1. |
Land O' Lost
02:07
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In the land o' lost we unhand the things that threaten trust. Unsafe to move, somehow, yet faith is anchoring our very known awakenings that lie aware of what a lie can do to us. Unproven fact rings true around the heads of those unwilling sons. The will to live: instinctual, intentional, I'm Karl Marx holding on to hammer grips, building up from nothingness which think again could never be less than what you're imagining. The images are skewering themselves over the flame, semiotic fragments of a memory untapped. Close to now, but never then, the places that you recognize have frozen into subtle nodes on edges of a patterned tool that's meant to break, that's meant to steal away from you in pleasant waves off bitter shores. You feel the cold. You hear the wind. Your eyes turn black. Incense yourself by other means, speaking out into the dust. Even in the creeping light the sun looks like a grave. Holding on yet loosening what you believe, what believes you. Original embedded in the length of you, not how you spoke, but how you termed a better world with loneliness still lonely. The world is all, the world is all, and yet it's not; it's something else.
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2. |
Bullets & Stitches
01:39
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Reach back, denial is your friend enclosed in offices on shelves. The greenest warriors seek a hole and come upon an open wound refitted out of modern homes, full-glottal stops and pageantry. The car in front runs out of fuel, a force of habit underused. Who lost their arms and then their legs and then their minds finally walked back? Whose tawdry whispers hang about over blue eyes and innocence? Projecting harm unto the foul and missing often, missing well. Hitting other points, rejoicing in the dusk. Traumatic gods remain calm, remind us to huddle close and block the shrapnel sounds with itty bitty clamors of disgust. It's undiscussed, the beady blood and purple guts that line the speech, but underneath it somehow. Somehow out of reach. Reach back, disorder is your name. Put fifteen bullets in my back. I don't remember where I stand, but I know when you're coming next. I've seen you walking back and forth across a dune that doesn't move. We're in a room with metal shades; our faces lightened by remorse. Reach back, compassion is your mouth. Put fifteen stitches in my back. I don't remember where we stand, but I know you aren't coming back. I've seen you walking back and forth across a dune that doesn't move. I'm in a room with metal shades; my face is lightened by and by.
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3. |
Viatrix
01:38
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She made a living eating hearts, she wants to die. Contact all that's beyond seen, a simple spell for errant love. The choice to speak or only feel motivations from below. Across from readiness is beauty, born of recognition's pause. It's the fear that wants you, before knowing that she's gone. A day that doesn't break, a moon without a face. The kind of hell made out of breathing at the will of someone else. A new forgetting, unaware it's unaware. Taking pains to be the perfect place to lay one's hands. Sleeping eager, beating in her eyes again, needing nothing, feeding on the wait.
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4. |
Thought Loop
01:42
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Serenity has its limits. Purity starts to feel unclean. The sublime doesn't live in four walls, unless it's trapped in a gold frame. While the subconscious does its own thing, you're left with a couple of options: hole up, hold out, get up, get out and find some sanity; or stay right where you are, thinking about your thoughts until they mummify. Who needs experience to learn? I'm already on the next plane loud as a speaker that's blown. We join wit the tales of the next age or the past one dressed like now. Only fools for the real hurt. Pain lets us free when the crowd protests. We are caught by hooks that we left for you. In the image, classic as it seems, of a man in thought, he's not safe. Can't face the demons of close friends, no way he'll conquer his own brain, but we say, "How great it is, to look within at nothingness!" and being just another soul, we witness the abject.
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5. |
Begin Forever There
02:08
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We became each other's worlds, were pardoned by the sun. So soaked in rapture, we forgot all other loves. Your name was meaningless to me and mine to you, and not a sound could reach us except the crash of walls. A better story would have started with the end, but for us the close was always waiting to begin. Forever there, across the room in perfect view of all my confidence, the cracks that started small grew wide until I lived in them inside of you. You moved your things and said, "It's better to recede than to mistake one's expectations for one's yens." I laughed and said it wasn't her that made me scared, and then she knew that I was far from being free. A silence washed us like no rainstorm ever could. A look of loss, a shared pain that barely reaches except to float around one's head and just as dark. The inner workings of my heart were heaving slow. A deeper patience whispered, "On, and on, and on…" That pause of innocence had cordoned off my soul and you were waiting by the line with careful eyes. There was no picture could be taken for a proof that this moment happened outside of two heads. One was formless from the force of such a break, the other stronger just to learn, to finally hear. A place between us forged from almost needing now. Better, realer, a true carving of a self. See why caution feels like stones against your flesh?
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6. |
Somnambulism
01:40
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Starts with a dream and ends with a vow, you don't even know how lucky you are. Leading in droves to possible ends, home on the ridge of opulent scars. Taking no breath to utter no shame. Circumvent trends, purposefully dead. Urgent as coldness enters your name. Venturing to forget what you felt. Anger in slices, power in bouts, nothing is real except what you think. Reticent fear is guiding your legs over a trail that's woven with air. Holding the key to broken down doors, knowing the way around obvious roads. Everything sacred left overnight, shaken and then dispelled as a code. Bathing in garbage, eating spite, happy to have a love underground. Better to grow in darkness than light, easier then to move in your sleep. Freedom from nothing to nothing, like life. Waiting for heat to burn on our spines. Wondering what the stars might look like kept in the capable hands of a god.
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7. |
Thin Wrists
02:02
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Words fit in your hands and dollars on your tongue. Both have no weight, drown your history deep enough to die but not deep enough to live. Fate has thin wrists that encapsulate no veins. It's a bastion of everything you try to hate, all the trimmings of an overfilled blood reserve. The source of shame when you see yourself be yourself from afar, a hunk of meat with ideas. Pain is casual. Painting cause on canvas stretched by the hands of a lesser as a lesson. Rotting fruit of a mental world cut open on the ground by conniving heels. This is our feeling, so naturally we assume no one else has or can when we share it, like broken birds singing holy songs to skies that don't reply; they just stare back and are. We care not for our great leaders who won't speak. Stutter for food with their freedom and money. It's a look in the wrong direction in the middle of traffic with the rain on your glasses and everyone's after that same little piece of truth like a grail that is made out of soul parts, passed away and also passed down. Some voice of the past with an echo like a car alarm. It can't all be ours, can it? Consult the papers and shred all evidence of where we came from and where we're headed.
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8. |
Mercy/Boundless
02:17
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The iconography, broken into harmless bronze, runs across your neck like bed bugs in the sheets. A new rule takes its place, less imbued with wars to wage, but seeing eyes seeing eyes watching time. A threat of something real for once, or you imagine real. The new ideal is to follow from the front, leaden chains always swinging. Eager to disprove the strength that opens hearts methodically., I'm sorry I can't hide the truth no longer in a cage. Mercy moves, mercy moves even on a cluttered wing addressed to you from far away, expecting to be lost among the casualties of lies we thought were meant. Look to someone else to end the verses incomplete. It doesn't matter how the ink falls, that it does. In a better world- wait, this is our better world. Ugly, cruel, and a mirror of our taste. Blackened railroad ties will carry the messages that can't be left to change. And here, the glorious castle built out of fears we have overcome. Our own self-doubt disfigured, now we aren't in charge of our egos. True death, true blue death, taking a form more perfect than bones, ageless and bringing forth a new sign of the times made non-reflective. Still stand at the back if it's comfortable, I'm still here even when you can't see me. Outlined by the boundless perspective earned through transparent grace. All ends join their flames and rise with the smoke that pervades existence. Born whole in the vague awareness that everything grows in pace with love.
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9. |
Interlude
01:15
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10. |
Center City
02:19
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Life's a game I'm not trying to play, but if there must be a loser it won't be me. Restraint: the purest virtue. Swag like Gertrude Stein because I hate to make sense. All freedoms make me elitist. Center myself on giving back, not taking advice for the sake of advice and then spitting it out the car window. I'm all ears like a wrestling mat rolled up for the season. Echo victory like a skull unloved not without reason. I loathe all goals; I shank freely. I don't think you would ever want to be me; too well-worn within this gaze, too sure that nothing holds the most weight. Way long on time, feels like a marathon in between waking up, tasting failure and falling apart. And contrary to what B.G. said in '97, it's all on me. Clear-minded but still can't find it in the center of a city deserted. Forget the other side of the same old arguments that we're terrified will resolve on their own without the guileless motion of an expert burring the flesh of the brute solution. I only move to move you. I hope to move through walls like Kathryn Obvious. Emoting at the screen of my laptop, feeling less human when disconnected. That follows the rules of society, you only exist to other people. Ask Sartre about Hell. I wonder if he's already made it out of there.
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11. |
Ringworm
01:31
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You don't know the half of it. There's a helluva lot of reasons to live, not the least of which is I'm here to share it with you. Ever-ready for the crashing notion of past devotions that sing mortality. Put a boat in a tree and paddle. The most you'll see is everything that you didn't before. A ringworm doesn't know it's killing you, it just needs to eat. And I know my wounds won't impress you, but I wear them anyway (until they fade) spread out after a long day. The blood looks like branches that we don't intend to climb. Stay away from me unless you want to learn why the smartest men used to confuse the heart and the brain. No faith is realer than fear. Come near to me and I'll show you why the tragic heroes never understood their own peril.
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12. |
Zero Sum Game
01:53
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My head is a window. My heart is a crutch. Screaming and starting to starve to survive. Promises tied in a bag don't mean much. Often as ever, we're scraping for chips, fooling ourselves into thinking we're free. Places we go that are circles not wide, and if they're green, let them be so. Lost in the bends of secret distress, someone's high bet ensured no one won. Playing a hand, sharpening nails, all over faces like rain off of roofs. All over bodies or caverns for souls, limbs like lockets, stubborn with rust. Open to none who seek out of joy, effort withheld perfect and still. Rolling the die, crumpling bills, all over moments too soon to be owned. All-over prints that camouflage life. Brains like fashions that learned how to swim. Open to all, even the found. Effort is now the greatest of bluffs.
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13. |
I Am The Tarantula
02:08
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Show wisdom to prove that there's no wisdom. These words take flight in dense air. Wait to see emotion's exit strategy, laid out in plum-black ink. Four seasons and three of them punish you for being born outside of the spun web. Nothing stronger than eight legs crawling down the throats of a misled merriment. Heaven calling, a devil-man answering. Pulling pranks on a ghost illusion. No source of destruction formed a whole, only thing worth having in shards. Dispirited, all miracles try their best to appeal to deers' hooves. Glass cup with spider eyes full to the brim with tribal blood. Face masks, empty sockets, who can conduct this symphony? Air ducts pump poison, laughing gas until the mood enlightens. Sell hope in a corner store behind the counter next to the loosies. Real time blends in with the actual paradigm of observing self. No wisdom to prove when we show wisdom. Crash markets like carts in shop lots. Learn right from wrong and then switch them simply to differentiate our needs. Close-caption a call to action, a call to prayer no one wants to bow for. How many brief feelings slip between recollection and true experience? In step with a common break, the sake of those no longer blue. Half a motion toward defeat, the other half outstretched for her. I am the tarantula, dripping fangs like dipping dots. Jumping to spread a seedless egg, a dose of death in the shape eternal.
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14. |
Ethanol
01:45
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I want to apologize for things I've never done. A push in some direction, whether felt at least it's there, openly. The declaration of my missteps, hollowed, falling around the mouth of providence. Incoherent in the guise of wilted brave, language is without use for the troubadour. Silent motives are intent to the out-of-place, no home for a middle of the road encounter. How long have you traveled like an unwatched circus? Tying up old beasts for the sake of gasps. Searching for nothing is the longest sojourn, but no truth reveals until a crack's made. Feet made out of street because that's where we end. I hate the yellow light blocking out black sky. Not all who are lost wonder from a solid state. The specials don't seem so special past midnight. The wrong songs fill our guts with sour fuel.
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15. |
Found Footage
01:20
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When I passed by, I didn't know you. A year collapsed in a moment and lost its brief hold over our simple goal of being happy and careful of how that changes the scenes within a screen that shakes on thin stalks and portrays reality. A light shifts and exposes the unseen half of old truth in the shape of clouds. Held down for the benefit of all who watch with shut eyes at the deconstruction. Forms hallucinate themselves and dart head down into creasing walls. Tense souls are conquered and tossed with the rest of the fools who invented dreams. Pleasure cast to sea and left drowning, picturing doubt and divining ways out of space and time, which are two strong shackles who clang and cackle. The vision of someone new comes now like it might never leave and I implore it to stay with me. If not for life, then for its thought process. Old films correct the past gladly. New books don't end. Old films correct the past gladly, hardly seeming to be what they are. Dead spots in a corner that sequence every effect that's perceived as "here." Cold sweat isn't cold, it's wet in the ears of equally certain lovers brought together in the shadow's absent arms, nestling emptiness and attaining bliss.
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16. |
Glass Half Broken
03:09
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Put the world above me and my life behind me. Pour the ashes out like old water. Ingratiate yourself without reason. No two moments are ever fully shared or imagined quite as clear as the afternoon they occurred in. Minutes urging for more existence now, on a plane that does anything but land anywhere but here. Place happiness in a glass and stare at it. The form doesn't taste right, does it? If you love it, a great man asked, "What is love?" You already know where I'm headed. Encroaching on the territory I would never venture to belong in. And if you claim it, by all means bang it, but do so quietly. Dead dreams, irony is a dead scene. Let's fall in love in our own heads. No two emotions ring at one time except hate and adoration. Self-respect immolated, turn the spit, kid gloves don't fit in the summertime. Playback doesn't show you something that didn't originate there. Brace the earth with common strings of breathless thoughts while exiting. Ancient texts we pretend to read don't tell you much of anything about how you feel or how you think you should when your mind comes face to face with its brevity. Your lightness, your righteousness, obscured by the muff of the intercom. Life is dutiful to one cause: preservation disguised as caring. Aired out like the laundry off the line, every shame transmuted and felt sure. No two interactions end in peace more than once at the end of spring. Intoning the heedlessness in the needs of us to be seen holding up our flags, the color of fear and the passion that extols it. Wise words don't intimate, they float in bowls waiting to be captured. Unbroken as a stream, man-made, concealed with filth. Prostration is the goal. We're miles wide, we're breaking backs of solid sound to prove this age is mouthing us a wish.
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J Alfred Prufrock Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
contact: cruelestapril@gmail.com
***I have no formal relation to Thomas Stearns***
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