1. |
Pull Me Open
04:46
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Being beaten on the spokes
on the wheel of the day,
there is no place for me to rest -
I am bruised with my limbs outstretched.
With a stone aglow to hold
in the trench of the day,
a heart – a flutter in your breast –
my mind, my person overstretched.
I can’t comfort anybody,
nobody is going to want me,
nobody to hold me down
or pull me open.
What’s left unspoken?
When you can see me
it’s too much to feel me.
It’s all receding -
why won’t you leave me?
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2. |
The Voice (for Bell)
06:16
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Let me be lost in your voice.
Now, you are constant,
I cycle back to you
all through these past years.
Let me be lost in your voice.
Now, I am selfish,
I swear I want to learn
to comfort others’ tears.
Let me be lost in your voice –
grin from ear to ear,
put the smallest words here,
hold me – don’t disappear…
Let me be lost in your voice:
everything stop –
I will listen, you will talk,
please don’t get far from me…
Let me be lost in your voice,
to float in the space
where I am treasured
and no fault is found with me.
Let me be lost in your voice!
Just to help you smile,
consign to forgetting
how you’ve hurt – you are free.
Let’s pretend I have a choice:
I’d give anything
to be anywhere else
but my body and my thoughts.
Let’s pretend I have a choice -
take me somewhere fun:
I wanna be treated nice,
not feel like such a putz…
Let’s pretend I have a choice.
Please don’t let me go,
I don’t want to have control:
I want to be enveloped.
Let’s pretend I have a choice,
and I will choose you:
we are perfect and blue
falling on a comet.
Let’s pretend I have a choice,
and I will choose you:
I’m waiting for you -
I will wait, I promise.
Let me be lost in your voice…
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3. |
||||
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Clocktower sentry
in Lambeth night,
onwards and upwards -
diagrammed light.
Golden century,
social satellite –
forwards, not backwards –
militant, bright.
Draw up the line of march.
Make yourself over
by what you know.
Mental nigredo,
quantified gold.
When you’re down in it,
hold to what you know
as you go deeper
into the cold.
Draw up the line of march.
Calendar student,
adjust your specs -
check this manuscript,
make it correct.
Kronos and Hermes
are both well pleased
with daughter Apollo’s
technical keys.
Draw up the line of march.
I heard you screaming,
wished I could help you.
I’ve been there before,
and I might tell you:
it’s too much to make
your body a law,
or words of the Lord
from a dead deer’s jaw.
Draw up the line of march.
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4. |
The Nest (for Delphi)
06:20
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Couldn’t let you hold me, so
I went out to be seen –
and now I remember
the spiral towards the door:
we have flung this thing wide open.
If I could let it be so that,
at level, I could see
the hearth and its embers,
the light at your door –
it’s still to you I want to open.
You feel and smell like home –
I’ll always need your warmth:
now that it’s been intimated,
please let me stay inside…
-
And when I spiral home,
and I’m waiting by the door –
I need to know that, if things changed,
you’ll still hold me inside.
Your Torah from Delphi,
Mishnah from Eleusis –
you don’t need my shiur.
You’ve been grown, babe, I know:
so I won’t give you the business…
I worry that when I praise you
it’s frozen, I have to
move to keep us in motion, it
makes me wonder: is there something
deeper wrong with my heart?
But – …
You feel and smell like home –
I’ll always need your warmth:
now that it’s been intimated,
please let me stay inside…
-
And when I spiral home,
and I’m waiting by the door –
I need to know that, if things changed,
you’ll still hold me inside.
But when I hold you, and
it’s at the level of the eye,
the recognition’s mutual –
the work can’t kill either of us:
all the love spiral back to us.
Girl, what you do is warm.
I free you, while I steady you,
and you give me the nicest blues.
You are human, and you are here,
and you set me right in my heart.
Thank you
for giving me
a home
to nest in.
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5. |
2009 in the sunshine.
03:00
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Now try to hold on to both sides,
it’d do you good to head inside.
Now try to get to doing fine,
don’t let the good inside you die –
you have a lighted heart inside.
I thought I had the living God
to steady my step and guard me from wrong.
The love I thought was a living thing
by start of winter could only bring
its thorns and briars to me …
I swear this thing won’t let me sleep.
You’re running empty I can tell,
you’re only seeing parallels.
You couldn’t tell me what you see,
worried that it won’t let you be –
worried it strengthens as you speak.
Please don’t let this thing become me.
I thought I had the living God
to steady my step and guard me from wrong.
The love I thought was a living thing
by start of winter could only bring
its thorns and briars to me –
This garden died because of me.
Two thousand and nine.
Two thousand and nine.
Two thousand and nine
in the sunshine.
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6. |
J'espere
03:56
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She said "you talk like Carol".
Girl, I'm stuck in an airport
and you don't know what that's like.
She's afraid of flying, but
she wished she would anyway.
And just to know the feeling
of waiting for surrender
surreptitiously, baby...
I know it's time.
I haven't flown yet, but I'm
flying all the time, always
up in the air entangled
in goodbyes, following lines
of flight. Know I'm not insane:
I'm just lit up different,
and you don't have to get it.
I'll pace until i take off, then...
I know it’s time.
A bientot, j’espere.
We all get used to dreams
that used to please.
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7. |
The Whirlwind
05:04
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I want to hold fast in
the whirlwind around you.
Although I am so small,
know it would astound you
the depths I have gone down.
Can’t put my arms ‘round you,
but while I’m gone
remember when
I first found you -
I hope I’m good for you.
The light I was given
given over to you -
hold to me when I’m gone,
know that I want you to
keep me like a lamplight,
as we pass through this night
when I’m not there.
I know I’m dear
to you, to you -
I hope I’m good for you.
I hope I’m good for you.
Know I’ve done good by you,
and when you need me to
I will return to you.
Hold to me tighter than
you’ve ever needed to.
I know it hurts you, too,
when all the good I do
won’t root inside of you.
I know you need it, too.
Where do I go?
Down to Goshen
for this hunger
for the winter.
I will do right by you
and yours,
and that’s a promise.
The light that you showed me is
a fire now between us.
The light you drew from me makes
the distance beneath us
not so impossible
to travel on my own,
and when I go
please remember
I’m coming back
with love and gifts.
I will do right by you:
by LIFE, I swear it.
I will do right by you,
and I will try for you.
I will do right by you,
and by LIFE I swear it.
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8. |
Moths (for Clarence)
04:11
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Moths hate the light, for them the glow is pain,
but as the sun goes down they flutter to the lanterns all over again.
And I have known a plethora of people in the botanic gardens
among the foreign flowers, there are strange powers exercised on me.
Some people are strong and warm and tall
and the world seemed so cold in the fall,
walking around talking about things of no importance.
To be a thread of molten glass by the way of the courthouse platz -
and the conversations twisted there.
Moths hate the light, for them the glow is pain,
and the shining stars and the highway cars scream like moths in heat.
Have you ever wanted to dance the days as they pass by?
Have you ever wanted to move close and caress
with a stream of words, as they pass you by?
I don't really want to die, I only want to die in your eyes.
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9. |
Forms (for Micha)
03:50
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won’t go anywhere,
I will lay down here and breathe.
Forms I tried on don’t suit you to see -
it doesn’t matter to me.
And you want me set you there:
we will drop our fear and be
forms – beautiful, not
straining to breathe,
or thinking too much of me.
It doesn’t matter to me.
And I would shape the earth out
of what you are from far: forms -
waterways, and caves, and things,
for everything that breathes.
It doesn’t matter to me.
Beholding the form of the queen,
I am beholding the form of the queen,
and you are holding that shape -
it’s free.
It’s just a form I tried for Micha.
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10. |
||||
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Face against the snow, Efraim shows
a tentative, and relieved, smile -
it will go away in a while.
It’s just the sun, Efraim,
it’s only the sky – I’m not there.
What can I do for you, Efraim?
And what do I do, Yehudah?
When your good is a morning cloud,
or like dew rising early – gone.
Your good is gone: leave me alone.
The ill thing, nursing its mood swings,
rings the numbers it sees in town,
finding a place to level out.
It’s just a room, Efraim,
it’s just a flat – can’t go home yet.
And who am I to you, Efraim?
And what’s it to you, Yehudah?
When you just won’t be comforted -
you haven’t let me comfort yet!
You’re on your own: leave me alone.
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11. |
The Cradle (for Gwen)
06:05
|
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|
I love you more than the world can contain in its weary and ramshackle head.
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VICE LOAD Blue Earth, Minnesota
this was in the garden before the pirates came in
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