1. |
||||
I feel as if my life has been a series of reminders
A cluster of opaque balloons in a blue-green sky
The chairs of the world dig into my spine
And I know how much I've borrowed
This is someone's voice, but it isn't mine.
I want to celebrate the clumsiness of hands,
I want to celebrate the clumsiness of feet.
I try to measure out the weight of the demands
That I impose upon the people that I meet
Do I get that wrong?
Oh, man. I get that wrong often enough.
Some days I'm full of smoke
Some days I'm barely here at all.
Now that I've hung from the bones of the night
Now that my lungs are full of sky
I dream of Republican women
I dream that we've all been forgiven
I dream that every building in the mile end
Is bathed in waves of woven light
From here on out
I want to be a person whose uncertainty
Is with me like a fat, ecstatic, friend.
I want to cultivate my mind,
I want to listen to that silence
I want to be kinder than I am
But will I see that through?
|
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2. |
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And, just like that, a new day dawns.
The lights are coming up in the restaurants.
Coffee courses like a river.
We drink ourselves together.
Amy Goodman, what have I missed?
And if the news is bad
As it often is
Help me remember how to breathe in
Give me something to believe in when
America,
That box of rain,
That peeling coat of copper paint,
Is coughing in its room all night
And shooting at the astral plane
All I hear is nervous talking
And what am I supposed to do
With all that noise in the morning, really?
Who am I even talking to when I say
"Oh how do I know that I was really here at all?"
I keep falling through
the holes in the languages I've found
I feel the weight of something
Silent and enormous
In the air.
I do not know how to describe it
But I
feel it
pressing
Down...
There is a sound
Like a thundercloud
Rolling over Nova Scotia now
The sound of women laughing in liminal spaces
The sound of men making faces
Oh I used to be so hard to tame
And I still am, on my darker days,
But now I leave more room for motion.
I was a door, I was wide open
And love came in, with its fine hips
With its wide mouth
With its blindness
And softened me up
Taught me to sing again
Fastened me into the world
With its ligaments
I know I could lose it
But I'm working to keep it green.
Still though, how do I know that I was really here at all?
All of the lies I've told, where do they live now?
What did they buy?
I feel the weight of something silent and enormous
In the light.
I do not know how to describe it
But
I think
It's on
Our
Side?
|
||||
3. |
Rest Assured
04:13
|
|||
I can hear my thirties come for me
Through the cool bloom of the dark
They wait like keys to a rental car.
I can hear their steps: a relentless
Press through the emptiness
To the west of the reservoir
Where we've parked
Rest assured that they know where I am
Rest assured that they know who I am
Rest assured that they know...
I can hear my forties come for me
Like a script I've half rehearsed
They will slide their arms into my shirts.
I can hear their breath,
I can smell their scent obliquely
Bent over the men
In my life like a curse
Oh rest assured that they know who we are
Oh rest assured that they know where we are
Oh rest assured that they know...
|
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4. |
Exaggerated Calm
09:21
|
|||
Picture me as I am:
Staring at my phone.
Already high and getting higher.
Wearing an expression of exaggerated calm.
Thin as a young Wynona Ryder.
This wasn't the world I wanted
But this is the world
I've got
How do I live within it?
How do I still my thoughts
when the bright pages of the papers
they pierce me through?
So much white rage in a dark suit.
I'm older now than I've ever been, but I feel so new.
My body replaces itself all night.
So why do I cringe when I see myself in pictures?
Why do I feel so unsatisfied?
Oh world,
If you're as old as they claim,
Teach me how
To forgive myself
Teach me how to praise.
Because
I'm moving through my life like the winter
Through a glove.
I try to hold the future close
But it reels around, it reels around
Like a squid in a
Wet manila envelope.
If I had my way, I'd float
Up up up up
Up out of my body too.
My whole life I've been running from something
But where am I running to?
My whole life I've been listening
For a signal through the hiss.
I did my work
I went to college
And all that I learned was this:
Sometimes the world is full of luck.
Thick and soft underfoot like clover.
And sometimes the world is just a truck
Backing into the ocean
Over and over and over and over and over.
|
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5. |
||||
I know it’s always been
Such a precarious time
To Be alive
Oh but tonight
It’s So Acute
I keep counting up the signals that I’m missing
All around me something sinister amassing
Dark water underneath all of the bridges
The future blurring out along the edges
I know it’s always been
such a precarious time
to be alive
oh but tonight
It’s so acute.
Oh the shadows fall around us like a curtain
A malevolent old chemistry returning
white supremacy. that enemy, is surging
Everywhere the same few words, like crosses, burning
“I should be able to wake up from this
I should be able to wake up from this
I should be able to wake up from this
But I’m not able to wake up from this”
I should be able to wake up from this
I should be able to wake up from this
I should be able to wake up from this
But I don’t know how to wake up from this”
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