1. |
Square in Your Corner
02:01
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David and Paul, with Adam and Larry along,
set out to become the best band in the world,
singing at one time to God and to Girls.
The dream came true, and if it is pure yours can too,
but it’s very unsure. And it’s best to have a backup,
a stable sense of self that you try not to crack up.
And that’s what I’m about. A friend is a home on the
ground.
Three friends will keep the four corners down.
One day you’re going to want a square in your
corner, girl,
a square in your corner in your world
now that you’re living in dreams. You’re living in
dreams.
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2. |
Inside Out
04:14
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Aren’t you tired of sitting around? This house has
halitosis.
You’re a cheese that’s expired, taking on all the
flavors around by osmosis.
You’ve made stasis an art. You’ve been smoking your
heart,
slow cooking with a dry rub till the meat falls right
off the bone.
You still deny that you’re grown. You’re alone
Even though there’s people all about. You’re inside out.
In the middle of space, in the middle of doubt,
In the middle of a frantic freakout now.
Your id is showing and your soul is inside out.
You’ve got nothing to say. Days pile upon days.
You haven’t had your shoes on in so long, you don’t
know where they are.
In a jar with your head and your heart’s turning
brown.
Everything’s turned around. Your upside ’s down.
It’s down there under you’re chair, slipping under
the rug.
It’s in the floorboards with the sleeping bedbugs now.
Hear them scurry about. Your inside ’s out.
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3. |
Wherever U.
03:21
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Sent away to serve the interests of the state.
Sent away to learn whatever you may.
Sent away to institutions of the state
and if you never return,
they drag for bodies at the tavern on the corner
of Chapel and Universe.
They take attendance at the corner of Ascendance
and Lotus Eater Lane.
They call the role with poppy seeds and coca leaves
at the corner of Loaf and Pain.
They call your name. They know your name.
We come from nowhere. We go there too.
Or so we’re taught at Wherever U.
Wherever me, wherever you.
Sent away to institutions of the state.
Sent away to learn whatever you may.
Sent away to be conveniently delayed
and if you never come to,
down at Guevara Hall the Career Day Carnivale
will make a proper clown of you,
but that’s one thing we ’d never do.
We come from nowhere. We go there too,
which leaves some time for wherever U.
Wherever me, wherever you.
And we’re glad you finally found
a place where your genius can settle down.
At the corner or Summer and Early Fall
you might get down to writing that book after all.
And we’re glad you finally found
a place where your genius can settle down,
’cause in the end there ’s probably nothing to fear
at the corner of Life and Disappear.
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4. |
A Tenth of Your Mind
03:43
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Like an organ mathematical,
but she was never so dry
or as still as the brittle and pinned butterflies
we all eulogize.
She was always hypermusical,
with glissandos in her eyes,
and she had all the blackbirds of Junes and Julys
baked into her pies.
A tenth of your mind
(beyond the reason, beyond the numbers).
A third of your life
(laying fallow, spent in slumber).
The half of your time
Is all I can line up with mine.
Unguided design defines all these lives,
and once in the brine you can stop and rewind.
Like a corkscrew computational
with coriolis rolling by,
And the pure bathymetrical work of the tides
and the seasons combined,
A tenth of your mind
(beyond the reason, beyond the numbers).
A third of your life
(laying fallow, spent in slumber).
The half of your time
is all I can line up with mine.
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5. |
Submarine
04:12
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Here on the seventh sea, a major mystery,
imagine you and me tossed in blue and in green,
in your eyes, in your eyes.
One day we’ll climb, one day we ’ll slide.
One day we’ll fall, one day we ’ll rise
till we ’re all in the submarine.
All weight be gone. We go tumbling.
We weren’t made to be strong. We were made to
comply.
We never belonged, we never belonged.
And even now they scream “hold on!”
One day we’ll fall, one day we ’ll rise
to the submarine.
Careful what you care for, who you come up to the
air for.
For the fall won’t stop on the bottom of the top of
the world.
There’s two ways you can go by.
We used to lie and stare and aspire to the air,
to the skies, to the skies.
One day we’ll climb one day we ’ll slide.
One day we’ll fall one day we ’ll rise.
To the submarine.
And your memories, they won’t weigh a thing
As gravity parts for your new set of wings.
Think of all the dreams you’ll drop when you’re in
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6. |
Dreamland
03:31
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We ’ll see your father in dreamland. Boats leave most
every night.
Climb aboard and we’ll wait for a fair wind. Close
your eyes, close your eyes
and we’ll steer through the hemispheres that he laid
for you when he was strong.
For no one is ever, no is ever really gone.
We ’ll see your father in dreamland working along
the far shore
with a cigarette cupped in his good hand and his
collar turned up in the cold wind.
Long gone the land that his heart built and the bed
that he made for your mom,
but no one is ever, no one is ever really gone.
And if you wake up in dreamland, you won’t know
where you are.
You’ll be lost in the bed that I made for your head,
though my hands were never so sure.
Climb on. They’re longing to see us, and we won’t
be gone long.
For no one is ever, no one is ever really gone.
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7. |
God Is with Us
04:03
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Her face was the flower at the head
of the very first notice.
I noticed. I went for a swim. I couldn’t wake up.
I was careful. A terrible care
colored the air not like any one thing.
And her voice was a terrible scare
when it finally surfaced to speak,
so rusty a squeak I could almost believe
that her very first words were for me,
all beauty conceived only this very spring.
God is with us. Where else would he be
but in the belief? He is careless.
He can’t really care, just comes when he’s called.
At the notice, he ’s born in your dream,
making it seem he was already there.
For a season or two I retired
from tilling the dirt just to dream
and to focus my will on the tilt of the earth.
Leading her path right to me
was a matter no more than a couple degrees.
Her touch was a touch of relief,
ambiguous in its intent,
somewhere in between a fate and a field accident.
It was nothing I need.
Better not suffer for any one thing.
But her eyes were the point of the blade
that struck while I dreamt in the field.
By my own hand betrayed: half an inch wide but quite deep.
I wrapped it in weeds.
Clowns all-heal and be well in a week.
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8. |
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9. |
Universe of Phoenix
03:00
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Before I get too old, I want to have myself some
experience,
saturate the senses and see where the spirit leads
at least until it proves itself dubious,
not once but a dozen at least,
by a dozen deceptions at least.
Before I close the book, I want to rid myself of some
secrets,
open to the light and the air all the shame that grew
before I even knew it could do that.
You just breathe and the trouble is there.
You just breathe and the trouble was there.
Before I leave the earth I want to have myself some
relations
with the people that you just never see,
(go without a guide and) have a couple cold revelations,
not to keep, they’re just passing through me
like the wind playing over the reeds,
like the wind playing over the reeds.
Would you be a stationary drifter
if the world were within?
You live an inch.
They put it in the book of experience.
You tear it out.
No one keeps a book on me.
But when you do,
they put it in the book of experience.
What does it take to get out of the reach?
What does it take to live out of the reach
of the markets of Mammon and memory?
And how come there’s no one around?
There’s nobody anymore?
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10. |
Dougie Says
04:19
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Dougie says he ’s fine today. He ’ll surely call me
when he gets back to the states.
Dougie says nothing is wrong just ’cause he passed out
in the middle of a song.
He says it’s nice we are so concerned with
his health and welfare at last, but just kiss his ass
’cause he ’s got things under control now.
Dougie says he likes he there, it’s not the kind of scene
you find just anywhere.
He knows the future tense of boys.
He’s only playing with a couple of his toys.
While all his friends were ball and chaining,
he took himself to the east, so Dougie at least
could have a little fun now.
The first peaches of summer are tumbling from the
trees.
Dougie says that he ’ll try to get back to me, maybe
next week.
When you’re always the same and you never change
then that means that you’ve stopped growing
So Dougie says he ’s to blame for letting his growth
keep showing.
Dougie says a lot you see, or I imagine that he must,
just not to me.
Dougie says a lot to them. He buys the drinks and then
he buys the drinks again.
So if it’s all the same to Dougie,
I think I’ll have one myself, and everyone else
Can take a flying fuck now.
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11. |
Mr. Reality
02:28
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It’s an open call for celebrities
or maybe it’s more like an open season.
They’re looking under the rocks at low tide.
But who among us wouldn’t squirm to survive?
The database shows that I haven’t worked since
Alien Fathers of Mother Earth and Sales 2005.
But who among us wouldn’t slum to survive?
High, high, high water.
They come for blood, they come to feed
On the bones of a minor celebrity.
I was halfway through my Realtor training,
lying low in the Garden State and
learning how to get by
on the day when the future darkened the sky.
Now it’s Private Life report for duty,
X-celeb force with yours truly,
and even the smallest of fries
jump in the oil at the sound of the siren.
High, high, high water.
They come for blood, they come to feed
On the corpse of a minor celebrity.
Say farewell to what’s left of the earth and the sky
that hasn’t been touched by her withering eye.
Immortality comes to murder me
at 58:10 of the live finale,
and Mom hangs my clothes on the line
in the summer time.
New Jersey summer time.
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12. |
Salad Days
03:09
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Pictures from my salad days oppress me now in
countless ways.
Every day supremely bored, intoxication was its own
reward.
And the styles! Turquoise ruffled shirts, tuxedo style,
with cuffs undone, And bolo ties for everyone
as we sang “na na na na na.”
Salad days in dressing drowned, all dumbed down by
dunderheaded clowns.
Tripping face and Nashville tuned, synchronizing
sundials to the moon.
Oh, the drugs! So content to be a certain kind
Of friend indeed: The crucial one who brought the
weed,
and they sang “na na na na na.”
If you really cared, You’d grow out your hair
at least as long as I grew mine.
Ten black turtlenecks In my kitchenette,
drying over my chairs all night. Would you fight your
drummer
Just to get him to wear one until he walks out the
door,
saying that he can’t take no more of Beatles songs
and being poor?
Salad days in summer haze gave way to falls in
browns and greys,
and folding shirts for a fuck named “Fred,”
Cursing my nose every time it bled, which was a lot!
And even though nostalgia has become my stock
and trade,
I don’t rehash the plans I laid.
I just sing “na na na na na.”
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13. |
Jai Guru
03:04
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Jai guru, though it sure did appear
you had one good truth and the rest was your career.
Just breathe as I dispense a microdot of
consciousness.
There’s so much more I would know.
Jai guru for the herb and the brew.
When you got over yourself, I got over you too.
It felt dirty to me, like cheating on the GRE.
How was it for you?
Jai guru, how’d I do on the test?
I swear the dharma was pure when I smuggled it west,
but they scour the depths, turning love to ego and sex.
Jai guru, when I woke from the dream
I found washing your dress with a rock in a stream.
I loved you there and then, so chemically and
genuine.
Maya, Maya you’re all to me, all my A.D.D.
and my monkey mind can see.
Maya, Maya your light is gone, and you can’t go on
loving everyone.
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14. |
NYSSMA
03:15
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The high school chorus sent you to NYSSMA
On a short bus. The talent scene ’s a kind of
quarantine,
One silhouette in back, ten empty windows and a
world behind the driver
with his payload: one cello and a choir girl.
It must have seemed like a peyote dream to that very
well traveled man.
Maybe I need a little High school refresher
Do you know what side you’re really on? Boy, you
better.
It was a strange conversation between the Honors
and the Raider nations.
The finest parts were the ones regarding the religions
of the world.
It was a strange conversation, but I won’t share its
revelations.
It was six o’clock and already dark, and it never
happened anyway.
One hand did the clapping.
One hand did the counting of time till there was no
one there.
It was a long holiday concert. They had the boys
there
Who play it like a crossword. Two in three are gonna
think you’re sweet
And one will share his Adderall. And in September
when you
move into Bouton, They’ll have a Coltrane kid at the
water fountain.
Will you think of me when the fraud concedes that
he’s never heard of Cannonball?
Maybe I need a little high school depression.
I can’t explain the way you make me feel in your
sweater.
It was a damn fine performance for the parents of
Wappingers.
The finest parts were the ones regarding The
religions of the world.
It was a damn fine performance, but you’re not bound
for Sarah Lawrence.
It’s getting late, and the busses wait, and it never
happened anyway.
One hand did the clapping.
On hand did the counting of time till there was no
one there.
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15. |
||||
Pretty girl blues, it doesn’t matter where your
heart’s at
at the start. When the needle hits the platter,
it’ll be in your shoes.
It’s not an optical illusion. You were yellow,
now you’re red and she can green you if she
chooses
before you fade into your pretty girl blues.
How much more should a stupid boy be prepared to
lose?
Pretty girl blues, it’s in the iris. But it’s the redness
on the whiteness that has us so desirous
for the peril of you.
Premium booze, a valium chaser put the hip check
on the shipwreck that launched a thousand faces
into the icy blue.
It’s a chemical, a cultural, professional
jones for you animal, in other words:
I’ll never change, I’ll never even try
until the day that god or nature
orders you to change your pretty blue eyes.
For your pretty girl blues,
how much more should a stupid boy be prepared to
lose?
Pretty girl blues is sung in Spanish, is sung in English,
but never in German, that’s outlandish.
And ich bin a fool.
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16. |
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17. |
Hannah
02:57
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Hannah knows that her name both ways goes
and those words are like magic bones.
She’ll be the end of her father, the reverend
’cause it’s stronger than sticks and stones.
Ha na na na na na na na na na nah.
Hannah knows that her name has a name of its own.
It’s the power of herself alone. She ’s a God of love.
When her father the minister set her to scripture,
she read right to left with the whites of her eyes.
But her spasms and seizures were nothing but theater
and the devil winks when he cries:
Ha na na na na na na na na na nah.
Hannah knows that her name has a name of its own.
It’s the power of herself alone. She ’s a God of love.
She tries to get nearer the face in the mirror.
She twists her own tongue and spells everything
wrong.
Boy you’ll moan it, you’ll hiss it, intone it in
whispers,
scream in the night, and carve on the wall:
Ha na na na na na na na na na nah.
Hannah knows that her name both ways goes.
And it’s stronger than sticks and stones.
Hannah knows that her name has a name of its own.
It’s the power of herself alone.
Hannah knows.
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18. |
||||
When I was a child, I could speak through a flower
to the other side of the world.
Dragon east, this is dragon west.
Come out, come out with your colors unfurled.
In these Balkanized international skies,
private oceans of the word,
All I ever did, I did it all for the love of a fictional
girl.
All the words that I spoke that I thought were a code
were a code but none that I knew.
The Great Wall and the Taj Mahal: cryptological love
letters too.
All the bridges I built were just sets for a film
and they’re set to be blown up today.
and should you ever decided to be real, you’d best
stay the fuck away.
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19. |
Body Writer
02:33
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When you’re a happy young drunk,
you will marry a moment
should the moment propose
Some permanent ink or a hole and a hoop in your
nose.
Your mom said, “I had me an inkling.
It was a matter of time.
Four generations ago,
we had one in the line.”
They called her a bodywriter
called it the devil dwelling inside her,
finally sent her away and denied her.
They’ll call you a bodywriter.
it’s not your style, it’s your tribe, dear.
You couldn’t stop if you tried dear.
When you are sober and old
and your skin is still singing
Of the blood and the vow
I’ll still say whatever I went anyway, anyhow.
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20. |
i mUSt bE CUtE
02:07
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I must be cute, and so you’re hardly obliged to regard
me
as anything more than a talking dog.
I don’t want to hear it from no sycophant mirror;
I want a forest of fauna to sing my charms.
Yeah, you get to be the astute and while you’re there
Be the brave and the brute.
Some say the Seventh Psalm was written by a raccoon
but I don’t know if it’s true, so this discussion is
moot.
I must be cute. I simply gotta. I’m bereft if I’m not,
and there will be no peace in the melting pot till I get
ice cream,
till you get what you want. Maybe you’d like to be an
astronaut.
And if Zach De La Rocha decries another era of
Barbicide,
I’ll keep the flame within. I’ll keep the prince in the
can,
you know the one from Siam. Now you know what
I am.
|
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21. |
New York Needs Actors
03:19
|
|||
Maybe someday soon in the very near future
we can talk about the future like we used to do.
’cause the time is going and they don’t make it like
they used to
back when they used to make it for you.
I come from New York and New York needs actors.
The circus needs more strange attractions.
And old Europe needs more melody.
I come from New York and New York needs actors.
Keith Richards needs more satisfaction.
And you and I just need more history.
Just needs a coat of paint, just needs a proper
cleaning
in my sober esteem, in my rationale view.
Maybe someday soon in the very near future
we can talk about the future like we used to do.
|
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22. |
My Soul Is Satisfied
03:45
|
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You’d been told, but telling pales
next to making things happen.
Oversold, but still on sale,
and all my baiting and switching won’t make us
happy.
Heard that song with brand new ears
and then the razor of Ockham cut
right through unironic tears
and I knew that I was in a rut
and I had to say to you:
that my soul is satisfied,
and my tears are sanctified
because they’re cried for you,
because I have you.
You’re the lightswitch and the lamp
and the power in the first place.
You’re the letter and the stamp
of the message that brought me face to face
with the only truth I need to know:
that my soul is satisfied,
and my tears are sanctified
because they’re cried with you,
because I have you.
How can I repay
the gifts you’ve given me?
Why would I betray
what every cell tells me every day?
Only took me thirteen years
to write you a love song.
Stupid hang-ups, baseless fears
about god-knows-what for far too long,
but now they’re gone away,
and my soul is satisfied,
and my tears are sanctified
because they’re cried for you,
because I have you.
Oh, my soul is satisfied,
and my tears are sanctified
because I cry for you,
because I love you.
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23. |
||||
It’s easy to get hung up on causality,
earnestly discuss epistemology.
but everything is A-OK. Discard the things you know.
That’s the risk it took to blossom and to grow.
Stephen told us how and when the ship got built,
how the quote unquote shipbuilder had no guilt.
But everything is A-OK. We figured how to row.
That’s the risk it took to blossom and to to grow.
And if you have questions (and you’ll have questions),
just be sure to write them down.
If you must have every Erg accounted for,
they might prove elusive. Try the Jersey shore.
But everything is A-OK. We need a road to hoe.
That’s the risk it took to blossom and to grow.
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The Sweet Clementines New Paltz, New York
New Paltz, NY, eccentric rock band the Sweet Clementines continue to play a melodic, musically adventurous brand of smart guitar pop. With vibraphones and violins. They are: John Burdick, Jason Sarubbi, Marianne Tasick, Matt Senzatimore, and Paul Carroll. ... more
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