1. |
empeiria (in test)
01:19
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"i like killing plants"
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2. |
empiricist
01:52
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i guess when i've grown up came soon
time hangs like plants in my living room
breathing sun and toxic fumes
smells of weak perfume
draped over pictures of you
magazines cut up around my feet to say
"yeah i guess you're still an artist
remember when it all had really started?
all those poems broken hearted
showing yourself just how guarded you were?"
you thought that you drank deep
but you sucked dregs between their legs
something is different now
you lost what you had found
you smooth the map under your fist
homesick empiricist
you're pinched nerves
swerved and hit the ditch
why do you exist
you're not proud of this
безформна сутність
child of privilige
is it too late to say what you meant?
you wanted my thoughts
well here they are
you pay me to say this
so i'll keep it honest
it's harder than ever
to keep it together
when everyone's better
at playing the part
i am not me
i am all these things
i've said and done, so
so
i am not me
i am all these things
i've said and done, so
so what?
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3. |
watermelon man
02:52
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a bottle of red wine
crooked smiles in your elevator
dropping hors d'ouvres on an auction floor
trying to keep ourselves from laughing
a couple hundred dollars later
on mushrooms all night
we called him the watermelon man
thought he didn't smile right
we painted him all white
the highs last longer than the sun in the summer did
our brains bent backwards into beds to recover in
we couldn't spend forever with our blood that tainted
in the corner of that canvas i painted:
you loved me wrong
fact is i'm an asshole
trying better ways to not run away
from love when it falters
at it's reflection in the waters
ripples distorted
i boarded ships to forget
burnt up like a cigarette
my heart said:
you loved me wrong
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4. |
libra
02:50
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do you surrender
400 milligrams on your prescription pad
do you remember
december and the plans we had
this would be easy if i could just up and hate you
but i was there too, once
suicidal and stupid
caught in a bullpen between your hope and self-loathing
either wishing my skin ripped off or to take off your clothing
while knowing
you're loving ulcers
not me
my impulsive coffee bingeing
is this my skin or just a letter between us
two children of venus
wishing for pills to complete us
there's a light you'll never know until it goes out
your hands before you groping blindly for your lighthouse
up the stairs, beneath the pictures of your family
a single match to strike the past that you're abandoning
i'm here if you let me be
i needed arms like air to breath
when i was stuck in therapy
fucking and drinking my way to sympathy
do you surrender
serotonin leaking from your every pore
do you remember
the person that we miss
and life you're fighting for
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5. |
styx
02:11
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|
if there's one thing i've learned squirming under your sea-blue gaze it's that "when" denounces "why," and "how" is no crown to seek out to proudly wave under storms born of self-abasement
it's just clocks facing themselves
when denounces why as i stand buried under four years of snow, knowing only i forged tears from circumstance and struck sand instead of the walls atop it
you say stop it
holding only betterments as evidence that salt can scrub from sediment what my existential sentiments neither can nor ever will
filled in moments, found choking in others, knowing the when of us as lovers might birth the why of my deserving it.
the how is mouse tracks, or river maps pretending you can cross the same heart twice, hoping to die each time, or at least try
to transcend the heart's mind
it's senseless
once you've said that and meant it, answer "when" with momentum
and i may still hurt from people who lurk behind pages or benches or even the mention of a past masked in "why?"
i still try to denounce it with each round shadow-boxing the talking points of chalk dusting the handholds between the ground and forgiveness
the hardest part is accepting your arms as harness
and as far as I'm willing to go, i know you're every bit as afraid and tempted to fall
but while there's snow below, there's all the more reason to jump
to love that uncertain sky
so just say when,
and we'll cross that sea of why
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6. |
orchid
03:19
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i used to pick up houseplants on whims
overwatered in autumn and watched the stalks split
my father farmed for his family
no running water, just pigs and bees
he paid for my university
financial freedom to waste on weed
i spend a couple months travelling
a couple more because i worked to afford it
but barely
came back and lived on savings, veggies, and rice
earned someone's heart and then broke it twice
i thought of moving to serbia
but what good is english with an arts education
i thought of moving to ukraine
but what good are tourists during russian occupation
these rotten thoughts become the compost to grow in
my body blooms
but why the fuck should i show them
i think my mind is embellishing
all the things i could have been but ain't
and that's fine, i guess
i'll wake up cold, get dressed again
and wait
put my roots to the ground
and hope for a storm to knock me down
because if i decay, maybe new life will take my place
on a forest floor, as leaves shoot from my veins
an orchid grows from the shallow holes of my face
i've got love to give, and time only points one way
it's like i couldn't be happy
even if wishes were granted
i want to live life uprooted
want to live like i'm planted
i want my ivy to creep
from portland up into kyiv
i want another degree
i want to go back to sleep
i see you teach overseas
i see your hearts on your sleeves
and draw this stupid conclusion
that you're all better than me
so i write in first person
for my own selfish purpose
am i the branch that cast shade
am i the roots on the surface
am i the vines and the oak
am i the pause when you spoke
am i the salt in the air
am i the sea in the boat
does it ever get better
or is that asking too much
am i writing the wound
or am i writing the crutch
to all the ferns in the forest
to all the fish in the sea
to all the knots in the stomachs
of lovers too scared to leave
to all the sunlight surrounding you
to all the questions still hounding you
to all the burnouts in dish-pits
to all the drugs that are drowning you
this is a giving tree
tiny patch of eternity
fifty minutes of vanity
me forgiving humanity
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7. |
happy song
02:52
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i'm writing you a happy song
i'm writing one because of you
and how you make this blistered skin
feel bold and warm
and new
i'm writing this in morning sun
burning lips on porcelain cups
overhearing bits of boring talk
knowing it's not enough
to keep us locked in bed like those
who dress in all familiar clothes
who tear at life just paper deep
who say that dreams are just for sleep
step one: stop deciding what to make and start making it
no more thirty meek pages to come out and explain it
no more complaining that writing got harder when life got easier
because when this all started is exactly when you wanted that
my back haunted by years of manic attacks
packed tightly between loves
like dynamite strapped above my own funeral
but no
goodbye to counting scores
slamming doors
cutting cords, and
onto sycamore forests
on the coast of oregon
i'm done with missing calls or ignoring them
i'm done not being my own friend
i'm finished kissing wrists who won't let their scars go
it's hard, though there's an end in sight
each and every kiss goodnight
i'm writing you a happy song
even if it feels contrived
i'm writing you a happy song
because you make me feel alive
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8. |
my bones
03:13
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counting steps on train tracks, thinking
"if i just keep going it'll have some meaning"
my hometown is cold now
they tore the bar down
where a pint glass helped my first tattoo's swelling
not much changes there or in my journal pages
it's all the same, i mix up the faces
if time erases me
let it be known
i slept better in your arms than I ever did at home
i guess you're not here to stay
and that's okay
i'll lay right here
you can have your way
with my bones
anyone who says they know me
sees a piece of what i'll never know
between the loves who leave and those i let go
what can be left of an identity
i searched the walls of every condo bedroom
i used to share with people i once knew
for signs they wrote on walls to help me find them
but jokes on me
i don't deserve to follow
so here i am
snow storm blinded me
slide out on the highway going ninety
to the sound of a grindcore album
skipping and turned up the whole way
lost sight of the exit
spun
flipped
counted headlights headed my way
and i still feel more lost now
than i did on that day
i guess you're not here to stay
and that's okay
i'll lay right here
you can have your way
with my bones
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9. |
scared and impermanent
03:58
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letting go of the wheel
on that midnight drive
scared and impermanent
snow knee high
thought i might not survive
scared and impermanent
letting go of your hands
ground me to dust with your hips
scared and impermanent
drunk and lost on that dock
woke with ash on my lips
scared and impermanent
whats the alternative
books are no therapists
the world is hilarious
but i'm fucking scared of it
trying to sleep outside
after our iceland fight
scared and impermanent
you were gone in the morning
hiked until i cried
scared and impermanent
all those art shows high
those nights where i could have died
scared and impermanent
now got this arts degree
three mice and love i need
scared and impermanent
what's the alternative
is nothing definitive
the world is hilarious
when you wash your hands of it
perhaps my soul has grown possessive
of this shell i've made a mess of
i want to make sense of the senseless
and wake up with love that i've dreamt of
my friends are leaving home
say it's the weather and dead scene
i'm sick of hearing it
my friends are slitting their wrists
say it's the meds and their dead dreams
i'm sick of hearing it
my friends are pairing off
say "it gets better past your twenties"
i'm sick of hearing it
my friends are shouting past each other
about the movies and traffic
i'm getting delirious
the world is hilarious
when you're done respecting it
the world is too serious
and i'm sick of hearing it
i'm looking for better fits
a job with some benefits
songs with more sentiment
a lover with sharper wit
i want to be over it
being scared and impermanent
but that's what they sold me
feeling scared and impermanent
i've sipped coffee watching
people fight over game scores
stepped in on a mugging
broke onto rooftops in kotor
no matter how much time i'm given
it still hasn't feel like living
empirically breathing
is that all
no
i'm not so sure
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10. |
redemption
03:44
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my body laughs but i get this feeling
that i'm not quite awake, not dreaming
like sun on your ceiling
like headlights, i'm weaving
meaning found in the lack
your bare back under light from a laptop
i want to talk but i don't want to wake you
i don't know where i'm going
but i know i want to take you
[laugh]
i wrote that thinking i'd have a chance to
patch up your past, but goddamn, it pulled at you
no sunlight, no steering
no spotlight, just leaving
meaning lost in the lack
turned back from a flight i took to give my head a rest
to push my stomach down and out of my chest
to forget about christmas and unemployment stress
now you'll find me on the yellowhead
headed west
out to the ocean to see what's left
of the riptides i've been sucking on
saltwater and a joke for you to sing along to
i'm a piece of grass that you're sucking on
the sweetness gone but you're sucking on
i'm a bloody lip that god's been sucking on
who writes songs like redemption coupons
two palms like a sentence run on
two lungs with the headwinds withdrawn
two eyes like the empty yukon
who loved you like colliding hadrons do
our hands together like urban infill
you can stay here if you like kissing windmills
it's like an open question
you were every word at once
like your name was redemption
i'm a piece of grass that you're sucking on
the sweetness gone but you're sucking on
i'm a bloody lip that god's been sucking on
who writes songs like redemption coupons
two palms like a sentence run on
two lungs with the headwinds withdrawn
two eyes like the empty yukon
who loved you like colliding hadrons do
[our hands together like urban infill
you can stay here if you like kissing windmills
it's an open question
you're every word at once
and your name is redemption]
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11. |
staring contest
02:17
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a textbook nihilist, sighing "this is anything but temporary"
time absolves nothing, or something like that
read on an oregonian bus, face flushed
having spent the last hour cowering under a thessalonian letter
like a poem or prayer
pablo neruda asking:
where went the woman you loved in your dreams
it seemed to me a simple question like you had been
what happened to the woman you loved in your dreams
asked plainly to the plaster we slept in
to cast something worth keeping strung like a pendant
neck shivered and cold
all your liver-rot jokes in the back of that bookstore
i left
found ionesco's journal next
scared to death of the curtain which turned him from
man to eternal, absurd in the turtle shell
he wrote his present as past, asked
for reprieve in the key lights
i thought i might cry then
two books of questions under my arms
found you next in the fourth-floor photography section
i made a joke and you were silent
tried to love, but time denied it
rented a van for a night and a car for two more
drove fast through the pot farms and gun store window reflections
expecting a lesson in empathy
you crying your eyes out
and threatening suicide to the background sound
of a city fountain
how do i not even think of you now
the contrivance in trying to break bread with futures
while sucking the venom in pints from our sutures is ours to admonish
staring contests with honesty lost by our vanity
batting their lashes to lapses of sanity
i prodded the trauma
massaged what i thought was a sign to continue
your bent spine and sinew
oh god
i'm sorry
a textbook nihilist, sighing "this is anything but temporary"
no second chances once you've scattered the ashes
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12. |
not alone
02:06
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oh god
take away my eyes tonight
take away my lungs and let me breathe
oh let me feel myself
i have been again reminded of what i don't know
at the limits of a soul, wondering where the hell it goes
reason humming back
oh, so it goes
oh, so it goes
oh, so it goes
if there has been an answer, i lost it in the questioning
of everything as if it's been a second sunrise spun for me
examined life and all of it's virtues
loves and losses took for true
singing songs of higher selves
kissing staples into you
i'm ashamed that these chords have been used before
but i'll still play them out to tell you
it's not true, be grateful
time made you, you're able
to bite the hand that feeds
make peace
with a couple of crosshairs aimed at eternity
your old street
the one ways
to mystery
i watched the lights go up at night
the hallways fall to silence
i wonder what the hell it means
to be here
not alone in a death dream
if there has been an answer, i lost it in the questioning
of everything as if it's been a second sunrise spun for me
examined life and all of it's virtues
loves and losses took for true
singing songs of higher selves
kissing staples into you
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13. |
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somewhere in the back of this guitar track is a pen scratching
yours
one of the last things you left before leaving entirely was the sound of making marks
i'm two days and three pages into trying to make sense of how
this couch was once ours
i make for the kitchen, but flowers i grew for you offer no solace
no scent, no clue as to where you went
and missing you framing hallway doors has made
a moat i can't afford to cross without first tossing lungs-fulls of smoke
to a balcony frozen, hoping haze might erase the space
you held open in me
it's so goddamn dramatic
but i still hear static where you once sang
this apartment is haunted with ghosts of those better days
cold coffee
and baby breath taped to doorways
remember when this band was bent on philosophic rambling
i have no answers now
only hopes i'm sick of gambling
no matter where you go
promise you'll forget about me
my walls and stupid stories
short blooms like morning glories
promise you'll forget about me
i can't imagine it's hard to
just get high in your bathroom like i do
to forget that i ever loved you
to sleep without pulling blankets above you
to forget frogs and pumpkin patches
your tattoos and mine in perfect crosshatch
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14. |
kid brown
03:34
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czech air choked down
prague in june
a hundred things to think of
and i choose you
your fur lined jacket would fit right in
the kafka museum
bridges
and mausoleums
i think of you out there
my mind plays jokes
stealing from memory
it's bumming smokes
to burn up, choke down
catch it's breath
you took the air with you
when you left
cyprus is nice this time in july
my journal sprawled out on agata's floor
i filled my eyes with life since you died
so when i write your name
who is it for
hiked with your ghost along icelandic coastlines
trying to put that voice to rest which
filled my backpack with camus and jetlag
looking for meaning in the paper stacks, with
tabs of acid from berlin to crash my
head in ways it's never felt
it hurt like hell, mornings hungover
slung the pack on my shoulders
you never left
la in august was a goddamn joke
the hottest i've felt
still miles to go 'til home
i thought alone i'd be okay
it's just a little raw today
still searching for closure
in departures and runways
then a woman named nata
on the ukrainian coast
helped me speak to my friend
let me speak to his ghost
he said:
"please let me go, kid
just let me go, kid
please let me go, kid
please don't be selfish"
but i was and still am
packing books into tombs
that you built with your words
and my nerves shot, knowing
we tried to build forever
but that's just how it goes
saw his face in my own
kitchen vacant and cold, said:
"i'll let you go, kid
though i'm still selfish
i'll let you go, kid
please be patient
i'll have that funeral for you
after all these years
hang up that pack
and let it dry with the tears
well"
i'll let you go, kid
though i'm still selfish
i'll let you go, kid
please be patient
i'll let you go, kid
though i'm still selfish
i'll let you go, kid
i got your message
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15. |
riptide
04:28
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i watched you
stripped of boards like a ship of nails
set sail with a second-rate father and your first-mate albatross
wave-tossed hair, scared
taken seconds from the edge
back to that bus seat where
it’s all daily routine
wake, sleep
remember pieces of the people who love you, then leave
loved ones deceased
mark the crease in your memory
with “there be monsters”
i watched you
walking that coast alone, or tried
signed a lease on a house fire
knowing all too well i’d find a place to spend a night
but not forever
it was a choice i made
a bargain, a pension
bet it all on a ride which washed on redemption
i watched you challenge the rising waters
no one’s daughter but your own
i watched you fight the life back into
all those drowned souls you know.
i watched you like a lighthouse forgotten
with dim beams as pipe dreams
and moss where this heart had been.
i watched you scrape it off
chewed nails and bruises
sleepless and lucid
filled lungs with the putrid
and spat out a garden
you preferred below the leaves
damp things are more honest
trust not those flowers in august
they’re here for a moment then fall
like the grown men who went for your throat
broke and alone
womb aching
room shaking
i watched it
though your glazed eyes trying to say it
like at some level, maybe you participated
that maybe your hands clutched sand instead of safety
clutching nothing but maybes
touched the face of abuse
and signed a truce with his baby
i can’t relate
i can’t understand
i can barely keep back my heart
from jumping onto the landmines tracked
up your left arm
it’s so hard to hear
but I see it
i watched you in tide pools
inside rooms which felt like closets
watched you scrape the sand
to see what time deposits
i saw your eyes as twin comets
trailing stars for us to follow
and while the loss of you won’t swallow me
i cast to sea apologies
i'm weak at times, but real
flesh, blood, and memory
to weave ribs tightly
each night baptized by saltwater
under each of your riptides
i watched you
stripped of sails
making the best of oars
i watched you
make beds of those horrors
and as you crest
where the sea meets the sky
i offer my lighthouse
in place
of goodbye
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16. |
not an empiricist
01:50
|
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my heart is an empiricist
crawling on the floor to find new doors to leave from
it's read existentialists
on a train between slovakia and hungary
my heart is full of stories
that sound cool in songs
but at the time they were just kind of depressing
my heart is sick of thinking
it's like leaning on water
surprised to find you're sinking
collecting passport stamps is an expensive hobby
so I stole some wifi from a hotel lobby
and called you.
i can't remember what about
but I remember feeling better
now i'm too much of a coward
to admit I'm glad I met her
it's all true
even if the line goes dead
even if there's things i wish i could have said
even when my friends ask where you went
my wishful head says "nowhere permanent"
maybe I'm not such an empiricist after all
|
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