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The Art of Being Pulled Apart
Spirits near the river by the salamander’s home
Far from the hustle on an alabaster throne
Heart is in New York, she says I’d hate the city
I try to make her hate it to just to make her miss me
Mind is in the cavern anxious that the end is near
Every turn I take’s the darkest place I’ve been in years
Body’s in the sun, pitted stomach, open arms
Empty chest, blank stare, It’s the art of being pulled apart
A shell of myself in the nebulous haze
The beauty is gone and the memories fade
I’d rather be down then as numb as I’ve been
Longing to long for something again (x2)
Last I recall I was trading I love you’s, deep in the woods while naming the mushrooms
Head with a clear view, right and assertive, body with a bounce that would fight the inertia
But then it untied, flesh from the mind, heart and soul found it better to divide
Tried to hang back and weather the goodbyes, but that shit don’t heal with the medicine of time
Stretching thin, spread my limbs slipping with the grip on the tug of war
Emptyness, full of it, I’m a quarter of the man that I was before
Damn damn buck up Luc, can’t be so detached and severed
The art in being pulled apart is how we pull it back together
My homey’s on that Mayan, many lives I once was
And I left that sacred part of me by the Columbia
Wanted to keep it pure, on a peaceful piece of earth
Where creatures stir, with no idea when we’ll reconvene and merge
What an awful thing to put it through
Separate it from the throbbing heart that’s posted on a Brooklyn roof,
Her moving towards a bigger shiny city life of living
Makes the gap between us seem like twice the distance
I become a hopeless slave to skittish thought and reason
Spiral down at the rate of the Fibonacci sequence
Dome’s eerie and blackened with walls of fossils
Easy to get trapped in the Cask of Amontillado
Which leads us to the body, now routine and robotic
That’s been breathing in toxins and sipping drinks from the goblet
Anything to pry a feeling up out of the chasm in my stomach’s pit
But this was all necessary wasn’t it
Absolutely. Now prepare the reassembling
Calling out to coax the spirit from the evergreens
Blow a kiss to shorty, say farewell and set us free
Someday time’ll throw its dirty prints on all our memories
My people’s offer perspective to put my fretting head at ease
Suddenly the energy runs through my extremities
Everything is everything, the changes let us see
The art of being pulled apart has forged a better me
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2. |
The Character is Me
04:19
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The Character is Me
I remember sitting on the roof top
Theorizing til my head was sore
Climbing over fallen tree limbs checking
What the Mississippi swept ashore
A young whippersnapper on a street
Corner hollering we gotta end the war
Now I be, this character is me
A bit of all of the things I’ve been before
Skinned knee shorty with a coffee can
Hunting slimy creatures in the mud and the dirt
For what it’s worth I let ‘em go at the request of ma dukes
Almost caught a snake once, last second I got spooked
Slithering, shaky, I stay fidgetin
Use to pier jump into polluted Lake Michigan
Now, I’m hanging off a bridge 40 feet higher
Above a the murky water, shit I thought I’d be wiser, nah
Tiddlywinks and newspaper tug boats
At 27 I be singing all my love notes
I’ve been afraid of rejection since back in the day
Prolly why I didn’t ask her to stay
I quit smoking and then, I started smoking again
I gotta find a different way to learn to cope with the bends
Extend a hand to foe, bumping folk tunes and wu tang
Lost my hops but still got a nasty hoop game
A minimalist preaching to you that less is more
A screen porch dweller soaking up the thunderstorms
A romantic with bleeding heart ripped and torn
A late nighter feeling hungover every morn
A deity, and a downer and a friend of yours
Now I be, the character is me
I think that I’ve learned the simplest things last
Every situation aint a riddle or ink splat
As a teacher I can spot the shittiest mishaps
And know just what to say to make a miserable kid laugh
A warrior. A worrier. Performing like a
Mourning bird chirping to the chords of a Wurlitzer
Shifting from power to paranoia like Greek Gods
Waxing on the dreams caught and glory that we’ve lost
But I’ve yet to live my better years
I still need to see the stars from the southern hemisphere
Author stories and compile a thick book
Spend the summer dawns pulling trout off a fish hook
Look, I get caught up in comparisons
Have accomplishment amnesia and forget bout where I’ve been
But the triumphs, melancholy and barriers I’ve breached
Form a fine collage and that character is me
I am just a drop of rain
Falling to the quiet stream
The growing rivulet that’ll
Wash it all away, wash it all away
I am just a grain of sand
Seated by the ocean blue
On the golden beach that
Sprawls across the way, sprawls across the way
I am just a single brick
In a wall that towers high
The edifice that you can
See from far away, see far away
I am just a lonely star
Burning in a crowded sky
On the night that stunned the world
All across the way, all across the way
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3. |
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The Salmon’s Journey Home
The dusk will be upon us, caught in the autumn cold
And I won’t be hollering for anything to save my soul
Don’t matter what I pray to, Don’t matter what I know
Whether I fight or flight, I’m gonna make that journey home
I’m on my grind
Until my time
But I’m letting go
Of what I can’t control
Through the euphoria and the animosity
I’m constantly reminded I am man and not machine
That’s why I bellow out a banshee rocking scream
In the jagged canyon bottom by the salmon flopping stream
I mean, I’m from the school of deuces to excuses my love
Where the masters view the beauty in the sewage and mud
That naked honesty is usually how I do what I does
And make it so they tell the truth up in my eulogy (uh)
The dusk will be upon us, caught in the autumn cold
And I won’t be hollering for anything to save my soul
Don’t matter what I pray to, Don’t matter what I know
Whether I fight or flight, I’m gonna make that journey home
I’m on my grind
Until my time
But I’m letting go
Of what I can’t control
The darkness plays its magic tricks and makes the panic waken
I swore I saw some gnashing fangs upon the shadow’s faces
Come to find it was a product of my imagination
What was certain doom was just a couple branches shaken
Really, I mean? Silliest me. From frightened and freaked to chill in the breeze
Wishing the prettiest missy I missed was sharing my pillow and still in my sheets
But I wouldn’t trade it, it’s part of the trip, survival of fittest, Darwinistic
I vibe with the mystic, no harbinger tip yeah I’m riding this mission as far as I get
Moons ago I watched the salmon spawning in a still creek
The torn remains of those who passed were rotting fresh and filthy
The handful left were idle with their tired bodies wilting
This journey that I’ve loved to live will prolly be what kills me
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Jellyfish Brigade Portland, Oregon
Machines and the Gods
03.24.2023
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