1. |
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January’s colors curdle fast
Eclipsed by their own fading as the world changes to glass
The Sunday morning method acting class
In fallout shelter basements always bracing for the blast
Fifteen years of lessons and debris
Accumulated everywhere but meant nothing to me
One more sour glow, another sickly winter sunset
Just another voice explaining this is all you get to be
I was trudging through some ridiculous landscapes
Straining my reach for each slippery hand
I had long ago used up all of my recklessness
I just wanted someplace to land
There’s a poison that the small towns just can’t contain
I heard those two got married to each other
That’s so strange
I hope it was just a perfect day
I hope they got some money and I hope that they both changed
I was still unstable and still on tour
Still slightly drunk and sleeping fully clothed on someone’s floor
Two separate pale perspectives pitying each other probably
But when I heard that, something sick inside of me was cured
I heard a voice somewhere tell me to start running
In any direction at full speed
There was no sweetness, sadness, anger, regret or resentment
Just blinding, utter, total relief.
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2. |
Alcohol Poisoning
03:00
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The panic was here right from the beginning
Started the year with alcohol poisoning
Crumbling couples fighting in parked cars
Wasted people smoking in front of closing bars
All dressed up like the world’s about to end
Destroyed at best
But once these days are gone, they’re gone forever
They’re never coming back again
Three PM with all of the lights out
Three day hangover at your parent’s house
Detroit skyline twenty years older
How come this year it feels so much colder?
All dressed up in emergency room red
Distressed
But once these days are gone, they’re gone forever
They’re never coming back again
And in your head there is a voice repeating
“I’m never doing this again."
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3. |
Hopeless Ocean Drinker
02:09
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You’re only restless in your right mind
You’re only confused when there’s no water on the lenses
When terms are absolute
Another hopeless ocean drinker swallowing all the blue
Another vessel of undone dreams
Like a kiss that misses the mouth
A promise peeling off of the skin
A miracle feeling with limited meaning
You always overdosed on lost time
Things that you didn’t do
Three lovers sleeping in the same bed
Some “Jane Says” karaoke fools
And when you tried to make yourself puke
It was no use
It was already in your bloodstream
Like a kiss that misses the mouth
You just regurgitate what you’ve been
A parasite feeding
The world is uneven
Even when the windshield popped out
You were just a passenger buckled in
Careening and bleeding
You still couldn’t feel it
You just want to sleep through the collision
Sleep through every decision
Twenty-one to thirty-seven
Come to when you’re either forgotten or forgiven
Your lungs fill with fluid in less than a minute.
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4. |
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Suddenly we’re in a different place
Good times are gone again
This year nobody’s talking about
How incredible their summer’s been
Bad things are happening now
Sharp days are wrapping around us
All of this could be so beautiful
It wouldn’t take a lot
You still think you’re the only one
Who had to fight for what they’ve got
Old words come out of your mouth
Bad things are happening now
Bad things are happening now.
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5. |
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The fall colors came the same in 2013
As any other year that we had ever seen
But the entire town felt like an altar then
Those nights were spent
Digesting the ashes of a dead friend
Putting barricades in place
Cultivating contradictions
Drinking whispers
Everybody knew without even speaking
Before it happens you recognize a pattern
My skin stayed soft like cake
The roads were unpaved
And no one was actually saved at all
But every attempt was made
To hold on to that dislocating magic
The sadness flattened every last thing
In a lasting, manic gush
There wasn’t much I could have said or done
Short of upending the afterworld completely
Walking through those days like a rabbit in a minefield
You can’t feel the damage ‘til after it happens
Everybody knew without even speaking
It was wordless leaf fire smoke
Murderous green bile choke
And a sick, sullen floating
The fall colors came again
A pair of plastic fangs joined some dreams in the drain
They told me “better days are on their way”
Uh-huh
The falls colors came containing unnameable flames
It’s amazing that everybody stayed exactly the same
Standing in the center at the altar.
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6. |
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House show, late December
Three noise acts
Mixer feedback, busted four tracks
Clusters of cables on card tables
iPod DJ standing in the corner
Playing the best tracks from Chandra, The Make*Up and Silk Flowers
The dirty coat congregation comes together
For a shit-talk session that feels like confession
For tallboy communion
Gathered to bemoan the bad year
Gathered to bemoan the bad year
Gathered to bemoan the bad year
And the deep freeze outside
Just punctuates how markedly miserable these last months have been
This year can’t end soon enough
Let the new one in
Let the new one in.
January first
No one’s waiting for a shift in eras
No one’s waiting for the anxiety to dissipate
Because we all feel it daily
I feel it mostly when I’m dazed, wandering around at Target
Or at the airport
Always two hours early
Worried about security
I get the impulse to curl up in the fetal position
Lie down next to the drug dog
And say “Help me. Help me get through this.
I know we can do this, you and me.”
Twenty three years old
On my first tour that really made it out of the neighborhood
Lovesick & Aloha
Twenty eight shows in thirty one days
Three hundred one dollar bills in the band fund
U-Haul trailer dragging uphill
Disposable camera that never left my hand
And every picture I took
Was of a vacant storefront, telephone wires, a cloud
No people
I was searching for meaning in everything
I was chasing some kind of feeling that I couldn’t describe
I couldn’t talk about
I could only reach for.
Seventeen years later I’m still in the same jail
I’m still sending out these cassette tapes in the mail
I’m still dreaming in scenes
Of high fructose corn syrup corner stores
Blunt wrap bodegas and now depanneurs
A 3,000 page manuscript
For a masterclass in colloquialisms of the working poor
I see murders in the vape shop
Yellow tape marks the scene off
I got in a car with a stranger
And he drove off the side of a mountain
As we fell I just saw Emily’s face
And I felt my head smash in before I woke up
To piles of the same stuff
Crushed cans
Recycled psychic life spans
Personal brands
And fake love made of
Waxy chocolate
Bags of dog shit
Backseat nauseous
Taxi vomit
Bathroom carpet
Nasty apartment with a mattress in that tiny closet
Casket coffin
Sophomore drama
Takes a grave to make the language soften
Small town toxic
So angry
“SO AWESOME!”
It’s fucking nonsense
Nonstop talking
The extraction tax and the added cost
Fully lossless in their rawness
The moldy ceiling and the leaky faucet and that dismissive pause
Before you tell me there’s nothing wrong with this
All these things you say there’s nothing wrong with
There’s something wrong with
Everything you say there’s nothing wrong with
There’s something wrong with.
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7. |
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It’s still early in the season
But when I walk by the church
With the janky donation thermometer
Painted on its front wall
The red bar still looks so small
It’s still mostly white.
These days I’m just observing
Watching quicksand conversations
I see my friends backslide
And I’m waiting for a time when they’ll forget me
I hope they forget me
Because lately I can’t see
What I used to love so much
About this ugly room I keep singing to.
It’s Wednesday morning
In the parking lot of the Pharmaprix
I see a mother around forty-three
And her daughter, fourteen, fifteen
And they’re fighting in French so I can’t make out the language
I can just see the exhaustion on the mother’s hollow face
And how the daughter simply hates her
With that blinding, burning meanness only teens get
Like she has to
Like her mom did to her mom
Like we all do
And the mother loves her so much that she’s constantly terrified.
What she can’t say but is everywhere
Is a shivering plea
Possibly the same sentiment mirrored in each of them
“You’ve got the rest of your life to be angry
You’ve got the rest of your life to be angry
For right now, just pretend that you like me
For just a little while
Be nice to me.”
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8. |
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You tell me everyday
Where would I be without you
Oh, I don’t even know.
It’s the middle of September
I slept maybe for an hour
I have to make a flight by seven
I’ll be gone just for the weekend
For two shows outside of Philly
That will pay my rent completely
I feel kinda sick like always
I’m not ready.
There are still shards in the kitchen
From the glass jar that I broke when I poured in boiling water
I was less shocked by the shatter
Than that I never saw it coming
Ethan said, when we were younger
That weird summer in Columbus
“Things are written so big that you can’t even see them.”
We are driving to the airport
Fighting about something
I read later it’s not uncommon
To not be able to remember
Any details or how you got there
Like what even really happened?
Never really even mattered.
And you tell me I’m included
But I always feel like nothing
While your friends whisper about my weight
And how they can see the outline of my stomach through my t-shirt
See my skeleton climb out of my fucking mouth
And start running away from this as fast as possible
Leaving it to some other hapless fucker
To get tricked into forgetting
And having fights they can’t remember.
I hope you feel perfect
I hope that you stay famous
I hope that your fans write poems to you
About how you truly changed them
And I hope they squeal and preen
And tell you how you’re so amazing that they can’t even process it
I hope that no one ever knows you.
On some broken, rainy morning
Before the sun clears through the clouds
In a sky that is eternally apologizing
Walk alone down to the banks of the rising river
And with your hands in the sand
Dig a small patch of ground
And lie there repeating “I was wrong”
Until either you feel better or the slow waves overtake you
Neither one will happen.
You tell me everyday
Where would I be without you
Oh, I don’t even know.
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9. |
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It’s winter in the states
The businesses are shuddered
The inroads are flooded
It’s just like the end of the world
Where I’m living now
It stays colder for longer
The windows are frosted
I’m looking out of the mouth of a well of remembering
When I was eight years old
My parents were worried
I spent too much time alone, I was too angry
I hated the kids in my grade
So they drove us to a church
A couple towns over
Maybe we’d see some new faces
Maybe I could make some friends my own age
What the sermon said
Was something about patience or mercy or serpents
It felt like it lasted a long time
When it was finally done
We met the congregation
Smiling and shaking hands
I stood there with one of their sons
He asked if I liked sports and I said “No” flatly
So he just stared back at me saying nothing
While the adults spoke above our heads
After all of that we went to an Arby’s
My parents drank coffee silently
We never went back to that church.
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