1. |
Passover
04:13
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I carry the coldness within me always.
I give it warm-blooded ones to freeze.
And all these clothes I’m wearing
Have got me bending at the knees.
But, I wouldn’t dare take one thread off
For I’d shiver apart.
But, please don’t leave
Cause I’ll feel left behind.
And if you go, you’ll be gone.
Every chunk of me has shattered on the floor,
And I can’t coax any of them to pick all the others up.
Hate myself a little more than before.
Of course, I tried my best to keep the Lord
Away from you that day, but he came
In the night anyway and ignored
The marks I’d left above your door…
Stalked in, and stole your first born.
Forgive myself for opening your eyes.
Forgive myself for being alive.
Forgive myself for all the times I tried to hold
Onto the rotting parts of what we were.
So, lay them down now to enrich the earth.
And many years from now, that hurt
Will have healed itself up right out of that dirt
And we can both laugh and sing
In the bloom of our tiny tomb.
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2. |
Carnival
02:49
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I went with the Canadians
The carnival reeked of fries.
We all ate acid. Wanted surprises,
The wood-knot eyed science in your sighs…
Just like life, I’m disappearing before your eyes.
On the breeze, moonbeams seemed
To weave and whisper with the leaves…
And although we could barely speak,
I saw life’s grass stains in your knees.
Judas still breathes, and our hearts bleed,
But Jesus is done washing all our feet.
Lenora, lay back down…
This feeling you’re speaking about.
It will not last long.
I know that I scared you; I told you too much too soon.
But nothing’s real, really…
On my bed, in her head–
Thoughts like bullet-pez, they bled
Candied red, and then she said,
“If you got any of that human life there left…
Keep it hid, keep it hid…they don’t make it like they did.”
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3. |
Once Under a Time
02:50
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I would’ve liked to love you,
But this is something we just clung to,
A safe place to tree scrape
Our itchy, mending hearts.
My gaze fell out of her window,
A dog, its owner’s arms akimbo,
She said “You planned this!”
“Yeah, that’s it, Pin the tale where you prefer¬–”
And your world will swiftly oblige,
Get you something quick to anesthetize
The once upon and under a time,
You were prey and predator both.
Water rimmed round her eyes,
Reached her hand all Jay Gatsby-like¬
For her cellular in the console’s light.
To the electricity of her touch,
That glass was sensitive like I never, ever was.
The door clicked low, twitched the silence that had awoken,
I felt old gravity groan, drag me by my marrow.
Like a kid, neck crooked, squinted the starlight into spoking,
The street seethed a wet gold, her engine’s ghost in my throat.
Ain’t there no sense at all in life?
The eminent self, its precious fights.
The haggling starts as it unwinds:
“If you play dead, darling, I’ll play nice.”
Still, tangled up in this skin,
It’s easy to feel broken,
Am I just a monkey, a junkie,
In the fire, another coal?
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4. |
Owed
02:37
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Any time you go,
Feel the light, it pulls
All the darkness here, and shit.
Drown courageously, make the pain feel free
And see the world through your slits…
Lay back, drowning down the alleyways.
Be that as it may and it may
Be that nothing can ameliorate
The fact that nothing can stay and stay…
In the morning, Dad
Hears the toothless babe
Wailing like it’s owed.
Drown courageously, make the pain feel free
And see the world through your slits…
Lay back, drowning down the alleyways.
Be that as it may, and it may
Be that nothing can ameliorate
The fact that nothing can stay and stay…
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5. |
Algorithmic
04:16
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“Hey, do you think that,”
He said his head so inclined,
“Jesus and the Antichrist cancelled out?
Like they were brothers, or cousins, or somehow shared a manger;
Or were compelled by market forces to downsize and combine—“
Her laughter lilted. Her bangs swept back as she lay supine…
“You tie off heaven with hell, sounds to me something like life…
Punish and save us both.”
Their mirth, it slouched out, its residue clung to the ceiling.
Their eyes swollen back and wide with tears neither was willing to find.
“Come on, let’s go out,” he said his head now resigned
To the business of forgetting occupying the night
“Hun, I feel sterile. Mentally Inoculated.
Like I never was taught to ask, but still received my whole goddamned life.
Can’t we just be here? Is love nothing more than a performance?
I think I missed out on something in school always coming in so high
Like critical feeling skills¬—“
Hallelujah. Algorithmic praise be God. Hallelujah. My data’s big and healthy.
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6. |
Deli Donald
04:08
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Hey, Mr. Norquist, I really dig this plan
Let me join up, I wanna be a real man¬¬—
And drown baby-government in a bathtub
It looks so pure when it’s dead and wet.
Mr. Norquist, can I trim your beard please?
I’ll tie liberal hippies to their trees,
Slice ‘em in half with the lumber,
Make alternate fuels out of what they bleed.
I took my heart downtown to Deli Donald
Made a nice big hoagie out of my muscle pump meat.
I’ll scarf that down and shit me out tomorrow,
Flush all feeling down, and leave up the seat¬—
Just to piss the ladies off.
Mommy, Mommy, I wanna be a capitalist God!
My logos like beauty marks on babies:
Pocked on pyramids and stars.
Oh, praise be to the Dow Jones on the most high!
And peace to his equal people:
May they have plenty of green paper to buy new lives!
I took my heart downtown to Deli Donald
Made a nice big hoagie out of my muscle pump meat.
I’ll scarf that down and shit me out tomorrow,
Flush all feeling down, and leave up the seat¬—
Just to piss the ladies off.
In my newest version of the apocalypse,
My most favorite regime-change won’t stick
And I can’t get the people to split
Over which bullshit is which
And they’re throwing a fit
“Father in Heaven, would you please help me?
I need a little bit of a lot of money!
And once I’m living more comfortably…
I’ll be able to serve you most efficiently!
And I promise I’ll be a good boy
And make you so proud of your little toy…
Oh yes, I know, that’s all I ever will be!”
“Oh, son you know, I don’t appreciate your whining.
You should just be grateful I made you in my divine image.
And about the cash—well, I swear I would, but I’m fuckin’ strapped
From all the loans I took out while making the Goddamned universe”
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7. |
Blessed are the Jerks
05:00
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Moon in rear-view, gored sun ahead:
This busted pleat
Of day spewed light, sating some lust.
Swallowed whole, numb and droll,
She imagined each pupil trussed shut.
Stitching up the highway, untying her hopes,
Laughing like some animal was licking her throat.
Abe just kept repeating, “El always left a note…”
Guess it’s like they say, “You know someone till you don’t.”
Sometimes you’re thrown in, the time’s like water up my nose…
Dead sun in wake, slow rises the
Scar tissue moon,
Aching light back that bleeds like a bruise.
The oceans pulled her tear tubes full:
Relieved her of the burden to choose.
Clawing at the sand, trying to bury her hope,
She let the dying animal sing with her throat.
Now Abe just says crap like “My ass! The last shall be first…
Glory be to me. Blessed be the jerks.”
You’re slanted, pinned down, the time’s water poured into my lungs.
Dear Lord, deliver those who’ve cobbled up lives from lies in TV Shows
Oh, in the land of plenty…life’s become so user friendly.
Still, I can’t get my feelings straight, at least not enough for the screens to mediate.
I hear soon, though, they’ll read your face shapes.
Let you know exactly when your heart breaks!
Am I convenient? Do you really mean it?
My flesh-specs match up with your prefs!
Would you be mine? You’re so streamlined,
I hardly even noticed when you left.
But, if you feel thrown away,
Just remember babe, this is how we planned it.
Cause it’s empowering,
To be the thing you bring
To the auction blocks for selling.
Katie, bar the door, there’s the corporate horde to data mine our children.
Meanwhile, a world away, hungry people pray for food to keep them living.
Abe spent a good year just untying his rope.
His thoughts judge, jury, hangman, and the noose at his throat.
“Used to try to choke life into something idiot-proof
Now it seems to me something only idiots do.”
…if time’s water, then, well, float.
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8. |
Love be
03:46
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Love be in my eyes and in my seeing
Love be in my blood and in my being
Love be in my tears and in my weeping
Love be in my sowing and in my reaping
And you would wait up all them hours,
Chasing hits in stems and flowers.
Your hands, they’d shake.
And for whose sake…?
Would the sunlight soak in sour?
And from the drapes you’d squint and cower…
“Oh, I feel fake. For Christ’s sake.”
Love be in my hands and in my making,
Love be in my sleep and in my waking,
Love be in my gut and in my knowing.
Love be in my comings and in my goings.
And even now the memory lingers.
Your tears would melt into her fingers.
And Mom would say, “Everything will be okay.”
But, with your ribs split, riven asunder.
The pain shorn you, held you under.
I’m wide awake. Skinned alive by time and space.
Love be in my back and in my bearing
Love be in my heart and all I’m sharing.
Love be in my lungs and in my sighing.
Love be in my bones and in my dying.
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9. |
Waziristan
03:53
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Shroud the world in legalese:
The wails and gnashing teeth¬–
Are Chronic Bruxism and Advanced Treble Sighing,
They offend the air, and propagate,
And thus, represent a threat
Of such imminence as to warrant
Reapers in rows to cull the harvest of chaos I’ve sown…
Bleached field of bones, skeleton cities, bombed out walls lined with crow.
Time it was, the fast had broke, and Baba’s house was lit
With tea and love; and then like lightning-
Missiles struck, but mercifully, unconsciousness set in.
Sweet little dream ‘til Hellfire finds you
I awoke, legless in Malala’s tears, my pores puking
Tinnitus so clear…
Long ago, it must have been nice to feel fear, voltaic blood made the pulse
pound so dear.
But now, I hurt just like a grown man.
And I hate just like a grown man, too…
It’s really challenging¬–the hows, and wheres,
and whens, and well, why nots?
Of who we kill, and the life death affords us.
It’s a real mean strain,
The conscience will
underestimate the threat.
I hope AI will soon decide for us.
But please still plead with your Gods, and regale us with Hegelian barks.
Sleep, to dream of undiscovered country that we can free up.
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10. |
Salve Regina
02:21
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Salve Regina
Do the seraphim sin? Do they laugh at me when
I wail in my discouragement from their
Vantage in the fourth inter-dimension?
See me at once superposed, perpetually exposed in
A closed-circuit yang…
In sleep, bliss that loves to forget
Electrically drips on our reptilian brains
Until in our own fried rapture, teeth to toes,
Swings low, the sweet chariot of Progress,
I’m hooked to carry her home
Hooked to carry me home
Come and carry me home
Come and harry me home…
Come and carry me…
Salve Regina
All my worshiping’s been feminine skin,
Holes to hide a feeling in..
And I’m worn down, in my account of you, the eye beholds itself…
Under the dust of that lust, no clue what I was for
Like a lot of things…
In sleep, bliss that loves to forget
Electrically drips on our reptilian brains
Until in our own fried rapture, teeth to toes,
Swings low, the sweet chariot of Progress,
I’m hooked to carry her home
Hooked to carry me home
Come and carry me home
Come and harry me home
Come and carry me home
Come and carry me home
Come and carry me…
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11. |
Hansel & Gretel
04:02
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Hansel, I’m scared.
Your skin falls off dead behind you,
A trail for those whom you smell sweet to,
Who’d kill you, consume and convert your tissues.
Gretel, calm down.
There’s meat in our heads that thinks, and thus,
We can make maps with the night’s glowey stuff
And find our way back to the grown-ups that abandoned us.
Gretel, I’m scared.
I don’t know how long I can fool her
With a spit-warmed bone as my finger.
Each day her moon-eyes linger longer, longingly.
Hansel, calm down.
I’ve pushed that bitch into the furnace,
Sublimating my wish to kill mother
For getting us babies into this shit in the first place.
Swallow, princess! Your witch’s heart gets undressed.
Meat night! And incest. Scatter dirt over coffins.
But Dad would offer up
His tired, his poor, his suffering
To those in limbo muttering,
God, how was I not enough?
You spit your spirit, sputtering
In flesh engines so cunning in
All vanities of moldering dust…
So ‘scuse me for my limiting
Fear-soaked thoughts and violence.
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PAT PHELAN New Jersey
uneasy listening
I write songs in my spare time. Thanks for listening.
Rat King drawing by C.TenEyck, 2018
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