1. |
Philadelphia
03:04
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i don’t think that this room can make a sound
to fill the buildings that were placed above the ground
and i was there under the earth
pushing fingers through the dirt
between the glass that traced my veins
i praised Remedios again
‘aren’t you scared of what you’ve made
of our kind?’
the empty halls carried carvings of the bleached
neon lights etched with scattered broken teeth
we have seen these waves before
and the slack jawed clouds that roared
to rise and conquer, scatter trees,
strip their arms and then recede
into the beauty of that perfect sea
on the other side of this storm
if there is one
there’s another stirring slow between its knees
winters on the coast
summers in my fevered head
you know how hard that i have found it
just to be
but maybe there’s a plan somewhere with all this mess written down
maybe all the generals were right
and maybe god is so very proud of me
for being terrified like i’m supposed to be,
but i’d rather go to hell than your narcissistic dream
i’d rather burn than swim in opiates and creeds
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2. |
The Sirens of Titan
03:48
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Final days, or The Things You'll Never Love,
52 weeks to a month,
the undressing eyelids gaze like Oracles
There's a part to the song you'll never learn -
a chord chained between those below
that pressed between autumns like creeks for deeper thrones
But what is an appetite
if not communion and trial?
For all us spiritual less
heaven sent libertines,
o to lose myself again
Forty days spent in deserts made of pearls
forgiving myself for the words
that rang through canals and the dams of underworlds
In the dark, yellow paper on the walls
the web of my bones pulling up
500 leagues to the sky
the Sirens call
For Babel, for Icarus,
for Luna's cape, for desire,
Lacanian resolutions,
a hand to hold in the fire
of the endless searching swarm
And they go, "O love, I'm not waiting for you"
(safer alone, not safer alone)
"Carnivore, carnival, carnage alike
I won't wait for you,
so far remote
so far from home
safer alone
we're not safer alone"
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3. |
Prussia
03:42
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Two terms for a garden, you traded your time,
I cleaned four or five roses with water and lye,
and outside entombed in promethean bile,
the cries repeat through fatigue and your smile,
“If there’s not a god
what’s this thing that I’ve learned to despise?”
Five hundred days plus the maelstrom of functioning paste
cauterized by revolutions trapped in the space
of every new stare, not so new, not unknown
not on pace but alive.
I’m calling your name for the first, for the last, for the only time.
Draw me closer then, will your fear fill my pockets with stones?
But don’t you answer that dreg, I just need your eclipse
to write your throne:
No thirst in the desert tonight, die
life for forever, take me inside,
turn loose your beasties for once dear,
I’ll seek no delusion if you seek no fear
And where will I go if tomorrow comes?
Night
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4. |
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Waiting for the Apocalypse
Will you take up my bet
drain the lakes from my head?
there’s a ruin I need to see
I won’t build us a home
make some walls from their bones
but i will take you to the sea
and we’ll stand along the Ivory Coast
with flame throwers and quarter notes
and we’ll run into the waves
teach ourselves how to unbehave
if there’s a race well you can count me out
i’m not built to be proud of some fate
where there’s a neat starting gun and an end
a sterilized fence and a gate
that takes us all away
but my love I digress
break the wall, lose that dress
I wonder what the rats will think
how they hoped we would square
give them millions of stairs
assume our role as the missing link
But I don’t want to die like a Greek in a play
doomed by trappings of plot, lustful hubris and rage
I don’t even want a name,
Not a fix or an ended day
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5. |
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To my non-bereaved, still unhatched by the breeze
of the yawning scratch of a fall,
To the silhouette still unfilled, still unspent,
still composing her funeral shawl:
There’s not one ounce of truth against time,
there are flowers that wilt in July
to be pressed between pages of Whitman and Wilde,
not praised for their purpose, but rapture enshrined
in the pages I won’t write for you, Domino,
a push from the center and where will you go?
Goodnight, goodnight again.
You see here tonight between flickering lights,
empty bottles and smoke, gestures played and rewrote
towards the darkening edge, marshes beckoning nets
go ahead, set it free! Be a king on your knees
like the rest of us saints, seeing stars despite the rain.
Holy scenes, holy notes, against our digital hosts,
Come along,
come along,
come along,
come along.
There’s a space you still save for yourself
an inner sanctum you built for your wealth
but love won’t bleed away like a candle’s demand
or grow to perfection in hermiting crabs.
Call your authors and tell them the truth,
they know nothing of you.
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6. |
For Derek Walcott
03:24
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“I’m better now,” she sings
as her hand slides over the sewing machine,
“Make me a wearer of watches and pearls.”
But her voice crackles like the leaves
in October that fall underneath
to be crucified in autumnal bedding,
or eternalized in that mystery.
So it subverts the facts
I can’t rely on simple math
to reveal or disturb my hidden seas,
and my history is carved in fog
and in natural disasters
that gazed upon the muted shoals
and showed the world its master.
So am I just a palm along the beach
waiting for the water?
Am I just a child of 23
hoping for a father?
Am I that which circumvents the East?
Am I that which circumvents the East?
I’ll be torn to pieces, but I’ll never bleed.
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7. |
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(Night sounds, the gardens that hang
alone like the novel girls,
cellophane wine),
Cover up clementine,
I won’t leave you a single hair
In ribbons in October, parks on the Rhine
delusions nestled in to your lungs,
drag it inside
(the cleavers peak out from the doldrums)
In 20 years they’ll turn me out
to ride the spiral always spinning down
I wrote all my letters to saints in disguise,
“You don’t need all that pain to die.
Forget all your temples tonight,
you don’t need them to come to life.”
Godot, away,
I can’t sit with your breath on my back
I’ll build you a lake
for the Other, the Womb, and your Lack
and under your veil
we can drown them in turn to ease your mind.
If they try to fight
pick them up to your lips make them cry.
There’s my name on the first day in June -
Spanish Harlem, a lizard makes two,
and once in a while I got lost in the woods
in those days I could still feel my blood
pulsing through every organ up through my skin
giving form to the words, “I end, I begin,”
and I wept with a thirst I had known all my life
when I learned I was always inside
Are you awake? Does it cool without oxygen?
Can you replace all your parts with another’s skin?
But don’t be scared, don’t you be a thing,
cause in my wires I don’t need space
to fit you in.
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8. |
Anarchy in July
04:04
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This clock never seemed to lie
it just counted seconds till the end of time
and while New York stared at it
we found a siren call to fall inside
Now the days dissolve without a care
and like water rises to meet itself in air
we must discover how to crash and pour
like July’s million flares
Now the tails drag long on twin balloons
that set their course on eternal skies
and it doesn’t matter when they’ll die
cause they’ve released all the movement they could try
Desperado, don’t make me right
there’s stillborn mansions biding time till the daylight
to find a reason, to take the 95
to slip on dinosaurs and snakes, between the lines
I’m still not awake, I’m still not alone,
I’m still in the trees, staring at the face of my only home.
I can still hear you say, from the top of a stone,
“I’m still a believer, a delicate vacuum, a wheel on the road.”
But those tokens fade away like fiction in July
the swamps fill in with their impartial dragonflies
and I wait for the one who could ever say it,
“Good bye”
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9. |
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Here’s a chord I’ve been writing for you,
the sound of my metaphors hitting your roof,
fingers that fumble on buttons,
there’s not only darkness in my empty room
And all of my visions have been clear -
I don’t know what you look like, or how many years
you’ve been wandering the deserts and snares
(I don’t know where they fixed all your scars
I just know I don’t care)
and
you must be safer than me
to defend against the demons that perch on my cheek
and you will rise, control my tides,
keep my appetites deep and profound
and I’ll color my robes to match your changing hair,
devote a gentle life to circadian glares,
learn to grow, and to wither,
to love sweet, and the bitterness
roaming the halls every night.
I’ve lost all my chain mail cause there’s no use trying to fight.
If you’re trying to kill me what other cause could be worthy of my time?
Who will remember me
when they’re out roaming free in the woods?
Who will untether me
from these soft chains mooring me to my moods?
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Solomon Glowe Charleston, South Carolina
Solomon Glowe is the cross-country love child of singer/songwriter Chris Howell and producer Jordan Graves.
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