1. |
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on the first day of her final year belonging to
the most coveted advertising demographic,
the afternoon air that can't settle its mind between summer and autumn,
it still smells and tastes the same.
she doesn't feel any different, really,
than she did ten years ago, still as obstinate,
childlike and fighting all categorization,
straddling the line between:
revolutionary living and insanity;
patient wisdom and stupidity.
she could never be brought into the fold.
and for her there is no real option
but youth in the mind, you are always beginning,
but when she says it, she has trouble
taking her own advice or even believing it.
and when her friends passed the threshold,
and the advertisers no longer cared to
invent roles for them to play,
imagination failed them so they fell into the framework,
down at their worship places:
netflix or public transit to brewpubs and arenas,
after excel spreadsheets endow their doctrines:
Please extinguish that fire we lit for you when you were young.
but for them there is no real option
but youth in the mind, you are always beginning,
but when they say it, they have trouble
taking their own advice or even believing it.
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2. |
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I return and I find you changing.
I can't help but think it's synonymous with degrading,
it didn't used to be that way.
I've been trying to squeeze the color
out of pretty moments and coming up empty.
was there really anything for me when you were living so intensely
and I was stuck- awestruck- wondering if I could compete?
If I repeat, would I really change,
or do I fall into the hypnosis pattern that is my hardwired brain?
I wonder what it meant when I dreamt in my thirteen year old skin.
I return to the fair where he romped, bringing chaos, or so he'd think.
Didn't it all add up to nothing?-
his friends that he was going to take up there with him-
to the top of the ferris wheel where they threw their half-eaten meals
to the unsuspecting crowd below, thought that they were waging war.
a childish understanding of anarchy;
punk rock misinterpreted by their privileged ennui-
but is there really anything for us now?
we take ourselves so seriously.
so I'm sorry I convinced you to buy that drumset
to start a band before we abandoned each other.
and I'm sorry I grew so self-righteous and serious,
thinking I was too good for anything that we used to do.
and you're sorry you were such a compulsive liar,
but your reality just couldn't match your inner truth-
that the world was all beautiful, chaos, and fire,
but your alcoholic father and fiance, they extinguished you.
you see, nothing could prepare us for the anti-climax,
taking graduation photos on the church steps-
conquerers spitting passion for some next big project,
had no way of knowing that this was it.
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3. |
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in the still point city away from overt sin,
our curiosity let us let it in.
they came with manifestos that attacked religion,
authority, economy, hierarchal separation.
I surfaced in the pool outside of your mcmansion.
your dad asking, "why's this cd playing say 'goddamn' so much?"
then he blacked out, cracked his ribs trying to jump in-
a story we retold over a bowl of weed,
and nervous glances out back from the driver's seat.
you were afraid of coming out to me.
we had common dreams in the years before
an entire culture went to war.
and quick to disavow that jesuit education,
you drifted to chicago for a four year bender,
drew your battle lines from the gutter,
with mother asking why you couldn't be loyal like Peter,
from your alma mater, "look! he's now entering state legislature..."
- to prey on the young female senators.
they had common dreams in the years before
an entire culture went to war.
our loud mouths shot round town like pinballs scoring points,
trapped within a framework they built to disorient.
I knew you wanted badly to believe and give full presence,
but once you saw the corrupt truth, there's no way to unlearn it.
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4. |
Song for Will Toledo
04:24
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hey will toledo, I heard that song
about doing acid in, what was that, was that a college town?
I hadn't heard a verse that hit that quick in so long.
hey will toledo, you'll never hear this one,
but if you did, I'd have to ask you,
does success feel just as wrong as any supposedly fun psychotropic drug?
then again, how would I know?
I'm in my office cubicle while you're sprinting from the venue to your van.
are you tired, too, of answering demands?
I bet the compliments don't mean a thing anymore,
but any criticism, it still stings.
I met Laura Jane Grace at the trumbullplex,
I was sincere in hoping my words would make an impact
when I told her in my youth she inspired me to write lyrics
that made better sense-
but she just let slip a sarcastic smile,
like she'd heard all that shit before, and, nevertheless,
I knew that both she knew and I knew, oh goddamn right she had.
I bet the compliments don't mean a thing anymore,
but any criticsm, it still stings-
but will, I need to know,
do you change the lyrics to your songs when you play them live
because you're scared you might get bored?
and are you ever too concerned that whatever you're writing next
just won't land the same as what you wrote before?
cause whether you're exhausted now from several weeks on tour,
or having a panic attack in an office cubicle,
work's just work no matter how you cut it,
but we can still trade places if you want it.
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5. |
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I didn't want to love you.
I didn't know what that would mean.
in my head I was searching for the passage
from reality back into dreams.
I didn't want to play a game with you.
I didn't want to play a part.
in my head, no one expects of me,
sounds and shapes collapse back into art.
I didn't want to cling to anything,
I just wanted to be.
I just wanted someone who wanted that like me.
this world is full of coarse distraction,
too many people thinking loud.
such transient scenarios,
they project them out onto the clouds.
I guess I'm just a fuckin' alien.
I don't believe in what I think-
and I don't think there's a single other human being alive
with that mentality-
who didn't want to cling to anything,
who just wanted to be,
I just wanted someone who wanted that like me.
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6. |
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there was an old nihilist across the street,
on his front lawn.
he was baring his teeth as I was playing this song.
he didn't like my joyous demeanor.
and, drunk, you stumbled out onto the front porch
with your paranoid eyes and troubled discourse,
upon him you were waging war.
he wishes he could feel it still, surrounded every year,
by faces growing younger still, his face entrenched and brittle,
with you wondering out loud why the hell he still lived here.
there was an unspoken objective of street-wide self-destruction.
we offered ourselves as a pyre to burn for lamplight illumination,
then after we've extinguished, they replace us.
so the sacrifices came from across the town and state,
carrying their baggage and a couple fifths across the sun-soaked driveway,
to warp the will of their fates with communal friction.
now admiral nelson orders you to strip the landlord's garage
of its wooden furniture and add it to the pile doused in lighter fluid.
and in the glow, you tell us that you've learned how the big dogs talk,
and they spin the information how all the old heads want,
you'd get into his, the old man across the block.
but as the black suits in the back rooms forced you to switch positions,
while your habit ate up and digested your convictions,
your hedon army would deliver no such desecration.
now we hide away in apartments and in hospitals,
damaged from those team tirades, tired, weak, and vulnerable,
wondering out loud to no one how the hell we got here.
well, jettison your dreams.
old enough now to develop that addiction to routine.
settle in a tiny house with a porch to sit,
and watch the peaches fall from trees and rot down to the pit.
find your scowl fits with screaming kids across the street-
completing needed balances of opposite extremes.
trading places back and forth when we wake from our dreams
of alternate realities that fulfill all our needs.
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7. |
The Profane Grail
04:39
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there comes a time to tire of
chasing grotesque lifestyles to get a fix
of thrill, attention, or blissful forgetfulness:
the holy grail feeling you think exists.
when you obtain it, realize its emptiness.
left with a hangover, lack of respect, and lost friends.
oh goddamn but you lived-
can't have a story without its valleys and its peaks.
sitting on your downtime at work, reading gonzo journalism,
wanna score yourself somebody who's the embodiment of that free recklessness.
missing the subtext on how the hippie wave crest broke,
and left at shore some drowning zombies,
all drugged out with egos.
bitching at the basement show, step out to smoke another cigarette.
you are wondering where the person that you came here with went.
keeping your emotions guarded 'til the moment that your intent
explodes out of you as a sabotaging lament,
wonder why you feel alone in a homogenous crowd,
while they're all wondering the same thing about themselves.
staring at your profile, my eyes glowing red.
I was wishing I could connect in the physical realm instead.
wondering why flowery pretentious language could never grant me
any commiseration outside of my obscure obsessions-
with rococo on repeat, I couldn't tell it was about me,
shiny wrapping paper around an empty being.
what we became didn't satisfy-
we chased it so hard, the price just didn't justify.
everything is as it was, and what will be-
we apply fresh coats of paint onto static ennui.
who would have guessed how easy being could be?-
we think ourselves away from living for our simple needs.
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8. |
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is screaming at a wall better than not screaming at all?
I forgot why I do this in the first place,
was I just following a blind impulse?
or did I feel the need to spread some 'vital message'
to be misinterpreted years down the line?
no holy spirit, no peace of mind
is screaming at a wall better than not screaming at all?
I could yell the hook of isis dose for years
to half-empty basements and to bars,
a bad mix absorbed by unconscious brick,
falling on ears deafened by my shit-tone stratocaster
and after a lifetime of pleading with humanity,
what would become of war? what would become of hierarchy?
all still alive and well and fine inside of you and me.
no holy spirit, no peace of mind
is screaming at a wall better than not screaming at all?
I'm feeling, after all,
there's no reason to write, release, or even sing this,
when all the best artists, upon discovering their helplessness,
drank themselves to death.
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9. |
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woke up so hung over to the point where thinking hurt,
took that extreme to remind me that thinking doesn't work.
the clarity embarrassed me- sensation without words-
omnipresent, blemished by our human knowledge curse.
god, how I'd short-circuited from pushing life away,
a series of rejections and self-imposed delays,
rejection of subcultural social games,
rejection of lovers that I couldn't relate to,
rejection of college credits as a trade-in,
rejection of earning suburban malaise,
rejection of religious or spiritual saviors,
rejection of advertisers' influence,
rejection of changing the system from within,
rejection of smashing the state without a plan,
rejection of music as an agent for change,
rejection of intellectual posturing,
rejection of bohemian hedonism,
rejection of seeking trust in a real connection
rejection of meaning outside or of my own,
rejection of any true home or comfort zone.
left adrift, reached a still point without want.
the emptiness left openings that sprung back up into thought.
the thoughts bubbled into barriers that trapped me in illusion-
so I break free to start the cycle over again:
freed by sensation without words,
bound by our human knowledge curse.
bound by our human knowledge curse,
freed by sensation without words.
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Holy Profane Detroit, Michigan
Lo-fi word spew and pretty noise experiments
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