Mah Sanctum Chords

Lyrics & chords

[Verse 1]
[Em][Am]
My sanctum
[Em]My cave of vine and moss
Is to my right about [Am]ten paces into the
thicket that surrounds me now
So dense grows [G]the swampland that sometimes
it would take me up to 30 minutes
To find the little [Am]hideaway
I had fashioned
Though I had been there hundred
[G]s and hundred[Em]s of times

[Verse 2]
I [Em]would look for the strips
of white sheet
Bright like bush [Am]ghosts that [F]hun
g along the [Am]woven walls
They would [Em]tell me where
[G]All about me were my treasures
[Am]The stained bandages like flags
Boxes of nails and tacks
[Em]A crate of electrical cord, my hammer
[Am]Candles and plastic bags full of matches
and tapers from the church
My Bibles
[Em]Twine Animal boxes and feathers
and bird skulls

[Verse 3]
[Em]Shells
and nests and some
of my shoeboxes, about [Am]ten
Pictures I had cut from [G]magazines and
[Am]threaded through [Em]the walls
The tiny [G]blue glass bottles [Em]of scented
[Am]water
And with these, I kept my life trophies [Em]My God

[Verse 4]
[G]
tokens, the parts of her left be
[Am]hind, the blood mementos
The whore's hair,
her night[Em]dress
The portrait of [G]Co sey
that I had delivered
From the [Am]hands of those who rose
up against her
[Em]Sheared [Am]her , cast her out
[Em]The kinder graph[G] and the instructions
[Am]she had written on the back of it in verse

[Verse 5]
The [Am]painting of Beth,
of her fastened to the walls and [Em]ceiling of the [G]grotto
Angled so that it hovered [Am]above me as I
lay in my shell
On a carpet of pink silk and frill, [Em]yes
And the ten pearl buttons leav[G]ing their evanescent
impression down [Am]my back or belly
The stroke of hair,
a ruby bead [Em]sailing down a yellow strand
[G]A trembling sca[Am]rlet drop
the bittersweet sip
Oh, the lifetimes lost in [Em]queer congress,
holed up in that dark retreat
Holed up in [Am]that dark retreat
Holed up [Em]in that dark retreat

[Verse 6]
A felled tree trunk, carved down the [F#]middle by a
cleav[G]er of lightning
[Am]During the rain days, I guess
Made a kind of a pallet where
I would lie stretched out
Between the two [Em]halves that I had pad
[G]ded with cardboard and moss
[Am]Encapsulated by two
walls of umbrage
That twisted about a few clapboards,
I had nailed to the trunks as sup[Em]ports

[Verse 7]
The vines inter[G]twining overhead
to form a low [Am]ceiling
I could sit up with a
full foot's grace
Room enough for my [G]angel,
too
Who would come in my later years
Appear on [Am]the tree stump
at the foot of my cocoon
Then come inside and [Em]lie with me
[Am]Sometime[G]s I heard thousands of

[Verse 8]
[Am]voices,
for [G]God is many- tongued
Whispering things to me as I
lay there all alone
[Am]All my feelings of fear [G]and of
anger and of despair
[F#]That I ate daily like bread would
[G]leave me
And I would feel most powerful
[G]Most powerful
[Am]They taught me He taught me how to deal

[Verse 9]
with myself [Em]at
first
Then later he taught me
how to deal with the others