Lit From Within CD (2010)
Disc 1.
Good Lives (For Bad Reasons). December in the desert, and your family and your friends are scattered like they're scraps of dust on Santa Ana winds. Some found less hostile places, some went legally insane. Some have died, some got arrested, some were just otherwise detained. You search for winter's definition, but seasons dull to shades; there's heat that scorches or heat that whispers incoherent names. But you'll find some spotty evidence in faded Polaroids of Food Not Bombs from Oregon. Of houses now destroyed. Aquarius. Aquarius. A trident through a crab that scuttled half-way northward and did not quite make it back. Can you put this all behind you, now: the contagions and the greed? The burnt-out husks of activists who've found other relief? And just schedule your suffering for the one hour a day between the time you shut off your lights and sleep takes you away. You've had a hard life for noble reasons. Now night emerges from the Earth. You've had a hard life for noble reasons, and it's not clear what that's worth. They've had good lives for bad reasons, and you're envious sometimes. They've had good lives for bad reasons. Maybe...that would be enough tonight.
Stars (For Claire Massey). I'm changing into funeral clothes in my hotel room alone, anxious about what I'll find. The TV plays old videos, and a youthful Axl Rose suggests that patience is required. He says, "(whistle)". The day's cascading gloom, coupled with summer's sick perfume delivers memories of you…of every thrilling bit of flesh, revealed quite by accident, that left me breathless and confused. It followed that we couldn't sleep...consumed by new realities. And at night the stars and planets, they lined up just as you would command them. They'd move in little circles, present their light just so they could alert you. Now your tormentors, neatly shod, curtsey stiffly before god, whose existence they've imperilled with their homophobic shit; with every wound that they inflict with their remorseless, empty stares. But your eyes once shone, devoid of fear; so blue they bordered on clear. They challenged every source of light. Now the tide of the morning sun just reminds me that you're gone…and how we all left you behind. Chorus.
The Asheville Period (In Retrospect). The stink of incense fills my chilly attic perch, and I awake to the sound of clacking looms. So as cats bat at the tassels of my hooded shirt, I lay motionless 'til afternoon. And, as planned, you are both gone when I descend. I mark the chalkboard and drive away alone…to where thick, muddy water curls with menace, with regret, and slops its verdict on the sagging shore. I watched you thrive there. I nearly died there. I watched you thrive there. You settled to find peace. I settled in defeat. Back in town, I've found you both out for a drink. The streets have emptied, but flags sprouted up like trees. And the entire bar is reading captions on a screen while the same image constantly repeats. Chorus. Mists condensing on the mountains like a bruise, like structures falling; the dust encompassed me. Oh, I have seen the leaf, the blossom and the fruit; now I'll be witness to the withering. I watched you thrive there. I nearly died there. I watched you thrive there; you found everything you need. I never tried there. I couldn't survive there. I just watched you thrive there…it was so beautiful to see. But it's best, now, that I leave.
Slow Learners. Your hair unspools like a pool of black ink. The spot where elastics had clamped it in place now is marked with a kink. I think: I haven't seen you this loose in a while. Because your glasses' thick rims; your conservative coat; your matching defences, resplendent and fully impenetrable: they are aberrations that have hardened to a style. Remembering the days that you felt so free. You'd walk around topless, smoke pot and you'd act like it was no big deal. I believe that you really thought that was true. But we were so small town. We were so naive. We were relocating, escaping to Portland, where we thought we could be ourselves, but our pasts fastened to us like glue. Deferred adolescence, small deceits. Adult swim lessons and G.E.D.s. Slow learners, slow learners. And I'd like to place the blame on everyone else: the bastards who hit you, dismissed you and forced you to abandon yourself. But I know I could never strike myself off of that list, because you would ask me for things I could easily provide, and I'd put it off, I would scoff, I'd swap jobs, I'd avoid, I'd deny. I'd freeze you out. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was just learning about myself, too. I never meant to hurt you. Chorus.
Triggering. Shadows align in stark designs, assuming familiar shapes. Bodies entwined turn undefined. Features merge and erase. You have dark memories to face. They show up sometimes in spaces you thought were safe. Sex you've endured. Techniques you've learned to disassociate. Corners you've worked in blood-stained shirts. Drugs that would blur the pain. You have dark memories in place, and I've brought them out with ignorance and haste. (Triggering) The shadows in your head. (Triggering) The sheltered life I've led. (Triggering) Violence has been carelessly spun into the fabric of the things that you really love. Alternate paths, supporting casts, ways to communicate. Tales from your past in increments. Heroic acts of faith. You have dark memories to face, and I thank you for letting me participate. Chorus. The strength it takes for you to laugh, to teach, to heal, to tell me that these are the things you need. These are the things that are triggering. Chorus. Well, you are a treasure, and your strength will slowly rub these echoes of violence from the things that you really love.
Communicated Through Blood. Your alcoholic father died when the vessels in his throat, they capsized, and drowned him in blood: his own. And so your despondent mother tried to fill in all the gaping holes in her life with escalating addictions, alone. You left home when you turned 16 with some people you met and admired, because they denied the vices that plagued your home. But their aggressive stance began to seem an abusive form unto itself, so you took flight. You hitchhiked out of the city alone. You tell me what you've seen. You imply the in-betweens, and leave searing red ellipses at the end. You think your friends won't understand. Yeah, they just won't understand. They can think they'll understand, but they won't. They won't. One day you'll wake as dusk creeps in, and strip off all your filthy clothes, stained with wine, and take them to a Laundromat far from home. You'll watch rows of gleaming machines spin, but cycles of another sort won't touch your mind. They're communicated through blood: your own. You tell me what you've seen. You imply the in-betweens, and leave searing red ellipses at the end.You think your friends won't understand. Yeah, they just won't understand. And if you think that, well, then, yeah. We won't. We won't.
Regrettable Tattoos. If you're lost to me before I can be lost to you, I will alter each inscription knitted to my flesh to prove the transience of self against the smooth scaffolds of time…and the thin membranes that separate the dead from the alive. Geometric patterns shadow sections of my arm, like the vectors that we travel in from hospital to bar. Or how we trace those same lines while we're propped up drunkenly, like an isosceles triangle...the base shifting as we weave. Face a jury, and mark your plea on your skin. The doctors worry, and ink flows from within….because the art is only permanent if the canvas can pull through, so let's commemorate these moments with regrettable tattoos. Abstract symbols for a friend I will never again see flank a kanji symbol for health blurred by scars from surgeries. When my blood thinners acted to increase the potency of wine, I got insignias for bands who've sucked since 1989. Chorus. The past becomes quite present as our march to death resumes, so let's commemorate these moments with regrettable tattoos. Let's commemorate...
Do You Sleep? Do you sleep at all? Do you ever stop shaking? Does your wakefulness twist past the yawning abyss that consumes your dreams? Are there still points of rest between your erratic motions, or do the ghosts encroaching need motion to keep them away? These questions aren't rhetorical. I'm trying to assess the mess inside. And your mouth curls like a dog's, in a permanent smile, but your eyes issue a denial. Do you sleep at all? Or do you sit up chain-smoking: a habit learned late that you've come to hate but that fills up the time.
Perpetual Autumn. We dwell in a perpetual autumn; auburn leaves curl and sway. They frame our steps in halos, stale and rotten. They will never disintegrate. We dwell in a perpetual autumn; the sun, a smudge, as fields burn. Wax drizzles into rancid jack o'lanterns, because certain skills can't be unlearned. And it's all right to curse this wilting Earth. Don't be alarmed. As you inferred, our sorrows were conceived eternities before our birth. Crisis looming, crises ever pending. Beasts fatten and change their skins. Everything's in the process of ending, but nothing ever finishes. Chorus. Wasps spin drunkenly at the edge of every tin of refuse we arrange on boulevards. This confounds ghosts whose spectral dealings dishonour their hosts.
Caroline. Come on, the music is fading fast, and soon there'll be nothing to distract us from our last unwavering directives. So slip past the bouncers, right into my arms. Leave your coat on, though its warm, and stare beyond me at the crowded exit. Caroline, it feels like a waste of time dancing to the rhythm of the things that aren't forgiven yet. And no one else would ever see the point in trying, but we'll stay and negotiate until we both are dust. Marks visible beneath the bar's black lights. Yeah, your scars glow hard; they shine, as you decline a can of cheap domestic. You crack your standard skinny little grin, and you look lit from within, an illusion that fades with brief inspection. Chorus. I'm enlarging and I'm echoing the insecurities that coil in your mind…and just a single word will cause them to unwind. Chorus.
Illness as Metaphor. Your words are in front of me like you need my permission for the ruthless incisions you have in store. Yeah, I know this was written for my older sister…and, yeah, I know that you kissed her. That won't make her yours. Well I didn't really take the time to read your lyrics; just a cursory listen sitting in the waiting room. Coloured by where I was, you'd expect something to hit me…but illness as a metaphor means shit to you when you are sick for real. Oh, it's poetry, sure, and I know you're as deserving as you are self-serving. That I can't deny. So take another picture of our abandoned old squat. Yeah, take it and fuck off. This was our life. Chorus. You take what you need, you leave in your wake something that'll capsize as soon as you're away. You spill each purse to fill in lines to define some kind of other way. But democracy's not forged in 'sleep', it's made while holding each other up, and when you betray that, the things you need, I swear, they won't be there again. The things you need, they won't be there again.
Crude Instruments. I know you never will move until circumstances force you to. Then you'll gather the couple tools that you turn wine to water with…like your wallet, so stuffed with notes and drawings, all so rough. It's like Jackson Pollock threw up inside of your consciousness. And on and on and on, you'll settle for these things: you'll crawl up to the very borders of your dreams, just to fight invisible and arbitrary lines with an endless tide of these crude instruments. You possess gifts so rare, but you shake them like snowflakes from your hair, totally unaware. You just keep building walls, until all of your points of weakness become your only points of access. Chorus. Crude instruments from another time. Crude instruments, crude by design. Crude instruments, instructing you on what to do. Crude instruments from another time. Crude instruments you can defy. Crude instruments, but they're leading you. Crude instruments.
A Year on Trial. Sister, where were you as the riot police commandeered 13th Avenue? We were harvested up like flies; they tossed their chemicals into our eyes. And now sufficiently blinded, we fell into our bindings anew. A year on trial. You've been kept mollified, and because privilege gives way to procedure every time, you have remained complicit with degradation and intolerance that will not be suspended unless we're defended tonight. A year on trial. Sister, you walk free, but ancient winter will render its judgement incrementally. I came of age in between two wars, both of them meaningless to the core, while, here, basest survival was all we could strive for, so I fought 'til I could fight no more. Until I was brought forward for a year on trial.
You Are a Reservoir. Your friends made a plan and it was a disaster. It was left to you to salvage it. You went into it cold, but you became a master. You found the best slots for them to fit. But then they expected you to handle each facet. They'd just show up to make complaints to you. Then the deadlines, they passed, and you were the last one. You gathered up the blame and locked the gate behind you. Then you fell in love with various cast-offs. You made a safe place for them to stay. You'd work until you were sore, and though they were thankful, their experiences made it hard to say. But the bills built up high, yeah. Oh, they would stack up, so you would work more, you'd steal, you'd plead. But the pressures were strong. And, because you were the last one, they made it the betrayal they had prepared to see. Bare ceiling lights on a hardwood floor. Gather up the mast, find a new cast. You are a reservoir. You came in late, yeah, and you felt so anxious. You just stood behind the final pew. All these people you loved mourning one they abandoned. You slipped out before anyone saw you. Then at the station, in line, yeah, you were the last one that they had room for on the train. You handed your ticket off to some kid who just asked you. You found a bench, pulled your hood up and tried not to dream. Chorus.
The Coast Starlight. The Coast Starlight is late tonight. Its steady rattle lures you into sleep, while shadows fall past ancient redwood trees to crawl the leaden darkness of a lettuce field. They sing. The fog conspires with night to blanket every sight, so against your trembling shoulder I will lean. And I'll whisper words in careful sequences to purge the restless chill that seeps out of your dreams…because the last time we were here was for a funeral, and the crackle of death managed to remain. Even now it feels unusual. It won't go away. If we're denied our passage to another side, we'll set our skinny ghosts here by the sea. But if we're returned to this earth in a manner transformed, then on narrow roads, in these brief rains we'll be. Oh, the last time we were here was for a funeral and the crackle of death managed to remain. But I'm still here, and I can't be losing you. Oh, don't go away. Don't go away.
Disc 2.
The Arc of a Light. Night falls fast, now. It fills in the crevice between the tactics we've practiced and the things that we actually believed. But, howling and snapping like wind through an abandoned shaft, you push back at the black stain 'til its inky membrane contracts. You hold me closer. You inspect me for the smallest flaws. A crowd queues at your feet; they hold their applause. The arc of a light. You can't see where it begins, but the ending's implied. You trace its inverted grin to where it subsides. You hold in your shaking hands some small demands. One by one, they'll be denied. The arc of a light. Prelapsarian variants on my own past struggle to supplant the last vestiges of memory I have. But my fusion with the beautiful things of the world is cut short by this daily struggle to determine who's forsaken me more, as you hold me closer, to deflect curses they've hurled at you. But that same closeness provides such a miserable view. Chorus. So: hold me closer, push me up to the glow of your dying fire, and I'll kick furiously to help it expire. Chorus.
A Dizzy Chain of Bees. I'm examining your new apartment through grainy cell phone pictures where the backlight ripples through your windows and pixels glisten in your hair. But as these borders grow more rigid with every vague domestic threat-with each inflated obligation-it's the most we can expect. I'm stalled in a haze without you, typing half-drunkenly, emoting in lower cases; unpunctuated fits. I'll circle around your ankles like a dizzy chain of bees to sting the shackles of citizenship. And you still can't leave the country on account of your arrest for knocking down a police officer at a decade-old protest. And so our parcels will clear customs covered in literal red tape. The contents bend though they ship cushioned and anything fragile will break. Chorus. Bold lines etched by old ties and plebiscites. Bold lines denied by thin wires and satellites. Chorus.
Casually Swearing at the Vacant Coastline. Catherine, you got so drunk that you forgot where your apartment was. You called 3 cabs, then wandered off. You woke up on a ragged lawn with your glasses and your wallet gone. Some teenagers were checking your pulse. You walked towards the ocean's swell to reorient yourself. The salt stole your remaining sight. You're casually swearing at the vacant coastline. Catherine, you were a mess: Your spine was visible through your dress, your hair was matted and torn out. You swung a bandaged hand at me. You accused all of us of treachery. Your voice shook the trailer walls. Your reflection quivered on panels of aluminium. It was nothing that you recognized. You're casually swearing at your vacant coastline. Closed factories on a toxic beach. Smokeless smokestacks. We'll rebuild them from scratch. I just want my sister back.
Math Damage/Maggot Age. The wind sings violence, and the forest's narcotic stench stains. Its vapours permeate. And we make our decision: we prefer prison to the rain, so our steps must be retraced. We propped a dying artist against her deathless art to gauge the gulf that separates. But all our first enchantments have outlived later judgements made. Thus, the chasm was erased. All rights are waived; embrace this maggot age. These rights we've waived. Math damage escalates. Math damage will replace all the rights we've waived; embrace this maggot age. These rights we've waived, math damage takes their place. Math damage escalates. Your dreams slowly revealed in full, monotonous detail: all passion is replaced. Just cold, mechanical sex and soulless architects remain to grimly populate. Chorus. The trees above obscure the view, but bits of starlight trickle through. A tinge of gold infects your eyes. The source, of course, is from inside. This is the morning I will…(Gorging, starving: it's a numbers game).
Umbrella Skeletons. Hey...your call was so cryptic that I came across town to see if you're okay. I saw your home decorated for Hallowe'en, and you had made a grave…your name etched on a Styrofoam stone. Then I walked in on you passed out, alone. I caught a glimpse of your face in the mirror on the floor; it was strange. So tell me, who are you? And who were you last time? And when will you clarify yourself…? Umbrella skeletons over your head. Bare ocean beneath you now. The sky's splitting, and scolding every inch of your skin. And you fold at the slightest sound. I can barely reach you now. Yeah, you're flailing, just sailing in the skinniest winds. I've seen photos of you as a kid. Bursting with rancorous id; raging, unfocused through the mobile home where you lived. And now, you're at once at one with those times…yet somehow just barely alive. And I'll never get used to that new hardened look in your eyes. Chorus. You said, "The cemetery's winning, so that's reason for quitting. The dead will push the living to higher highrises." You planned your journey not worried what you did to yourself. But then the initial thrills were shoddy. They vacated your body. You needed something heartier to keep yourself high, so now I'm diving to revive your venomous shell.
Day Planners. I had a tentative plan for this year, but now I don't know if I'll even stay here…or if I'll just allow unconnected events to slowly merge as they blur at the edge. And now I have had far too much to drink. I'll say things I rarely let myself think. My breaths come in pairs as the present resolves to pass, and my heartbeat leaves ripples when I grip the glass. My heartbeat leaves ripples when I grip the glass. So let's dismiss options as each one appears. Let's choose completely unsuited careers. Let's let our arms hang there limply as we're embraced, and then just race breathlessly into our graves. Then just race breathlessly into our graves. I'm reaching out, but you're too far away to love with accuracy. And a dark depression could be scheduled in, but It all takes too long…so let the clocks decide who's right or wrong. So let the clocks decide who's right or wrong.
Make Art. Through the windows of your offices, junipers lay soft with lazy snow. And in your apartment, paintbrushes grew hardened in their disuse long ago; the colours rusted closed. Make art. Focus and create art. You work just to display art that's completely beneath you. Stationed amidst your obligations, I'm dying for the day when you admit you need it, too. Some instruments flawed in small ways: broken strings or cracks from constant moves. They get buried in your storage space. Though easily repaired, that's your excuse that they never get used. Chorus. Absolutes that charmed you in your youth appeared harmful as you grew. And though they've been abused, these fundamental truths still require things from you.
Patron Saint of Atheists. In my youth, I attended non-accredited religious schools. They taught me the body was a unit without cells, and that to accept division led to hell. As I grew, all the fallacies instilled in me, well, they changed, too. I steadfastly rejected everything that can't be proved. I needed it to spit, to scream, to bruise. Time passed, and the Great Plains developed their own central myths. I was made smaller in the vast expanse of land and the dogma of countless hardcore bands. That, too, was decimated as my disappointment grew; their calls for revolution always being undermined by their sexist words, their slurs, their lies. I could never get a hold on myself. I never got a hold on myself, and when you asked, I'd say: If there's this world and another one, let's just get to the other one. But now we've fallen too far. Petitions for our security are denied. So march with me, arm in arm, O, patron saint of atheists, to the light. Now the cells that they denied existence of, rise up, rebel. They leave my body twisted, but I will fight on, still eased by the gentle looks you offer me, or your bracelets clattering as you lay out some medicine. Because you provide the antidote to both heaven and hell: A life that's worthy in and of itself. Chorus. Standing at these barricades, knowing that all symbols fade. But what they symbolize is something altogether different. Something altogether different.
No Fatalities. We're paring down a monster by degree. We've emptied it of harsh vocation and mortality. And the venues range from amphitheatres to coffins, settled unadorned, unmourned and resolute. And now we will not fail again. We will not fail again. Accumulated loss comes to an end. We will not fail again. We will not fail again. This year, no fatalities, my friends. Exhausting every method we've been shown and then incautiously defecting into the unknown. Because maybe something in you has to die to ensure the core of you will somehow still survive. Chorus. It feels so different since your attempt. But we will blend vigilance with joy; layer music over noise, and then (Chorus).
Lit From Within. In the single-digit streets of Portland's Southeast, you emerge from your temporary job. And in the cover of a storm, you change from your uniform and you walk…to the Basement Pub, where the people that you loved rarely gather now, since Gail passed away. You buy scraps of food and dollar-fifty Laurelwoods. You're lost in thought…as the night captures you, and will always refuse to let you wander from its borders for too long. And though it's never quite your home, it's the sole passport that you hold: to the darkness, where all your precious stars once shone. And the rain does not abate for nearly 15 days. You watch the drops make patterns on your screen; it makes portraits of the dead, with their secret messages. Past them, you see your unregistered car that litters your backyard. It gives shelter to a pair of scruffy birds…until the sunlight spills, as it sometimes will, through the trees. Oh, but the light could last for you just as long as you would choose to embrace with greater depth the opinions of the people who have tried to let you know that you provide them with such comfort whenever your clouds lift. They want you to know you are lit from within.
A Hawthorne Sublet. Makeshift curtains from Iron Maiden flags; water-damaged bedspreads, threadbare laundry bags. It keeps the light out, but can't deflect the shame that you've scattered liberally through your domain. And now apparitions both far and near, they keep telling you that you're wrong. They keep whispering in your ear. It sounds vaguely like a song. They're begging you to sing along.
The Empire Builder. The Empire Builder spills into the last station on its run. Ghosts solidify upon the dawn. Snow descending, figures blending, grey skies collide with the streets. There is no one waiting here to receive me. So many things have changed. So many things have changed since I've been gone. So many things have changed. Me most of all.
Continental Drift. You laid down roots in California, upon its grinding, shifting plates. Its metaphorical and actual flash-fires and rattlesnakes lapping at your calloused heels, which you've pressed bare to the earth as you've examined all its chaos in suitably defiant bursts. And fifteen hundred miles away I'm motionless before a desk, trying to marry words to images of you that will not leave my head. Perhaps art is mere compulsion, or just a debt that must be paid. If so, I offer every word to you in full public display. You seemed older when you were younger. Now you seem younger than you are, like your notions of self crystallized in that strong premature start. Or is it just that your convictions remain uniquely undefiled against an entire generation of relentless compromise? And so in thoughts of my mortality, I find myself wondering who in the end I will finally be held accountable to. And the facelessness of God remains an obstacle each time. And so I see my life assessed within your merciful blue eyes. Continental drift. Unseen aggregates. Over, under. Desert, tundra. Earth beneath us, still...if it be your will.
Rolling Blackouts. The smog sits like a heavy curtain over every distant source of light, and the street lamps have blinked out of existence. So, half-blind without your glasses, you stand, paralyzed. You carry the twilight of the prairies in the few good memories of your youth, but now you cower among a cluster of black towers. Your clocks have all lost hours, and so have you. Wildfires and rolling blackouts. You snuff your candle out and sleep, but, unfamiliar with your new house, every noise enters your dreams. It tears at their loosened seams until you wake. Old friends, displaced or abandoned: you never expect them to remain. Like even the brightest of electrical devices, they're extinguished at the strangest times of day. Chorus. Every noise enters your dreams, servicing their hidden themes, until…in silence, you're waiting. In silence, you're waiting for them.
It Will Take Courage My Love. It will take courage, my love, to walk through this life; to cut paths through the bastards who'll strain to devise nefarious methods to strip you of your hope. It takes courage to not let go. And then as your family fractures and your friends disappear, or, out of self-preservation, chain you to their fears…as their fictions and addictions drain the last of your will, it takes courage to love them still. It will take courage, my love, to refuse to heed the cramped imaginations of those who would lead. And though you can barely see past their consuming fires, it's your courage that is required. To wrap your fists around what you've found to ward off their lies, to manoeuvre past hearses and to curse at the night. To pick up a tape off the floor of the van. To sing with it as loud as you can. Oh dearest, I know, you can't see a light. But dearest, don't you know, you have one inside. And now obstacles tower without and within; disease angles closer, your words lost within. But as its muscular wings rip the skin from your bones, oh, my love, you are not alone. Because it takes courage, my love, to assess what you are; to see what surrounds you and to be humbled and small…and to still find the strength to fight for these slivers of truth. So I take courage, my love, from you. I take courage, my love, from you.
An Asterisk Beside My Name. O, sweet vessel of light. O, sweet vessel of light. The infrequency of courage often stalls your fragile flight. But you'll manage it now, sweet vessel of light. And time, it won't make amends. Time, it won't make amends. The past hangs like a vengeful shadow, with it you will contend, and I can attest that time won't make amends. But in the night…you lay down beside me and I saw your glow. So if it's time, put an asterisk beside my name to show that, though I can't say I believe, I can now at least conceive of the presence of light. Oh, this could be a phase. Oh, this could be a phase. Though it feels like something more abundant than just a comforting haze, I will admit, this could be a phase. Chorus. Oh, 'cause I could be strong. Oh, 'cause I could be strong. When I feel the things you've tried to tell me; when they meet me in these songs that I've been singing to you…oh, I could be strong.
Thieves Guild. Kate-you're walking through a Circle K, and all your circumstances have changed, but you'll still read every spot the convex mirrors and cameras reach. It's muscle memory. It's just what happens when your difficulties go on so long. All the habits remain after they've all gone. You were saving up money for a surgery that she needs. Skimming off the till at the sunglass kiosk. Making fake receipts, while I was stealing every word that I heard you uttering. Thieves among honour, aligned to each other, with pockets both picked clean. Oh, Kate: I betray you constantly, I adjust your pain to fit a melody; compress your time into platitudes produced to crudely rhyme. And you rarely ever say a word, though I know these things must hurt. I guess you relate to me moving things from column A to column B. Chorus. You were saving up money for a surgery that she needs. Skimming off the till at the sunglass kiosk. Making fake receipts. And you were developing a food stamp scam so you could feed a pair of punks sleeping in your front hall closet that appeared randomly. You did a seven-point dive into the dumpster of the bakery. Hauling back bags in your bicycle basket, deeking out police. You were forging signatures at a chain-store pharmacy. Thieves among honour, aligned to each other, with pockets both picked clean.
Remission Sex EP (2010)
10 People in a Room (All Talking on Phones). "We live as we dream: Alone." And thus emboldened by new technologies, my dreams take on brighter tones, but contract to smaller sizes as their borders get violently defined. So what, now, shall we collect? What square of space shall we now fill in? With blocks of disjointed text; cryptic halves of conversation where each misprint becomes part of the design. Days pass that I've awaited for years. Days pass and I sit, distracted, at a green light. 10 people in a room, all talking on their mobile phones. Signals touch as they pass through, but our longing knows no distance. No, no limits. Oh, nothing will satisfy. So accompn'y me to these heights, and grant me the strength that I will require to blame each new device for my chilly isolation. My divisions. My arbitrary cries. Days pass that I've awaited for years. Days pass that I've awaited for years. Days pass that I've awaited for years. Days pass and I sit, distracted, at a green light.
Remission Sex. Oh, your soft silhouette ripples tentatively on a clean white partitioning screen, as your doctor leaves the room in a rare nod to privacy. And you’re struck by the light as it clings to your skin and your returning shocks of hair. Its a brief thrill that you are unsure of how to share. Well you feel you've been exclusively seen as a canvas for your disease. Now you're wondering what remains as its threat starts to recede. And you still feel unveiled (for a sustained battery of tests). Unveiled (making things endlessly complex). Unveiled (when approaching remission sex). And you strip off your clothes as you walk through your door, run a finger from your throat to your heart. It rests at the crevice of a deep surgical scar. Well your body’s been your enemy for so long now and the siege will ease up by degree. You want to rend time, and consign this to history. 'Cause the doctors never answer you when you speak of anything outside of their realm. And everyone around you is still adjusting to you being well. They can't see you unveiled (for a sustained battery of tests). Unveiled (making things endlessly complex). Unveiled (when approaching remission sex). Broken down to your components and then addressed with the technical terms for each cell you possess. Robbing desire of its poetry and its depth, until it's shorn down to the attachment it represents. They won't see you unveiled (for a sustained battery of tests). Unveiled (making things endlessly complex). Unveiled (when approaching remission sex). Unveiled (Oh, it seems so strange that). Unveiled (Every original arrangement). Unveiled (Is subject to some kind of change).
A Plague of Doctors. Graves, depicted on roadside signs to give pause to drivers prone to drifting off. But in the mid-afternoon as we drive towards the hospital, they are the scrying stones of oracles. And when I’m there, they stare, ‘cause I’m the youngest here. I embody their worst fears. I embody their worst fears, because I could be a daughter or a son. Genetic legacies at work. I will linger like a curse. Wherein you shall be beset by a plague of doctors who contradict each other and fight against you, too. At night, cats flit around my bedroom, and they press their heads to the fresh wounds of a surgery.And the pain tears through me, but I grit my teeth and suffer it. Oh, I’m exhausted by my fearlessness. Now I see all bodies as inclined to death, but some incline more than the rest. Yes. Some incline more than the rest, and are reduced to just a totem of these things: The circumstances of your birth. The limits of your time on Earth. Wherein you shall be beset by a plague of doctors who contradict each other and fight against you, too.
Careful to a Fault. As we drive out, the darkness conceals all the belligerent ice that swells beneath the wheels. The wind whispers threats on frigid cones, and you awake in transit with a startled moan. Spreading out a set of detailed notes by the brightest flashlight beam you can summon forth. You make some calls to re-verify the same information you confirmed last night. But if you, you're inclined, we could still drive much further tonight...or stop in somewhere else less pre-arranged. But like a scholar and a bibliophobe, we fight with what we do and don't know, exchanging points of pride and points of shame. Would it make you feel alive again? Oh, you're careful to a fault. Could it make you feel alive again? Oh, you're careful to a fault and losing time. Highways will close. Roofs will collapse. The television will post their altered weather maps. And what once was quiet will begin to yell as the slovenly wilderness will assert itself. But if you, you're inclined, we could still drive much further tonight...or stop in somewhere else less pre-arranged. But like a scholar and a bibliophobe, we fight with what we do and don't know, exchanging points of pride and points of shame. Would it make you feel alive again? Oh, you're careful to a fault. Could it make you feel alive again?Oh, you're careful to a fault and losing time.
Safeword. Surrounded by the ones who love you most, you insist that you need to be left alone. But they bind you with your own potential and gag you with the insistence that this must end. Casually you catalogue your scars as their volleyed accusations inflict more. And the weight increases exponentially until your core constricts so tight that you can’t breathe. Then like a safeword, screamed in agony as the pain transitions from relief to a shock that endangers your life, you become aware that you do not want to die. Theraputic sessions didn’t work. Passionate entreaties didn’t work. Medication was a seperate hell, and their anger could not penetrate your shell. Chorus. You've picked the locks habitually. The skill itself was comforting. But now, you're clawing desperately; a key between your teeth. Dismounted from your harnesses, the unmasked crowd unfastens them. They’re lowering you carefully. They won’t let go, they swear. It's like a safeword, screamed in agony as the pain transitions from relief. And your actions become redefined as components of a suicide. And the shock now clarifies your sight, and you become aware that you do not want to die.
An Illusion Against Death CD.
Hesitation Marks. Its as rigid as a lunar sequence, and our months contract around this event: The silence that floods out of your room. The perversely common image of you with one arm dangling. Hesitate and the skin wont break; it just leaves a map of anguish on your wrists. Vials tipped so the contents slip. A Marat pose. This monstrous art. Hesitation marks. We have urns lined up on bookshelves. We've split up in shifts for bedside vigils. An epi-pen in every coat. We've amassed an arsenal you've absorbed with your cruel vanity. Hesitate and the skin wont break; it just leaves a map of anguish on your wrists. Vials tipped so the contents slip. A Marat pose. This monstrous art. Hesitation marks.
Holocaust Art. They stand shoulder to shoulder, their jaws tightened with grief. I stand as a translator. I lean in and repeat, "This is a lesson in history: The victors knew victory and the vanquished knew war. But, though their voice would come later, it's power was greater. They survived and endured. I'm coated with sorrow like fresh ice on a lake. Though periodically shattered, overnight it's replaced, because there are wall-scale projections of the most meaningless questions by the museum's store. And somewhere ashes still crackle and casualities stack until we can't see them anymore. The sputtering engines; the boundaries of will. The leaking containers you're reluctant to fill. Defining illusions, exhausted and old. Your shrinking perspective as it gets cold. Things I've deemed immutable, they were all vulnerable to change, while my most transient habits are almost all that remain. Life can float on the surface of things predetermined and wilt like brightening leaves, while you're enslaved by possessions, reflexive aggressions and ornimental misery. So let's take all this darkness, convert it to art, and scrape the rust from our souls. Crowd in to every omission with more extensive ambition than just damage control. Damage control...
Institutions. Light touches your eyes like an unfamiliar thing. The medication leaves you sensitive to its sharp florescent sting. But now I fill out forms to take you temporarily away...through bright corridors of airports, to hospitals in other States. Landing at St. Petersburg, I fumble with your hand, and explain again the situation in words I think you'll understand. Oh, if you could only map for me your madness...reveal an unseen code for all your sentences that are so awkward that they sound like palindromes. But instead, I answer my own questions. I speak to you across a gulf. I watch peripherally for baggage; you squint blankly at the wall. Brightly lit and dreary...brightly lit and dreary at the same time. Brightly lit and dreary...brightly lit and dreary at the same time. I've seen you in restraints before. I've seen you in a cage. I've seen your face consumed with fear as I've had those things arranged. I've watched anti-psychotics drain expression from your face. I've watched my remaining family occupy three feet of space. So when a silent, sullen intern puts our mothers hand in yours, and all I've tried to say gains meaning as some connection is restored, and theres a moment where youre lucid; let it not be in my head. I cant bear to lose the both of you: not now. Not again.
High Praise. I’m shocked both that you came and that the guest list included your name. You nod your head imperceptibly as you hand your coat to me. And you mutter on in an attempt at kindness. But it is only rhetorically distinguished from contempt. You’re scuttling downstairs. You commandeer the headliner’s chairs. You’re mispronouncing each band’s name, and you take their drinks, unashamed. And you mutter on in an attempt at kindness, but it is only rhetorically distinguished from contempt. Still, that’s high praise coming from you. High praise, indeed, though tentative and crude. High praise coming from you. But, oh, you’re still the same. She's scared to introduce a song fiercely directed at you. Her courage builds before she starts her set, but you’ve already left. And you mutter on in an attempt at kindness. But it is only rhetorically distinguished from contempt. Chorus.
Things Get Abstract. And with my hair matted to the edges of my face, they detail processes they can’t yet undertake. But they will tentatively schedule some tests…and it gets too hard to hear the rest. There’s things they can’t identify (It’s at once concrete) to grant these symptoms a disease (and hallucinatory). Things get abstract before they disappoint me. Theories widening their eyes (It’s at once concrete) and then crumbling like a monarchy (and hallucinatory) Things get abstract before they disappoint me. And you send flowers, crisp and carefully arranged that befit a relationship too young to bear this strain. And various reasons for your absence are expressed…but it gets too hard to read the rest. You will not pull these curtains closed (It’s at once concrete) with an air of finality (and hallucinatory) No: Things will get abstract before they disappoint me. But there was uncertainty before. (It’s at once concrete) There’s a job offer in D.C. (and hallucinatory). Things get abstract before they disappoint me. Threats sharpen to blades, omnipresent but sheathed, and no one facilitates their release. (It’s at once concrete and hallucinatory) Things get abstract before they disappoint me. Every gift becomes a loan (It’s at once concrete). Every access point a breach (and hallucinatory). Things get abstract before they disappoint me.
Rattled By Failure. We’re not rattled by failure now. We’re not rattled by failure now. We’re not rattled by failure now. We’re not rattled by failure now. Statements slurred, terms are altered. The air stalls as we venture out of key. And the words turn so vicious as these stakes that were so small get torn in three. Unlearned parts; a constant ringing; a smudged stamp on your hand and a vacant stare. Fed our hearts on this fantasy. Now these hearts have grown brutal from the fare. You pit art against reason. Though the two aren‘t opposed. This recurring theme contaminates your dreams. We’re not rattled by failure now. We’re not rattled by failure now. We’re not rattled by failure now. We’re not rattled by failure now. Absolutes and autumn deadlines: they just pass like a fever. Like idle dares. See this through. See it ending. You retreat to go dye your dulling hair. Standing mute as a starfish as the bright lights and music start to recede. It consecrates your dreams. We take failure for granted now. We maintain our feet on solid ground while it clings like a cloud of bees to me. A halo of sand in the cuffs of faded jeans. To wallpaper our room with rejection slips. To slowly wet the circumference of our lips and admit the coldest form of defeat: It was all just a dream.
All Available Light. All available light finds itself attached to you...and this, to relieve the things that you know I’m going through. As you speak them, words shake loose from resonance of common use. Tension transforms to tonic; something catches your eye...and we step out from the club where the music blasts so loud. We separate from a crowd that I could not care less about, as your hair coils and twists like miniature Möbius strips, reflecting slivers of streetlamp. You have upset the night with all available light. On a dreamless sleep’s vast landscape, or in a car, curled like a cat, or on a dance floor full of slack shoulders, or from a pocket of a fraying backpack...some gifts arrive in distressing disguises, but yours appear transparently; no grand gestures, no definitive statements. Just your remarkable glow. And all discomfort will bow to your luminosity as I stare in disbelief at all these things you’ve done for me. But I will promise this to you: whatever threatens to intrude that you may construe as darkness, then against this I will fight with all available light.
The Architecture You Despise. On a bus under a soft wash of dusk, you inspect your new community. Its dull lines cry out to be vandalized. Its muted tones clean and corruptible. And just when you’ve made peace with your new anonymity, you’re suddenly haemorrhaging almost everything that you believe, as the architecture you despise branches out. It multiplies. It slathers plasters here and there, uniformly unaware, and hey: it isn’t enough, now it comes for you. Your scars itch; your blood audibly aches as you take the same route everyday. And you resist, but your accent starts to twist. Within months, you sound like anyone. Chorus.
Publish or Perish. This was a fabulous reception, though it was all foreign to me. Or…it was a little less offensive than I thought that it would be. The platitudes and drinks just kept on coming, unrelieved, and their tones conveyed affection with a tinge of rivalry. And the tenured tilt toward you; they make motions with their glass like they’re hundred year-old parrots blurting curses from the past. And their anecdotes and witticisms coated by the heat; in the slow sway of its shimmering viscosity, they read: Publish or Perish…it’s up to you. In the corridors of power, through the Groves of Academe, there’s a labyrinth of fingers scrabbling above the weeds. And a whole English department is united by these things: a shared hatred of literature and other faculties. Publish or Perish…it’s up to you. From the manicured lawns, through the sound-proof highway walls, they can’t see the slink of river light and the torn scraps of cloud that sing to me.
In the Absence of Notable Guests. Jenny...oh Jenny it’s strange to see the almost desperate urgency with which these guys will phrase their questions. And you look so radiant, yet visibly bored. You issue bland quotes they cannot distort or compress, because they’ve hurt you before. Do they know and do they care? Their lights just follow you everywhere. Though the things they do still seem intolerable to you it still looks like its settled in their favour. But, Jenny, I’ll be around. Met up with Kate and Andrew at Marshall’s Pub. I told them that you sent your love; they got wistful and changed the subject. But some ghosts, some ghosts they linger without pause due to Canadian Content Laws. Your song is playing on the ride home, and (chorus).
Skinny Sidewalks. Take me walking
through the streets outside my door.
Show me something
that I've never seen before,
past the margins
of abbreviated stares
that reduce all objects
to a scroll of passing fare. Slip through alleys,
relieved of what they mean
in the musty archives
of childhood memory.
Entire sections
of the city at this time
become deserted.
I have no idea why. Skinny sidewalks
taper off
to small ellipses
and unclear stops.
A hidden city
comes to light
on skinny sidewalks.
Your dorsal tattoo
expands with every breath.
The pale cilia
on your belly trembles when
we speak in sleepy,
dehydrated monotones:
the drowsy discourse
of cartographers at home.
Skinny sidewalks
taper off
to small ellipses
and unclear stops.
A hidden city
comes to light
on skinny sidewalks.
The final strains of light
that creep through broken blinds
make patterns on your face.
Tiny little lines
that slowly intertwine
until they fade away.
I want to know you, I want to know you.
All there is to know. You've always been here, You've always been here.
Walk with me along skinny sidewalks...
Inspired Casting. It’s late. It’s just us alone in heaps at center stage among the programs and bouquets crushed on the floor. But we stay; we’ll frolic in the simulated snow and drown the memories of the show that still remain.These games of dress-up that consume us utterly. Oh, the pageantry, the empty seats, the lights. And, hey…will we be haunted by indifference and regret; the incalculable debt we’ll be stuck with? We try for something something lasting between the rentals and reviews.Oh that was such inspired casting. They do invigorate the room. And this alcoholic haze will ultimately fade, but what’s left, but what’s left…? And then one errant strand of hair slips from your braid, and it shivers with the cadence of your breath. You stretch; you’re sprawled out like a half-packed parachute, and every universal truth reveals itself. Chorus. These adrenalinic ghosts still linger in their hosts. That’s what’s left. That’s what’s left.
Translations. I pushed through a crop of Australian tourists, spilling kids drinks as I ran up the stairs just to find you...laughing that I‘d arrived. A couple of the doctors had mixed up some samples, and we both misinterpreted what they said identically. We’re so predisposed to tragedy. Mystery solved: there was no mystery at all. Mystery solved. It’s mask had collapsed and distracted us in its fall, but now we know. All through this life I’ve committed to nothing, to keep every option available, until it was clear that each door will close on its own. So here, as my shoes stick with congealed Pepsi to worn hospital floor, I want you to let me revise: you’re one thing I won’t compromise. Chorus.
An Episode of Sparrows CD.
I Suffer This Like a Dream. Now, night arrives with peculiar viciousness, free from the strange glow it once would descend against. You could see the factory lights from any given point in the town on orbits of razor-wire. Now darkened, they still keep us down. I suffer this like a dream. My father sits down on the porch stair next to me. He rubs a tattoo that’s lost all its clarity. But the image depicted has power; it serves to remind how time will conspire to erase every trace of a life. I suffer this like a dream. Just close your eyes and point anywhere on the map and gather the few things the banks cannot take back. Did you in your life ever think you’d be present to see the kind of events that could turn atlases obsolete? I can’t stop thinking about it...it just keeps going on. I suffer this like a dream.
Who Will Run the Starfish Hospital? Here...take a last look at the beach, where shadows of abandoned things stretch out to greet the sea: the terminus of every street, our hair and clothes tinged with its salty, stinging bleach. Then seal up the last boxes with tape and clear the porch of what remains. Mason jars and pliers, salt water and innocent desire: who will run the starfish hospital? My strength exposes its frail roots, like the bald and flailed earth beneath my tattered shoes as I reflect on what was cultivated here: a childhood marked by un-abstracted fear. Because, though its not my fault things got this way, the water is liberal with its blame. Mason jars and pliers, salt water and an innocent desire: who will run the starfish hospital next season in the cradle of this wilting crop of real estate? Hush now, sister, soothe the cat. She’s not been caged before. If the sickness here still shadows us we’ll find our way back home, where our ghosts will check for lumps out of habit until the sea claims what its owed.
If I Make it Through This Winter. Fishing for my keys outside of your front door in the diesel-dark slush of a cold November night. The rumble of the wind absorbs each passing sound, but somehow you’ve got me believing in a silence that’s not born of solitude, but from compassion left just holding its breath. But gravity won’t fail to make its presence felt or to wage war on unmedicated sleep. Its merciless advance muscles me aside into the sharp nape of a snowdrift. If I make it through this winter...if I make it through this winter. If I make it through this winter, I think I’ll be okay. The few remaining birds, they leap from leafless trees to circle right above us, and, you know, their patterns are so strict, they seem etched into the sky. Oh, you squawking, starving heralds of impenetrable darkness all day long...and of the chemicals that set with every sun. So while drivers skid to stops and take down license plates, their patience worn and weathered as their skills, my own nerves bend and fray like branches glazed with ice...until I see you trudging with me. Chorus. Last year’s robbery, this year’s absent friends: they all linger in the scars on every wall. And there’s nothing left to take; I found solace in that. But now I need something worth losing. Chorus.
Local Celebrities. Performing under assumed names at the club where you first played. Your awkward charm now utterly gone. So utterly gone. Replaced with deep disengagement that’s a defense against pain, it is misconstrued as a force developed to keep guest lists short. And we recall how you’d hate this: Comparing tips with the waitress. Oh...I know, I know who keeps coming up with all these stupid rules. Local Celebrities on a bigger stage. Local celebrities when they’re tossed that way. We feel you owe us some token for the contract you’ve broken by not remaining wedded to themes you explored in your teens. But time will leave art debased and it will annihilate all traces of the unbridled rush that we’d get from those manic early sets. From waving ironic lighters to catching up on our nightmares, and I know, I know who keeps coming up with all these stupid rules. Chorus. The lighting alters its texture and everyone’s past is right there, and at the same time utterly gone. So utterly gone.
Plans in Advance. A photograph of a city’s streets lit up so bright that it subdues all one would associate with night. A Berlitz course, it chatters breathlessly with you. You’re splayed on the floor among maps marked off with shaking hands. I can’t plan that far in advance. No one will acknowledge that. Amber vials, they flank each windowsill and shelf. The contents expire and are replaced with something else. Results return, and days, once undefined, contract. So close the guides. Let’s just try and keep this candle lit. ‘Cause I can’t plan that far in advance. No one will acknowledge that. Constantly held back by the feeling that nothing is mine, but overlapping dreams I generate to pass the time between catastrophes. Chorus.
Bridge. Kate, we’re stuck here for awhile. The only service station closed tonight at five. The transmission has conspired against our silence; it’s relieved us of the goal that we have tried to hide behind. Kate...the pamphlets can all wait. We’ll send them in the morning. They’ll just be a little late. You’ve got a banner wrapped around you like a blanket and a cell phone that we swore a blood oath we’d never buy. Have you got this terrifying notion that this is not a shared experience? Just synchronized, solitary moments bound by belief in this alone? Kate...is there anything left to smoke? I feel like I‘m drowning...you talk to me in code. Staring at a wooden footbridge, you say, “It’s a marvel of construction. Two weaknesses combine to become a strength.” Chorus.
An Episode of Sparrows. Shield my eyes from April’s glare, because now that you’re gone, you appear everywhere in these fresh seasons that struggle to grow through the last kernels of dark, hardened snow. But all production halts; we don’t resist as gods withdraw their remaining services. And bands dissolve. Leases terminate. A great silence then descends on you, until birds explode from the branches up above, darkening your path only briefly, then leaving you the canvas of the sky to reconstruct their movements in your head. And each street then accumulates these ghosts, because art is not a luxury...oh no, no. And it must proceed undeterred by all unconscious opposition, anyway. Thoughts scrawled on discarded receipts or backs of cash-handling procedure sheets, on unpaid breaks, in highlighter pen until the senses overload; a fog rolls in. And then arriving home so tired tonight that I don’t think that I’ll bother to write, though the press of ideas, neglected like this will find expression in dreams...dense dreams, where Chorus. To be no longer just a vessel for our hungers; or, at least, to transform these hungers into something bright and astonishing that nourishes itself. Yeah. And then the birds explode...
Perpetrators of Art. We’re engaged in the task of swapping purity for depth to perpetrate our art with the authority our broken heroes had. I want to do more than tolerate your love. If only we could be relieved of all we’ve done in keeping these fences in such marvelous repair to distract from what was never there. Your careless questions have the same effect as a flashlight playing back and forth across a stranger’s dark and cluttered room. Chorus.
My Landscape is Not Land. They’re lurking at each stop: a sea of expatriate Americans who will reveal their ignorance with zeal. They natter at me in their unbroken English, then indulge in outdoor drinking sprees “just for the novelty.” Stars in this tourist sky bleached out by city lights again. Coins weigh down my pockets with their elusive value, and it inspires me to spend them all on more alcohol. Until I can barely stand. Until my landscape is not land. Just the sounds of passing things. Just remembering... stars in the swollen sky reach out for you tonight, again. These countries passing like a film unspooled by hand, coloured by your absence, I...suddenly I’m learning how something that makes a constant sound becomes a default silence then, as it repeats again and again and again. Stars in another sky shine for your distant eyes, again.
Books As Furniture. How are you? I’m writing you from school. All I sacrificed to get here, and I just want to talk to you. One month down and I still feel all alone. There’s still years left to go. And all the things I thought I’d learn are never taught. We’re just instructed to lean back and think some frilly, cautious thoughts. I’d collapse into your arms if you were here and douse your shirt in tears. I’m assaulted by the verse of peers that stresses, line by line, how anything’s assertable as long as it can rhyme. And they all inhabit fictions like these workshops will inspire...hearts abbreviated to a singular desire. And their books line up like furniture; they shine. The light makes constellations on their uncorrupted spines. And if one desire was all I had to choose...I’d wish that I was with you.
Raise a Styrofoam Cup. Quick: our hosts are going to close their eyes to kiss, and we’re the last people that they are going to miss. So let’s smuggle some Baby Duck out from the bar and hide out until the silent auction in your car. And raise a styrofoam cup, because, beneath it all, there was something here to see: that even now, with sober hearts, you’re the closest thing to me. You first knew me as this awkward teenage kid who dressed like Morrisey with spots and jutting ribs, shrouding all the uncompelling things in me in a silence that inferred great mystery. Chorus. And may our hosts find wedded love somewhere far away from us. We’ll bear witness to our own slow, subtle change and poke fun at all the things that still remain. Chorus.
Letters Vs. Numbers. Hey...wasn’t anyone listening to the words in that last song...? The way they lurched out of his mouth like wounded beasts shambling to their ancestral death grounds? But, hold. Perhaps I’ve gone too far. True, his delivery’s akin to a sopping wet kazoo. But I’m here with you, so this night’s been upgraded to a standard-issue guilty pleasure. The rhythm of the hospital (Run around, run around until these errands are done) departs so slowly from us now (Come around, come around to this one). Heads pump to serviceable beats. The music threatening to speak to me. It’s letters vs. numbers. When you turn to me and laugh so loud you drop your battered crutches to the ground, it’s letters vs. numbers. And I fear I’m on every side. You, in the years I’ve been around, you’ve skirmished with death and defeated it somewhat, though it does creep back through tiny cracks that have somehow been left unattended. So, though it’s vanquished once again, sometimes the most harmless things adopt a sinister resonance. But let this doubt be balanced out with recognition of its absence. The rhythm of the hospital (Run around, run around until these errands are done) departs so slowly from us now (Come around, come around to this one). Get-well cards on the windowsill obscure the phalanx of impending bills. It’s letters vs. numbers. When the meniscus of our cheapest wine drops below a certain line, it’s letters vs. numbers. And I think I’m on every side. I watched cartoons on hospital TVs with academic solemnity. It’s letters vs. numbers. Now you’re asleep between familiar walls. I feel the sweet math of your pulse. It’s letters vs. numbers.
Clifton Square. In the warmth of your car, you arrive at an empty bar where the decor commits every artistic sin. Where buildings rise high and carve up the evening sky...untethered from purpose, yet still guarded, as we begin. I have no idea if you still drink. If you do, raise a glass here with me. I’ve watched you ache, and you’ve watched me hesitate. We’ve both brimmed with words while sitting wordless and reserved. But let’s not compare notes on who has hurt who the most on this anniversary of a greater violence endured. Ghosts of squatters that we built this with weave through barricades, rubble and mist. So arranged at the foot of these graves, all our petty concerns drift away. So let this monstrous and clotted spite be abolished from all hearts tonight.
Wolf Colonel/Paperbacks split CD.
A Northern Allowance. When were kids, asthma kept me home from school frequently in winter-time. You’d elect sometimes to stay with me, too, though...I suspect your motives weren’t so pure if the options were to stay here or endure the fury of a frozen earth. In our pyjamas, we’d sit with a tape deck to the radio to capture songs we thought we’d like to know. And you would put on a show that I’d try, feebly, to join in on. I’d flail my arms to nudge my breath along, and I’d get every word wrong. And now moonlight hits a white patch of snow and it anoints the night with a curious glow. It dances to a rhythm as undefined as these memories that pass through me tonight. And time presses hard against your back as it distinguishes the litter from the precious artifact. You can’t renounce this portion of a northern allowance. Strange how some things just get eradicated from your life. Now days turn cold and I can breathe just fine. I’m singing, standing outside. And those songs, stupid as they were, live on.
They bring you back for a short time, ah...and then, just like that, you’re gone. Chorus.
The New Poverty. And so, we step out for a drink at the place we always go. We’re docile and expressionless. We’re sexless as chess pieces in our coats, lurching gracelessly along through these streets we barely know. We’ve been here for a couple of years and still, nothing about it feels like home. We’ve inhabited these lives like nervous tenants, dear, terrified we’ll be ejected from them though there’s nothing for us here. Amid pervasive mumblings about prosperity, we‘ve misplaced passion: it’s the new poverty. The generous indifference of a city that’s this big is reinforced on days when snow obliterates our tracks as they are made. And the icy streets rush up to greet each drunken step. And every structure waves goodbye. And everything reminds us what we’ve left . Chorus.
Grey Skies. You say, “I was in a movie once. A documentary about suicide; about the people left behind. It was for the CBC; they still run it sometimes.” I picture you in a hooded shirt, knees huddled up, eyes to the earth, the questions long, the answers curt. Shots of your brother are interspersed between the silence and the doubt, the things you still can’t talk about. When I approach the topic you leave the room to go stare at the grey skies. Now I’m thumbing through a TV guide, overwhelmed by its current size, in the unlikely hope I’ll find something the film may have that you cannot provide: maybe a photograph of his face; a memory you’ve tried to erase with your gestures of sullen grace. Because I can't believe that after all this time, I still don’t know his name. Chorus.
