1. |
Intro
01:40
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2. |
My Brain
00:17
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My brain is a
dry sponge
dying for
a good drowning.
My tongue
tastes like
pencil shavings
and my fingertips
smell like
firecrackers
in the
summer air.
I want to be
inspired,
more than
anything
else.
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3. |
The Fence
00:24
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"Do you think you can make it all the way over?"
I asked through the chain links
in the fence.
You told me you didn't
know if you could,
you must have seen me
cut my hand on the barbed wire.
We stood there quiet in the winter air. The steam rose slowly from your nose when you exhaled a sigh of sadness.
The blood dripped from my skin to the white face of the snow at my feet.
Standing there in the cold air
I looked at you through the fence,
you seemed so far away.
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4. |
Falling Star
00:24
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The sky
held back
the rain
like a sneeze
that never happened,
we sit
on the sidewalk
trying not
to huff the
gasoline fumes.
With fingers
laced together,
we count
the bricks
on the
run-down
building
across
the parking lot.
Be my
lady forever
and I promise
to try and stay
this clever
as long as I
possibly can.
I hold my breath
then bite
my tongue
and wait
for the next
shooting star.
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5. |
||||
Lying on your left side in a football field, you woke up.
The sun had only beaten you to consciousness by a few minutes and the empty high school bleachers were blanketed in the light blue morning glow.
When you sat up to put on your shoes it set in that he left you to wake up alone with nothing but your tiara to accompany you.
The dew covered your prom dress as you left to find a pay phone to call a cab for a ride home.
Regardless of being the newly appointed prom queen you woke up alone,
and feeling alone never seemed so literal.
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6. |
||||
I really thought you were happy
before I saw the needle
dancing in your arm.
It was hanging phallic
in the bend of your elbow,
I saw it wagging right after it blew its
load into your hot red bloodstream.
I thought you were happy
when you were sober.
I don’t think of you happy now.
Not anymore.
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7. |
Odyssey In Cement
00:18
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Quiet skylines
and gas station receipts.
Silent bylines
and parking-block breathers.
Onward,
over,
away
and
gone.
Caffeine prayers
and deep breaths.
Mix tapes
and bright green wanderlust.
Reasons
to
be
hopeful.
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8. |
||||
Walking home slowly
on a night like this.
My feet stay
close together
stepping on the
blank spaces
between the
double yellow lines.
Heel to toe and back again.
The repetition is
my slouching mantra,
my wish to carry me back
to where you used to live,
when we would
fall asleep together
with the TV on.
Heel to toe and back again.
I want to go back again.
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9. |
||||
A sour taste.
A slow thump.
The blue insides
it make sense again,
Crumpled up and wrinkled like old newspaper.
The train rode characteristically on its track.
So what else can you ask the water
but to choke the lungs?
Skin covered in dried sweat
and concrete bits,
The sidewalks are a terribly lonely place
But at least they aren’t a quiet apartment.
So humor this hoarse throat
and these ink-stained fingertips
Because tonight, my dear,
the drift was caught.
It’s not any different
because it’s not the same.
Here again
the insides became overcoats,
And blue,
how ironic.
The violence of feeling dictates its laws.
Love is like a shotgun, leveling all in its spread.
Open-armed and in its path
this man-shaped target stands,
time and time again
begging for a change of fate.
Wouldn't you know?
I’m damn immortal.
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10. |
||||
The damage was done, slow twisting,
the sight of her smiling through
the hushed soliloquy of the
sick Saturday night
when she sucked him off.
Passed the past it’s easy to fake
the replay of the dashboard light
gilding across her gentle features
covered in sex sweat as something
less haunting when his name
is mentioned.
These apparitions will never
find their way home,
The ghosts will always be earthbound.
So I offer them a seat and open a beer,
It looks like I’m going to be the one who
needs changing.
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11. |
(De)composition
00:34
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The soft touch of his kiss slides slowly over the skin of her neck.
I’m frozen stiff under a pine tree with needles poking into the pale skin
of my back.
The gentle touch of the corpse flies crawling in my nostrils keeps me awake.
Ashes to ashes, bones to earth, soul back to the dirt that God scraped from under his fingernails.
Dancing on the border of infidelity she smiles genuinely.
His touch is soft.
His kiss is warm.
Mine isn’t even cold yet.
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12. |
Spinning
00:25
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The wiring in my ceiling fan is screwed up. Most of the time it doesn't work right.
In the summer I turn a box fan on and point it up. If it's tilted just right the breeze it blows will spin the blades of the busted ceiling fan.
When that happens it looks completely normal, like there's nothing wrong with the wiring and everything is fine.
You are my box fan.
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13. |
Angelscrape
00:27
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The sky rips in half and
the earth screams her name.
My skin shivers as I taste
the poison on
the back of her teeth.
She gasps between stabs
to hear the grinding of my spine,
bone on bone.
The purity of death
and the ecstasy of grief
is what she sheds
with every passing embrace.
I hold my breath
for fear of smelling her on me,
because if I do
this may all be real.
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14. |
Fission
00:42
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Have you ever wondered what your soul looks like?
Or anyone's for that matter?
Is it orange and yellow, a burning color like something exploding?
Is it shaped like an outward expanding mushroom cloud?
Like the sun we built on the ground in Hiroshima?
Does it obliterate every damn thing in its path and turn everything alive into a gray dust?
Does your soul act different from everyone else's?
Or does it flicker and spit like the single hanging light bulb swinging from the ceiling on its extension cord noose?
I guess, in the end, it really doesn't matter what it looks like.
Only how it lives and if it chooses to lay down and sleep.
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15. |
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I remember your voice and
the nights we would stay up
writing verse after verse.
I remember your skin,
switchblade hipbones and
your sly & sleek smile.
I remember your eyes and
how I could never put a
clear description on them.
I remember how easy
your name is to say,
I hope that eventually,
I'll say it again.
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16. |
||||
They were all born with
the same color hair,
and the temperament
of a litter of cats.
It bothered me, to say the least.
They would all laugh in this
high-pitched tone and
circle around,
much like I would imagine
velociraptors hunting.
They were one weird group,
just to make an understatement.
One weird group.
To say the least.
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17. |
||||
Should I take your coat? Welcome.
Make yourself at home, just like all the metaphors.
You know- the silly things we say, like;
“Two birds with one stone” Or “Grab the bull by the horns”
Or “Like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs”
and a ton of other sayings we can’t remember
the origins of or at least where we heard them
to start with anyway.
Whether or not they have animals in them,
we love our metaphors just the same.
So, Can I take your hat too?
It really does match your shoes and coat quite nicely.
What is it made of? Leather?
I hope not-
you might offend the metaphors.
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18. |
Lonely Girls
00:34
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Thick winter coats cover up the lonely girls.
They wear the colors dark yellow and brown
mixed with deep greens
and sometimes a rich purple.
They button their fronts all the way up.
They shiver and shake,
they fool like it’s February
in the first weeks of fall
and they shudder with scarves
tossed over one shoulder.
You see, the lonely girls wear the thick winter coats
to cover up the bodies they don’t much care for.
They dress up in this year’s fashion,
only the latest, only the warmest.
Even if it isn’t cold.
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19. |
Paper Doll
00:40
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Are you always going to
stay the way you are now?
Standing on the line and
being another guy's paper doll.
I'm not offering to
pound the sidewalk by your side;
this isn't me trying to
lace fingers or migrate into
your warm and fuzzy heart-parts.
This is me saying that
you are way passed
one dimensional,
no sheet of shaped and
decorated paper could
ever hold you.
You are still heroic in
black and white photos
but your real life wonder-
inducing splendor is
laid inside you,
passed poetry and 11:11 wishes.
No one can ever find words,
not him and defiantly not me.
But still, I don't mind the view.
Not at all.
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20. |
Miles From Rest
01:11
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I took a walk with Dee Dee Ramone and John Berryman down to the harbor on the New Jersey shore.
It was the middle of the night. I dreamt the long and short of it days ago.
They both did their best to teach me about patients. They suggested I wait for her. I held an unopened pack of cigarettes in my hand the whole way. That life was always there to go back to. The Whiskey and tar-battered lungs are always a half a step away. If need be.
Dead men or not they knew more about life than the people around in the day light, those people claim that I’m callow and closed up.
I quoted Robert Frost in an attempt to seem somber. I explained how I was feeling the nights get longer, how life didn’t feel so full when her voice is a phone line away.
I didn’t know I was figuratively dead until her blue eyes woke me up.
Dee Dee laughed when John joked about how “figuratively dead”
was better than being dead all together. I decided to laugh along;
I enjoy that type of black humor as well.
I spent the rest of the night listening to their stories as we staggered on down the waterline until day broke and I woke up better than the night before.
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21. |
On Crafting Art
00:16
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Smile through insecurity,
Tumbleweed.
Fumble towards greatness
with a smirk and
bits of thunder
stuck between your teeth.
Make it matter,
make it shiver and
most importantly
burn it at both ends.
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22. |
Dwell
00:35
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Inverted I swim, deeper and farther away.
The ocean whispers in a symphonic voice,
and I feel I have found a quiet home here.
I taste the cold salt water on my lips and
feel the frigid rush blanket my scared skin.
I embrace this new journey with open eyes.
Three hundred fathoms dropped I find the
counterstatement nature proposed to our
constant cries and omnipotent questing.
I call out to the expanse that embraces me,
and find its arms already firmly around me.
Here, below the surface, I am finally home.
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23. |
A Lock-Jaw Prayer
00:53
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Do you remember the rain falling all the way down from the sky and slithering across our scalps?
Do you remember "waking up" under that street light like "waking up" was something we had just figured out?
I know I'm not a great poet, but I'm a good man who has been seeing his way to wishing pop up like the daisies he’s not ready to push.
I want to lock us up alone and someplace quiet. Away from dry skies and hot daylight. Someplace distant where we can duct-tape our hearts in cigar boxes and give statistics the finger, because who the hell cares?
We’ve got these scalps that love the slither of rain drops, we’ve got these hands that need holding to keep from shaking and these eyes that need "waking up" like "waking up" is brand new and ripe in the wrapper.
I'm not ready for the daisies yet and maybe I can learn to be a better poet, but for now I’m just praying, in a lock-jawed rabies-type way for the street light and waiting for the sky to fill.
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24. |
Outro
00:37
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Scott Jensen Anderson, South Carolina
I write a bit and sometimes record them into spoken word.
Read more of my writing at: scottjensen.wordpress.com
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