1. |
The Ladder Slipped
07:27
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Brother, would you talk me down?
I’m afraid that if I stop this truck
I will be tempted to reach in between
the seats and feel the heft
of my “just-in-case.”
Slick earth and the ladder slipped
and I landed twenty feet below,
a broken back, bruised ribs
and a pool of eggshell white.
So much for pushing brushes.
Came out of the hospital so deep in the hole
they were suggesting I climb on my friends—
prescribed enough “ocean” to drown a horse,
my God.
Brother, I am so afraid
but not for myself no more.
If I can’t provide, I’m worth more
dead than alive, no man am I.
No man am I.
Woke up this morning when the screen door slammed.
Guess the kid was heading off to school.
I started east as soon as I found a box of slugs
behind some paint cans.
I am a descendent of the great William Clark,
if only somebody gave half a crap.
“You’ve had your turn!” is all I hear.
Brother, when was that?
There’s a place my father used to go
to shoot off some rounds and howl
as he got drunk off his ass
and shattered all the glass
in a graveyard of old television sets.
I’m losing reception, man.
I'm going to lose you.
I’m going.
I’m going.
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2. |
Division Blues
02:21
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The streets are deserted.
The night is cold and wet.
The light turns uselessly to red,
another empty threat.
I’m bringing back your old raincoat:
I haven’t used it yet.
I don’t want any more questions—
I told you I’m decided.
Every answer you’ve ever needed from me
I’ve already provided.
You step out the door, troops in a line,
come back home at night, divided.
I was wrong,
got little else to report.
I exhausted all my options,
used up my last resort.
I tried my best, I stuck my neck out:
I fell short.
Well, there’s a vice grip on my temples.
There’s a beam in my eye.
The whole goddamn town smells like burning rubber.
There’s something whining in the sky.
I don’t care if you’ve got company—
I’m coming by.
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3. |
Stuck Inside of Elvis
04:45
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I woke up to the rain
earlier than I wanted to
and felt a kind of click
that seemed to set the world askew.
You know that kind of click:
you meet your own impersonator,
become a spectator
captivated by the cold precision
of your own dead-end ways.
And no one suspects a thing
—your man does such a bang-up job—
you’re stuck inside of Elvis,
feeling like a tone-deaf slob
and clinging to the mic—
your spiritualism,
your own anachronism—
to keep yourself from falling down.
And here she comes again
like a dozen rotting roses;
sadness swarms the room
and gives the lie to all your poses
and you just can’t tell
connection from reaction,
repulsion from attraction
in the warm, dark circus of her face.
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4. |
Sage's Song
00:48
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I found a little tune behind a cloud.
It’s short and it’s sweet. It’s not very loud.
Sing along with me—
no need for crying, now!
Look up and see:
half moon.
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5. |
Dürer’s Rhinoceros
12:54
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Strange that this place doesn’t spook me out,
but it doesn’t:
working the night shift locked away
under government ground,
roaming the stacks in a library of numbers,
feeding and changing all the big
number crunchers:
fear would be a signal
coming over the horizon.
Sometimes I wander to the heart of the “black forest”
where a sage sits in silicon
with its head in an eastern desert.
You know you can’t beat a steam drill
with a single iron spike,
so you lay down your tools and wait.
And the clouds are blowing by
—because I can feel them blowing by—
If I could read, I would read them blowing by.
I know there is a language for the alphabet of weather.
I know that there are curves behind the numbers that I enter,
but you don’t get the vision of a raptor in the desert
without the hunger of a raptor.
There was a kid who worked here
who used to walk out in the hallways
and look at the postings on the doors:
bits of articles, cartoons and epigrams.
Dürer’s rhinoceros kept him coming back.
He said “I’ll never know how he could capture
such a likeness without ever laying eyes on one.”
I dreamed of a legless buffalo
as I nodded off for a moment
a couple of hours before the dawn;
I felt a piercing gaze lift me from my chair,
I felt the tail wag the dog.
Wait a minute now:
What resolution will turn a map to territory,
will melt spirit from the stones?
And the clouds are blowing by
—because I can feel them blowing by—
If I could count I would count them blowing by.
There is no end to it.
My hands are busy, busy
ticking off seconds, seconds.
At dawn, when I roll down the mountain,
I don’t watch the road, I only look to the plains
where the sun appears at the head of a fleet of balloons
and I laugh, because it burns like a myth,
it howls like a bomb in the pit of my stomach
and I don’t know what’s coming.
Take this hammer, bring it to my captain,
tell him I’m gone.
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6. |
||||
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This is just what it seems:
anesthesia, no one screams.
No more straining after gold.
No more struggling to hold.
This is just what it seems.
See the land slowly change:
spread of alkali on the range;
deeper canyons, weaker streams,
wilder-eyed beliefs, thinner dreams.
This is just what it seems.
Horizon highway, Flying J
howling through the town night and day.
For every feeling finds a word,
there’s an ocean won’t be heard.
This is just what it seems.
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7. |
How Are We Doing...
13:15
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High tide at last in this world
and you can hear the iron eaters:
it’s a little tapping sound in the wires
but it keeps you awake.
High tide at last in this world:
the speechless brutes come out of hiding
and go bellowing at noon on the hardpan
like a warning system test.
The moment I perceived that I was living in record,
I saw the entire world as living in record.
There’s a great clock hidden in these hills
somewhere north of Ely where the air is still.
It’s a funny sort of love
through which we stream to touch
with our mystery tools,
itching for memory.
So, a black bear ambled down from the highlands
at the end of another trading day,
cornered me on the Embarcadero
and edged me slowly back into the bay,
and from the corner of my eye I glimpsed a figure
on a promontory high above the bustle.
I called out to him and saw that he was watching
but he didn’t move a goddamn muscle.
God loves you if you leave him out of it
and exercise the faculties he gave you,
and wield them like a broom
to sweep him from the room:
Order soothes, but it’s the paradox will save you.
I felt a chilly draft come down the attic stairs
and I called that movement breath:
our Golem, if you need to name it,
our brawn, if we only claim it.
Add one letter, and it’s Truth in place of Death.
World, world, world, world, world, world,
born full-grown into a velvet zero, 1968,
It’s growing late.
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8. |
...And Who Will Tell Us?
08:21
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I woke up to a perigean spring.
The waves were washing right up Market Street
and bunching at the ankles of the drunken wrecks
and the beautiful elites,
and everyone in town was walking backwards
holding mirrors up in front of their faces,
retreating into the advancing landscape
of this world and other virtual spaces.
(Ooowee! They’re after me!
My brain stem is after them!)
We’re wandering in a jungle
of our own design.
We’re limping in a circle,
believing it’s a line.
I am a man of numbers:
(There’s something flying over:)
my brain is on my sleeve,
(the sun gives us a wink.)
but there are some hard limits
(The shadow on the landscape)
to what this old hammer could achieve.
(moves faster than you’d think.)
In earliest memory,
riding on an elephant:
feel those big, bony shoulders cranking sad and slow,
and there are way too many balloons
and too many faces, all festering,
fucking festering with joy.
All those footprints,
all those footprints in the mud!
Daddy, give me your hand to hold,
I think I’m growing old.
Mama, feather-dust my room,
I’ll be coming home soon.
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9. |
Snowman on a Ledge
03:30
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Twenty stories in the air,
Broadway far below,
a figure is standing,
his head full of snow.
Rainy weather hit him hard,
tightened up his belt,
but I don’t think he’ll do it.
More likely, he’ll melt.
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Jack O' The Clock Oakland, California
JACK O' THE CLOCK "presents a fine lesson on what it means to write songs that are at once approachable and human while simultaneously being incredibly profound in terms of timbre, depth of emotion, and harmonic complexity," Progulator.
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