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Mistigris
Words & Music by Brooke Lunderville, 2008.
I have lived most of my adult life in apartments with views of alleys. I have come to prefer them to the post-card views of mountains and forests and beaches that more expensive balconies command. Clotheslines and discarded dolls and garbage bags splitting at the seams tell you that people live here. Comforting and gritty and condemned and homelike. Mistigris means "alleycats."

PDF leadsheet for Mistigris.
MP3 recording of Mistigris.

I make my home between the ocean and the graveyard			E  Bm  E
And as I fall asleep one ear hears the quiet of the harbour		Esus4  E  Esus4  E
And one ear hears a silence more profound				Esus4  E  B

I make my home between the dockyards and the taverns			E  Bm  E
And prostitutes patrol between, and pigeons linger overhead		Esus4  E  Esus4  E
And heroin and rice roll up on shore					Esus4  E  B

My home is dressed in sheets of corrugated metal			E  Bm  E
And stucco made of broken glass coats timbers brittle with the years	Esus4  E  Esus4  E
Of drinking gloom and fog in to their bones				Esus4  E  B

	But when the sun slips through the clouds and makes the gutters shine like diamonds   	E  Am  E
	Then every rusted chain-link fence encloses pieces of my heart				Am  E  B
	  
   And every oil-stained patch of asphalt, every faded blue tarpaulin	   E  Am  E
   Every rat's nest on the seawall, every traffic cone bleached yellow	   Am  E  Am  E
   Every splintered alley gateway overrun with morning glory		   Esus4  E  Esus4  E
   Reminds me why I'll never leave my town				   E  Bm  E
   Reminds me why I'll never leave my town				   E  Bm  E
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