1. |
Developing Your Ghost
03:21
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Leave to sort them out, the sordid details
knifing through the happy story.
A decade here. An artful year.
Highballs for the low-browed gladhands
who sip with pinkies up.
Deep in your darkroom, developing,
developing your ghost.
With whom do we share this mealtime, the seasons of rain and sunshine
uncomfortably whole and rich?
A lifetime here in a single year,
An orb in the mirror, a mirror in a dream of Victorian drapes.
Deep in your darkroom, developing,
developing your ghost.
Here, with the softening sunrise,
the caraway seeds in the soft rye:
a window open for sounds of birds.
A ballad sent on the springtime air
high up in the oaks that shoot new life
from their wits' end.
Deep in your darkroom, developing,
developing your ghost.
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2. |
Milk-White
03:34
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"Milk-white," when used to describe skin,
is hyperbole, though a shut-in life might lead one
to that creamy lack of pigment
at least a century unloved, but still it delights
despite the sun in our eyes,
the sun in the window,
the sun on the teary refrain
of a sad song that prisms
on the whole of a rugged terrain
and the milk-white lies that skim your soul again.
"Rose-red," when used to describe lips,
is hyperbole, though lipstick gives the look
of a bleeding mouth on a milk-white face.
Eyes like cultured pearls. A shut-in life
despite the endless caress,
the tongue of the oyster,
the tongue of duress. And the sun,
when the oyster dies, prisms
along the glands, the shell, the sand--
the rose-red blood of life in clumsy hands.
[Arteries send; veins return.
The stars will shine if their fires burn.]
"Milk-white," when used to describe skin,
is hyperbole, though a shut-in life might breed some
deficiencies and phobias
in an endless echo of blood that almost delights
despite the mettle we lose,
the terror of loss,
the rose-red language we choose
for our pale song whose schism
takes nature away from man,
milk-white baby's breath from rose-red hands.
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3. |
Rose of Sharon
03:36
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Settled down for the night
with her head chamfered to his shoulder
Wetter now the eyes
with understanding and love to hold her
Rose of Sharon round the streetlight
a steel spine bent with flickering full moons
Dark green and soft white
their shadows merge and rise in full bloom
Who's labored long can settle down
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4. |
Our Fortune
02:48
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I thought I saw that airplane fly
straight into the mountain.
I expected a crash,
a black cloud in the red night.
Eyes fixed on where the ink will bleed,
blurring all the headlines
pressed for millions to read—
life and death streamlined.
I thought we'd feel our fortune give
birth to bolder fountains
gilt with reason. Alas,
The womb sags with heavy lies.
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5. |
A Sun-Filled Room
03:18
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There’s a mixtape I play in the car
Of the songs we sang in Spain
With hand drums and a travel guitar:
Wine-blind verses and loud refrains.
They’re older now, of course—
The songs and the friends.
Voices grow faint. Spines begin to bend.
And memories, little memories, little memories
Hang like motes in the air
Of a sun-filled room.
When we think for some time
About who we are—browning fruits
On the apple tree—we can linger on
The moon and stars: close as ever
At apogee.
Who says the dream song needs an audience
Believes the flat earth needs its humans.
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6. |
Growth Rings
03:46
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On the darker side of the lighter hours
we trace the growth rings
of the cut pine in the burn-pile
We ache to remember
what it was to organize
those alphabet blocks
into ideal cities
for card-carrying members of the idiot elite
When evil speaks, whose ear will bend to the sound?
In the strongest light, those who were lost are not found
but given a way to cast ever darker shadows
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7. |
Waterless
03:25
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Those pendants you wore
before the war began:
do you want them still?
They say they're American-made.
Does that mean something?
No shortage of warmth
on the hearth where our wet gloves dry,
snow-soaked yet finding the form
fickle hands left behind.
This horoscope warns of a harbor
where ships collide.
Though no wake when we wake,
somehow we've lost the night.
In the middle of the city
there's a fountain—
ugly, concrete, waterless.
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8. |
The Ever-Present
03:21
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Unwieldy fumes in the air.
First eyes to tear
are the sparrows'
and next, the delivery boy's.
He undoes bread,
pushes it from his hand
—a promise, a review of kindness.
What does it say of us who say
never-ending over everlasting
over, over-extending the ever-present?
How does it feel to be, she says,
in denial? He says I'm not
She says Wait, but
—I won't
—You will
My first, last, security,
my good name, my dynasty...
What does it say of us who say
never-ending over everlasting
over, over-extending the ever-present?
In no time at all we'll be walking over
rolling over, starting over
in the ever-present.
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9. |
Saline
03:36
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Tell me the Webster difference between fragile and frail
She's porcelain-armed from the elbow down
Listless and lunarly pale
Fingers: spindles from their wool exposed
Clutching at nails
She builds a cross to be your pin-up girl
Full mast with delicate sail
Saline dreams in open wounds
It's raining on wilting blooms
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10. |
Move as One
03:19
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We sheep will move as one
just before the rain. With the leaves
of last year deep in our fleece,
we’ll lie down on needles from the pines
soft against the pain.
We need to run, but we just dig in our feet
and lie down.
Whose guns destroy the slight echo of rain,
echo of automobiles several roads over?
Whose guns destroy the night?
Little lambs want to play.
The canopy sifts light just before the rain.
We live bound to a fenced-in lease on life
and it’s hard not to lie down.
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The Warp/The Weft Poughkeepsie, New York
Blending traditional and avant-garde styles, the warmth of a good wool sweater and the sometimes-bleak cold of an upstate winter, the progressive folk and psychedelia that the band brings to bear is propelled by poetic lyrics and a "spirit-conjuring" lilting tenor that prompted psych-folk legend Tom Rapp (of Pearls Before Swine) to ask, "Can I have your voice when you're through with it?" ... more
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