1. |
Not Alright
02:44
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I hid from disappointment in the trees
But my indignation burned up all the leaves
A labyrinth of arboreal bones
A cradle for frustration unatoned
It's not alright to make gardens out of graveyards
If the gardens are a paradise for runaways with trust funds
I hid from doubt and panic overseas
But the scenery did not put me at ease
Imperial decadence and sprawl
An apocalypse of power and control
It's not alright to make poems out of people
If they dignify the damage done by misinterpretation
I hold my breath all night
Infinity comes crashin' after me
Water wells up in my eyes
And vast wings rise
It's not enough to see/breathe
Go ahead and choke me
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2. |
Peace & Quiet
01:41
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A war waged on filth and lust
One thousand veils
Ten thousand veils
Unanswered bedside prayers
His serpentine caress
Guilty, graceless, yearning
Is this the peace you promised?
Thank you for panic
Is this the calm of a restful sleep?
Thanks for insomnia
Is this vacuum of your divinity?
Thank you for chaos
Is this the silk of the cleric's gown?
Who the fuck is gonna wear it?
What did we promise ourselves?
Our hands are bleeding
Our ears are burning
Our guts are twisting
Our hearts are bursting
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3. |
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The night before the night
Before the first night
We dawned
The night we tore our eyes
Out of your sockets
We saw
The night we purged the bile
Of blighted hopes
We spoke
The night we tread the ink
Of a profane abyss
We rose
Not one of us dared to speak and
Interrupt the panic of our arrival
Not one of us saw the place we had left
Or feared what came next
We won't forget that night
The night forgets — we won't
The night before we dawned
But that night is gone
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4. |
Guts Rusted Shut
03:33
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The tears that stung his cheeks
Were not the reason he felt weak
And could not stand before
The people who had gathered
His boots were worn to shreds
His feet were worn to bone
And his footprints in the dust
Were wet and pink
At one hip hung a dull blade
That was rusted in its hilt
At the other a stained satchel
Full of stale half-eaten bread
The able bodied jeered and
The child cowered near
As the anguished stranger rasped
In an ill-begotten tongue
Calloused fingertips drew cryptic signs
Where his parched lips
Could not form words he had forgotten
Or had never even known
Then the skies opened up and it rained
And it didn't stop rainin' for days
The villagers fled to their towers
And the traveler knelt just the same
Moss grew where his hair had worn thin
Bark hardened over his rough skin
Bruised knees took root in the soft soil
His whispering tongue uncoiled
Weeks later when the storm gave way to first spring
The floodwaters fell and the town got back on its feet
The smell of fresh blossoms emerged from the narrow streets
Memory's misery drowned in the mud
No one mentioned the disappearance of the babbling stranger
But the families who lived on the edge of the village
Celebrated the growth of a curious vine
That seemed to change its shape from time to time
And the flowers it bore reeked of human sweat
And the thorns left a smear of rust when they cut
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5. |
Invocations
02:56
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Incision's how the virus spreads
Its parasitic thirst
She tastes of him, he wastes of her
Dull theatrics expertly rehearsed
Their fingers glide in tired forms
Administered with clinical restraint
Allegiance sworn to open sores
Portraits poured adoringly in concrete
Tenderness obliged, our lovers sigh
Shyly admire their invocations
A birthright, an exercise in territory
An inscription of the flesh
We wear denial like precious silk
To protect us from each other
We help to build the palace 'cause
We play the part of king and queen so well
What more could we possibly ask for
Than the security of eternal conviction
And the purity of chaste of desire?
Everything?
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6. |
The Horde
01:58
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When I look out I see chain-link fences
When I look out I see windowless walls
When I strain to hear the calm at sundown
It's swallowed by sirens and catcalls
All around me
Outstretched palms hustling something
Outstretched fingers laying the blame
The sprawl of an empire nobody asked for
The reek of a shitstorm
No surrender, no quarter
How am I gonna find myself a home?
And how am I gonna earn the right to call it that?
There is no sanctuary
There is no end in fucking sight
No matter where I lay my hand it seizes
No matter where I hand my head it's poison
The thundering ocean of crushing glass
The canopy of lidless eyes
The pallor flesh turned underfoot
The wholeness of un-empty skies
The cranes get bigger and
The people get smaller
The blood in the gutter
Gets thicker and darker
There'll be no place to sleep
There'll be no enemy but me to fight
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7. |
Nervous Buzz
02:17
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What burns as brightly as the fuse
You lit when you first fuckin' knew
You couldn't/wouldn't sign away your life?
But they set so many traps
And we set so many traps
And we tripped them as we stumbled home
To someplace dark and easy on the eyes
Who stamped out the spark
Of your incendiary glow?
Or was it you eclipsing you who blew the fuse
And made it cold?
Things'll get better.
Will they ever get better?
It'll pass. All things pass, right?
Maybe things never get better.
Fragile fingers pinched out trigger's light
And turned to creeping smoke
The searing heat of sabotage
And nervous buzz of sleepless nights
You shut your eyes
You settled down
Too bright
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8. |
Click Tap Roll
02:50
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Burning for familiar scars
No fists to pound into the dark
The oxygen is getting thin
The air up here is fucking cold
Should I despair or should I drop?
The fall isn't that far
When you're extinct
And you're the earth
And you're your all
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9. |
Eulogy for Big Ben
02:47
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Agile sprites are we
Who spit back needfully
Aghast, aflame
Our threadbare rage unmends
The orchestra of bleach
The angelic cacophony
Trying to split time
Trying to cheat two extra beats
Tattered kites
Backlit by fission and filament
A fleet of knots in
The bliss of permanent dark
What the wishful embrace is a pattern
What the pattern distorts is the end
What the endless obscures is revision
What tradition holds sacred is death
So the chorus admires the soles of its feet
And begs for the notes to unshackle its throat
But the song that it shivers — at best bittersweet
Is the dirge of a heart that completely forgot how to beat
Harm's way overflows with incomplete
Time makes tracks for trains
But not for folks who walk the empty planes
And not for folks who do not fear the end
We'll get there when we're ready
But we're not ready
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10. |
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Lights come on around the house
A hundred acres of green grass & mudfields
Our salty lips licking the Potomac
Our hips sinking into this earth
Our heaviness making tracks in the soil
The mystery of our proximity to this dirt
And the faintness of our breath
All precious/tense, present tense
No bleed, no interrupt
Lights come on under the house
We spill our guts everywhere
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11. |
Sound of the Storm
02:55
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I knew I was getting older
When the places I feared the most as a child
Seemed to suddenly unfold
Into the most beautiful corners of the planet earth
When I stood alone in the fog
I realized we had nothing to talk about after all
And I could always be naked if I wanted to
But never who thought I was when my clothes were on
I wore armfuls of rubber bands til they melted into my wrists
Kept them anyway to remember who I was
I will never know what to say to anyone
I will never know how to leave
I will never know when to listen
I will never know the sound of the storm
I knew I was getting older
When the places I feared the most as a child
Seemed to suddenly implode
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DEEP FREEZE Toronto, Ontario
b. lyin / scrunched / crazed / darkly lit
scraps from scraps / 2005 onward
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