Okkervil River – Dont Leave (Guitar)

  D                        A
I went out and I found the house

         F#m                        G
where my old hometown lived and lay down,

      Bm
and I broke through the window,

  G                           A
a rag wrapped around my right hand.

      D                          A
And I snuck up the stairs in the night,

     F#m                       G
each familiar and friendly old flight,

      Bm                       G                     A
until I found the room that my hometown lay sleeping in.

      Em                Bm
And I crawled into that bed,

      G
and I listened to each even breath, and whispered,

D                                                     A
"What did you mean? Did you speak to me? What did you say?

       Em                       G                              D  A
Do the secrets I dreamed mean a thing that I dreamed them that w- ay?

               Em  F#m  G  F#m  G  A
Don't leave me again."

      D                       A
I got caught as a cold little kid,

         F#m                      G
with his collar flipped up in mid-day.

     Bm                       G                   A
In a basement my broken-wrist friend and I faded away.

          D                      A
There's a gunpowder whiff in the wind

      F#m                        G
Off a crumbling cliff, where the waves

    Bm                         G                        A
Are filling with children, gay smiles in the silver and spray.

         Em            Bm             G
Down the linden in the lane float the feelers of the flames,

            D                                     A
As we climb high on a wind through the gardens of graves,

        Em                      G                         D  A
To pick flowers flung up by old friends as they dream and decay.

        D
Can you open your mouth up to speak?

                      A
Are you weak? Are you drained?

                    Em                    G                  D A
Do you blaze in one second of time as the rest is all wiping away?

                       Em  F#m  G  F#m  G  A
Oh, come on, be my friend

                   D
And don't leave me again.

  D                        A
I went out and I found the crown

           F#m                      G
That I had cursed as a kid and cast down,

      Bm                       G                            A
And I brushed off the bugs and dust and plopped it up on my head.

  D                         A
I went out and chased after words

      F#m                   G
I had read as a kid, or had heard,

      Bm                       G                         A
And I carved them up letter by letter. They shivered and bled,

      Em                Bm
Until finally they were dead.

        G
And who knows what they might have meant?

             D                                   A
And I sat up high in the gloom of my room in the rain,

          Em                    G                        D A
while the world I had known lay below, going cold, going grey.

               D                                                         A
I called on my friends: Hey, my friends, do you hear me? Do you feel the same?

            Em                       G                       D  A
Can you all assemble for me, take my lead, and leap into the waves?

                    Em  F#m  G  F#m  G  A
Oh -- my aging old friends,

                    Em  F#m  G  F#m  G  A
I just noticed your skin,

                  Em  F#m  G  F#m  G  A
and your old, shaking hands,

               Em      F#m  G  F#m G   A
and your cold veil of mist. And I will sing

                                           Em  F#m  G  F#m  G  A
from where I stand, whipped by late winter wind,

                D
"Don't leave me again."