1. |
Animal Steam
07:09
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How long have I been
spinning in this blue bottle of light?
And still, I know so little...
And still, I waste so much
of my time.
I feel as if my whole life has a fever
and I'm sliding down a well
lit road full of empty signs.
Did I spend my twenties bristling
at myself? Slipping in and slipping
out of who I am?
Without a doubt.
And what did I find?
I found this body
breathing animal
steam.
I found love all around me
thicker than cream.
Oh this year has taken what it wanted to take from me
Oh this year has given what it wanted to give.
I take it
In, I let it
Go.
And lately I feel as if I'm living underwater.
My mind is full of currents and my throat
Is full of laughter
I think about my parents
and their parents
and their parents
and their parents
and their parents
and their parents
and their parents
and the patterns
that are scattered
through my movements
like a song
I barely know.
Looking back behind me:
a sea of
endless afternoons
so fine.
Looking up ahead:
a foggy morning
above a field of winter wheat.
And beyond that?
A thresher looming.
Overhead I hear the sound of the seasons
passing slow.
Oh, world. How I'll miss you when you let me go.
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2. |
Atlantic Haze
05:19
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I'm learning how to praise again. I can almost see my hands through the thick Atlantic haze that bends the morning in and out and in and out and in and out of shape again.
My roomates float around the room. They drink instant coffee cold.
Am I awake? Am I awake? I am awake. What else is there to know?
Is there a word for this? Waking up to find that whatever's in the wood and the walls and the wires is on your side again?
I don't know the word. Or I've forgotten...
But I'm learning how to praise again.
It's going slow.
These things take time.
I haven't heard your voice in a little while now. I hope you're doing well. I hope you hear this and you smile.
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3. |
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All of a sudden, I hear the house
expanding outward
and the piercing yellow
roundness of that
sound is like a friend
rising to meet me.
I guess that means the drugs are kicking in.
My limbs are wooden, but I still
drag them through the blue,
incessant hissing weathered luminescence
of an early Februrary morning
I feel so moved
to press the world against my skin
Oh I get so worried about the future
And I know that's real,
I know that's real...
I know that's real...
I know that's real...
I know that's real...
but the more I try to prepare myself
the more I spin my wheels
And while I'm spinning
the seasons change around me
they go from
bright metallic pink
to pale pea green
to winter white.
And I'm grateful to be here.
Grateful to the women in my life.
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4. |
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Downstairs, women talk religion,
adolescent sex, and indecision.
Upstairs, a bearable defeat swings
over the mountain,
heading east.
It sings to the dogs and
it strips their bark.
It makes the sedate
blue day
a little bit longer.
Everything that I will ever say
is making it's bright way to me.
Downstairs the women go away
but their talk it sticks around.
It singes the trees and
it strips their bark.
It makes the sedate
blue day
a little bit longer.
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5. |
I Wish I Was a Raven
14:45
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I wish I was a raven.
A black blaze
over the Malahat,
floating around.
I wish I was a wave in
a blue peninsula crashing
into sound. In a future life
I will float all over the road
like a dress in the breeze.
And whatever's left will live
alone in the bones of this Mp3.
I want you
to know I tried to be open
as a window when the wind blew through
the thin clothes of my life.
And if I failed to hold that line,
and if I fail again,
I hope, on balance, I did you right.
I hope, on balance, I was your friend.
Did I help the light to bend?
I was born with a white skin.
I went to the right schools.
Who did I use those weapons to defend?
Outside in the cool night
I hear mating calls fading in.
I sit in my room listening to
Joan Armatrading sing
"how do you make it through this life?"
How do I begin?
How do I shake the sleep and
the weight out of my limbs?
I dream of Walter Benjamin
I dream about Beirut.
My clothes don't fit. My fears
won't quit I feel so destitute.
But oh, this world, I love the way it howls all night
and it's a brighter thing than I can sing to be here by your side.
I want you
to know I tried
to be a good man
despite the way my gender was defined.
And if I failed to break that bind
and if I fail again,
I hope, on balance,
I was the kind
of kind, effeminate man
that you could get behind.
I gave what I could give.
I'll say it again.
It was such a bright thing
to have lived here
when you lived.
Outside
in the blue night I hear sirens
fading out. I sit in my room
listening to O.V. Wright shout.
And behind that voice I love so much
I hear another sound.
It's coming from everywhere at once.
I hear it in the middle distance
Steady like a hunch. At first
I barely understood the grammar.
But now it's clearer than
a Dream Friends song:
I hear the sound of every being
in the world, from the crows
to the cover girls
from the shoes on my feet
to Yao Ming's hair
to the lemon trees
to the loud spring air
calling out loud.
They're saying two things
underneath their breath
at the same time.
They're saying I'm trying.
I'm really trying.
I'm really trying.
I'm really trying.
And the second cry,
coming out of the world:
You're here.
Right here.
And right here
It's okay.
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