1. |
pageantry
03:45
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the automatons, they dance, pure limb-for-limb mimicry
their composite flesh not yet lonesome for death
but why should it be when they move, move so feverishly?
i guess that's why the french call it divertissement.
and though they saw the sun that day
they thought it was an illusion
if not for the, the sky-turned-grey
they'd still be dancing now.
tossing and turning, the drones cannot sleep
fear has invaded their worn circuitry
fighting off nausea, conceding defeat
all disavow their past pageantry.
and when they try to dance, aligned
they find, find theirs steps amiss
they sleep at night, but curse the days
that decadence has won.
awake in the morning with a handful of faith
to a shower of confetti in the wake of a parade
where children scream for candy and the youngbloods swig gin
as the elders watch clouds pass, forgetting their sins
it’s another new day; let the pageantry begin.
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2. |
devastation works
02:29
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said virtue to vice, “i am an innocent man!”
to which vice replied: “i see blood on your hands
and i can sense the mountiain of carefully laid plans
whose lofty ends drowned in seas of circumstance.”
subject to object: “i brought you to bear.”
object objected, “i really don’t care
for i am the great, dead world and god is my nom de guerre
my blessed body circumscribes the designs you would have me wear.”
subject to virtue: “what thinks you of all this, my guiding light?”
virtue in earnest: “you won’t be needing me or my brother vice.”
subject, denial: “but there must be something you can do?”
and vice with pleasure: “not against the objects!”
subject, despondent: “so i’m suppressed by this dead world?”
object, sardonic: “dominated is a better word.”
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3. |
pregnancy pact
02:52
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gear up, soldiers. we’re off to war.
two blessed virgins stare from distant shores.
pawns have come to litter the beach.
each glowing godsent spits a stump speech:
the first virgin cries, “breed! just breed!
the pagans are coming! it’s numbers we need!”
hoping to spite theotokos,
head-birthed athena proposes a toast:
“here’s to the prophet who birthed from his head
a real saviour; the old god is dead!”
and all the troops who made the trek sing, “this is a pregnancy pact!”
all the veterans left at home: “this is a pregnancy pact!”
at the parthenon they’re screaming, “this is a pregnancy pact!”
from the walls of the vatican in rome: “this is a pregnancy pact!”
panting, rabid, and flushed with a lust for war,
the faithful flood the fields.
numbly fucking, drunk off fear,
newborns strewn across the plains,
they breed in the name of sweet, sweet st. mary’s missionary.
the greeks cough blood through the night,
orating in favour of sleep.
weak limbs waving, voices cast into the cacophony.
amidst the downpour of semen, spit and blood,
their bodies expire, but the war rages on
(fighting) and on (flailing) and on (fading) and on (silence)...
good god.
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4. |
program and practice
03:08
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up on the transcendent clouds of history
the tired scribes and their brides slept fitfully
dreaming of time's crimes and man's divide
from the myopia of his memories;
their dreams were fraught with the fear
of failing voices in the long-since-forgotten throats
of their brothers, who, in their innocence,
wished eternity upon the lines they wrote
in songs and melodies so vain
that none but the king of the sun
danced to the music they made,
his self-pity displaced.
the petty fears the years evoked
aligned them with their destiny:
to be the kings of all until
the separation of leaf from tree.
their dreams returned them to the day
they watched their library burn down
bringing back that sense of loss so crushing,
that loss of hope so profound,
that when they woke to find the day
they saw in the shadows they cast
an absence they couldn't escape;
death hanging in their wake.
the drifting ashes choked with smoke
implied to them their destiny:
to be the kings of nowhere when
the leaf takes its course from the tree.
leaves from the trees.
as leaves from the trees fell the scribes and their history;
an honest forecast called for the clouds to dissipate,
so they just faded away.
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5. |
puncture wounds
02:38
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i am haunted at night in the streets of anywhere
but find myself tempted in my throes of terror
with pride comes fear of that which we have repressed
dream-stalked, gun cocked, feigning strength nonetheless.
what a dream.
i’d run but i’m trapped by the sister of death—
there’s no escaping these things i’d rather forget:
the dogs, the dead, the moat well-fed.
the dogs again. oh god.
i am taunted at night; enemies of foreign flesh
bear down with guile and malice about their breath
i’ve tried in vain to fight these macabre visions
but once sun meets street, i’m wholly victim.
i swim the moat to the manner of tortured redress,
past the pale and floating, acquiescent:
mother! father! why the water?!
mother! father! please!
i would dive back in the water for them.
“you’ll never save the dead! you’ll never save the dead!”
i dive back in the water again and feast upon the dead
like a pack of feral fucking dogs
like dogs barking at gods as they tear at their flesh
with insatiable claws, i scream:
“hey predator!”
“yeah?!”
“fuck you! fuck you! hey pride!”
“yeah?”
“fuck you too.”
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6. |
harms
00:46
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7. |
||||
“hey there, young fiend, what do i say?”
“once you hit bone wipe the blood off your face?”
“i should think so. it’s all in good taste. when you dig for his heart,
don’t let his entrails go to waste! i admit, i eat meat—”
“you feast upon prey!”
“i’m just an avenger fighting decay. this decay, it creeps through
flesh, baring bone. we waste away, and our legacy will be debated
as to the battles we’ve won and lost against the slow rot of time;
against the flight of the sun. our fragile bodies come undone.
“stitch by stitch, seam by seam, time makes us pay. vultures eat
vegans out on the highway. children hide under their desks and
they pray as bullets ravage classrooms; as the sun dusks the day.
who bursts across the scene of open fire? the overarching father
time, whose swinging arms offer no reprieve— one more god to
deify; our plastic hanging mock sun counts down a fate we can’t
outrun.”
“deep in my hearts of hearts, i guess you’d call it guilt.”
“call it a labour of love.”
“i call it death from above.”
“circumstance is a lesson in chance.”
“the heartbeat, a ritual dance?”
“call the timepiece a brazen image, the tick-tock clock life’s blood;
time will drain us drip by drip unless we commence with flood!”
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8. |
voyeurs
02:07
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let the headlines read today,
child killed by runaway taxi: driver flees the scene.
yeah, he flees the scene.
but let the headlines really mean
are you a vigilante
or do you indulge in tragedy?
as your eyes scour the page
and you look into the frame of lens that caught
the morbidity of that sombre scene
are you looking for escape
or to live vicariously through the shocked gaze
of the spectators in the streets?
our eyes like keyholes on thresholds we just can't cross;
watched and watching, we long for crowded rooms
to placate the loss.
we were there the night the princess di’ed
we watched camus fade away
and i swear we’ve never felt so alive
as when they brought out the body bags.
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9. |
martyr heap
03:10
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“apollo! patron saint! i need you and your muses to explain:
i am told that the poems don’t love us anymore, but who really gives a flying fuck?”
“the teething youth and poor man’s truth with whom rhyme and metaphor still resonate and bear fruit, though it’s so ripe it’s to the point of rotten— that’s who!”
“can these brave recruits save this sinking ship?”
“there’s not a hope in hell.”
“i just hope they can swim.”
“they sing aboard the ship: ‘i was left trampled in the streets of bull ravaged pamplona; fucked beyond belief, i came up spitting poetry. my brother lied down dead in a cold hospital bed, but i made his spirit rise and want to celebrate it.’”
“they can sing all they want, but the dead won’t dance to their petty songs.”
“come on now!”
“don’t you see? i blame them for the cynics spitting blood from the cheap seats— with dicks in hand— who
understand that everyone in the theatre is getting off to the show.”
“imagine that! you were like them too, you know?
don’t forget those lines you wrote: ‘i am the last ragged breath that dances through your body, singing, “the war is over, the war is over!” to the duly martyred dead. i fucked the afterlife to see if she was really right for me. poor girl was terrified; her fear went unrequited.
“destroyer, please, just listen to the poets pray:
dear god, save us from this sinking ship!"
“that’s just coward’s talk. it’s a bloody shame,
after such a storm of hostility, to be so caught up in your sympathy for the poets drowning in defeat.”
“no, dear god, it’s not what it seems to be.
they’ve been floating there now for centuries,
fighting off fatigue and depravity
while their god gambled with the fates."
“as their limbs get tired and lose urgency
they will gasp for breath, come to taste the sea
slowly slipping under—”
“till human voices wake them and they rise;
but they will rise.”
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10. |
chants
01:47
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11. |
ochre essence
02:56
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like an arctic fox too fucked too stalked
the tundra lied to us beneath our feet
the snow geese flew just out of reach.
or icarus, his dreams sun-kissed
waxing wings, we took to the sky
but were struck down by god (or the sun in our eyes.)
we’re the whitely-bled as they carry the dead
we stagger with the weight of war
stumbling in want of shore.
our everreaching hands and that they hoped to grasp
separated by the lines that divide our voices from laugh tracks.
like a violent plague— la plus nouvelle vague!—
we stormed the mouths of the innocent
breaking teeth with abandon.
shining long dead stars, still-burning avatars
exciting the songs of hollow chests
as we sing them to death.
we’re a martyred man with a nail through each hand
we suffer, strung up for our father’s pride
hanging spread-eagle to prove we’ve been victimized.
our everreaching hands and that they hoped to grasp
separated by the lines that divide our voices from laugh tracks.
now, with due solemnity, let’s all self-eulogize:
shipwrecked sailors left behind
with blistered hands stretched out in vain
our dreams live on but won’t survive
the shoreline or the tide’s embrace.
her arms, so salty, sting the wounds sustained in the storm.
what a sin.
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12. |
the things we carried
03:39
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albatross wingspan, a weight we can’t stand,
hung from our tired necks
those who’ve mined the river will never forget its flow;
debritage caught in a branch downstream
the bird and the burden bastardized in effigy.
sisyphus is pushing rock, lover left abandoned
back-breaking ascension dulling the shine of eyes
forced back down to the water, bowed in defeat again
a pale reflection his only reward for carrying the tide.
these, the things we carry, bearing more than we.
sepia stains every motion, shadows drawn adrift
infants torn from the womb by a midwife/mistress.
knelt in prayer in the shallows
hands cupped, sieving water
searching for gone, longing for lost
carrying the weight of a thousand empty shells.
left behind, the sea.
gone.
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