1. |
The Blue
04:47
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Lyrics:
I’ve got a feeling you’ve got your reasons.
So solipsistic, I can’t believe you found another way down to
All the way down to earth.
Your condescension. The way you stand there.
Such strong dissention,
But how your face illuminated before you fixed your gaze down to earth.
When I first met you, you were a beacon.
You were a siren,
An admonition as the trumpets resound and bring it all down to earth.
What’s your name?
You are Apollo. You are Philomel.
Your cavatina recounting all regard for every last sound that
Brought the blue down to earth.
Now in the sunshine I see it shimmer.
And in the moonlight, I hear the music as it carries you under.
All the way down to earth.
When I last left you, you were afflicted.
Your convalescence concluding what you knew inside of your heart,
You never recover.
Never reclaim the light of your lover.
Never recite the rest of your song on earth.
What’s your name?
I know there are consequences for every new objection,
But I swear I’m not pissing into the wind to prove a point.
Let one hundred flowers bloom and prune the shoots,
And salt the roots.
It’s all the same if I have to forsake my soul to know my name.
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2. |
Waterloo
04:08
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Lyrics:
The halls you’re calling home are cozy like the catacombs.
The washed eggshell white tombs, you never shake that smell.
And when the skies part on the Waterloo to your Bonaparte
The void that hosts the voice of God will be all that you have left.
It haunts you like you were the only one to blame
And it hovers like a Pentecostal flame.
It haunts you like you were the only one to blame
And it hurts you like he never knew your name.
Headstrong, you keep pretending I sing dessertissage.
Hold your applause, please.
Hold on. I don’t remember ever taking the shot, coup de grace.
Do you still speak in rhythm?
Steady on the floor.
Do you still speak in rhythm?
Will I hear the drums of war?
I hear the distant drums of war.
Shots fired across the bow. I acquiesce, I disavow.
That sacrosanct placated prose, the emperor’s new clothes.
That four lettered philosophic sick pseudonymous anonymous game.
Just hide your face and keep on burning up like you do.
Second cousin, once amused. An exiled Prussian twice removed.
Coat of arms hanging in the Louvre is all that you have now.
Because it’s all Greek to me you cool, clairvoyant Constantine.
On the qui vive for the king and what’s left of the crown.
I cannot look away now, and I don’t know where to turn.
More than a visceral backlash. Iconoclast, you’ve got a lot to learn.
I cannot see the difference and frankly it’s not a curse.
You don’t need to hide from the beast while she’s still busy
Eating the afterbirth.
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3. |
Project Artichoke
04:16
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Lyrics:
Everybody I know is contagious.
I can’t breath in your immediate presence, baby.
I choke on deception.
You don’t know but I control the capillaries.
All the worst bad words that I can think of.
My head covered in aluminum foil, baby.
Tap tapping on the window.
Radar effect microwave auditory.
Cut them out before they crack that frequency.
Memory crushing like a head cold.
Like, line them up and spin in half time, positron.
Trinity, Oppenheimer choke hold.
Breathe, hold it in, please count backwards from ten.
Please sleep. Counting sheep after redacted sheep
In the back of my mind, 1975.
Antidote apropos paranoia.
Surreptitious control delusionary.
Every thought is caught up in the crosshairs
Of this inculcating apothecary.
Pure impulsive xenomelic inquest
Dredge out my ear canal to cultivate a
New conjecture post postulation
To statistical advenient erudition.
My head humming like Bobby McFerrin,
Johnny Locked by the frail substance of consciousness.
Every turncoat who comes has a reason,
A motivation for spatial propinquity.
Radar effect microwave auditory.
The water is wide, I cannot cross over.
build me a boat that can carry two and both shall row,
my love and I.
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4. |
The Turquoise Period
04:55
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Lyrics:
I know you need some time to recover.
I’ve got my rosary beads. I’ve got the Gospel of Thomas.
I’m stumbling past the Stations of the Cross.
The prodigal son, you see him counting his losses,
Fixing his collar and coming home.
I’ve got my reasons to leave. I’m coming clean with a promise.
Pistols at dawn with my fingers crossed.
The devil himself, you see him empty his pockets.
He’s got more up his sleeve than a dirty arm.
When I close my eyes I don’t see apparitions.
No illusions.
Ignis fatuus luminary.
Cold cocked. For the love of God.
Hell bent believer, I know you need some time to recover.
Shell shocked. For the love of God,
Please hold your fire. I know you need tome time to recover.
You’re combing your hair, pedantic sophistication.
Insipid savoir faire, fearless diffidence.
So you left the water running in the bathroom to cover
The sound of your piss on the porcelain.
I’ve seen the Sierras and the Buckingham Fountain,
The genius of nature and grace of man.
As the avalanche crumbles to the foot of the mountain
I’m still shoveling snow to cover my tracks.
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5. |
Skopje
04:19
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Lyrics:
Endure with youth in your nerves. Your desire discerned.
Sure as the stars that shine over Skopje.
Strong like your mother, sweet like her song.
And when the doors opened wide to Darjeeling blue skies
Scars on your hands and hands in your pocket
Heart on your sleeve and fire in your eyes.
The way the wound mitigates your courage,
You were a child, I know you were scared.
Fading memory of your father standing proud in the distance
Waiting there for you after.
Waiting there for you always.
Hush, hush. Now hold it down, my darling.
Koi Baat Nahi my darling.
Break. Break it down. You break it down.
Wait, wait. No hesitation child.
The silence is wild.
Wait while your wound is opened wide.
Forsaken sacred entente, say my name just once.
A reticent creed you held with aversion, eli eli lama sabachthani.
Because when your feet hit the ground no one made a sound.
Give us you shoes oh Mother Compassion.
Give us your years as silence abounds.
I can’t begin to discern cosmic taciturn.
Watch for your star, dear Mother Theresa.
Wait for the moment certain to come.
And how the hell do you stay so stubborn?
To tune to the pitch of such distant sound?
To salt the wound where you took her father?
To hide yourself in the silence, drown her spark in your absence?
Tidal waves of your absence.
Heart attack. Pacemaker. Further heart complications. Silence. Broken collar bone. Malaria. Failure of the left heart ventricle. Heart surgery. Silence. Exorcism. Silence. Death, Sept. 5 1997. Silence.
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6. |
Sault Ste. Marie
03:35
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Lyrics:
The rejoinder to the question, an emanant redundant repartee.
Incessant is the invitation, cautious is the callous invitee.
The intransigent sentiment, the unrelenting deluge of the sea.
The rigolets of Pontchartrain and the cataracts of Sault Ste. Marie.
Ste. Marie, pray for me sweet Saint Mary.
I can’t read the future and I can’t see the past.
Please, Saint Marie, send us sweet sanctuary
Now and in the hour of death
And whatever comes next.
The universal allargando, delta to the infinite expanse.
The moments in between the moments in between each unassuming breath.
Still I sense the will of some invariant, unyielding bel esprit
Ceaseless like the Salkehatchie, flowing like the falls of Ste. Marie
A valedictory decree or reverential reverie for truth
The anacrucis to the coda, good to meet you nice to know ya, and adieu.
And if I should relent my soul I will commend my quintessence to thee
And catapult my body o’er the cataracts of Sault Ste. Marie.
Hold on, I don’t believe you, when you gonna come for the unbelievers.
Hold on, I don’t believe you, what you gonna do with the unbelievers, now. Hold on.
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7. |
Applewhite
04:40
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Lyrics:
Force it to the fire. Division.
Shrouded in smoke, subito. Accelerando sforzando.
Flashes of pure blinding light.
Bound to the curse and the cost of desecration, your foundry.
Scourge of you sin is drawn nigh.
Seditious sands of exodus extraction.
Conduct you coup d’état.
Recant you cold recalcitrant recusant.
Parashat Ki Tisa.
Inhabitant son overcome. I am your transfiguration.
Holding your hands to the fire.
Cold to the core. This is war and you are searching for something.
This is you soul’s caesura.
Zodiac child, I’ve come to cause division,
Dissever soul from spine.
Ascetic son, suspend your castigation.
Consume your fluid fire.
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8. |
Hoarse Latitudes
07:18
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Lyrics:
Fuck it. Let your fragrance linger on.
Your conflagrations laying waste to desiccated chaparral.
Forget the places you belong.
Take just what you can carry on your back and leave the corpses with their guns.
Under water. Watching all the thirsty drink up.
Baptized in blood with a fire in my gut.
Flood charisma fill up my lungs.
Dredge the river. Living water. Cinder block son.
This indigent spirit is lost to the stars.
The deluge is ours and the hour has come.
Then I watched you recoil from the rhythm and blues.
Cursed voyeuristic schadenfreude my masochistic muse.
Then I watched you regroup
Like a Teen Beat bodhisattva, steal the spotlight, no one’s laughing at you now.
No one sings that note as sharp as you.
Taste it. Let it slide across your tongue,
Among your teeth, between your beet red cheeks, the piquancy of blood
And note the moment it becomes
Long division, yo soy El Calculadora and I am carrying the one.
No. Please, no, Goddamn. No. Fuck. No.
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9. |
Asch Paradigm
03:24
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Lyrics:
I know you try but if you keep feeding that fire forgive me if I don't seem surprised.
'cause the rules still apply and if you extricate some consecrated communiqué
shut your mouth and work it out.
I felt the flames and I know no one knows they're doing it. You've got the cure. You're goddamned sure.
Because I know you still don't got it and I still don't want to know where you plan to take it.
'cause you're bare ass naked while you shake it. Now stop.
And God knows I'm trying. 'cause you don't get to defend your treasonous accolades.
My mistakes were mine to make.
But you must see the difference. Such a willful ignorance, cognitive dissonance.
Let's call a spade a spade and dig the grave.
I know you try but if you keep feeding that fire forgive me if I don't seem surprised.
But if I keep on smiling on fleek with the boom bat, clap clap, the high hat.
Swisher with the playback.
But if I keep on smiling on fleek with the boom bat, clap clap your mud flaps.
Flip it like a flapjack.
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10. |
Wisdom Teeth
04:14
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Lyrics:
You don’t make it easy to see through the smoke.
Your weapons are useless when you need them the most.
You don’t make it easy. I’m losing my grip.
When you jack like a hammer I crack like a whip.
Up for debate in a bodega basement;
all of the words that abated your statements.
I don’t know.
Prognosticating bourgeoisie coterie.
The cult of the king or the caliph charisma
You manufacture Mr. Cobra Commander.
Never known
To any believer, friend, or defender.
AUMF against the force in Fallujah.
If I don’t accept your intent, what’s it to ya?
Terpsichorean cosset with treason.
Sweet ballerina, deceptionista.
There are things I believe that I don’t know what to do with
And a brain that won’t let me declare it a nuisance.
Does it show?
je pars pour les grand peut-etre, ooh my darling.
Do you hear the sound of the gunshot coming in just behind the beat?
If you’re gonna fight you better fight to win.
If you’re gonna bite you better break through the skin.
If I’m gonna get fucked you better leave it in.
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11. |
Prayer Chains
06:49
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Lyrics:
This silent still horizon, the distance of your ghost.
Still staring into darkness for the faces that I’ve known.
And since the scrambled syntax it’s been buried in my lungs
Portmanteautally pneumonialone.
This blistered, burnt out city. This ghost town of a soul.
A would be devisee to dialectic tae kwon do.
Blanking on the reason why I let the reason go
To float into the black and blue alone.
These calloused lungs, this indigo blood.
I’m not afraid to say I’m the only one for just this once.
This nauseous noise, this indigo voice.
I’m not afraid to say I’m the only one.
Do I turn my face away from all the places where you are?
Hold my breath to death and break my neck to see the stars?
Bound (and gagged) for glory or the glow of something else
To shine it up and sell it to myself.
Old soul synecdochal, take your headcount for the call.
Forsake your euphemisms for the sake of one and all.
In contradistinction, I will speak in cryptic tongues.
The closest kiss to holiness I’ve come.
Maybe I’ve never listened. Well, I’m listening for you now
So open up your depths before I open up my mouth
To spill my guts and break your trust. I swear to God I’m bound
To show you what I’m really all about
These calloused lungs, this zydeco song.
I’m not afraid to say I’m the only one for just this once.
This nauseous noise, this indigo voice.
I’m not afraid to say I’m the only one.
Now I slide like a National resonator six string,
Smooth like the delta blues
Into the one, the four, the five of the stages of grief.
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12. |
Alkali
05:08
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Lyrics:
The best of the worst of all I can give you.
I don’t want to hold onto a promise overdue.
The sound of kingdom come. Sweet delusion.
I don’t want to tether to vestiges of my youth.
If my ears start to bleed and I cannot see I want you to show me.
Alkali. Don’t push it, you don’t get to defend your salty dissention.
The oeuvre of all that you stumble back to.
I don’t want to cave into the weight of words accrued.
The fane to the nameless one, incognito.
I know I cant hold onto apocryphal pulchritude.
If I can’t find my feet, and when I cannot sleep,
I want you to show me.
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13. |
The Reason
04:07
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Lyrics:
I’m trying hard as I aught to be to reconcile our dream and our memories
And I swear to God or whatever I believe in these days
There has got to be a reason things changed.
And I hope you’re holding on.
I hope that your patience is stronger than you let on
Because I’ve got a lot to learn about myself and every reason I run.
I know it ain’t easy to cope with. I know that you know this.
Don’t trust the feeling. You are the reason I never let go.
I know this is not what you thought of me.
It’s the place I always run when I’m ashamed and don’t know what to believe.
But this is not what you thought of me
When you opened me up and showed me all of my everything.
You do the best that you can with me
And when I slow down… I never slow down.
So take hold, honey. Look me in these tired little eyes.
Do you see me?
I know I’m not easy to cope with. I know that you know this.
I know I’m not easy to deal with. Believe me, I feel this.
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