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Come on, get in, we’re off to school
Our carpool gets us there
Ballyhoo and boisterous backseat bongos make us sing
Carl is out of tune and will be killed
The hump riding turd’s throwing me off
Notebooks brim with information
And eager to augment
The dog-eared sections,
Quotes of interest
The dates we came and went
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2. |
The Mustache
03:28
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All the gumption he could muster
To grab the lip and set free the mustache
Dressed up the porcelain in last year’s hairs
And rinsed the moment all away
Another imperceptible alteration in his shadow
Not even California could inspire
To dangle from the lamplight
Or to curl away from the milky crown
Of the Los Angeles night
Me and the boys lament
The drowned and drifting mustache
Swept through sewers and oceans
Edged along the continent
In search of Andrew
You’re lost, little one
And snared on the seaweed
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3. |
The Spume
03:59
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Today I let the spume wash over me
Coughed up from all your beautiful blowholes
And down to where the ocean blasts the crags
I snuck with disaster in my eyes
My heart is filled with razor blades
I see you in the sea-green foam
Loitering by my knees on your way up
Today the riptide stalled against my back
And eased away from each would-be gashed zone
The death-stink rode in on the jetsam flow
And snatched a breath from underneath my nose
Dread moves in sudden gusts
Sweeping heavenward
But I’m anchored to the shore by the urge to drown
Dread does the patient ooze
It settles in the mouth
Can you smell it when I tell you I’m ok?
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4. |
Boozin' & Whorin'
02:13
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It’s a real humdinger, yeah
But there’s no shame in anything done well
She said she was only passing through
A transient orbiting my pants
A satellite at second glance
Not a star like you and me
Trouble blows through me
And I seek the knocking down,
Insist I’m stronger than I am
Crotches mingle, the wine is making me sick
Lunch will storm the boots if we botch counterattack
We head in from the east under heavy flak
Determined now to hold our course
Though fear does fly from every pore
And infiltrates the fiber of well being
But she is a helmet for my mind
That is reinforced by each new barely averted concussion
Mountain of worry
You’re as steep as you are high
A death trap for tourists who vacation in my life
And while the future saturates with danger
I kick back with the fluids of a stranger
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5. |
Overhead
01:52
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You burned the bridge
You stopped the parade
Balloons onward zip
We run out of helium
And land in the trees
Nearer to death
It’s just so over my head
Car crash eyes
You broke your nose and never knew
And you held against me that simple premise
That what I love must hate me
You’re just so over my head
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6. |
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She was full of happy juice
And they squeezed her for it
Sucked and wrung
She left them all with sticky chins
And a tingling in their guts
She leaned out off the fire escape
Just waiting to be born
And all the boys who thought they knew her
Closed their eyes and swore
That they never, ever thought it’d be like this
Her eyes are a million miles away
In a picture I thought I’d lost
And found by accident one day
In a pile of miscellaneous crap
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7. |
Drag You Through It
03:19
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How wonderful to wake you up
By telephone some night
With a thousand stupid things in my head
To tell you about
A thousand stupid things take up a lot of space
And they rattle and reel around the skull
They are beautiful luggage
I’m gonna sick my intuition on a heretofore unconsidered postulate
That I’m committed to my goals
I’m gonna breeze through every single lingering criticism that built up
On the outskirts of my goals
I’m gonna let me hair down in places I never had any hair at all
And giggle at my goals
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8. |
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Where were you the last time I faked it?
Sauntered along the bike path and wondered over and over
Shaking off a deep sleep and scratching my head
Are you planning your escape?
‘Cuz I’ve never been one for plot
are you smuggling away my affection chunk by chunk?
A clever thief you are
A stowaway sneaking in and out of my secret places
Through cracks and keyholes
We are two fangs hanging over the same tongue
Stuck in the same meat
Stung by the same rot, the same ache
Your compliments are buckshot
Blasts of rock salt
They penetrate the cartilage and flower with welts
They nick my heart
And make pissants of us both
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9. |
Her Name Was Zima
01:15
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Her name was Zima
And she didn’t speak much English
Her eyes shone like rattlesnake teeth
In the silent, balmy dessert
And if all the roads I follow
Lead me right back to her arms
I will never get to Denver
All my maps are useless now
It’s a maze of unnecessary detours
They get you lost
So they can find you in the end
She kept a journal
Of the things that she was thinking
And one night, a strange passage
Ending with the words ‘gringo’ and ‘horseshit’
And it’s not like I can comfort her
When her horses turn to glue
When the dreams she had confided in me
All fail to come true
The Effort Expended’s ass is brutalized by vandals
And left for dead
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10. |
The Size and Shape Of It
02:41
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From our cool airplane
The summit came without word or warning
Lit by electricity where the clouds were storming
From our cool airplane
Snared on dread and stuck on autopilot
With parachutes into the vulture-speckled night
We hide our bones from them
The roof of our apartment
From which you can see the whole city
Laid out like a squirrel on an irresistible interstate
The roof of our apartment
Is littered with the dregs of thousand unfinished beers
And shadows of friends we didn’t think were coming
The party broke its neck
Sometimes I sit here for hours
Pondering the size and shape of it
Pass me another cocktail
I’m in for the long haul, sister
When we go walking
A gauntlet of sleepwalkers and alcoholics
Flushed like moles from subterranean nests
When we go walking
I just fall and make a terrible spectacle
I am late for work on account of this condition
My feet are tires of a lame vehicle
Just sometimes sitting
On a subway train rife with overachievers
In the invisible gauze of resignation
Just sometimes sitting
I might slouch into an unsuspecting neighbor
I make the places in your book that you lose and can’t recover
I’m a maker of premature conclusions
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11. |
Greetings From Sediment
01:38
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You were happier as a martyr to phony causes
Always pressed against obstacles
‘Cuz the girl who was actually what you wanted
Exorcised all your demons for free
A stomach seized with butterflies
To do the thing the thing implies
Would hollow you out
And grant you the prerequisite space to enjoy yourself completely
Sabotaged in the end by your long-term goals
Mistaking popularity for vindication
You slew your albatross to guarantee sympathy
From an otherwise uninterested crowd
Opportunity costs come cheap
When your decisions have all been leased
From a secret wish to never, ever change
We honor different inertias
One at rest with lead for eyes
One speeds through and never photographs well
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12. |
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Twenty-five degrees in Boston
And you without a decent winter coat
Shit-eating grin has gone blue
Can’t maneuver in the snow
I say, I use my powers for Evil
You use your powers for Good, but you hate it
We’ll take the T to nowhere special and shoot at the birds
One bird, two bird, three bird, four
Pigeons’ wings from here to the moon
Climb if you can, it’s not so hard
Plus, I’ve been working out
These are not my zapatos
You snuck them on when I was asleep
Somewhere a man is pulling glass out of his feet
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13. |
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Martians crashed my party
Hogged the chips and abducted the beer
They said really personal things
And made us all uncomfortable
Aurora Borealis, humbled in the saucer’s glow,
Blows and disappoints us
Jumpy, lumpy reptiles go
Brendan retired to his room
Erica feigned interest and smiled
Eugene startled and confused
And made us al uncomfortable
When it came time for goodbyes
We helped them pack and clean their probes
And who among you, in good faith,
Could faith renounce and claim to know?
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14. |
Alan Alda
03:38
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15. |
No No No
03:04
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We’ll go gouging
We’ll sneak little holes into the sling
That keeps our crimes in place
We’ll let them fly
I wobble around the place
Quietly accumulating second guesses
But hear, when I motor,
The crying of hell shake the trees
Enemies all caked on the rearview, oh crap!
Heaped up against the windshield
Undisturbed by the wipers’ slash and swipe
They gnaw on the wreckage
And hiss when I hitchhike away
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16. |
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A hail of prosthetics
Undeterred by my protective visor
Did a number on me
When you said that you were leaving
I almost fell for it
Babies don’t come with kneecaps
And I won’t apologize
For the things I never had the chance to do wrong
This is the last time you’ll ever hear me confessing to ignorance
On my knees
It’s a technicality cultivated by the pirates of self-esteem
On my knees
It’s a last-ditch play resorted to by the purveyors of half-truths
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17. |
Hardly Awful
02:13
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I came around like the wheels of a pick-up truck
And went back again
The trouble is, it’s so fast
It looks like I’m sitting still
I think I’m sitting still
Had I armies to look over me and get me there safe
I still wouldn’t come
A mental sack of the looks she gave me when I was saved
Here’s a curious one…
I done found out what I knew all along
I’m just fine now but yesterday I’m a wreck
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18. |
At Twenty-Four
03:30
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She like the smell of alcohol on my breath
Once in a while
I move in careful speeches around the room
But I am bound to the fuck up
And I’m running out of slack
How they writhe
When their girlfriends refuse to come back
The sidelong glances are counterfeit
She doesn’t want you
Valentine’s Day is coming
And nobody around here cares
Souls like buckets without bottoms
Litter the living rooms of overpriced apartments
How many daydreams are never reclaimed?
At twenty-four, the coffins are prepared
The running starts
The delirium of high speeds
The killing thirst
The bleeding of noses
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19. |
The Space Between Teeth
02:59
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20. |
She Wants Buildings
00:48
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She wants everything she sees
She wants everything she sees
Sometimes she sees buildings
And she wants them
Because she wants everything she sees
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Matt Savage Cambridge, Massachusetts
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