1. |
Prisoner Of Conscience
01:38
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Encased in bone, some shit you’ve got to face alone. He may thrive here, but this place ain’t home. Survive off of pace and tone and the grace of escaping slow. White Apples and the Taste of Stone. He loves the moon when its light seems to make her glow from within, turning into a patient snow covering the hand planted trees which rise from the dirt like fantasies, unsure of themselves and their chance to be something more than appreciated fancifully in passing; but they’re still asking for a second glance through a crack in a handsome floor. Answers bore, yes, but these questions coax; caught in between the frame of the exit door. No Banksy, but see wealth as perplexing or at least vexing. He is not connecting. He is separate, trying to be dialectic yet disaffected. Resurrect like death is not the final breath. Tie regrets in a knot around a box of violence. Violet colors of veins, just brains in cages. The sky opens wide for the rain of ages.
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2. |
Trophies
02:39
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Trace it with your eyes, laying on the shelf. You think you’ve got the prize but you’re playing with yourself. You do the right thing every day; it doesn’t help. You say what’s on your mind without saying what you felt. Aching to define what you see in someone else and why that comes first before earth, before wealth, before health. You’re coughing, tightening your throat. Stepping over lines like the dopeness of hope is going straight to your bones because your veins are too skinny. Look to your notes, turn a page like Jimmy. But really, being alone is just fuel for a fire that burns with such vicissitude that you move on, but more like off. Your thoughts go blank and your words go soft. Your words, the only tools you ever trust, are crumbling and spreading through the air like dust. You come to learn the value of silence and that the world ain’t come from a stylus. But in your heart still brews much violence. Even in the quiet, it lurks like virus. You’ve got to keep their voices down. You’ve got to keep their ugly voices down. Glintering while the past is splintering; pure simplicity will have you whimpering more than the complex. You read God’s text; a dead judgment that plead no contest. Think of God’s breath: unattended wind. Now picture God’s death: that’s the end of sin. You’re no friend to him but you’re familiar. Gold twine but the shine doesn’t thrill you. What doesn’t kill you is still concerted. What doesn’t feel good makes you feel worthless. There’s no in between, serene purpose. What doesn’t feel good makes you feel worthless. As if you really mattered to the world. As if it really even mattered to the world. As if it really mattered to the world. As if you really even mattered to the world.
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3. |
Green Is The Color
01:57
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Harsher than mellow. Caustic and hollow. Watching old VHS rips of SALO. The world is a hand reaching out for apologies in the trees like a swallow. Prodigiously callow to keep the brain fallow. Looking behind because tomorrow is now, though. Looking ahead because the past is a fallacy of devotion. Free from emotion, he is the closest that you can be to impulsive. Reflect on life and the thought is repulsive. Stay in one spot because disgust is propulsive. Pushed, still smoking, back into a holster. Green is the color of the grey sky. These are the days to make time. Speak through the art of a great lie. Bite those lips for the eighth time. Pulled to the nub by decisions rushed to partition lust before a missing touch. Your visions must be growing sour. Skip the powder, he’s picking flowers. The minutes soak on into hours, counting dreams like counting dowers. Counting down to the aches and frowns; might break them down, straight shake and brown. Drastic contacts…call then call back…sacks and all that rise and fall back into the earth, the leaves, the green. Know what it's worth but unsure what it means. Green is the color of the grey sky. These are the days to make time. Speak through the art of a great lie easily tuned to erase minds.
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4. |
Two Hearts' Weight
03:02
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Pleasure is yet the weakest of all tenses. Speak in defense of trust to be authentic. Even she wants to see evil upended. Effortless love that leaps from a heart rended. Emphatically radical; turn the outside world into static, but be warned that it forms into habit. You’ve got to have it like you think you need it, really fiending. Picking who you want to leave with and what that means in a minute from now, because, shit, you only live multiple times. So make it count through these temporal eyes. Recognize that it’s not the sight of her, but the light of her; imagine furious fires you'd like to ignite in her. Passion is never wise but it's more real. Pick the right cards but still get the raw deal. It’s all here: another reason for staying or just a reason for playing up the things you’ve been saying all in her ear like you have any control. Guess it is better not to know, to be copped and sold and re-sold as dog eared pages choke with mold, waiting to be broke down. Shouts out to Smoketown. Everybody’s broke now. Everybody’s soulless; feeling so alone with the world on their shoulders, but really all together with a wall between. So bore a hole in it and keep the method unseen. Self-sacrifice as if she had one. Who'd of thought after it all you'd be the glad one? Rise from the fog unscathed, at least mostly; and what ain't finish the job becomes a trophy. A couple scars on your ventricles, it's nonsensical at what expense she pulls everyone she touches down past zero. You can be a man but you can't be a hero. Never save shit. Value is subjective. Two hearts' weight makes the scale ineffective. Searching around like you were some detective, but clues elude and you're left no directive. Break connections that may cause spark. Use your discretion that feeds into dark. Hark! Clipping wings for hanging on walls. Start to relinquish, not wish, for resolve.
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5. |
Your Reflection
01:25
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Down to the minute, outwardly fitted; firmly grounded in the infinite. Proudly a gimmick, now that it’s finished. The crowd will diminish and you can get right to business like mystics. (Alfred Lord Tennyson) If you’ve got beef, better hope its venison. Behind your reflection like medicine lies something deeper and much less innocent, so get rid of it. (Castaway) The game’s to be sold but you don’t have to pay. No, you don’t have to play, you’re better off on the side. It’s all for effect though often it slides into usefulness. What a youthful mess, trying to recognize life in diffusive death! One crucial breath in the form of wheeze. You know that he takes any form he pleases. Oh sure, he needs it but he won't say why…like feeling sun rays through blue grey sky. Who takes time? Better yet, who gives it? Ain't a lot left, the price is like wisdom. Never fall victim to the unwritten. This is not the moment unlived in.
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6. |
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Fear is a state and your mind is the flag. Time doesn’t drag it gets caught by the grab of invisible armaments looking to harness all physical harm into a single disharmonic missile of karmic destructive constructs. Like the feeling you get when you board the wrong bus or trust the wrong smile, after long miles with much to discuss, reveal and revile. Life is a freestyle with too many syllables. Your cup ran over, it must be un-fillable. Nothing on God’s brown earth is un-killable…it just might be unwilling to die. Swilling your eyes with the burn of certainty, the unique curvature of perceived urgency; look hard enough and it becomes purposeful. All nervous absurdity, currently, is getting pulled out like a riptide or a grey tooth. It’s easy to say that you “stay true.” But to actually live it in everyday action takes a lot more than a primal reaction. Hate motivates because it is love misguided by misaligned fates combined to deride what you think is safe. You’re on the brink of making some choice in a blink to secure your greatness. Deplore their fakeness but it’s hard to blame them. A lot of lions in your heart and it’s hard to tame them; the king of all things that you can’t repeat, rewinding time and recanting speech. Swear off sight and smell, only listen, and quell the dread with positive premonitions.
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7. |
Nosebleed
01:29
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You think you know better than anyone; sharper than any knife, louder than any gun. Much to your chagrin, every win is a petty one. The battle’s already fought, the war is already done. Your father always told you, “Keep it steady, son.” Secretly, you hoped he’d soon take his own medicine. He had you feeling very alone, as if jettisoned, until the light bulb lit, no Thomas Edison. You found the remedy: all in the editing, considering the P.O.V. and who said the thing. But who’s listening? That’s what counts. The pain ain’t lessening or doubling down. Trouble is bubbling, deceit is brewed, served at the point of no return and imbued with a sense of burning and leaning, touching and needing; punched in the face in the nosebleed seating. But what is the place that will precede erasure of all that is held true? From the day he held you, he knew that the truth is just hope with a head for a home, never seeing that the self can be overthrown.
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8. |
Unshakable Faith
02:29
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Unshakable faith, tape decks and big faces. Wondering how much of your time has been wasted wondering about the next move down the line; you found a lie to drown in pride. The sound resigns. Liquid drips in from adjacent, familiarly sacred spaces. Relief relates back to the cold source of the mouth. Of course, it’s the force of a doubt that spurs on heavily; swerved on readily. Between Heaven and Hell is nothing but melody, or melancholy; a lack of security that returns every form to raw purity. In a mortuary/estuary…quite a whole lot of flesh to carry on aging bones. Holy nights leave evil days alone, to pray to moan. To realize what it means to be alone. Maybe even what it is to be on your own. Late nights on the phone, dial tones sharp in your ear like the clang of chrome. What do you clamor for? For what do you search? Ain’t nothing here but air and dirt. Care is hurt, but it comes natural like picking which fact to pull out of a hat and then act like it’s actual. Documented, therefore taxable out of your pocket like an amulet. God damns as he scans the drifting dead land cut by a warm hand into rifts because really that hand is a fist, damaging. Be a martyr for yourself with the help of stealth. Because when you think about it, there is not much else. Crossing a bridge made of eyelids sealed like lips. So prepared to live, yet scared to give if it won’t be taken. Growing sideways with raging patience. No place for a face-to-face blind date with Time, Fate, and Amazing Grace. Engage disgrace in a short conversation and learn from the pain like consecration. It doesn’t take a whole lot of contemplation: think of, empty, and drink from every hole in your heart that you could not feel and failed to see was clogged with zeal.
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9. |
Hell In Theory
03:57
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He never understood the phrase "life is a dream" until he rose with his conscious and it stayed beneath. Rather it stayed between, so it was hard to speak. He didn’t want to die no more, nah, he just wanted peace. A goodnight's worth sleep to put him back in pieces; he was an egg man posted up like Jesus. But the thorns turned to hair turned to dirt real quick; rubbed with his thumbs like making a wish. He wasn't making up shit. His every fear was real. Sad truths came out no matter how he concealed them. It didn’t take much time before he forgot himself. He didn't recognize the being he unbearably felt. He had to crack a smile so to not shed tears. A red face laughing at the fright in the mirror. He had no eyes like he had no mind. They said even without them he'd still be fine. His bones are not his own because he's damn sure they don't fit. You can strike the stage of time, but the curtains swing ageless. His bones are not his own because he's damn sure they don't fit. You can write around the lies, but that doesn't mean truth exists. Down in a vault, he ground water to salt; proudly at fault for every misplaced bolt. For every mislaid stitch he heard the background rip, revealing grand nothingness warm and thick. He wasn't warned of this that's why it's such a surprise. A slave to context, still clutching the sky and rushing to find the source of discontent. Some are more comfortable misfortunate. Proportionate to the time at waste being alive in space, it's a conniving race toward goals ever-obscured. Hermetically born; shield tepidly worn and eventually shorn. Nude and nonlinear, he never was pure. He gambled for faces to settle the score. Contempt and rewards were checked at the door, as real as death when it stepped to the fore.
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10. |
Wallace Stevens
02:26
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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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