1. |
Teething Song
05:25
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standing before an audience of bloodthirsty wolves,
and I'm just as hungry as they.
How beautifully our eyes flash as we puncture a wound,
before quickly turning away.
For we're the busiest of beings, acting selfish and cruel,
and it's tiring to be such a thing,
but we must push the pack forward and disregard the truth
if we wish to find any meaning.
Sitting sick and alone inside of my room,
I see the cyclical nature of things.
It occurs to me I've pined many times before
over these unsatisfied dreams,
but if they were to be realized any time soon
well then I'd be empty, it seems
that it's hard to conceive of an ending when
I only know how to stall and concede.
I've been keeping awake til sunrise,
occupied by the worries of a stagnant life.
I know that it's not mine,
that I am but a stranger to its kind,
and as I sit and scrape at this package
that I am lent, I teach myself to accept
my surroundings are not permanent.
Marching alone and watching my tracks form a trail,
eternally beat through the ground,
and noting the dirt records with careful detail
every misstep that its found.
So what of all those paths that I've avoided with fear
that I am now forever barred?-
where my cautiousness in the face of a threat
proves more of a hindrance than help.
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2. |
Comfort/Death
05:09
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I'm more concerned with the time that's passed
than the life that's caught in between it
that has no room to breathe,
and outside there are countless paths
leading out to open air
and peaceful relief.
Detached, I tell myself to wait
in barren rooms and open fields
for the spring of wild age
which creates its own momentum
and pauses not for a single
exhausting turn of phrase.
Will my flaming tongue speak only truth,
illuminate the darkest hues
of facts hidden from view
which tore my mind from the vine's root,
obliged it to unearth the proof
which killed what it removed?
and a maze did separate
imagination from the soil,
uprooted dreams to pollinate
but never to recoil,
and for years I could not walk among
the foliage shining under sun
or speak with anyone
without hearing that voice of doubt
speak in place of where truth dwells
in that which is without,
while poison thoughts began to wreck
the balance that my body kept
in check with its climate,
but my line of sight intensifies
when distinguised colors are denied
the privilege to divide,
and form into their lifeless castes,
bound in every direction
by broken alphabets.
I'm amazed so many separate
slight variations from the norm,
and deny its need to saturate
and absorb life from the storm.
Awakened from diluted dreams,
delivered to this open stream
of raw consciousness,
where I can't connect in true earnest
with anything else that exists
if I can't silence my head.
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3. |
Where Ya Been Blues
04:29
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You're sitting where you would once sit,
years before, and you seem too much
different now.
It's not the lines that form fresh wrinkes
on your face, but it's the lines of dialogue
that linger in the air,
that you cut at viciously with your hands.
And memories of your trivial mannerisms,
they reawaken in the crevices of my mind,
so this stranger I now meet looks as familiar
as the promise of a comforting smile
from an oblivious and self-absorbed friend
who only offers stories
of the mountains that he has climbed,
so as to let his appearance overshadow mine,
and I know that any road we take
is someday sure to wind;
the least you could do
is realize what it is that you're leaving behind.
I'm still unsure of what's been said those
years before, or was that all just something
I made up when I was bored?
What of these potent conversations that
I've been devoid of, or have I imagined
the inflection of my voice
sounded much clearer before?
- that which resonates on dark,
desolate nights, don't this seem
so much like old times?
such peace and tranquility,
you know they were never ours,
but they still pass before us
waving frantically and loud-
I wave back from the passenger seat
as you drive right on by.
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4. |
College Town
04:00
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I am stripping back the bark to reveal
the rotting truth of my age,
I am selling my soul to experiments
which have me writhing in pain.
I am a poisoned creature
who cannot come to terms with his own existence.
I am young and determined not
to remember it.
Sometimes I confuse these apartment blinds
with prison bars,
with us behind them merely rambling criminals,
shouting loudly, scheming to set ourselves free,
so we can join in that chaos out on the street.
I am taking some time to celebrate
the pinnacle of youth,
by realizing that feeling is just a substance
that is sold to you,
and ignoring that previous experience
simply handed it out for free.
I am accepting this as my introduction
to responsibility,
because life should offer no handouts,
yes, you best go earn your degree,
yes, it should give away no pleasure
without first taking your mind and your body
and leaving this vacuum
to fill with gratification and with greed,
perpetually pining for release.
I am toggling with my consciousness
as if it had a lightswitch.
I am satisfied, I am insatiable.
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5. |
Maladaptive Daydream
04:12
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In hollow file cabinets, I keep tabs
on the things I've never done,
where my greatest accomplishment
has been to recognize what never was,
cause most of these things I do now,
I do them to kill time,
and most of these things I do now,
I'll do them til I die.
We invented a season where we can
deposit all our plans that will never happen.
We invented the future to celebrate
what will never be,
cause most of these things I do now,
I do them to kill time,
and most of these things I do now,
I'll do them til I die.
so eager to pass the baton,
wash our hands of the sin
of feeling resentment towards
what we can't understand.
So how do we breach these checklist thoughts
if we can't imagine as children?
We're taking something simple and
trying to make it complex,
consuming illustrations of exaggerations,
not much an adventure to pursue
these performances, do I really
have anything real to live for?
cause most od these things I do now,
I do them to kill time,
and most of these things I do now,
I'll do them til I die.
I invented this character,
rooted in uninspired reluctancy,
I invented my character,
rooted in helpless passivity,
and most of these things I do now,
I do them to kill time,
and most of these things I do now,
I'll do them til I die.
So eager to reach some privileged age,
could have all of life at our expense
but now all we do is whine about our
lack of innocence,
because all of our fucked up dreams
lost their frail credibility
when we believed ourselves when we told us
what to expect.
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6. |
Busking Song
05:31
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Left separated by my own volition from
tongues that speak in clusters and demand
my voice in haste;
I'd much rather be contemplative,
rehearse what I'm discovering
through a non-threatening aesthetic
but my effort's a waste.
I possess five senses and far
too much time to think;
I watch the clockwork stumble off
the street to fix itself a drink.
It satisfies its vices
so to filter out the sight
of my objectionable manner
and of unkempt blight.
And you were waiting
where we had planned to meet;
I was already outside and running
from imagined boundaries, manipulative words,
the smiling face of competition.
I find my habitation on decaying and
worn streets, my tattered jacket's camouflage,
I blend into the scene, and I find myself connecting
with the traffic's ugly screech, digging the life
from dirt and granite, disillusioned feeling clean,
watching the city vaccinate the need
to compromise with nature, spawning
arbitrary customs to define and limit sense,
so that none of us discover freedom's burden
on our chests, labelled helpless, wretched,
obsolete, to appreciate just that.
I find myself decaying under streetlights
faintly lit; this glow will never reach a man
afraid to walk by it, and likewise, I will not
meet death through a window of worth, but as a
humble, hopeless appendage returning to the earth.
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7. |
Starving Song
04:17
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Keep awake and let regret catch
up to you, it was a couple years behind
and it was hiding, watching you do nothing.
And you knew, oh, yes you knew it'd be
pounding on your door with a bouquet of
decaying flowers. You drank water during drought
and you fasted at the celebration, with sadder
bags of bones than you who were crying out
for pity.
But you grew silent since your calls remained
unheeded, you tallied every moment that you
wasted, licking mere bones on your plate.
And you thought, oh yes, you thought
you could accumulate your kill in time
to sit with the gluttonous divine,
and you laughed at their caustic charm
but you wept when they drank to victory,
a child quite tired of bowing to their history.
Left asleep to let the fear seep into you,
wake up numb and with no one substantial
left to inspire you.
And you saw, oh yes, you saw
our hands sliding through your soul,
as you thought only of withdrawal
to a haven where you could dream
of embracing each person you meet,
each one softer in your memory
than they could ever really be.
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8. |
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People are predictable,
and you've done nothing new.
And if we all were really listening,
we'd be as bored as you.
There's patterns in your speech,
dialogue by design,
and you react accordingly
when asked to recite your lines.
I'm not concerned that you're angry.
I'm not worried that you're sad.
I'm not surprised when you're happy.
They're all just triggers in your head.
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9. |
Sell All Your Friends
03:47
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Everyone's smiling and everyone's happy
and nobody's angry and nobody minds.
Everyone wants you to crawl through their eyes
and stay til you've melted from the corners.
Everyone wants love and I'm tired.
Everyone's laughing at stolen punchlines
and nobody's inclined to improvise.
Everyone wants you to tell them lies
so they don't have to learn how to sympathize.
Everyone wants love and I'm tired.
Everyone was watching your puncture wounds swell;
no one was asking how it felt.
Everyone plunges and everyone's sinking
and no one will surface and no one will try.
Everyone wants to drag you down by the thighs
til the pressure crushes your mind.
Everyone wants love for my face caked in blood.
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10. |
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I'm wandering Warren at dusk and trying hard
to get lost, to find some hidden former life
or road that I have not yet crossed, but all
I see is fading sunlight shining on old red brick
and leafy streets contain autumn even in this
warmest season.
As I imagine cooler evenings, I realize I'm
numb to feeling any experience I've come to know.
I'm instead fascinated by the life that I could
have lived, if chance and motivation held different
cards for me; with backpack over shoulder
would I hop the fencing to meet an inseperable
love down the street in some distant decade?
But in present, wouldn't we be trapped within
this house that lies beside me?- with a
Mary statue in the backyard and football
on TV?
But I'm bound to act young once,
says that discarded pack of cigarettes,
bought by an adolescent and swiftly tossed
when she matured.
And those punks skating at school,
I remember being them,
still I could never comprehend waking
up as this thing that I am.
I see alternate selves as I count house after house,
there's too many incarnations to count,
so I travel south,
to observe the core city's internal decay;
gutted remains of my family's history now
silently lay,
and signs point to the north now to focus
on the scene, up past that boundary line
where we abandoned our dreams
and settled for less than what we knew was possible;
yes, we'd all sell our potential for a safe neighborhood.
But I remain fascinated by the lights on the boulevard,
how my loneliness could be curtailed by a five minute
walk to a crowded restaurant behind a buzzing alleyway
where the patrons drink and dance to a jukebox
playing Marvin Gaye,
and each generation warns not to romanticize its crowd
but I can't fight that current
as it drags my body south.
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11. |
Bad Faith
05:51
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It's quiet save for
the hum of the train's horn,
and the hollow sound of rain
knocking at the door,
something light and rhythmic
to distract my troubled head,
pitter patter,
pitter patter,
pitter patter.
the echoes of these sounds
reattach me to reality,
in its majestic loneliness,
its acting out a play-
projecting beauty and enlightenment
to an empty house and the reverberation
sounds like a heckler's laughter.
and it's here I act: a character,
an invented person, well aware of the role
I wish to carry out, yet
I'm disgusted at the effort that I put forth
so I can hear the harsh crackle of clapping-
the scorching warmth of acceptance,
the false security,
the promises of failure
and the desire to succeed,
words that guard these concepts,
so vague in their meaning but
defined enough to contain my existence.
So should it be clear that the future
is lonely and its poor, whether
I'd be bitter or accepting,
that much I can't know.
So if I stop pretending the people
I love owe me my happiness,
will they please stop expecting
that I owe them in return?
Because I keep coming up short
at the entrance to that planned,
satisfactory narrative.
If I'm always showing favor to abstract
intangibles, then I'm just a romantic
whose ideals are all overblown.
I'm still young, life's but a competition,
so when I am old, will I drink to wasted youth?
to my involuntary habits that aren't met with acceptance?
to my voluntary protest against tradition?
all which run with high risk of loneliness
and failure, and tonight offers no answer
for tomorrow's methods.
It's quiet save for
the hum of the train's horn.
It's quiet.
It's too goddamn quiet.
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Holy Profane Detroit, Michigan
Lo-fi word spew and pretty noise experiments
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