![TeeeeT[ra] thumbnail](https://f4.bcbits.com/img/0022417226_42.jpg)
1. |
Every Song Sung To A Dog
03:52
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So that’s it?
Eternity equates to forever walking towards without arriving any place?
With some beasts leashed
And the rest so hung up on the majesty of having two functioning feet
Don’t con yourself with comfort
Don’t talk about the future
In the fur patch shaved and sutured
In the tangle of tubes where I lose you
Everything is changed
And the rest of us remain
So could we exchange our lifespans?
Or would that be a shitty deal?
My eight potential decades--
sloppy, selfish and unreal
For your thirteen years of walking in one clear, pure line
Even with all this ridiculous talking I can never get through
And I can’t get any help
I can just stand here in front of you and embarrass myself
So drag me out of the river in a backwards baptism
Take it back to the beginning
To make sure there’s no revisions and we are all of one mind
While we watch this reel rewind
And I see myself there completely lightweight wasted on like a single drink
In 2003 in Baltimore
Smashing my first flip-phone on some piss-soaked alley floor corridor
Crimes of the heart
Crimes of the convenience store
A whole history of crimes felt more important at that time
I see them all from last to first as they play out in reverse
I get to find everything I ever lost
I get to uncast every curse
See every upturned motorcycle, every page from every bible
All my acid stomach mornings and my nights of deep survival
See those horses in the stables
Teenage tears and jumper cables
See me rattled and insane from all the changes strange and mangled
See that never-ending room filled up with everything consumed
A pile of everything consumed to fill a never-ending room
Hear every song sung to a dog on every walk with every dog.
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2. |
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Winter is in a state of constancy
And meanwhile, all the old friends
Are just that
And I’m wondering-- when they built the schools
Did they realize they placed them directly adjacent from the parks and the woods?
And the structures enclosed?
The places kids could go and feel safe to be unknown?
A shelter for the stoners, the fumbling first-timers
The jelly legs and anxious elbows of the awkward lovers
With no time for the burden of nostalgia
Hands full with the ever unfolding hell happening
Because it’s always there in the lids of your eyes and at the corners of your mouth
The museum-like qualities of your parents house
(with butterfly wings pinned to the walls)
But I was running past you when you were running past me
In these puppet days
In these puppet nights
In this puppet century
I was looking for you while you were looking through me
In those puppet days, in those puppet nights
In that puppet century
I was running past you while you were running past me
In these puppet days and these puppet nights
In this puppet century.
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3. |
July
01:37
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4. |
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How you wanna live?
Can you conceive of a living wage?
Or does it all just sound like something somebody else would say?
Even when they talk so calmly
They say "There's only a couple of questions we've got to ask."
You know the pavement is always hungry
For those drops of your blood
For that knee in your back
Life is so incredibly long
Like a kiss on a bridge between two nervous-ass kids
Terrified of doing everything wrong
Fickle, belligerent, fully existent
And I don't wanna talk to all the people in their pickup trucks
Moving all their mouths
To make it hurt so much
You won't get my blood in some apologetic stop-gap gush
You'll feel it all at once in a red, raw rush
Overworked doctor is smoking in the doorway of the clinic
While protesters picket different perspectives of the same prison
The peace signs in pictures chucked up by the diminished
Mean "Nobody's safe from the law"
Cause they don't give a fuck
They don't give a fuck about us.
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5. |
Monster Movie
03:26
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If it’s gonna be a monster movie then make it ugly
In the scenes the demons see
What scares them the most is the way that no one leaves
In a whisper on a front porch
“Could you be more? Could you be more for me?”
It’s not enough.
From a memory of an unclear time
When your parents were the only people
And the sunlight on your old block
And the parking lots where you learned how to get free.
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6. |
Bad Blood
04:09
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Bad blood saturating the sheets and the blankets
Good god, there are ghosts floating up from the pavement
They flip over the houses, blood runs out from the basements
In it's unholy flow
You remember this whimpering, thick, nauseous feeling
From your step-brother chasing you around with a staple gun when you were young.
It was fun and then suddenly pain became a very real thing
Do you remember that feeling?
Similarly, this isn't fiction.
Well, actually mostly it is
Or a series of IRL moments cloaked in the vagueness that songs give
But when there's nothing to say and you've got to say something
Fuck, I don't even know.
We pass on the street and say "hi" cause we have to
Even though both of us are clearly just like "I FUCKING HATE YOU"
So stilted and silent, not awkward just angry
Hey I gotta go, but I'll see you at the show
It's that song everybody loves, but the lyrics are garbage
And it stresses me out how often you're mentioned
It's like everyone we know collectively vomited up a pile of brown sweaters or something and were so impressed with the results
That they put them on the wall
And I'm so sad you're in my head
And I'm so sorry it's so venomous
Especially because we've got like maybe four or five words ever spoken between us
But I can't heave my heart into my mouth
I can't tell you
I can't stop you
I don't want to
This first day of school shit just seems to keep happening
Everybody says "Man, it's so cool. We're so glad you're doing your own thing!"
But worse than disdain is colossal indifference
The smiles are so big
And there's no one at the gig
I'm either deep in the woods or on TV for everyone
And I know-- it's disgusting how much I think about myself in relation to nothing
The things that aren't gonna stay just aren't gonna stay
Like; I was getting a tooth pulled in the free clinic in Portland in 2007
The dentist turned out to be this dude, a drummer whose band I'd recorded, and somehow that was comforting
Then the Novocaine block kicked in
It closed up my throat and I was ready to go home
Maybe once this record comes out then I can stop drinking
That might look good on a press release or something
If they even still do those,
Wait, I'm certain they still do those
And then the summer comes and then the fall comes
And then the winter comes and then the spring comes
And then the summer comes and then the fall comes
And then the winter comes and then the spring comes
And then the summer comes and then the fall comes
And then the winter comes and then the spring comes.
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7. |
Unfading Flower
03:26
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Dreams of limitless light and of an unfading flower
While crashed on the cushionless couch
In the trashed college house
After another series of regrettable hours
A collector of faces
A thief of ideas
A hoarder of hardships
And we’re all here
Gathered at the table with frozen features
Over unopened beers
But who are you to tell me how to ruin my meal?
And who am I to tell you how you actually feel?
In the exhausted bathroom and the insincere kitchen
Cryptic admissions seem to be written
In the toothpaste smear on a spit-flecked mirror
Where your stare returns itself
The tightening throat
The covered blue boats
The failure to pass that 101 class
The half-hearted shrug
The cum on the rug
And the way that they say each other’s names
The books on the shelf and the food in the cupboard
Are different brands of empty promises
A bag of moldy baby carrots sits atop a pile of empty pizza boxes
And outside the spike in crime
And the clack of skateboard wheels
Let us know that spring has finally arrived
These complication days, don’t let them stress you out
Because everything is exactly the same
Just going under a different name now
The banishment you’re swallowing has no nutritional value
The night has already passed
The city has no center
That unfading flower and the limitless light
And the repeating sound
So familiar by now
But I say it again because I want you to hear
But I say it again because I want you to hear.
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8. |
Bed Bugs
05:04
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Let's stop and talk on a slow street
Your guy is cross-eyed and muttering
Looks at me like "Now who the fuck is he?"
And I tell you, man, I wish that I knew
Trash-scavenged mattress and a stuffed bear
Bedbugs crawling through your lover's hair
You got that thousand yard stare
I get itchy just from talking to you
Drained hopes sinking with the August sun
Floating out on the freshman year beer run
It's so hard to have fun
But there used to be a way to get through
All your amazed days fade
But all of the damned dogs they think they've got it made
And no matter what you say
You know that you are gonna do it anyway
Do it anyway
Knuckle tattoo says "I H8 2 LIVE"
On another dickhead who assures me that I'm just too sensitive
You can't tell everybody to fuck off forever
Then be mortified when they finally do
You had a textbook breakthrough on a shaky plane
Seated next to kid, hyperventilating
She’s so embarrassed by her dad's use of slang
And nobody ever gets to feel cool
These days I'm only saying something if I'm swaying
That's the only time it doesn't feel like I'm explaining
So if you see me and I seem too entertaining
I'm not singing, I'm just talking to you
But you don't want a funeral unless everybody comes
And you don't want to kiss until you're adequately numb
And you don't want to speak, not even just to say goodbye
Because you don't want to share how you're in shadows all the time
And you don't want to think about the people that you knew
They're a tug on your sleeve, they're an embarrassment to you
Just some bones in the sun, just a decomposing rind
Just a sitcom that aired before you were even alive
Your friends are full-length mirrors that you pulled out of the garbage
Orange juice soaked cotton balls to convince you you're not starving
You need somebody to fuck, someone to call when you get down
And some people to make wonder why they even stick around
Now you don't want to drink, you say it feels just the same as water
And you don't actually even like me, I just subconsciously remind you of your father
His flannel shirts that smelled like cigarettes and rain
And a whole catalog of things that you wish never had to change
But it's never been quite like it was when you were a kid
Puffy eyes, play fights, bug bites, Jif peanut butter, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, strawberry allergy, beestings
All of the people are asleep
But tomorrow the punks and the cops will both have to eat
And whatever those people say
You know that you've got to do it anyway
Do it anyway.
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9. |
Expo '87
02:30
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I get so hung up high on expectations
I get so sick at restaurants and on family vacations
And I leave every situation invariably feeling dumb
But you've got to be a little bit dumb
Otherwise you never get anything done
And you've gotta be kinda hit
Otherwise you spend your time smiling entirely too much
Wincing while you're waiting
For that next soft punch
So give up, fuck up, stay out
Cause no one's keeping score now
This punishment, it doesn't fit
But fuck it, we've got it
You still know what all the drop-outs know
And anybody who's ever lost a tooth
It doesn't bring you any closer to the truth,
But you do start to recognize things
So can you keep your firm belief in those ill-fitting jeans,
A burning hatred of the home team and everything that it means
Will you go with the mongrels? The deciders?
The jelly legs and anxious elbows of the awkward lovers?
The unsightly? The sickly?
The migraines?
Let's puke up the foam from this bottle of champagne
Let's ruin this fucking wedding!
All these nights are only worth forgetting
This conversation; we're so above it.
Let's bury it
Let's dead that shit!
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10. |
Thesis (Lear)
02:42
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11. |
Doggie
06:57
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All summer long
Through dazed phases and cold coffee songs
All of the time was spent
Two glued friends slept on the floor in a strange arrangement
All summer long
Stumbling numbly around at the mall
All of the days, they went
No reflections and no requests
Just the din of a distant celebration heard through basement walls
In a house with all the windows closed
Light kept out by black towels
And the cold coming down in a soundless noise
"Doggie, I love you. I love you."
When the sun was gone
They ventured out on the lawn and by the post office that was always closed
A moonlit and wordless walk towards love at the edge of dissociation
Where nothing was wrong
And everything could be held
In a cloud where you can't touch your friends
Just reach out in a voice that says,
"New days, please be good to us."
Doggie, I love you.
I love you.
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