Chuckie Campbell

Lyrics

Father's Hands
Truncated Chorus (x2):
Men carve hate in the hearts of men
Feeling how it feels to feel again

Verse 1:

We didn't have much, but we had us
For some, it would never be enough,
and we had love, though I grew up rough,
I learned what it meant to be a man -- thus
my father's hands, calloused and tough,
would teach me how to throw a punch with
the very same hands that the very same man
once held his new born son

I would never know love without pain
To me, they were one in the same
Maybe that's true, and I really don't know,
how I really want to deal with the hate
I disintegrate, break it into parts,
sleep in the arch of his lifeline
In the pads of his hands are the maps of a man
that could hold my heart for a lifetime

Chorus:

Hands on me
Men carve hate in the hearts of men
Pleasure and pain
Feeling how it feels to feel again
Hands on me
Men carve hate in the hearts of men
We go numb
Feeling how it feels to feel again

Verse 2:

My father's hands instilled mistrust,
obscene but tender, coarse to touch
We called our fist fights arguments,
silence deafening, bruises, cuts,
palms like leather, knuckles blunt
How children sometimes learn to love:
learn from us what was taught to us --
patterns, cycles, violence

And, he never laid a hand on my mother once
She told me he was never really taught to love
Although he never said it, that he loved his son
Now, we try to talk at least twice a month
I participate, break it into parts,
on the other side of the phone line,
In the pads of his hands, the chance to understand
and heal in the course of a lifetime

Chorus 2 (x1)

Verse 3:

And, I woke up calm in thought
led by scars and the beat of my heart,
and my hands feel large and wrong,
stained by pain I could never wash off,
and the nights are long, because
I’ve been both in physical assault --
the helpless victim and person at fault
and both only involve loss

I hurt everything that I love
A piece of me feels I was taught
Maybe that's true, and I really don't know,
how I want to deal with it all
I rehabilitate, put together parts,
staring at the arch in my lifeline
In the palm of my hand
is a promise to my dad
to break this cycle in a lifetime

Chorus 3 (x1)

Truncated Chorus (x1)

Coda:

We are men who were pushed away by their fathers,
whose only hope for true human connection
lives in our detachment

End Song