1. |
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Every moment is the only thing that really ever runs away.
Somehow it feels eternal and all there really is.
I heard your voice speaking just the other day.
Somehow it lingers inside me just the same.
You would never stick around.
You would never stick around.
I would never stick around.
I would never stick around.
This would never stick around.
This would never stick around.
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2. |
i'm fumbling my words...
01:47
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|
I am fumbling my words,
Dropping a motif spectrum
I attempted from a droning noise.
I fear those two ears are
waning palms of my
Longing to meld.
I would strain to grasp banners
For every favored hilltop
So far as I can see;
I might thrust up any color
for a smudge of claim
Of a tattered moth
Wobbling into
These tender belly walls;
For commitments
Forever at war.
Some bandage for death,
Like having children or making art.
I cannot reach for feathers
Of but one bird in a flock.
Like a child I run up
And scare them off —
A shrinking form in tears
And awe.
Maybe one day
I won’t be choking
On all this life —
I will reach out and
Really grip something.
I have always succumbed
To an abandoned nest,
Eating the sky,
Like a youngling.
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3. |
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|
Time never accounts for the fly.
Suffer the canyon and sky.
I flotsam the shores once again.
Try to show up for my friends.
I’m always caught up in myself.
I struggle to live and to die.
I lean on the hearts of my friends.
Mind is a place
We choose to stay.
But what choice
Did we have
With the cards we were dealt?
When I try
Again and again
And again?
Well, I’ll try again and again
And again.
Yeah, I’ll try again and again
And again.
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4. |
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|
This time I’ll use better words,
Better serve myself.
Speak soft, I’ll cast it all
In good form.
I’ll try to navigate me
For peace of mind.
But these spells
Won’t mend lies
You tend to tell yourself.
So face up, face your fears.
So face up, face yourself
To fess up all your bullshit.
Name it when you see it.
Push back your addiction
To the pain you cause yourself.
Face the hardship
Without armor.
Maybe you will make it out alive —
And you’ll lick your wounds.
And I know that sometimes it’s hard
To see the creature when you wear it.
Like everything else it hides
Behind a shield.
Face up, face up.
Fess up, fess up.
Name it, name it.
Push back, push back.
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5. |
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|
Casting out the old salt.
Shedding yesterday's armor
So I have space to learn,
Room to grieve.
An empty house,
Restless, guestless,
No kin or hearth,
Only a barren mantle
Where the future once was.
The spaces we carve,
The cave-ins that shape the walls
Of our homes.
When will I leave?
Learn to breathe the outside air?
Sip the promise of sunlight.
A little song humming it's alright.
Where does our love go
When it has nowhere to turn?
Grief is the homeless love.
The wandering spirit
Of an empty house.
We grow around our grief,
It's shape and frame
Never growing smaller.
But the shape of this home contains me.
I've nowhere to grow,
Nor courage to go.
I am the empty mantle,
And I will vanish with this home.
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6. |
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|
In the fold of the couch —
Hasn’t ever lived.
Long lost and unknown.
Put that gem in your mouth.
Supply and feel whole again.
There is a need,
It looks just like you,
But not on its own.
Take nothing else but the road.
Shift into your disciplined stillness.
Sick of feeling nothing helps.
Just take what you find and rejoice.
Or better yet, know what you need,
And think, and act, and breathe.
|
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7. |
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|
Shaking on the spire.
Somehow I shouldn’t have any regrets.
Because you said,
“There is nothing at all,
except for what you choose
to make of it all,
For all time.”
And you said that God
Can be whatever in your head.
Slick thought, I wish I had thought
Of that one before.
I have too many regrets to hold still.
The spire, the world, collapse.
None of it holds any weight.
There is nothing left to prove.
God flies away
When nothing matters.
I see the times
Dying unholy.
God flies away
From our memory.
I see the world
As it is.
And it looks bad.
Take back the thought
Even when you’re so far gone.
I need something
To save me from myself.
Even when I take back the thought,
Even when I’m so far gone
I need something
To save me from myself.
|
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8. |
Horses Forever, Dude
03:05
|
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|
Replay old times that are gone away.
Psycho fruits will one day lose their holding.
You can’t expect to hold on so long.
But we’ll roll down this hill together.
Time floods the basement floor.
We throw chairs in a circus room.
Thanks to y’all I do persist.
Thanks for living with a masochist.
Over our heads the roof decays.
Dance with clowns in a circus space.
Thanks to y’all I still exist.
Thanks for loving a masochist.
|
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9. |
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|
I recall cherry blossoms
At the onset of death throes.
And then a year passed in obscurity,
In what felt like one foul season,
Marked with the dimness of hunger,
And a swarm of failures;
Left with nothing but a soured resignation,
Somehow something
Did bud upon the grayness.
Nothing has hardened me more,
Nothing has stripped me of so many
Leathered layers.
Weathered and cured and
Manically glued,
I saw death in everything --
In a whisper;
Between silent gestures;
In the tone of the voice of a friend.
In the midst of this storm,
In the company of ghosts,
A coward and helpless,
I found a warm punishment
In doing harm to my mind.
A blade through spongey butter.
A face to the flowers who
Thrust themselves at me.
I had no choice
But to cut myself away.
For at the head of bedrock,
That was the utmost I could do.
I found the core supple.
And better yet it was lighter.
Some residue of that
Impassioned adhesive remains.
I cannot tell if it is dried,
Or if it reaches still for melding.
I have yet my fears
After all,
And one of them looks
To the cherry blossoms when they might
Fall upon me.
|
||||
10. |
||||
|
I am a flaccid diamond
In need of twice the gain.
I’ll give a slothful effort.
It’s the same all the time.
I think I like when mind erodes.
When sputtered heart erodes.
I’ve felt it all along
And I swear it’s warm.
So respawn over.
Why do I want more
Of the same?
This is all I have really ever known.
This feels just like home.
And I know it ain’t right
But I keep coming right back.
Back to the pain again.
Back to the horrible bliss.
Wrapped in those familiar sheets.
Wrapped all around you.
The comfort that settles in.
Warmth goes ever colder.
Might as well get out of bed.
Warmth goes ever colder.
So leave it.
Just leave it.
|
||||
Holy Basil Portland, Oregon
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