1. |
Mary Anne
03:24
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I wish I had a radio.
But, oh, when the fall comes, and the leaves die now,
Oh when the wind blows and that full moon howls,
Oh I hope you’re still by my side, I hope we’re still killin time.
I wish I had a love in my life.
But, oh, when the winter comes, and the snow falls down,
Oh when the ice comes and our hearts are froze now,
Oh I hope you’re still by my side, I hope we’re still killin time.
I wish I didn’t worry so much.
But, oh, when the spring comes, and the rain falls down,
Oh when the rivers flood and it feels like we’re drowning,
Oh I hope you’re still by my side, I hope we’re still killin time.
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2. |
Thomas Hardy
02:47
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I’ve read about you,
in a poem or two.
You were the seven eighths under
that threatened to wreck me through.
And I’ve seen your image
on a church wall before.
The stained glass, and silhouette candles,
or the picture I kept when you went forward.
But I was so young then,
my eyes were too.
My soul hadn’t quite grown yet
and my heart had never learned to lose.
But I’ve seen sorrowed summers,
I’ve seen angry suns/sons.
The kind that rise ragged in the morning,
and never seem to set soon enough.
You are the rocks in my starboard side.
You are the slight through my aortic valve.
You are the ghost that haunts my side.
You are the dark in my sleepless nights.
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3. |
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It’s going on a year now this May,
Since I walked those ten miles on that cold spring day.
I hadn’t slept in two nights.
Been too concerned with the goings on in someone else’s mind.
The road was straight, and the ground was wet.
The rain came down and hit me on my head,
and every time it hit it said, “Just forget.”
But I just kept on moving and said, “I’m not ready yet.”
But I burnt it all with my forest fire heart.
You were just a kindling flame,
brought on by the wind and the fire and the dust,
but you were not made of the same thing as me.
I skipped winter last year.
When times got tough I headed south with the birds of the air.
I had my pack, you know I had my thoughts;
a new habit for smoking things, and a mind to get myself lost.
The dogs chased our heels,
while I listened to a mother cry out to God to please help me.
I watched the children steal the wallets of the whitest thieves,
all while I sat on a curb and tried to translate a breeze.
Oh time will go.
Time will change me.
Oh you will go.
You wil change me.
Most nights I get through now.
When I wake I find my thoughts are somewhere else.
Still wonder where your thoughts are now.
Lord knows I left mine about 3000 miles south,
and you would take them west.
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4. |
Trying My Best
03:21
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I’m trying my best to be honest.
I’m trying my best to be clear.
I’m trying my best to tell you you’re a liar,
and to make you somehow give a damn.
I’m trying my best to be patient.
I’m trying my best to know the demons you’ve fought.
I’m trying my best to be understanding,
but after what you said that’s gonna be hard.
I’m trying my best to be sincere.
I’m trying my best to show you I care.
I’m trying my best to know the pain you feel,
flows the same way as I bleed.
WHOA!
(I AM TRYING MY BEST!)
Maybe one day I’ll be honest.
Maybe one day I’ll know one thing.
Maybe one day I’ll be humble,
and give something back before it takes all of me.
I’m trying my best to tell you I’m weak.
I’m trying my best to tell you I lie a lot.
I’m trying my best to tell you I don’t care,
but I’m the only one who’ll ever know that.
I’m trying my best.
I’m not trying at all.
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5. |
The Light That Failed
05:25
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the light that failed
It’s getting dark outside.
Its been that way for years.
Going on seventeen now,
since it got dark in here.
I miss the sky,
I miss the night,
I miss the way darkness would come,
and fade in delight/into light.
I miss your hands,
all padlocked in mine.
Don’t pull away yet
you’ll find your power in time.
And I hope you see.
What you’ve done to me.
Its getting cold outside,
found its way in here.
Well, I’m paper bones now,
stringed muscles float in the air.
I’ve got a snow globe heart
where a red one used to beat.
I remember strength,
but all I see is your back leaving here.
And I hope you see,
What you’ve done to me.
I remember your eyes, how they’d dilate to night.
I remember your mind tore adrenal with fright.
While my mind was sinning God scooped out my eyes.
And while you were leaving I screamed, “Oh you’re my strength, Delilah.”
But I am not proud, that’s not the word I would use.
I am not proud of the things I’ve done or I do.
But please have mercy, for I know exactly what I do.
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6. |
Good Mourning
07:03
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I drove all the way across town just to get gas.
I drove all the way back home just to stare into the past.
Remember those memories and question their facts.
Recalling all the witnesses, in hopes to bring my jury back.
To change their minds of my crimes; put this rail back on it tracks.
Convince them one last time it was me and my apathy that stabbed me in the back.
I sang so loud but nobody heard.
I sang so loud but my pride would not be disturbed.
Its kind of like the first time you woke up sad.
Its kind of like the first time you realized those plans would go bad.
Its kind of like the first time I stared into your eyes.
Its kind of like the first time I watched the sunrise.
My good friend the winter didn't bring his cold for awhile,
as a gift to the nomad in my heart who knew he'd be stuck in this town for awhile.
But the lover in my heart would chastise him well saying,
"Well, how do you expect to find love when you're always out travelling only thinking about yourself
just saying, 'Oh one last time, I swear, I swear, I'll slow down.'"
Ask the lover in my heart to be patient, 'Oh please, oh please, oh please stick around.
Can't you just sit here awhile now?'
Perpetuate the pain; that's the way it sounds to me.
Its kind of like the first time you woke up sad.
Its kind of like the first time you realized that person you hated was yourself.
Its kind of like the first time I stared into your eyes.
Its kind of like the first time I watched the sunrise.
Oh and I sang her my soul/song.
Oh and I sang her my sweetest lullaby.
Before she went to sleep beneath that burnt red orange sky.
Oh and the stars came out and they reared their ugly heads.
I just pulled the covers over, let the darkness cover my head.
I let all those words unsaid stay right there in the back of my head where they should.
And I wonder if you'll ever come back.
Lord, knows I'll keep a weighted heart in my back packed.
Oh and my boots strapped; the back door is unlatched;
there's a crow calling me home and a gentle wind, friend, push at my back.
Oh when you get here you'll find my tracks.
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7. |
Me and My Friend Ben
07:33
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There was a boy who stood by a vast sea. He said, “Make me a wave; that’s all I desire to be.” But the sea made no reply, and the waves would not take him that night. So he walked back on the sand black as night, while the shells blushed in the fading light. With one hand over his eyes and the other hand over his cries, he walked into the night. Then a man called out from above he said, “Son, climb! I swear there’s something above.” With a quick shift of the hand and a sharp squint of the eye the boy faced the cliff and started to climb. But when he reached, when he reached out for the man, and their eyes exchanged the lies of a first glance, well the man pulled his hand back from the boy, and left him a precipice, on a cliff forlornned. What is there to do when you find yourself alone on a cliff with no home? Well, the stars opened their eyes, and began to watch the show unfold that night. The boy, he began to speak. It started slow and soft and quiet and meek. He said, “I just want so bad to not be a burden. I don’t trust your love. I don’t trust myself.”
Then the boy, he jumped into belief. And he fell fast as the water falls free. And when he met where waters leap, I swear he turned wave to an infinite beach.
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8. |
Therapy Hymns
03:39
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Therapy Hymns
This is about burnout
about too short of wick.
About not enough candle wax
to form the flame’s width of a matchstick.
About cross stitch
ripped out for burnt bridges,
and the rivers frozen
always flowing underneath
never surfacing to feel the wind’s breeze.
For the feelings fading
lost in a whisper out of the room.
A candle’s lips
pressed between dry fingertips.
This is silence.
But come on, if we ever needed a metaphor for death
or a memorial for suicide,
we could always look up.
Every single one from Polaris to the Southern Cross
burns like a Tibetan monk in an empty street
screaming in absolute silence,
“See me! Witness this.”
Hold your breath, feel that heartbeat, hear that iron chest.
But you know I couldn’t make you love your own brand of beautiful.
You eternity, wrapped up in infinity,
a body.
Armed with artery artillery,
mapped with bloodstreams,
neuron synapse cartographers putting Lewis and Clark to rest,
if you would just rest.
Hold your breath, feel that heartbeat, hear that iron chest.
Until your dying death, infinite is less,
and tangibility, that bastard, is traded
for a telescope horizonless.
This is a thank you. To the hopeful of chest. May you never lose your breath.
So I penned these songs, written as therapy hymns,
a gift to be written, a gift to be given.
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9. |
A Poem
07:04
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A Poem
I was a bare pine in your winter wash.
You were falling continuous and gentle,
I stood root stubborn.
You were falling to cover my crucifix cross,
all my past growths and tries and fails and deaths all held up.
But your snow never stuck to branch bottoms,
in the same way your love won’t cover
the hate that makes my hate.
I was a forest fire trying my best be the sun.
But you were a star and I was a flame
and I’d die out soon enough.
I was burning alive, you were burning alive, we burning to die.
But when you die its beauty
when I die its ash.
I was a bare pine in a gravel lot,
you could find me praying for some self aware snowflake to find mine crossed.
You know unique like all the rest
but conscious of it.
The kind that froze and stuck when all the others melted.
Well, is that what trust is?
But you can never take anything back.
You can never take anything back.
I saw your mouth say things that your mind never had.
I saw your hands do things that you mind never had.
You can never take anything back.
Is that what trust is when you look back?
I watched grace pull a man’s spine right out of his back.
I watched grace pull this hatchet right out of my back.
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10. |
Ghosts
04:26
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Ghosts
I walk home from school.
My ghosts carry my soul.
And I walk with them and I talk with them,
and we reminisce on what we have known.
And it seems they only want to talk about the past.
Oh to reminisce and only that.
Can you see them, can you feel them?
Are they around the way they’re around me now?
Don’t be my ghost, don’t haunt me, I don’t haunt you now.
And your nostalgia is making me crass.
And I don’t enjoy visiting tombstones of your past.
Stuck on a broken time machine and oh we’re headed back.
The dial broke in fourth grade, I’ve seen hell and been past.
But I can’t be my father; a ghost among the living.
Always sneaking around always haunting.
But please don’t make of me a swollen cemetery.
Just another ditch dug for another forgotten memory.
Don’t be my ghost, don’t haunt me, I don’t haunt you now.
I died three times last year.
Once in the back of a plane, once in the back of a trailer,
and the third weight that finally crushed me,
was your discontent wrapped in your apathy.
Stop seeing through me!
Don’t be my ghost, I don’t haunt you, don’t haunt me now.
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11. |
Sordos
05:54
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I’ve been hiding in the mountains.
Call it a cave, call it sin.
I’ve been hearing your voice like a silence,
it’s a sword, it’s a lesson.
Well, it’s written on the walls all around us,
it’s on the tip of your tongue.
It’s in between our hands when we walk now,
it’s a distance, it’s an ocean.
She’d say, “I know your love like these floorboards,
and I’ve gotten good at leaving without making a sound.”
And I’d say, “Darling, that’s sober.
But it’s so narcissistic to think you’d wanna stick around.”
But what could I say to you now?
You’re a prayer with no end.
Some proverb, or parable, or sorcery,
To quell the meaning.
But I’ve seen the summit of your mystery.
I’ve felt the hurt in your hands.
I’m but a memory, a flash in your chemistry,
Thanks for the kind sentiments.
She’d say, “I know your love like the backs of my hands,
and lately darling, I’ve been thinking about washing them.”
And I’d say, “Sweetheart, I understand,
I just wish like hell I wasn’t the dirt you wanted off of them.”
But I got caught up in the fiction.
I taught myself all I was not.
Became a scarecrow hung by a telephone pole,
the hangman remembers the knot.
Would you progress? Would you stagger?
Your forgiveness looks a lot like a crutch.
I’m floundering around with my boundaries,
and you look a lot like trust.
And I’d say, “I know your love like this god damned town,
every corner, every alley, every street that you had me in.”
And oh she’d say, “God, that’s poetic.
Maybe when Hell freezes over we can go skate around it.”
But I’ll be a wind with no mountain to haunt.
Why did you come back here?
I’m only rubble and dust mouth now.
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