the way the neglect of your
intrusion is
fondly recalled
lost
bartered for
offers rescinded is
almost why
i remember you fucking my hand in
the cab and lips parted and the
stretch of gauzy blocks at
dusk and a smile beneath another
smile emerging in the smoke of
your hesitation
and promises loosely shaken from
provisions and cinnamon hued
skin and freckled and
pink and
lost
tentative defied ultimatums
and this
is almost why
stray on my canvas painting shook out
lines
argued as profound
travelling always at nights and in
them and at
them bulletproof or
isolated and as them walking
me into my own chapped mouth
rubbed smooth on you and
abandoning medicinal escapes at
the brink of
exhaustion is almost
why
now
three nights of dreams of you wake
me and
puncture my lungs
stopping each
other pausing
me quietly and
your interruptions don't
resonate any longer and
your doubled smile doesn't
fit in my hands anymore and cuts
them deep and your curvature doesn't mean
shit
again and the city isn't colored
green or
brown or dark brown or dark brown
reflecting anymore
missing the nothingness
the rank dissolving occurrences
where i
found you and
you and you and at
times i am creased
disheveled (and you)
bold and
denied
proud and suspicious
yammering heartfelt in the ears of
cynical associates or cynical at
stunned gazes never
quite
fucking
right is
almost the reason we continue
to meet
Friday, December 28, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
fiona apple
and it's not money
set on repeat
echo
nonchalant in t-shirts years old
jeans don't fit and
collect the spills and torn barely
bond to frame
tonight its fucking freezing and
quiet and you drink yourselfself calmly into the
dullest most sympathetic stupor and you
hold the moon outside between distant
hands and she smiles whenever i
close my eyes we always
had that
it's the admitting part that's the killer
it's watching long fluffy curls of delicate
advice fan out in strands around
it's the rustle that remains in the bed you
don't sleep in anymore or
that's missing from the one in which
you do
it's listening to music without words so
nothing muddles these toxins
so when you find yourself singing or
spitting out blood in the sink or
scratching the back of your neck to
find an old wound you don't
lose it when her voice bellows
instead
you listen to drums and humming
equipment
you are able to stay (did i
already smoke
that cig
yet? no)
set on repeat
echo
nonchalant in t-shirts years old
jeans don't fit and
collect the spills and torn barely
bond to frame
tonight its fucking freezing and
quiet and you drink yourselfself calmly into the
dullest most sympathetic stupor and you
hold the moon outside between distant
hands and she smiles whenever i
close my eyes we always
had that
it's the admitting part that's the killer
it's watching long fluffy curls of delicate
advice fan out in strands around
it's the rustle that remains in the bed you
don't sleep in anymore or
that's missing from the one in which
you do
it's listening to music without words so
nothing muddles these toxins
so when you find yourself singing or
spitting out blood in the sink or
scratching the back of your neck to
find an old wound you don't
lose it when her voice bellows
instead
you listen to drums and humming
equipment
you are able to stay (did i
already smoke
that cig
yet? no)
Monday, December 24, 2012
burial - truant + rough sleeper
i don't know what it is about burial.
burial is a british musician from the UK who makes music i can't even begin to understand. and no, it's not a result of having just pricked my skin on his bizarrely beautiful anti-music. i've listened to every one of his songs hundreds of times and i understand them and i don't fucking understand them at all.
a rigged patchwork composite of recorded sound effects, overwhelming vinyl crackle, rainsounds, whispers, clipped slipshod drums, videogame bits, mashed strings and jagged murmuring vocal samples and lullaby bassline meshes. all this seemingly disparate matter composed into soundscapes that echo condemned buildings, sneakers sticking to wet concrete, lost souls dancing against streetlights like moths, neon lights spelling out your truths, passing cars, humble banshee girls next door, your mistakes, your redemption. your secret favorite thing. the shitty stupid thing you said to her, what she looked like when you said it and how she looked at you. and, later, his music has that fucking indescribably impossible, anachronistic, chemical component: it says "it's ok".
i've listened to burial since i first started listening to him. there's a reason his ramshackle tunes have persistently remained in the unforgiving eye of the culturati. an anti-persona, an anti-musician, he paints a weird welcome and we all flock to it. he really doesn't give a shit, except he totally does, he bleeds into these minutes released in their always-too-slow trickle. longing for an era he missed by making music out of time, music that doesn't exist anymore, except he's making it, so it does, fucking up the spacetime continuum.
time travel. wet concrete. factories churning out smoke in the distance, away from us (doesn't really matter...right?). there's a sound that comes off four houses down as we walk, it's a bark, a dog-sound, it's the dog we grew up with as a kid who died. there he is, four houses down. we walk past. we're not crying, right? no. we're adults now and we don't cry about that shit.
but there he is in the headphones. scratching away at that shit. soon our steps are catching his stepless rhythm, we find it, or find its lack of rhythm. and then we are walking, walking. and feeling miserable but alive. there's the diner we like, tonight we don't go in, but it's there, it exists and things are OK. we walk past the graffiti that's still there from last week, we appraise it again, amused and inspired by it, until it is in our peripheral, curling around our right arm with just the lightest tug. we'll see it tomorrow.
and oh god there's the elevated train. like an angel on ragged wings, ragged tracks, shaking the very earth, and it splits through the headphones until I am listening to "Stolen Dog" behind its casually beautiful carnage.
there is very, VERY little music these days that stirs a conversation within me. 2012 was a fantastic year for music and there was plenty bubbling in my little humble android player companion. i would talk your ear off about it if humbly permitted. but the truth is that very little of it communicates with me, back and forth and back again, aside from burial. i listen to great records and I marvel at their greatness, their decisions, their failures and immense accomplishments. their impressive fidelity, their curing properties, their escape. and i listen to burial and i speak with it, and i walk with it, and it grounds me, sadly, pleasantly. and i know it even though i would disagree with every choice, every badly placed beat, every tricky fucked up gritty missed trigger. if i knew him i'd be like why the fuck, and who the fuck do you think you are, and come on clean that shit up, and come on come on. and there at the 13:04 mark on "Rough Sleeper" is that fucking bizarre synthy bit that starts up, it comes on twice, twice before the end, because that's all that was there, because that's all that was needed.
it's always exactly right, shabby and worn and stubbornly confident. it plays coy, and plays serious, and fucks with you, tricking your ears, painting something forgotten. at night it joins me on walks home from work, or walks home from walks. it's background music, except it's a feature film made entirely out of background pieces. it's the video from Infinite Jest. it's about the only characters you care about, but you've forgotten their names or wondered if they ever had any. or if that matters.
burial released his last bit recently. it stops and starts, it shrugs and straightens its tie. it doesn't know if it's interesting, or if you'd care about it. but everything within it is indiscreet, and its emotions shoot true.
the thing with burial is that he doesn't have any "tricks" you're not aware of; it's all true. he's a terrific liar, for sure. he hides in plain sight, a scribe for a history half-experienced, a guide to the only city he knows, the city that's not your own. but it's all true.
burial is a british musician from the UK who makes music i can't even begin to understand. and no, it's not a result of having just pricked my skin on his bizarrely beautiful anti-music. i've listened to every one of his songs hundreds of times and i understand them and i don't fucking understand them at all.
a rigged patchwork composite of recorded sound effects, overwhelming vinyl crackle, rainsounds, whispers, clipped slipshod drums, videogame bits, mashed strings and jagged murmuring vocal samples and lullaby bassline meshes. all this seemingly disparate matter composed into soundscapes that echo condemned buildings, sneakers sticking to wet concrete, lost souls dancing against streetlights like moths, neon lights spelling out your truths, passing cars, humble banshee girls next door, your mistakes, your redemption. your secret favorite thing. the shitty stupid thing you said to her, what she looked like when you said it and how she looked at you. and, later, his music has that fucking indescribably impossible, anachronistic, chemical component: it says "it's ok".
i've listened to burial since i first started listening to him. there's a reason his ramshackle tunes have persistently remained in the unforgiving eye of the culturati. an anti-persona, an anti-musician, he paints a weird welcome and we all flock to it. he really doesn't give a shit, except he totally does, he bleeds into these minutes released in their always-too-slow trickle. longing for an era he missed by making music out of time, music that doesn't exist anymore, except he's making it, so it does, fucking up the spacetime continuum.
time travel. wet concrete. factories churning out smoke in the distance, away from us (doesn't really matter...right?). there's a sound that comes off four houses down as we walk, it's a bark, a dog-sound, it's the dog we grew up with as a kid who died. there he is, four houses down. we walk past. we're not crying, right? no. we're adults now and we don't cry about that shit.
but there he is in the headphones. scratching away at that shit. soon our steps are catching his stepless rhythm, we find it, or find its lack of rhythm. and then we are walking, walking. and feeling miserable but alive. there's the diner we like, tonight we don't go in, but it's there, it exists and things are OK. we walk past the graffiti that's still there from last week, we appraise it again, amused and inspired by it, until it is in our peripheral, curling around our right arm with just the lightest tug. we'll see it tomorrow.
and oh god there's the elevated train. like an angel on ragged wings, ragged tracks, shaking the very earth, and it splits through the headphones until I am listening to "Stolen Dog" behind its casually beautiful carnage.
there is very, VERY little music these days that stirs a conversation within me. 2012 was a fantastic year for music and there was plenty bubbling in my little humble android player companion. i would talk your ear off about it if humbly permitted. but the truth is that very little of it communicates with me, back and forth and back again, aside from burial. i listen to great records and I marvel at their greatness, their decisions, their failures and immense accomplishments. their impressive fidelity, their curing properties, their escape. and i listen to burial and i speak with it, and i walk with it, and it grounds me, sadly, pleasantly. and i know it even though i would disagree with every choice, every badly placed beat, every tricky fucked up gritty missed trigger. if i knew him i'd be like why the fuck, and who the fuck do you think you are, and come on clean that shit up, and come on come on. and there at the 13:04 mark on "Rough Sleeper" is that fucking bizarre synthy bit that starts up, it comes on twice, twice before the end, because that's all that was there, because that's all that was needed.
it's always exactly right, shabby and worn and stubbornly confident. it plays coy, and plays serious, and fucks with you, tricking your ears, painting something forgotten. at night it joins me on walks home from work, or walks home from walks. it's background music, except it's a feature film made entirely out of background pieces. it's the video from Infinite Jest. it's about the only characters you care about, but you've forgotten their names or wondered if they ever had any. or if that matters.
burial released his last bit recently. it stops and starts, it shrugs and straightens its tie. it doesn't know if it's interesting, or if you'd care about it. but everything within it is indiscreet, and its emotions shoot true.
the thing with burial is that he doesn't have any "tricks" you're not aware of; it's all true. he's a terrific liar, for sure. he hides in plain sight, a scribe for a history half-experienced, a guide to the only city he knows, the city that's not your own. but it's all true.
Friday, December 14, 2012
my body has a shitty tomcat inside
my body has a shitty tomcat inside and
he leaks poison out the corner of
his ragged permanent smile making
dainty repulsed hustles through
street filth texture aching limbs
philosophizing old haunts
remembered vivid aching
at times there are distant noises
and he looks very seriously at the
noises as if they were things come
unraveled but displacing the air
until he is hungry again
then when he swivels around
the scene renders to primary
colors and tension lines
i don't know how to speak to the
things that don't know my animal
they regard me with congealed
confusion lazily knowing me
they ignore him
which makes him rub their legs rudely
he finds a corner to play with a
piece of stray trash very briefly then
sleeps deep
and every introduction is a fiasco of
insecure learning and
paws catch on the clothing of strangers so
we stare at each other awkwardly as i
disengage
my tomcat is lazy yet emptied of
homelands he
barely holds his own recent scenes down and
when he shrieks and
coos into the wet bread of night he is
throwing his own precious energy away and
couldn't tell me why
the parklands and gaunt alleys and other
nightmares of nowheres are
where we divide
he into the dreaming and
i into the dreaming
he leaks poison out the corner of
his ragged permanent smile making
dainty repulsed hustles through
street filth texture aching limbs
philosophizing old haunts
remembered vivid aching
at times there are distant noises
and he looks very seriously at the
noises as if they were things come
unraveled but displacing the air
until he is hungry again
then when he swivels around
the scene renders to primary
colors and tension lines
i don't know how to speak to the
things that don't know my animal
they regard me with congealed
confusion lazily knowing me
they ignore him
which makes him rub their legs rudely
he finds a corner to play with a
piece of stray trash very briefly then
sleeps deep
and every introduction is a fiasco of
insecure learning and
paws catch on the clothing of strangers so
we stare at each other awkwardly as i
disengage
my tomcat is lazy yet emptied of
homelands he
barely holds his own recent scenes down and
when he shrieks and
coos into the wet bread of night he is
throwing his own precious energy away and
couldn't tell me why
the parklands and gaunt alleys and other
nightmares of nowheres are
where we divide
he into the dreaming and
i into the dreaming
Sunday, November 18, 2012
repeat
might be the will to reopen
joining with the wind
night appears before me like its joking
centers the longing to reappear here
what two hands do to disarm this
patience
these thrills are beyond this
patiently i reach beyond this
alarmed by the symbolic and
the last song spinning around the
last song spinning around the
last song around
summers
out there
like a tonic for the wounded
emptied of its tears
whole in the june light
what do two hands do to disarm this
patiently these thrills are beyond this and
i reach beyond the summer skin for
the thrill
lost in these years
and the last song spinning around
the last song spinning around the
last song
joining with the wind
night appears before me like its joking
centers the longing to reappear here
what two hands do to disarm this
patience
these thrills are beyond this
patiently i reach beyond this
alarmed by the symbolic and
the last song spinning around the
last song spinning around the
last song around
summers
out there
like a tonic for the wounded
emptied of its tears
whole in the june light
what do two hands do to disarm this
patiently these thrills are beyond this and
i reach beyond the summer skin for
the thrill
lost in these years
and the last song spinning around
the last song spinning around the
last song
Monday, November 12, 2012
after and before
sunday light
drunken mirages below
14th and she is corralled in her
own streets
misbehaves
like a vaulted hellion before the city
meets a hurricane again
tonight there will be rain in these
streets and
she runs her tongue against the
smooth aluminum rind of a beercan
she doesn't know me enough to
keep me anywhere in mind
the thought of my name summons
jingles and loops
i imagine her so defended against
the barest approach of my humble
memory i could be an allergic mishap or the
weather eighteen days ago
summaries of this night and others exist
somewhere
scrawled in a two word note
tumbled in pocket with keys and disinterested
nicorette and 54 cents wrapped
tight in a pointless receipt like a
lover on the
next to last
day
drunken mirages below
14th and she is corralled in her
own streets
misbehaves
like a vaulted hellion before the city
meets a hurricane again
tonight there will be rain in these
streets and
she runs her tongue against the
smooth aluminum rind of a beercan
she doesn't know me enough to
keep me anywhere in mind
the thought of my name summons
jingles and loops
i imagine her so defended against
the barest approach of my humble
memory i could be an allergic mishap or the
weather eighteen days ago
summaries of this night and others exist
somewhere
scrawled in a two word note
tumbled in pocket with keys and disinterested
nicorette and 54 cents wrapped
tight in a pointless receipt like a
lover on the
next to last
day
Saturday, October 13, 2012
delete / gently
and he crosses paths and makes a funny stumble like
this is not deeply felt
it narrows closely
like a thickly drawn line of words
adolescence is permanent markers and
songs of crass nullified defiance and
cigarettes proud and elongated chained
repeated and remixed into
conversations with strangers to flow
over them like blankets punched with breath
and more words
these are more words
keep coming
scatter my eager entrance into
pocked regret
find my wrecked reflection in metrocards and
underneath beer glasses in the packed bar
residing in my handled relics
transfer meaning and submerged eloquence to the
objects touched in travel
i seek definition in privately held things
finding it
wretchedly disappointed in it
color each segment of the sidewalk with
thoughtless steps to somebody else thinking
i
can't
be
here
for long not long i snaked a careful finger on your smile
touching your mouth before it parted before
rediscovering its shade
no shadow hides me and
i would erase this
becoming the cul-de-sac of a bruise
hands of strangers welcome me rudely
expectantly
erroneously
i drink two beers that say
fuck you
and leave
if i am young and recast as traitor to
all these careless mishaps
then fuck you is a smile that welcomes and enervates me
that walks me towards your wall
yet i pick these moments gently
if i am old and crushed by fuckups old and young i
cruise with it
i lift it from its odd angle
i put it down
this is not deeply felt
it narrows closely
like a thickly drawn line of words
adolescence is permanent markers and
songs of crass nullified defiance and
cigarettes proud and elongated chained
repeated and remixed into
conversations with strangers to flow
over them like blankets punched with breath
and more words
these are more words
keep coming
scatter my eager entrance into
pocked regret
find my wrecked reflection in metrocards and
underneath beer glasses in the packed bar
residing in my handled relics
transfer meaning and submerged eloquence to the
objects touched in travel
i seek definition in privately held things
finding it
wretchedly disappointed in it
color each segment of the sidewalk with
thoughtless steps to somebody else thinking
i
can't
be
here
for long not long i snaked a careful finger on your smile
touching your mouth before it parted before
rediscovering its shade
no shadow hides me and
i would erase this
becoming the cul-de-sac of a bruise
hands of strangers welcome me rudely
expectantly
erroneously
i drink two beers that say
fuck you
and leave
if i am young and recast as traitor to
all these careless mishaps
then fuck you is a smile that welcomes and enervates me
that walks me towards your wall
yet i pick these moments gently
if i am old and crushed by fuckups old and young i
cruise with it
i lift it from its odd angle
i put it down
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