1. |
Losing It
02:09
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i think i'm going crazy
i think i'm losing my grip
i think i'm going crazy
i think i'm finally losing my shit
maybe i'm hallucinating
but there ain't no mistaking the smell of burning bacon
when i see blue pigs on two legs
constructing androids and taking down names
maybe i'm really just dreaming
but there's a cloud coming down and i sure as hell ain't sleeping
seeing zombies feasting in factories shamble out the back door looking more like machines
i must be going crazy
is it okay if i go a little homicidal one day?
and blow away every racist homophobe who gets in my way
will the men in white coats come and take me away?
to some nice happy place where they know my name
where the drugs are free and they all wear a smiley face
well in that case babe, you can call me insane
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2. |
Destroyer Of Words
04:46
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blurred through the mumbling atomic cafe
i thought i heard you say
i am become deaf
destroyer of words
but you were breath
become butterfly effect
spiraling within the stereophonic white-noise drone
of a static radio station
tuned to the music of the silent colossal rotation
of the planets, stars, sun and moon
behind the drawn curtain of a vanished polaroid
still these beating hearts to a murmur
slow these breathing lungs to a whisper
and attach the cello strings of your bloodstream
to that glittering confetti cloud of satellites
strobing, circling the sphere of our atmosphere
strung out on geo-synchronicity
the turning tunnel of the tides
the aeon-spanning volcanic swirl of magma
subsonically writhing
beneath the magnetic pull of the ocean floor
and just...listen...
can you hear the flaming crackle
of the fire burning in our bellies?
if we slit our stomachs open
the flames that spill from our hari-kiri'd entrails
will fill the darkness in the corner of our closet
and burn it to ashes
in a dream
i saw us laughing together many years from now
when the blast-furnace of our blood, sweat, tears and acid dreams gapes wide
we will laugh in it's face
at the absurdities
of death and taxes
and as the years push through
we will laugh
as we go blind in our old age
growing brighter than the glow
from within the dollhouse home we assembled
from sticks n stones
and we will grow gray together
and fill the soles in our shoes
the holes in our soles
with the dirt, rust, ash, concrete and angel dust
of these city streets
and we will laugh like pyromaniacs
as we piss on burial plots
soil our own graves
and erase our fingerprint smudges
from the blueprints
of our jailbreak escape plan
flames will erupt from the holes in our heads
consume us
spread in a tectonic shock-wave
and lick the pale toes of angels and dreaming junkies
hovering on ghost clouds of opium soot
just above the foot of our bed
the outlines of our bodies will liquify, disintegrate
and reform as the jagged teeth of a cityscape skyline
crowned crookedly upon the head of a crippled pigeon
ascending in a stuttering climb
towards a heaven
that does not exist
for us
shaking ash and bone-dust from twisted feather
our flames will spread further
devour prehistoric forests
suck roots and tree trunks to bare bone
and march in a coronation parade
upon the city gates
behind a revolutionary brigade
of angry red army ants
finally, those flames
will surround a broken boombox
lost behind a landfill-mound
of moth-chewed cardboard moving boxes
containing the soft stains of dream and memory
tagged, painted, and graffitied
in white out, in sharpie
duct tape peeling from perforated speakers
the flashlight-sized battery compartment
an empty coffin
i didn't cry the day you died. i'm sorry. the reality that you had passed away at barely twenty-five didn't really hit me, even at your eulogy and that still haunts me. they say that denial is the first stage of addiction but I assumed that you knew that death was a possible side-effect of your prescription. about two weeks after your wake, it hit me like a train. i was riding the n judah to the end of the line at ocean beach when I passed a throw-up piece that you had painted a few years before in the train tunnel near haight and cole. it was a big letter "a" in lowercase with an exclamation point next to it. i once asked you what it meant. you shrugged and said, "i just like the shape of it," and something clicked. it was then that i realized (that)
the flames of our light, love and laughter
move faster than the speed of life
and those flames pass us by in the blink of an eye
if we're not quick enough to catch 'em
and return the letters like stars
we borrowed, typed, stole, scribbled and scrawled across the pages of the sky
back to the sprawling library of the night
where they belong
where we belong
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3. |
Trazadone
03:22
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surprise
he lost his eyes
they popped out the sockets of his skull
rolled away from his feet
like little glass marbles thrown by the hand of a child
on the sun-cracked street
sometimes
he'd flail his bruised limbs
groping wildly for something solid in the dark
lose his balance in his dizzy panic
tripping on his own shoe laces winding through park
sometimes
he got so wound up he'd spin into the sky like a jet plane
spinning through the rain
burning brighter than m80s
watching daisies swirl down the drain
sometimes
she'd pick those eyes up
as gingerly as if she was picking cherries from a tree
polish 'em down with the hem of her skirt or the edge of her shirt and gently close them in his hand
and she'd say, "i think you may have lost these eyes.
you might need to use them sometime."
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4. |
Cara Vida
02:22
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tonight is a night for a night on the town
so paint it blood red and burn it all down
lace up your boots or best dancing shoes
turn up the bass and drown out those blues
aging hipsters don't die they just get new tattoos
fuck fixing a fixie, just dye yr roots blue
darlin dry yr eyes and dont you cry when i die
crank hickey and get high like it's 1999
cheers!
dry those tears
the end drawth near but it'll wait til next year
cheers!
have no fear
the end drawth near but it'll wait
til tomorrow, my dear
coke tastes like shit except when it's free
cut with plastic and laxative american dreams
now you may be the queen of england or the king of the street
but tonight when you sleep you're still a no one just like me
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5. |
||||
Who's gonna sneak into the S.F. public water supply system tonight?
Who's gonna spin the tap and give it all back to those that jammed us all up
for public urination, self-medicated sedation, and the Stations of the Cross
we have all lost at one time or another?
Who's gonna dump in hallucinogens that'll make em unzip their skin and repent
for all their sins, schemes, and conspiracies?
Who's gonna hijack an empty jet plane strapped with OJ n gasoline
leaves n aces up their sleeves, bunny rabbits from magic hats
and C-4?
Who's gonna bust open the emergency door
and watch all the concentrated ugliness of humans get sucked out
in the air pressure differential?
Below,
There are bodies sequentially piling like sandbags in mounds
in places we don't seem to give a fuck about to even pronounce properly
I've never seen limp fingers withering like burnt tree limbs
I've never seen crimson constellations on the ceilings of abandoned school buildings
I've never seen vultures circling like hallowed, feathered halos above the sulfurous scent of barbwire-souled angels
Rittled with riddles of U.S. shrapnel
And they just keep poking more holes in the people, in the wells,
in the soil of overcrowding cemeteries
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6. |
||||
American consumer death burger honky culture is doomed to fail
Like the Roman Empire, Napoleonic France, and the German 3rd Reich came n went in the blink of an eye
This 4th Reich is reaching the end of it's rope
And we're collectively laughing until that noose snaps our collective necks below the trapdoor
We won't be laughing anymore when OUR shit hits the floor
Eyes peeled back like orange rinds in disbelieving death roes
Dethroned from our cellphone deathbeds
TV/ internet dreamlands
iPod disconnects
Missed Connections
Her talons
Full of figs and arrows
How can she possibly land on the tip of a flagpole and remain stable, stationary
When that pole is already creaking with red blood-lines, white-line Dogma and the blue eyed skies and seas speckled with the blinding pentacle purity of smart bomb explosions
We've wounded her
We stoned her and broke her wings
We put our wedding rings on the bathroom sink
We took shots at her and clipped her feathers
She's been hopping from pole to pole since the fall of Nero's Rome
She ain't on her last legs though
I wanna wake up tomorrow with make up stains on my pillow
I wanna see electronic guts n circuitry piled high on the pavement,
Auto mobiles without wheels rocketing to the Sun
I wanna see the guns that were made to be used in her name pretzeled
Tears drying from the eyes of their barrels
I wanna see her unafraid of colorcodes and timecodes
Tapping out Morse-codes instead of barcodes
I wanna see her in full bloom again
I wanna see her plumage again
I wanna see that
The Eagle Has Landed
on a mountain
on the Moon
without Old Glory, without oxygen masks
On her own two talons
Behind the trees, behind the curtain
Prominent men make prominent decisions that cause divisions among us
They give us just enough circus and bread
to keep us just enough entertained and fed
to keep us in psychic prisons
But we're building Rainbow Prisms
from stainless steel bars, ballpoint pens, and beat-up guitars
We're wrapping our pinkies around the strings of stars
and yanking them down from a forgotten sky
And before you blow out your candles tonight, honey
Ask yourself, "what have I been drinking?"
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7. |
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i was so sick
you were so high
i was so still unborn
we ran through the night
crashed through the sky
then you
broke through
didn't you?
things don't always turn out like you want them to
we had everything and nothing and everything to lose
wouldn't you?
i was so dumb
and you were something
i wish i could understand
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8. |
Roll Credits
06:29
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The City lights blinked out forever--literally overnight--with a sudden finality that caught even the most nuclear-winter-prepared/Guns N Ammo reading/Campbell's canned soup and distilled-water stocked/backyard-fallout-shelter-owning-survivalists completely off guard. Armageddon had always been there, sleeping just beyond the horizon line of our periphery, but it awoke fully clothed and ready to go to work that day.
It was an ordinary Thursday, just like any other. The MUNI lines were choked as always with angry elderly women clutching plastic shopping bags full of pungent vegetables, poultry, and recyclables as if their lives depended upon the contents of those bags (maybe they did) and the usual gaggle of gibberish-mumbling crazies talking to themselves with cellphones plugged into their brains, some without.
That day, baristas were 5 minutes, 23 seconds late for work on a city-wide average. Bartenders were making their rent in tips as rowdy soccer fans converged in their local Sunset, Richmond, Mission and SOMA district faux-Irish pubs to watch the latest big championship match between Ireland and...some other country.
By Saturday, less than two days later, the desperate siren-blare of emergency vehicles, the insect hum of DPT tri-bikes carrying cutthroat ninja-sneaky meter maids ready to make their weekly quotas by slipping bogus $55 parking tickets under the windshield-wiper of your best friend's beat-up, barely-working mid-90s Mazda you were borrowing just for the night, and the cloud-cutting rotary-whine of channel 5 news traffic-report helicopters chopping through the sky had been silenced forever.
As if sensing the absence of gardeners, street sweepers and garbage men, weeds grew out of the cracks of the streets and sidewalks with the newfound urgency of a wildfire. Leaves swirled through glass and concrete skyscraper canyons, settled, and slowly began forming mounds as if attempting to fill the spaces that angry elderly women with plastic shopping bags, cellphone schizophrenics, and drunken soccer fanatics had once occupied.
Speculation about how the End of the World would actually occur had always been a theological reference point for religious zealots hell-bent on giving the Book of Revelations some validity, but had taken on a tone of comical absurdity in the hands of post-Y2K pop culture and disaster movies. A horde of zombies rising from their graves and feeding on the flesh of small bands of living human survivors was one of the more popular, albeit fantastic, apocalyptic theories. Some predicted that robots would enslave us, some thought aliens would invade us, while still others--baring signs reading "THE END DRAWTH NIGH," arms stretched meaninglessly up towards the hollow heavens in the sky above--believed biological or nuclear warfare to be the most likely form of humanity's demise.
But by the following Thursday, speculation had become a moot point; none of it had mattered at all in the end as the power-grid of the City, and then human civilization altogether, had been suddenly switched off for the last time by an alcoholic rent-a-god, leaving the face of the globe devoid of any trace of the spiderweb-night-glow of terrestrial city-lights.
Only the birds in the sky and the fish in the sea were spared to fill the blank pages of history that were to follow human(kind's) fading footprints.
***
Aeons later...
When those birds learned to read, they would see cryptic symbols inside a crooked heart jaggedly carved into a tree trunk surrounded by a mote of fallen leaves and ragged newspaper pages blowing through the streets like tumbleweeds.
Aeons later...
A trickling trail of bleeding hearts would lead back to the worm-eaten remains of a pair of skeletons holding skeleton hands beneath that tree.
And that tree would become a monument to the fire of an unwritten four letter word.
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9. |
Broken Record Blues
03:32
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This one's for the honey's with the flames in their hair
Pump up yr hearing aids, dentures in wheelchairs
Downtown, the shoppers are so perky and bright
Twitchin' headless chicken flappin in the night
Now you got nothing else to prove
Needles skipping in the groove
When you got nothing left to lose
You got the broken record
Broken record
Broken record blues
His lobotomy left the bulding in a taped-up baseball hat
Scribbling in the gutter watching androids getting fat
Yuppies on Segways out the window rolling down a one way street
Passing Garbage Pail Kids spittin rainbows and broken feet
Chewing up computer chips: delete alt control
Concentration level: approaching zero
Sheep counting sheep and the wolves just lick their teeth
Something tasted funny in yr drink as the shepherds fell asleep
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