1. |
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Once I was a blind pilot
In storms that I conjured with my two hands
Puzzled, she asked
“Were you surprised when you crashed?”
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2. |
You, Me, And The FCC
01:19
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People always say when you’re young like me
It’s the best years of your life and I have to agree
Ain’t it funny how pain can just fucking leave
With a few drinks on nights like these
Kids I knew from home are showing up dead
They’re blowing out their veins and the insides of their heads
I guess you can say I’m lucky
I got out when I did
Honey I can see you standing there
With your shirt undone and your hand in your hair
It was morning you were getting dressed in my bedroom
The sun was peeking through
I couldn’t help but walk over to you
Put my hands on your hips like I was someone smooth
Like a gracious queen you let me believe
That foolish notion was true
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3. |
Carnival Crowds
04:35
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I see a father failing to connect with his son
I see the lights on the Ferris wheel gleam
I see a whole lot of people in love
Everyone it seemed but me
I see weathered faces
I see lives broken from expectation
And all the places it swore they would be
I see the booths of minimum wage workers
I see cash exchanged for relief
I see your face in each passing stranger
I hear your voice in each word that they speak
I see tattoos on foreign girls’ skin
I follow the lines of yours down your hips
I feel your heart race
Like the excitement of children
Running through carnival crowds
I hear Kerouac in the stories you tell
I hear you say “Let’s get our kicks in the bars downtown”
My eyes are dilated
My drink falls slowly to the ground
I feel the tile impact on my head
The force it takes a body to fall
I hear the ambulance speeding away
I hear my mother’s frantic voiced call
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4. |
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I’ll finger my drink and hope you aren’t seen
In this bar, or any bar in town
I just want to drink in peace
Can you do that one thing for me?
You’ll walk through that door
He’ll be next to you I’m sure
With his arm wrapped so tight round’ your waist
So that you cannot get away
Like that one time that you got away
Your gaze will find my face
You’ll look startled and afraid
Of what he’ll do when his gaze finds me too
My friend read the last of the letters that you wrote me
She looked up with tears on her face
Said, “I know you’ve moved on
And that’s long overdue
But that girl she did once love you”
No, no, no that can’t be true
You don’t know her like I used to
She spoke like a writer
But she split like a liar
I don’t mean to suggest
That I loved you the best
It’s time to bury that fallen robin
So I’ll figure my drink and look to the street
And hope that you have somewhere
Better to be
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5. |
Billboards
03:31
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Someone had etched out the faces on billboards
I noticed on my drive home the other day
And right beneath the white blank space
That had once contained a face
Someone had written
“We are nameless”
In black ink
Were you bitter for blending in?
Did you dream of being A-list
The marquee lights shining out your name
Hollywood works in mysterious ways
It promises all the things it plans to take away
I dreamt my room was filled with dust and smog
And sunlight cut through the polluted haze
Then I woke up next to nothing
The air seemed clean to my suspicious gaze
Still I coughed and wheezed and choked and searched my brain
It wasn’t the air but the thought of you that drive me
Fuckin insane
Someone had left my heartstrings abandoned
A year ago so I moved away
But then the west coast let me down
Like everyone left in this town
Still you talked so much shit to all of my friends
Half a country away
(I never wanted to be nobody’s baby
You just left me a whole lot of crazy)
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6. |
Radiate
04:19
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Do you think of me
When you pour your customers’ drinks
And my excessive need
For the very thing you’re serving
For I am destined to be
A fool at the bar in his usual seat
As the years move on
That notion gets less charming
Are you suspect of
The way I self destruct
I’m an itchy trigger finger kid and you’re in the way
Do your friends think I’m
Just as asshole like
All the men that left them jaded wanting more out of love
And I will admit
I’ve been known to split
If on;y you knew how the people
Around you bend and break
To get close to the warmth you radiate
Once I saw a rising sun
While you lay sleeping in my arms
I was trying to be subtle
With the way I moved so that i
Wouldn’t wake you up too early
I lay restless if I’m drinking
One day you will wake up with a new man
In the space I left
I am temporary like I always told you that I would be
When I leave just know it’s not your fault
It’s just the way this town breathes
In and out ‘till I’m gone
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7. |
Dalia, Projected
04:10
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My girlfriend’s in the band
She will sing to me in basements
And hope I pick up on the phrases
She tucked between her songs
Strangely specific instances
I always thought were merely just bits
Of shared memories
But now they belong
To all the kids nodding their heads along
Did this town inspire you like it did to me
I can turn these rowdy kids in crowded bars
Into a chaotic symphony
Have you always been in love with a fleeting thing
Will you meet me on the corner of where we’re going
And where we used to be
I can’t get no sleep
I keep writing all these words down
Crumpling it up
And throwing it on the ground
I know what he wants from me
Another metaphor about love
One he knows he’s the inspiration of
But all I do is bleed
Staining once white pages with dark red abrasions
Words that seal our fate
When he realizes the metaphors
Are for the boy that I don’t love no more
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8. |
Rehearsed Love
02:17
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With great practice I will purse up my lips
And push out air that will form sentences
Something light at first a faint dash of wit
A subtle glance in your direction
Another beer for me I’ll ask you to dance
Another vodka tonic for you I’ll ask
I’ll admit I’ve never been too good on my feet
You’ll softly laugh and say the same goes for me
The dim lights in the bar will emit
Just enough light to keep you interested
You’ll call a cab and offer your place
I’ll act surprised like it’s the last thing I thought you would say
In the backseat my hand will find your thigh
You’ll smile at me and your hand will find mine
You’ll lead me through your house and into your room
Turn off all the lights but the moon sneaks through
Every breath is like I’ve been here before
Rehearsed love leads to similar performances
Though I’m guilty for this whole charade
There’s a likely chance that you’re doing the same
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9. |
Joshua Tree
04:37
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My phone has made me less of a poet
I don’t notice as many things
Like the way the afternoon gleans off the sea
On my drive home with Mei-Li
She said the locals have dust on their souls
Or so it had seemed
We were coyotes on cliffs of stone
Casting farewells to the waning sun
We were exploding stars
We were the desert night
We were tribal and magnificent
My hands were callused
My heart seemed the same
A layer of tough replaces a former pain
When my skin falls off
Mixed again with Mojave sand
The parts once fragile will be eager
To be fragile again
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10. |
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Some days I like to sit
With my room locked up tight
I don’t want to see nobody
For the rest of the night
I heard you been around
Since you turned twenty-one
In the places that I frequent
In the bars that I love
But I don’t hold no grudges
I don’t hold no pain
I just wanna disappear
For the next couple days
I’ve never seen a thing
That has made me so afraid
As the faces of friends who’ve lost
A love they can’t replace
My roommate as imperfections
On the lines of her tattoo
It itched and itched
So she picked and picked
Now it will never heal like new
I don’t hold no grudges
I don’t hold no pain
I just wanna disappear
For the next couple days
Hey Jake
I used to write you letters
When everything was crumbling
But I never did send them
Have you found yourself a lover
Does she treat you like gold
Do you treat her even better
I’ve been exploding like spiders
Drinking way too much
And sleeping with a detonator
Since I moved away from home
Did the feeling of the streets change
Like the seasons change the weather
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11. |
A Vibrant Yellow Returns
04:38
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You told me you were only looking for sleep
That I was only looking out for me
The drugstore signs in the neon lights read
“Don’t quit right now
you got too much time”
I always wanted to end up here
In the front seat where we were last year
Sometimes it don’t help to drive in circles
My roommate said
“You’re gonna write another song
in the same vein as the ones you’ve always sung”
I don’t know what’s wrong with me
I can’t fit nothing new in the space between
My mouth and my home
My heart and my lungs
My ways never meant no harm
While I was stumbling through New Orleans
Buddy Bolden’s brass encompassing me
You were peeling off the layers of shit
That accumulated on your skin
The yards of twine you wrapped around yourself
Tightened slow enough to mask what you felt
A year passed and there was nothing left
But a tangled mess that lay between
Your mouth and your home
Your heart and your lungs
Your thing fingers
Electrical gaze
Warm hearted nervous ways
If I took apart my memories
Plotted them on a graph I could read
Happiness and uncertainty
Would intersect far more than I need
This place has always been shrouded in doubt
Beautiful but sly a shifty eyed house
Take a deep breath as you walk away
From the mystery
Of a temporary town
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