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1. |
Kairos
01:45
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As we busy ourselves with mindful puzzles,
squaring circles in existential darkness,
Persephone yet returns each spring,
bearing, steady as a compass,
an ever-widening gyre that we pass through:
the cycles of seasons and celestial bodies.
And we too pass like ghosts through our own bodies,
moving through them as they age,
but the past is always with us.
Ebbing and flowing,
always leaving,
and alwaysreturning.
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2. |
Happy New Year's
04:23
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I put on some nice clothes and then walk outside to greet the new year
because I think I could use a change as I survey the bleak and wintry atmosphere. But I won’t resolve anything because it always turns out I’m wrong, like last year’s promises I almost kept. Instead, I’ll put on a nice face and get up to greet the world with all the nonchalance I have left. But I think what if the world is a meaningful place and I’m just wasting all of my time? Another year’s passed me by and I’ve just filed it away with its predictable meter and rhyme, and I’m saying “oh, happy new year's to you.” And you know something isn’t quite right as you turn out the light, but you’ll forget about it by dawn. So raise a toast for your clean slate as you try to change your fate; the new year has just begun.
And God’s been reduced to a point of academia, but at least we say he’s something more. And politics resemble college football rivalries:
what people care about is just the score. And people talk like the world is a whole brand new place and ask “who knows what the future will find?” Another year’s passed us by, and we’ve just filed it away with its predictable meter and rhyme, and I’m singing “oh, happy new year's to you.” People drink till the world’s a hypothetical place and ask “what if we do things different this time?” Another year’s passed us by and we’ve just filed it away with its predictable meter and rhyme.
Oh, happy new year's to you.
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3. |
Meter-stick on a Train
04:14
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The universe is constantly in motion and it’s impossible to measure what lies within. But 300,000 km/s light travels through space before it hits your skin. If we try to hold ourselves the standard, we will always be proven wrong. Rigidity never was an option, I just need to find some place where I belong, like how the moon surely loves the earth, and the earth truly loves the sun, and she gives them both light in the day and the night in their elliptical continuum. They say time flows like a river, but I disagree, I think it’s more like a waterfall because it just goes so fast, and before too long, we hit the rocks below and break all our necks. So I tried to write a book about my life, but I threw it away because I thought it sounded fake, because we separate poets from their poems into separate Galilean coordinate planes. It’s like how I’m a meter-stick on a train, and the faster I move from you, the smaller I shrink. And time itself begins to slow down, but we never notice anything. I’ve read some books by old, old men, whose words weigh more than me, but if the earth stood still, we’d all fall off. There’s no such thing as gravity.
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4. |
Oh, to Realize Space
03:56
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I’ve got the best thesaurus that I could memorize, to say just what I mean… but fail every time I try. But if I do succeed, I won’t blame you for being cruel. God knows that I deserve it, and we all know how I’m a fool. I’ve got apples in my eyes and bread crumbs on my table; I’ve got some things I’d like to try, but I don’t know if I’m able. But everybody’s born, we all love and then we die. There’s a lot of good words out there, but no substitute for real life. But oh, to realize space, from the planets to your face, is a malleable thing, and nothing’s really fake. I played my guitar once for a woman on her deathbed; she’d lost her powers of
speech, but sometimes words are better off unsaid. We’re so acquainted with the things that we see every day; we hardly notice that they’re there until the day we pass away. So I’ll take the things I’ve got,
and see what I can find. Maybe I’ve got a better hand but just keep folding on the blind. But everybody’s born, we all love and then we die. If you keep putting things into words you might miss out on what they really are. And every time I see your face, all the planets start to race until they’re perfectly aligned… what marvelous symmetry! And oh, to realize space from the planets to your face is a malleable thing, and nothing’s really fake.
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5. |
Common Denominator
05:20
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I’ve seen many things that seemed quite bizarre, like how it’s so strange to think that we can know who we are. And I sit here alone, counting my
scars; perhaps that’s a good way to measure it. But I’ve got my friends, and they’ve got their health, and I’ll drink to that, not some feelings we felt; because feelings keep changing past their circumstance, and I know we’re not here just by chance. So I’ll sing loud if I must; let no man ever say that he loved too much. There’s such a thin line between thinking and being, and I don’t want you to think that we’re strangers. Sometimes I revisit the place I grew up. This place is so different, we’ve both changed so much, and though it’s not the same place that I used to call home, it feels like I almost belong. But, these people can be like holes in your pockets when they keep losing track of all of your change. They see binary code, simple yeses and nos, and keep thinking that they’ve got you pegged. But sing loud if you must, and I’ll try to be someone you can trust. Try your best to tell me just who you’ve become, and I’ll try my best to listen. When they look at you like a problem to solve, and you’ve been reduced to a common denominator, take a look around because we’re still alive, and we’re going somewhere. A highly skilled doctor on the day that he died said “we can’t live forever, but oh how we try,” but I’m not like that, I’m not clinging to life, just trying my best to live it. So, I’ll sing loud if I must, before my throat is turned back to dust. You’d think it goes hand in hand with just being born, but we all try so hard just to be somebody. And I’m not a book you could read and then say “we’ve figured it out, how things happen this way.” I’m no set of attributes measured and weighed, like how a common whore gives herself away.
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6. |
Teleology
05:04
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Today, I was reading old poetry and remembering what it used to mean for that stranger bleeding from the tip of his pen when he used to be me. What strange dichotomies. I read a poem about fierce despair and wondered what that poet meant. It seemed he wishes everything would just end, but if this is true, why then does he write? He said “pack your words as tight as you can, and labor until they mean something.” Look at the men we’ve grown into, experienced and wiser than our old selves, but the world makes no sense when you can’t see where you came from. We’re forgetting our roots like a tree when it’s being cut down. When you live your days like that’s all there is, when the days of your life turn to calendar years, when all our best efforts amount to nothing at all, I’ve got to believe in teleology. Like how a prism shows what light is made of, like how Noah saw the world on both sides of the flood, I’m ready for the world to start over again.
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7. |
War & Peace
05:08
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I heard a young man singing this song that he wrote, and the words “I know what love is” came from somewhere in his throat with the kind of joy all men feel before the first feel pain. Like a fanfare announcing victory before the enemy even came. And who’s to say if he’ll tuck tail and run? But then again, they may never even come. I was drinking with this soldier and we were laughing even though his son was just born, whom he might never get to know. And he raised his glass and gave a toast for all the letters A-Z, naming all the things his boy might grow up to be. And he said “it doesn’t really matter much to me… I just hope that he’s a better man than me.” Maybe war and peace are all the same, and it just depends on which one people notice, because if you don’t have something worth fighting for, you might not ever find peace.
Do you remember when we were just made of skin and bones, before we learned the brutal truth about sticks and stones? Up until that point, we could have been content just playing in the dirt, but the more we found about ourselves, the more we found that we could hurt. And all the while, the world, it stayed the same. Since the dawn of time, it’s always been this way. You’ve got to lay your weapons down long enough to find something you love.
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8. |
Sulphuric Steam
04:33
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I drove to a convenience store one night, while the whole world was asleep, and the cashier just wanted to talk a while. Didn’t say much of
anything. He compressed all the problems of his broken life in some words about the weather said to a perfect stranger just passing by, because strangers don’t do more than pass on by. And on my way out, I met a homeless man, gave him a pocketful of change. And as we parted ways, I called him by his name. He said there’s nothing else in this whole world that makes him feel so much at home, no there’s
nothing else in this whole world. I spent one night with my car broke down in a dusty parking lot, 300 miles from anyone that I knew, and in the bitter cold, I sat outside playing my guitar. And people asked if I’d play them a tune. But I was playing the blues, and I was playing just for me, like when I was just a boy lighting fireworks on a dead-end street, watching the things I should have said as they exploded in sulphuric steam… I said “it’s just me, myself, and the Holy Ghost, and I just want to be left alone.” And though that feels like such a long, long time ago, I’m still so full of virtue and vice, sometimes they coincide, and I’ve never known just where to draw that line.
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9. |
Book of the Grotesques
03:17
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10. |
Losers
04:47
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I try real hard to be a good person, but sometimes it feels like nobody’s good to me. I try real hard to love other people, because there’s no other place that I’d rather be. I try real hard to find the right words, but nobody
likes the sound of my voice. I try real hard to find peace and quiet, but I’m always the one making all the noise. I try real hard to do what Jesus said, but it feels like I’m always messing something up. And I’m always trying so hard to do what’s right, but maybe I’m just not trying hard enough. We’re all losers down here.
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11. |
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Oh, how I wish I could be deliberate; if only I didn’t lose heart so easily. If I could just keep from being a spectator watching the world happen all around me. I’ve watched the world, and it’s a beautiful place, as it travels around the sun, through the black of outer space. But I’m just floating around here, I don’t know where I’m going. Maybe I’m going nowhere at all. Oh, how I wish I could have more faith—knowledge is such a poor substitute. How beautiful are the eyes that can see more than just what lies straight ahead. They say the greatest gift of nature is to see and understand, but I don’t want to understand if the world just turns mundane. If the cost of knowledge is removal and indifference, I’d rather live in constant amazement.
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