1. |
Hurtin’ Or Healed
06:01
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Hollowed face stranger
Just who might you be?
In the mirror, something’s crying
With the same eyes as me
I studied his face as
He spat in the sink
I watched the foam that sizzled slightly
Then observed it was pink
My weekly dinner
Of popcorn and Coke
Every Friday, like communion
That I took as a joke
That tallied the weekends
When time had no hands
To count the passing of the days spent
With no decisions or plans
Memories are slippery
But I’ve clung to one like a shadow
Hunts the heartbeat of a man
On the run
The thin poly film of
An envelope pane
There in the devil’s favorite typeface
Is my address and my name
Remaining balance
The largest sum yet
Final notice, printed boldly
I’m breathing fast and reading slowly
I recalled the names from
The badges they wore
As they pointed me to follow
A yellow line on the floor
That ends in the corner
To watch the bag drain
I taste a coldness as the poison
Drags the blood through my veins
Why am I programmed
to feel like I do
Tell me master, am I broken?
Wasn’t I built by you?
Silence is golden
But nothing quite roars
Like a sunset reflected
In those wild eyes of yours
That peak from the blanket
And make my skin feel
Like it’s been dipped into something sacred
While the gods held my heels
Wilder than the fires
That burned on TV
The sound was muted, but I could hear it
I was the forest and I could feel it
Each time you leave me
I say it’s the last time I
Let you cause I’m certain that
I’ll repeat my past
When my check gets delivered
And the law gets off my back
I can build us a place to call home
Until the hope in my soul
I just mine and not something they say that I stole
Nothing feels certain
I don’t know if I’m hurtin’ or healed
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2. |
Elvis In The Army
03:37
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Most things are over
The old world is gone
Worship death,
Catch your breath,
That’s the west,
Carry on
Where do I go after one dozen laps
Around the sun in this town
With the people it traps?
Riches and roaches
Come and go with ease
When’s my cue? One more round?
One last fry, one last freeze?
Lately I’ve noticed that I am away
More than home more than not
In the zone’s where I stay
Just like Elvis in the army
Eating dinner from a can
Saying a prayer for rock n roll
Is it gone? Do they miss me?
I live in fear of the frauds who have flown
Thru the revolving door
To a devolving throne
And I’ve shed more tears than I’d care to admit
For the drunk fool on my stoop
Talking so much shit
Said his goodbyes
when I paid him his cost
Scratch off card, can of beer
He said thanks and got lost
Which would he forget
If he had the choice?
Is it the look on my face or
The sound of my voice?
Just like Joyce down in Trieste
Squinting at the Grand Canal
From the bridge like he’s back home
Crossing north into Monto
Lately I’ve noticed my hearts disavowal
Of the suffering myth
Guess I’ve thrown in the towel
Debt, dust and memories
To collect and trade
To the man, on the fan
And in the room where I lay
Stretching my limbs out
Till each one extends
To a place I can’t see
Because the earth’s surface bends
So let’s plant a seed that
grows high and devours
What is yours, what is mine
Till what’s left is what’s ours
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3. |
Le Grand Balloon
06:09
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My stinkin’ lies and I were tracked down by a bear
It waited till I fell asleep to make its presence known
I heard its paws and opened my eyes I could smell it breathing
It could hear my blood
Red sky, a curtain draws, the moon traces around
The shape of something growing louder was stretched across my tent
And etched into my scent was a garden of guts
Terror blossomed from my bones
When I get misplaced I forget the name that I’ve answered all my life
Everything glows slightly, nothing’s so dim it can ever truly hide
Shiny and sharp as a grin grown in the dark
Was I there or was I blind?
Once you and I walked through the vines at the edge of town
We stained our teeth with wine and smiled like wolves smile at their prey
Like teenagers when they’ve found a song that they can’t quit singing
After they get high
Le Grand Balloon, I’m the buffoon that treks your trails
The pearly tit that milks the valley — Menstrual lava goddess
I jump in, I can’t swim, but I don’t dare. Take me there
When I get old.
There is a dark stretch on the road that connects my spirit to my spine
Littered with my memoirs, thrown out of cars drove by people passing through
Holes in my shoes, distribution warehouse blues
Was I aware I was alive?
Embers, innocent prisoners break free from the pyre
You light so I can find my way back in the night
A seed made out of light you plant in the dark, damp dirt of a dream
Build us a fire family out of the trash from the bin behind the beauty store
Light them on fire and release a light so that I might follow it back to your arms
Draw me a bath of the tears leaked from your laugh the blooms
The green perfume of home
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4. |
My My My Dear
05:01
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This haunted place I keep a room
A pied-e-terre, a pharaoh’s tomb
The cantos of my New York Years
Are scribed in ink that disappears
The autumn leaves that store the glow
of summer, then invite the snow
It’s five o’clock, the sky is dark,
The blinds are drawn, the dogs all bark
The bending pitch of siren choir
That cries to find a crime or fire
The seeds of hope I throw across
The sea are kissed before they’re tossed
Into the world like random prayers to gods
Who don’t exist or care
But some find soil, and grow, and bloom
In fields I find when I’ve consumed too many beers
Gotten lost, I speak your name when they are tossed
My My, My dear you’ve showered the trash
For flowers and sparks that hide in ash
And walked them through the city walls
Past parking lots, graveyards and malls
Where rows of dirt are stacked with stones
Like skulls the bind the catacombs
Arranged into a shelter’s shape
To lay low when we’ve escaped
Like Procerpina’s gift of rain
Wringing the Styx out of her mane
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5. |
Riding Cobbles
01:52
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Million Grain into a flour
Feeding dogs and losing hours
Making noise while no one listens
Cleaning brushes in the sink, then,
Riding cobbles in the classics
Wearing nothing made of plastics
At the seaside, gleaning shellfish
Reading more and speaking
Less English
Loading Timer to an oven
Paint a room for making love in
Taking part in the resistance
Hearing sheep’s “baa” in the distance
Folding laundry from the clothesline
Silhouettes in winter sunshine
Growing lemons, saving the peel
Gripping tarmac on a
Ten-speed steel
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6. |
Mountain Time
05:23
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Mountain time wasn’t on my time that morning
I shot out of bed you were curled in a ball
The sun was a dim strip of amber across the edge of the earth
And the black oily blue of the sky
I heard your voice ask why
As I wiped the glass dry
Well she mostly draws bulls these days that’s what I’d say
If ever anyone asked about you
I’d say it used to be horses, before that it was trucks
I’d say next it’s container ships docking below
The v shape of ducks
But you always belong to yourself, even when you’re not you
Every time I try escaping I lose
If you were a unit of time what would you be called
Everything that’s ever happened, or could happen
Tied up like yarn in a ball
Somewhere young lovers sneak out secretly
Somewhere a ball wrecks a jail to the ground
But nowhere’s like this and nothing else is as perfect
As the end of the bar after you’ve just sat down
Well I live off paychecks much like you kind folks
Who paid just to hear several songs about fire
and I’ve hit hard times but I’ll still make it work
I’m not one of those jerks who only talks about themselves
(They’re often liars)
But you always belong to yourself, even when you’re no one
You might wear a disguise but you’ll never outrun
If we were a unit of mass, what would we float about
The night and its sound, and the rate that it travels
And they way it unravels as silence
Perched like a bird on a glove
Dried up like bones in the sand
Bleeding like trees in October
Bare as the palm of your hand
Sweet as an hour going backwards
Louder than the wind between planets
Tied up like yarn in a ball
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7. |
David’s Dead
04:01
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Oranges are not for sale
At any store for several blocks around
The part of town where fruit just
Brings in flies
Corner building used to be something else
And now it’s finally sold
Then it’s eight stories high
In two years time
Laundry folded in a bag underneath
A chart of price-per-pound
Quarter machine out of order sign
Used to be a corner with a mural of folks
That you would see walking around
Used to be a shop where a guy could fix
Anything that had broke down
Used to be man who I’d see around
And he used to be my pal
But I just heard the news that David’s dead
Still tryna wrap my head around
I have paid rent to the same lord of land
For ten plus years, and now
I’m tired as hell of living life this way
Faces in the hallway change and you
Know who to let in and out
No one says hello or meets your eye
So called friend who only says
“Let’s hang out” if he runs into me
He says next week and I see him in five
I remember parties where people would dance
To rock n roll all night
I remember parties where people would show up
Just to start a fight
I remember nights when we did both and
I remember what you wore:
A turquoise dress and tequila grin
A mirthful mess when you walk in the door
Can collectors making rounds after dark
And I can hear them clank
I just drank and it’s money in the bank
Witnesses just rang my bell
Saturday when I was sleeping in
Is that why their magazine is called
Awake?
You can see me laughing to myself alone
Walking down the steps to the train
You can see me writing words in a book
Waiting for a bus in the rain
You can see a stranger asking me for a buck
And you can see me saying “sure”
Because I just got the word that David’s dead
You won’t see him ask me anymore.
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8. |
Thanksgiving Prayer
04:53
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My money melts like sugar in the shower when I don’t sing
Like a broken mockingbird that’s put in pawn
And traded in for diamond jewelry
The shines but only briefly in the golden heart of fall
Where the afternoons wain quickly and your breath
Floats in the final beams of evening
But I don’t need dollars, pounds, or pesos
To know I am rich
I’ve got people who allow themselves to love me
And are insane enough to be loved
It’s funny to think how much time we quietly spend apart
You don’t need to be a witness to have withness
And I’m with you now, that’s certain
Civilize me from the wilderness of constant mercy
Guarding a nursery of light
That drifts inside me like a caravan of floating candles
Trying not to capsize in the night
Listen close to the dark and write down what it says
Like it’s words are your own,
And dig a hole inside yourself
And bury them there
Thanksgiving Day is every day I write a song like this
When I get down on all four paws and drag myself
by my own jaws toward a feeling
And I wise woman once told me no one has a single voice
You’re a chorus harmonizing
Or opposing voices rising
Or a string of strangers waiting for their turn to speak
So every day just ask yourself who would you rather be
A conductor or a cop
or a night watchmen slowly strolling an asylum
Civilize me from the wilderness of constant mercy
Cut like a kite string in a storm
That’s drifting through me like a caravan of floating candles
Huddled in clusters to keep warm
At the end of the hunt when you cut what you grow
will you have what you want?
And feast when fear is fleeced from the sheets of a ghost
When you open your eyes to the sound of the dawn
Peel a dream off your brain
The film that takes the shape of the surface you dry it on
Like a Thankgiving prayer you can taste in the air
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9. |
My New Green Coat
05:46
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Photoautomat
Portraits of 1,000 nights spent dining
But mostly wining
With angels
Some stick out their tongues
Some of them slept in my bed
And a few of them even had funerals
My collection of
Items signifying love
They don’t all spark joy but they all have meaning
Meaning tends to sit
On the surface of the past
Because memories, like objects and people,
need cleaning
My new green coat
Has got a belt that I can tie
Into a knot when I want it closed tightly
My new green coat
That my dear friend gave to me
Is the most-recent best thing I have
She told me that it lived
In the Met museum
And I could see it, in a case behind glass
Reasons to stay packed in boxes
Safe from the risk of belonging
Prolonging my hesitance
My ceramic dog
Wags its tail as if it sees you crawling
From the the night through my window
Turn it upside down
And see the letters of my name
Arranged in no particular way
Ren and Stimpy toys
The first obsession in my life
Reminds me of the meaning in an object
This one was my first
I hesitate to call it it
He has a name and once he almost got lost in a fire
that I set
Reasons to stay, I’m uncounting them
Because you are the reason that kept me
And I’m taking what’s left of me
Reasons to stay, I am weighing them
Because staying feels like a coercion
And leaving desertion
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10. |
Out Of Focus
03:23
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If you never want to see me again
I’ll blend out of focus into the background
Till I’m gone
I’m no good at saying adieu, so I wont
And babe, neither should you
Just say see you next time like it’s true
But if there’s something you need to say
And you don’t know how to start
Just feed the birds your final words
The day the hangman grows a heart
All my time’s been yours till now and it’s up
So we’re both feeling down
Maybe in the next life, if we’re lucky
All the words said and wrote mean the same
When they’re sung, and so
We’ll say our goodbyes till we have more
But if there’s something else you need to say
And you don’t know where to start
Just feed the birds your final words
The day the hangman grows a heart
And the rich all rob themselves
And the wasteland turns from soot to soil
But if you’ve got something left to say
And you don’t know how to start
Just feed the birds your final words
The day the hangman grows a heart
And the pulp turns back to pine
And your lips are back on mine once more
Like before
So if there’s something say it now
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A. Savage New York, New York
MGMT
James Oldham
[email protected]
BOOKING
Timmy Hefner
[email protected]
Russel Warby (UK/Europe)
[email protected]
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