From the album by Anna Tivel

KURATED NO. 280
VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL 49
RECENT RELEASE Animal Poem by Anna Tivel

Screenshot 2026 06 17 At 2.13.18 pm

Album cover for Animal Poem

CONTENTS

Holy Equation Lyrics

[Verse]

God bless this city

Steel-beamed and starless

Exhaust and graffiti

A dirty glass forest

Surrounded by faces

Always a tourist

God bless this city

I′ve just got to say

This whole thing is really

Keeping me humble

The discount groceries

And the timing-belt trouble

I’m waking up early

I′m bussing the tables

This whole thing is really

A hopeless equation

[Chorus]

The math doesn’t add up

There’s holes in the fabric of dreams

You see right through

Good luck to the lucky few

And God bless the rest of us fools

[Verse]

And God bless my neighbor

Her pit bull′s barking

Thе boyfriend who robbed her

Was sеarching for something

To ease that feeling

That mortal labor

God bless that woman

She always waves

At the old Russian couple

Who walk in circles

Bright-colored kerchief

And hard world smiles

The harshest language

Is one that fails to give a person

Endless value

The math doesn′t add up

There’s holes in the fabric of dreams

You see right through

Good luck to the lucky few

And God bless the rest of us

[Verse]

And God bless this country

I cry about it

Gold dust blooming

From black gunpowder

A proud explosion

Of hope and anger

God bless this whole mess

And God bless my neighbors

The purple bicycle kid rides home

His arms outstretched

In the flight path, soaring

A pickup swerves and honks his horn

If God exists, that math is holy

Animal Poem Lyrics

Courage is a tired mom, milk crate and a cardboard sign

Trying to find a story for her daughter

This is how the world exists, let me spin it for you kid

In a way that’s easier to swallow

Everyone is in a play, characters in constant pain

Reaching for a way to taste some beauty

You can be someone who loves, or you can be somebody else

That’s all there is, you breathe, then you’re not breathing

Lit up real neon bulb, everything is human love

Everywhere you look therе might be meaning

Chaos is an ancient art, you can cut thе world you want

Out of any shit that you’ve been given

I don’t know and tell me more, is a poem that never fails

Spoken in the language of a lover

You can be someone who moves, and tries to move somebody else

That’s all there is, you die in broken laughter

None of it is really fair, born into the atmosphere

Breathing gold or stealing when you’re hungry

Everyone you come upon, holds a picture in their mind

Ask them and they might just show you something

Magpie on the dying grass, looking for a diamond

Or some trash to build a temporary altar

Everything’s a turning wheel, it comes around, you’re born, you feel

You leave the truth you stole for someone after

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High up silver howling bird, looking down to see the world

Spinning out into the vast forever

Flying is a faithful dance, animals suspended

At the place where understanding touches vapor

Sorry and i’m listening, is a poem that’s always been

Beautiful enough to kill the darkness

You can be someone who loves, or you can be somebody else

I tell you kid, the first one is the hardest

Paradise Lyrics

[Verse]

You know I keep the paper for some future rainy day

I put it in a pile with all the other things I save

Bottle tops and broken watches

Rubber bands and creamer cartons

All that I might need tomorrow

You never know when it gets hard

Folding all the clothes, a growing pile upon the bed

T-shirts from my travels, Egypt, Montreal, Berlin

Turning up the radio, the BBC, the world so close

My old car is dead, you know

And all those papers block the door

[Chorus]

I can′t find it

Paradise is in the mind

I just know it is

But I’ve been searching for a lifetime

[Verse]

I pick my way through everything to find thе ringing phone

Pose a hundred quеstions, hungry just to hear someone

Another year tomorrow, no one here to send a card to

Books and bills and empty jars, a wave arising, oh my God

[Chorus]

I can′t find it

Paradise is in the mind

I just know it is

But I’ve been searching for a lifetime

[Verse]

Wasn’t I alive among the pine trees in the wind?

Running through the country, trying to find it

Almost out of time and I still don′t know what it is

I don′t have what I need to keep from dying

[Chorus]

I can’t find it

Paradise is in the mind

I just know it is

But I′ve been searching for a lifetime

I can’t find it

Paradise is in the mind

I just know it is

But I′ve been searching for a lifetime

A lifetime

[Verse]

You know I keep the paper for some future rainy day

I put it in a pile with all the other things I save

Envelopes and advertisements, soup cans and folder files

I keep looking, I can’t find it

Paradise or something like it



Badlands Lyrics

[Verse]

Driving through the badlands

You were talking about time

All those strange formations

Making shadows you followed

The purple of the ages

And the painted yellow lines

A photo never catches what you′re after

It’s further

Easy does it, lead foot

You got miles to get it right

Look at all those silver hubcaps

Spinning, the wind sends

A thousand birds and startled waves

Reversing through the sky

Then emptiness right after that explosion

[Chorus]

Sweet understanding

The sky is on fire above the badlands

And when you least expect it

You′re gonna find yourself traveling alone

[Verse]

Settling in sandstone

There’s a coyote on the rise

Lonely as a figure in a painting

It’s painful

You learn it all so slow

You′ll be gone before you′re wise

But maybe it’s the highway that′ll change you

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[Chorus]

Sweet understanding

The sky is on fire above the badlands

And when you least expect it

You’re gonna find yourself traveling

Sweet understanding

The sky is on fire above the badlands

And when you least expect it

You′re gonna find yourself traveling alone

You’re gonna find yourself traveling alone

You′re gonna find yourself traveling alone

Hough Avenue 

[Verse]

Plane touched down, Cleveland, Ohio

I raised my collar to the cold

On the cab ride home, that song was playing

Don′t let me be misunderstood

Raised on soul and running hungry

Looking for a more perfect love

Rock ‘n′ roll or God and country

Or just somebody to look at us

On the corner where you were laid out

Still half-smiling from the dream

There’s a reason for the letdown

And that song means everything

Good intentions, better liars

History wears its bloody hand

I saw you last in late Septembеr

You were sleeping in your car again

Human kindness is ovеrflowing

Miss Simone made me believe

I just don’t know where to go now

Let this whole place lie to me

On the corner where you struck out

In the echo of a scream

There′s a reason for the breakdown

And that song means everything

It′s just a song, quit your crying

There’s man who fought so you could find it

Reaching out past their violence

Into some bright unknown

It′s worth the cost just to listen

That door was locked and now it isn’t

An endless wall of televisions

And something bigger still unfolding

On the corner where you bled out

And the bells began to ring

There′s a reason for those bells now

And that song means everything

On the corner where you held out

For the future lives of kings

There’s a reason for your death now

And that song means everything

Airplane to Nowhere Lyrics

Gold trombone and broken drum

The wonder and the violence

The wonder and the violence

Reaching out to touch someone

Just how you learned in childhood

Warm milk and dry blood

The winter rain is blowing sideways

Some other day′ll find you smiling

Pepper shaker, shattered plate

The way he kissed you after

Good as any mother

Made that anger fly away

Airplane to nowhere

Reeling in the ether

The wintеr rain is blowing sideways

Some other day’ll find you smiling

Starting ovеr, climbing up

From a dream that you were driving

Out into the badlands

Best intentions right up front

But the dream was just a phantom

Never really happened

The winter rain is blowing sideways

Some other day′ll find you smiling

Don’t worry, babe, this is kindness

A little pain and then you’re flying

White Goose Lyrics

[Verse 1]

June was just around the corner, the rain my only lover

A green so bright and tender, I got high enough to let it blow my mind

I was a kid in some past life, I shot a white goose flying south

Crimson rose blooming across, the empty wildness he fell out of

Drunk with power, sick with pain, I laid in fields to feel something

Small and lost and full of thanks, I guess the rain just made me think of it

[Verse 2]

Of blue dragonflies on rubber, the cracked tires by the river

The pull of muddy water, hiding quick flashes of silver, it’s alright

In just a minute I’ll be fine, I got the mеaning wrong again

Took for granted everything I need to brеathe and feel and live

The tender green, the violent wind, I want to let it make me change

Born, then blown around, then dead, I guess the rain just made me think of it

[Verse 3]

Five semis in the darkness, the stars that map the night shift

Driving back to Oregon on the burned out path the fire took, I could cry

Only chimneys left alive, is there a lonelier sight

The ghost of everything we loved and everything we didn’t fight for

The wild midnight forest, the kid, the gun, the white goose

The wind, the tender green, the summer rain just made me think of it

[Outro]

June was just around the corner, the rain my only lover

A green so bright and tender, I got high enough to let it blow my mind

Flourescence in the Future Lyrics

[Verse]

Saturday was endless

You became a prism bending

Indigo across the ceiling

Finally let yourself believe it

A mind to live inside

Terror, boredom, kindness, flight

Getting older all the time

Or is it just fluorescent lighting on your face?

[Chorus]

Is there something else you meant to say?

[Verse]

Fear and disappointment, a forever kid just hoping

For a better movie version of the future fact of dying

You arrive, and evеry room is just a mirror facing you

A carpet path, a shifting shadow

You can turn, but you can never turn away

[Chorus]

Is thеre something else you meant to say?

[Verse]

There′s no way to avoid it

Every engine has an end date

You are here and this is one day

Another may be coming

Lay your palm upon the table

Every fortune you have handled

Everything you loved and mangled

Every thought you held so close

Your mind was changed

[Chorus]

Is there something else you meant to say?

[Verse]

Happiness is fragile

A breath of air through a window

Maybe all the rest will help you

Hold the wind when it’s against you

Incredible explosion

Ephemeral good feeling

Close your eyes, it′s only fleeting

Don’t forget the way it came on

Like a wave

[Chorus]

Is there something else you meant to say?

Meantime Lyrics

[Verse]

The family down the street moved out

That dad who slapped his kids around

Then, built a swing behind the house that no one ever used

It′s funny how we find it hard to see into a tangled heart

The beautiful and brutal parts are beating in us too

[Chorus]

And I’m gonna love you in the meantime

′Til the gold light ends

In the madness of real life

I promise to do my best

[Verse]

Sometimes when the morning comes, I roll away from everyone

Holding all that hurt me once, I know you know that truth

It’s hard to keep the wheels attached, the everyday, the aftermath

The purple fading blue to black when sun sets like a bruise

[Chorus]

And I’m gonna love you in the meantime

′Til the gold light ends

In the madness of real life

I promise to do my best

[Verse]

The family down the street moved out, I wonder where they′re living now

They fixed it up, the swing is still reaching in the wind

I reach for you, something like that, eternally, but never quite

Becoming good, but God, I’m trying to be a better friend

[Chorus]

And I′m gonna love you in the meantime

‘Til the gold light ends

In the madness of real life

I promise to do my best

[Outro]

In the madness of real life

I promise to do my best

The Humming Lyrics

[Verse]

You were trying to tell me something I could not relate

Language is the lover′s problem, listening is pain

Everything is open, baby, everything is safe

Someday, when we’re older, I′ll remember

Summer on the roof, the apples falling from the tree

Reaching for each other in confused eternity

Reverence and wonder, emptiness and need

Someday, when we’re older, I’ll do better

And watching you becoming everything you will become

I just want to live inside the realness of it all

Hold you ′til you know you are the reason I know love

Someday, when we′re older, I will tell you

Everything I learned about the rain from watching you

Every way I thought I couldn’t change until you moved

Every hour I spent just trying to kiss some kind of truth

Someday, when we′re older, I will linger

Over all the moments of an ordinary life

Orange moon so low, we had to stop and rub our eyes

I was trying to tell you, but I couldn’t find the words

Someday, when we′re older, sitting quiet

Everything will spread out like a history of love

Cinema unfolding in the wake of us

What if that bright humming is all there ever was?

Baby, tell me something, I can hear it

[Outro]

Hey, love

I’m just in my hotel

Sitting here, I′m thinking about you

Okay, bye