars
and you told me that you had a hundred ways to break my heart

Well you picked the lock and I opened up the door
And we laid a blanket down upon the floor
It’s not so much that I didn’t choose
when you took what I could not refuse
but how I wanted what you wouldn’t give until I’d hurt some more

Now can you hear the church choir sing
As it’s mixing with the mission bell ringing a long way off
I remember how I miss your touch
I miss your kiss, I miss so much about you
I miss almost everything about you

I lost a little of my innocence to you
So when you took the rest it felt like déjà vu
I thought I could hold fast to faith and grace and hope and chastity
But you wanted every little bit of that last virtue too

Now can you hear the church choir sing
As it’s mixing with the mission bell ringing a long way off
I remember how I miss your touch
I miss your kiss, I miss so much about you
I miss almost everything about you

I thought I knew what love was at the start
But you just knew the lines and played your part
And all the sweet things we’d rehearsed
You memorized them all in reverse
And you proved that you still had a hundred ways to break my heart

credits

from The Great Make Believer, released March 11, 2016

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Chris Robley Lewiston, Maine

"Chris Robley is at the top of his game with his new work." - KCRW

Maine-based singer/songwriter and award-winning poet Chris Robley (formerly from Portland, Oregon) performs orchestral indie-pop and fractured folk reminiscent of John Lennon, John Vanderslice, Harry Nilsson, and Joe Henry.

His poetry has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals. ... more

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