1. |
AILIFILIA
05:05
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O, Ailifilia.
I stole this palimpsest
Just for you.
I don’t mean to steel your
Nerves against the union-less
Good romance wrecking crew.
I long to hear you,
Ceaselessly, kvetch me blue.
Then, gather near you,
The little things: your dwindling,
Idiolectic youth.
Heaven knows that I was warned—
The briar-rose, the clavichord—
The gestures that will eat themselves to mend.
Pardon me but I don’t want
The semaphore, the last “bonne chance.”
The means will take the cake
And leave the ends.
O, juvenilia.
Can’t say I’m raring to
Kill the time.
Sell what avails you:
The anxious sets, the noontide sex,
Floridian slant-rhymes.
Thunderheads beguile the ocean
In canopies of locomotion.
Studied up for summer
But you only read the summary.
A hundred years; a watchful sentry;
Schiller and the landed gentry.
Hellas is a bummer
When you’ve only read the summary.
Heaven knows that I was warned—
The briar-rose, the clavichord—
The gestures that will eat themselves to mend.
Pardon me but I do not want
The semaphore, the last “bonne chance.”
The means will take the cake
And leave the ends.
The marginalia ran me through;
The text was just in back of you.
I’ll bury the censor
And head for the hills with his pen.
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2. |
LITURGIA
05:23
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Liturgia, it slipped into our minds,
Made a mess of all those times
We’d spent debating
If Berlin was overrated.
And I told you that we’d make it.
And I guess we almost have.
Although, “making it” seems pointless
When the present’s not half-bad.
I’d like to stay here for a while,
Lay [sic] here for a spell.
Come wreck me in the wreckage
On the earthly side of hell.
Liturgia, it slipped into our heads
And made “up” seem like “down,” instead.
We got to thinking,
All the monuments were winking
At the state of our devotion,
State of this attempt.
Words like “arsenic,” “potion,”
And “the lover’s malcontent,”
Seem the same when you’re defined
By a really bad design
For a photo of us laughing,
With our molars keeping time.
Marie, it’s getting warm
In mayfly-peppered pours.
The Duchess of Demands
Inquired if I was yours.
Marie, I’m in a state,
Living on vermouth,
Reliving all the ways
The kids relive our youth.
Marie, I’d swim for miles,
Under the bottom line,
To meet you seven steps ahead
Of being seven steps behind.
I’m always seven steps ahead
Of being seven steps behind.
[".llim-eht-fo-nur" erew ,demialc uoy ,hcihw
,llis eht no seisiad rebreG eht
fo thgilp eht ezingocer-dna
-pu thgim uoy taht—yadsruhT yb—sepoh ni
,thgil gninraw devoleb ruoy
fo thgir eht ot relkraps a tes I]
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3. |
THE DEVIL
03:56
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I saw potential fading,
Down each and every turn I took.
You were the one-armed lady,
Made whole by my dark holy book.
We went and built a vector
Of Oregonian clay;
We put our hands inside it
To keep the ghouls at bay.
You said you love The Devil;
I said, “I like him too.”
Let’s go and make a bargain,
Faustian, through-and-through.
If you provide the tincture,
I will provide the grin.
You give me half your darkness;
I’ll give you all my sin.
I heard, around the corner,
They sell the sweetest grace.
But, through the latest horror,
I couldn’t read your face.
We saw that Greece was burning,
On the touch-screen display.
Some sentimental yearning
Faced-off the cavalcade.
You said you love The Devil;
I said, “I like you too.”
Let’s go and make a bargain,
Faustian, through-and-through.
If you provide the reaper,
I can provide the grim.
You give me half your darkness;
I’ll give you all my sin.
You give me half your darkness;
I’ll give you all my sin.
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4. |
SØULSIDE, NY
02:30
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I’m the fried space heater on your skin:
Every millimeter, I'm all-in.
Go ask the asteroids
To set their sights on better boys than this.
Every coup d'etat that both our knees
Plotted, underneath the suede valise,
Sat on the table as an omen.
You can make me love a tryst.
Soulside, it’s left unspoken.
No time to heal the broken.
No time to make a better bet.
No time to think or, better yet,
Leave thought to warmer weather. And
No time to form a better band.
Soulside, it’s left unspoken.
No time, it’s left unspoken.
So, we let the language settle in
And we let the broadcast do its thing.
But, I’ve got fingers
and they’re laced between your fingers. Let ‘em think
that this whole fiduciary trend
Is the way I look now, “on the mend,”
That I look stable. But I want you
And I want you, without end.
Soulside, it’s left unspoken.
No time to heal the broken.
No time to make a better bet.
No time to think or, better yet,
Leave thoughts to warmer weather. And
No time to form a better band.
Soulside, it’s left unspoken.
No time, it’s left un-.
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5. |
PØSTED LANDS, CA
05:39
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We got talking: books and bands.
You said you had space inside.
California posted lands,
Not a welcome sign in sight.
I’ve got bestiaries here,
In the bookcase of my mind.
California posted lands,
Let’s go see what we can find.
You said you left both your hands,
Somewhere, in a plastic bag.
“Have a nice day,” as it stands
Underneath a windless flag.
There are nations, there are states;
Neither really suit my brand.
“Irony” precedes “decay.”
California posted lands.
And I don’t want this to show
On the official procedural:
That I was still in love with hope
And the inane individual.
Run the big one down my spine.
I’m broad as a continent,
Brighter than Sensodyne.
Want your name on that marquee but
Ran out of alphabet,
Spelling, “The Everbleak.”
Once it’s done, we’ve got no place to be.
We looked close and we looked thin,
Undermine the “far and wide.”
California posted lands,
Not a post or sight in sight.
I’ve got bestiaries here
But the beasts are locked inside
Of a thimble made of tin.
Woe betide this state of mine.
And I don’t want this to show
On the official procedural:
That I was still in love with hope
In the inane individual.
Run the big one down my spine.
I’m broad as a continent,
Brighter than Sensodyne.
Want your name on that marquee but
Ran out of alphabet,
Spelling, “The Everbleak.”
Once it’s done, we’ve got no place to be.
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6. |
RØD ØF IRØN
04:02
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Finally it breaks,
Like a rod of iron
‘Cross everything we’d buried,
All we’d meant to redefine.
I get over the shakes
With Zusmarshausen wine
And those Swiss-German novels
That propped up your sense of time.
We left the masquerade,
Bejeweled and refined,
With time left for a nightcap
In the boathouse of your mind.
If this is what it takes,
To keep ourselves in line,
I’d drink the Danube sober
And get wasted on the Rhine.
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PRØM Denver, Colorado
"maybe quitting is the answer, after all."
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