Nothing Stands Still

What Remains

2008-10-29T18:43:00.001-07:00

what remains (album songbook)

contents

daybreak
love
i’ve been slipping
pulse
dirt
back outside
wasting time
echo chamber
atlas
how easy
what remains

daybreak
C G F C
the night that we heard he was gone we cried
our sadness was a thousand knives in the sky
piercing through the silence praying for theses dream to pass
we heard angels dance in the light that his shadows cast

F G C
we’ve got to do so much better than what was done before
or this dream just won’t have a future anymore

hey, dylan, old man, i wrote you a song
about a funny old world that keeps pushing on
a dream born from the stormy embers of yesterday’s cause
and woken up in the whispers of tomorrow’s dawn
yeah, we sure could use a voice that clear and strong
and i guess we’ll have to just hold on

until love breaks through the barricades
and we learn how to shake the dark
with songs of hope we open the doors
there’s nothing but our voices anymore

but we’ve got to do so much better than what was done before
or this dream just won’t have a future anymore

love

a d a...
i feel hope falling from my hands
like water overs grains of sand
we’re floating high above the land
packed inside a metal cage in the sky (worst of all, we don’t know why)
we lean out to gaze through the glass
to catch a glimpse of this world as we pass
flying above like angels carrying messages of love for everyone (love for everyone)
and it’s because we’re all trapped in this cage
with eyes built only for shade
that when we see the light it burns and blinds our fragile eyes (and hurts us deep inside)
and maybe when we wake from this life
like a dream that passes before our eyes
perhaps that when we catch a glimpse
of that other place we once called love (where we once belonged)

i’ve been slipping

(capo on 6th, Em-D-C-G)
It took a million years to drain this ocean dry
For each grain of sand, a star is glowing in the eastern sky
I had no dreams as we slept deep in the desert (that night)
Our bodies drawn close together just to keep the heat inside
And I had no thoughts as the summer breeze blew through
your hair and I finally knew where everywhere had been hiding
And all these years were suddenly a thousand tears
Which couldn’t fill a well deep enough to drown the truth

i’ve been slipping through black holes out of the light
because i’ve had your image stuck upon a hinge in my mind
so i’ve been falling through your whirlpool for some time
and i’d like to know where we’re going and whether this is all there is to find

I looked to the stars as we flowed through the summer
Like a leaky old boat upon a tempestuous sea
I had no control as we rolled down the hilltop towards rivers that
ran onward to the sea just like me she smiled
like an innocent child and always was good to me
she was something special you see

pulse

Am-D
a shot rings out shatters the silence of the morning quiet
a sleeping songbird jolts and sails confused into the sky, flies way up high
sarah smokes a cigarette and stares out across the bay
she’s turning towards the light she feels somewhere out in space
calling her name

she knows the truth, there’s no more left to say
she had nothing left to lose, she knows it’s not gonna be ok
she knows the truth, she found out the difficult way
she’s got nothing to prove, and there’s nothing left to say

she knows they’re gone, she knows what happened and that they’ve passed away
now she can’t bring herself outside to show the sun her face
(she stays awake, all through the night, just thinking to herself
she knows it’s not alright, she’s breaking down, and something’s got to give)

now i’ve written down that song that she used to for me
a thousand years ago it seems, her song and a long-forgotten dream
of sleeping in peace with her next to me
of dreaming in peace

dirt
Bm-G-D-A (throughout)
words are corpses, images are lies
this world is built on mud, it’s only a matter of time
before everything will burst and break and rust
decay is a process you can trust (pause)
so you’re stuck inside this dense river of organs
while this world is flowing through your skin
when everything explodes and flies away again
from that cave of shadows you’re living in today (pause)
my friend, were you really hoping that an answer
would just leap right out of the sky
and now you’re wishing that the truth
was more beautiful than the lie (pause -- speed up chords)
but there’s no up or down or right and wrong
no true or false, everything belongs
no in and out, it’s all one song
it all depends on what you were all along (pause)
reality’s invention, suddenly it’s all clear to me
what’s left of us but a nightmare in memory
this terrifying mystery is so much simpler than our minds can conceive
what’s destiny but heaven in memory (pause -- chorus speed)
there’s no up or down or right and wrong
no true or false, everything belongs
there’s no black or white or love and hate
only dangerous feelings that we can’t escape
it all depends on you and how you make your way (pause -- solo -- quiet)
words are corpses, images are lies
and this world is built on mud, it’s only a matter of time (fin)
Back Outside

A rosy day like this should not be wasted on a book to read
or even some movie to see, or on your internet’s t.v.

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where anyone is everyone again

Let’s turn off all of our machines, try out some human reasoning
Give up our social anxieties, we’ll dance until the sunrise rings

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where everyone is anyone again

Between us there’s no proximities only pure and flowing intensities
A day like this should be shared with those so close nothing can intervene

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where anyone is anyone again

You are the world when you feel joy burst
Within your hearts, we are never apart

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where everyone is everyone again

wasting time

(blues in E)
this world can’t satisfy me so i’m just sitting here wasting my time
this world can’t satisfy me so i’m on my porch wasting my life
wasting time, just like the world got nothing to offer a man like me here
so i’m stuck here with a headful of cacophony, don’t mind me
stuck on my porch watching the rain come down in sheets
maybe if we’re lucky it will wash these city streets clean
i’ve just been thinking about whether any of this is real
i’ve just been thinking about the way the rain furrows the fields
and how the far the river runs and how many ways i’m returning to you dear

echo chamber

i don’t really believe a single word i’m saying to you (we’re creating the truth)
every syllable is crafted to ensure the message gets through (it gets through to you)
so memorize the lies, repeat them often enough and they become the truth (at least the truth for you)
if you’re having difficulty, please adjust your point of view (just invent the truth)

it’s so hard to think all by myself
i need some help, i need someone else
there must be something besides this echo chamber hell
there must be someone awake besides myself
it’s so hard to think all by ourselves
we need someone else, i think we need some help

is it too late to say we’re being lied to, we’re being led away, we’re going astray
i don’t really believe any of the things i’m putting into your brain, but it’s all the same
they could just as well be true, we’re relying on you to make it real, to make it into the truth
is it too late to say, we’re being lied to, we’re all being deceived, but all too soon we’ll see

atlas

let it sink
let it leak out through your hands
and flow into the desert sands and up to the light
let it rise, let it build up inside until your love bursts a hole through the sky

you know i wonder where she goes
only her stellar atlas knows
i wish i knew the secret of her
i wish i knew the secret of her heart

let it flow, let its resonance echo throughout the world you know and back to the source
let it fly, let it run through you like rain rolling over hills and plains and back to the sky

how easy
(capo 2nd fret)
D A
i keep thinking about you
Bm Em
how easy it is to
G D A D(etc.)
open my heart to you

i just wanted to tell
you how much i love
you and how good you’ve been to me
i just wanted to say
how much i appreciate
you and that i’m grateful you’ve been there for me
i keep thinking about us
whether i can trust
this world we create when we’re together
i want so bad to believe
in something i can see
in something i can hold
i’m just thinking about you
how much i need you
how lucky i am that you say you love me

what remains

(G, fingerpick)

i’m singing glory, glory with the stars in the sky
i’m singing glory, glory to the most high
and i’m singing lord, lord won’t you lift me up from the ground
i’ve been here so long i’m thinking i might be found
so what remains of you? so what remains of me?
so what remains of us? so what remains of being
here with you, and here with me, here with us, here in being
perhaps i once had broken free from those ghastly chains of death
suddenly catastrophe and there’s nothing to do but rummage through whatever’s left
when you’re all alone upon that precipice, falling through the spinning pages of history
remember we are one breath and nothing else remains
so what remains of you? so what remains of me?
so what remains of us? so what remains of being
here with you, and here with me, here with us, here in being
i’m singing glory, glory with the stars in the sky
i’m singing glory, glory to the most high
the weight and weightlessness of your pure light
illuminates and locates me like a flame in the night
so what remains of you? so what remains of me?
so what remains of us? so what remains of being
here with you, and here with me, here with us, here in being

Memory of the Event

2008-06-28T00:59:00.000-07:00

Dawn rose above the tiny village nestled between rolling slopes of a towering mountaing range. Children ran down to play in the narrow river trickling through the town. That morning, the sun rose to discover Benjamin Shaviro carefully inspecting a sick animal brought to him by the poor villagers, who had found it and had not wanted to eat it -- at least until it was better. A strange code, he was thinking to himself.

Shaviro investigated the migration of pathogens between ecosystems, and in the three years he had spent exploring the shrinking jungles of South America, had filled more than twenty notebooks with careful measurements, hand-drawn diagrams, measurements, maps, and sometimes even strikingly novel biological and ecological hypotheses.

This animal is going to die, he thought. It struck him then that this was self-evident, and this thought filled him with a fullness -- or was it an emptiness? -- more profound than he could express. Suddenly the code of the villagers did not seem so strange. Purity and danger are so completely interwoven, the same fabric. His eyes made contact with the animals’ and a moment of understanding passed between them.

A powerful but subtle energy seemed to fill the room. He closed his eyes, because suddenly all he could see was glare. Nothing had any outlines. He tried to breathe but found the air suddenly grown dense. He coughed and sputtered. The dawn light creeping through tiny cracks in his laboratory’s roof exploded from a thousand ruptures, violently opened his eyes onto another kind of space.

A higher-order dimension became not only conceivable, visible, actual, tangible -- but mutable, a malleable hole in his vision, slowly tearing time apart. He was a cut, through which untamed particles flowed. A channel. Relativity has still not been digested, Shaviro thought. A door opened, or a window broke: and suddenly he was a thousand shards of glass, ripping through the wind-shaken night, tearing deep gashes into the profound ignorance and darkness of his soul. I am not here. He focused upon a single tear, felt his awareness leap to a dizzying new height.

A light was turning on within him, a dangerous power infinitely stronger than the the terrifying clarity it produced. The light dissolved into traces and shadows: suddenly, he saw that more dangerous than fear is disgust. Sickness and health were one. Then suddenly he was beyond disease, inside his own body, registering a completely new collection of intricate inner senses.

He could feel a virus squirming, eating, crawling, reproducing within him, and strangely enough could feel and see the structure of its molecules, its mechanisms and weaknesses. It was deprogramming, decoding his most essential organic structures. Stealing water, stealing energy. Its essence was a de-essentializing. He knew the antidote without having to think -- and no sooner had he visualized the change he needed to make, he could feel it shifting within him. The reaction became catalytic, volatizing the surface of the disease, turning it against itself. Within seconds he felt the change repeat itself throughout him. He stood up, a new clarity bringing intense and sudden focus to the world around him.

His outer-senses had been amplified to an even greater degree than his inner-senses, with which they harmonized organically. He rushed outside to find many villagers already on the ground, coughing blood -- not beyond saving. Without thinking, he spat onto them to provide their immune systems a sample of the “changed” virus. It was an immediate antidote. The villagers he spat onto sat up within seconds. “Kiss everyone you see!” he shouted to them, running to his car.

* * *

The instant the contagion chose was uncanny, coinciding with the return of the Hermes, the first manned mission to Mars. The Hermes was notable for being, some fifteen years prior, the first launch of the Global Ministry of Astronomy and Cosmology. But the crew of the Hermes found themselves returning to a world surprisingly uninterested in their unsettling and highly unusual report regarding the Martian Question.

For Kronos, the disaster which ensued that day, was unlike anything the human race had ever seen. Within hours of the virus’ outbreak, thousands were dead -- merely inhaling the pathogen led to death within minutes. Its inorganic patterns replicated freely in the atmosphere itself, extracting energy and excreting carbon dioxide -- bonding water and hydrogen molecules into its structure -- sucking water out and polluting the air. A dark fog rolled in, and suddenly the air was denser, thicker, harder to breathe. It fed upon the weather systems, and when it hit the Gulf Stream, it was worldwide within a day.

Every continent experienced tragic and enormous losses. Within the body it dissolved or dehydrated any tissue it came into contact with. Some dropped dead in their cars; other slowly melted in office buildings, or stiffened and broke to pieces while sleeping. The disease seemed to be beyond possible containment when a curious vaccine was discovered by Dr. Benjamin Shaviro in Sao Paolo, Brazil -- a mere two hundred fifty miles from Rio de Janeiro, the origin of the outbreak.

Before It's Too Late

2008-05-31T17:00:00.001-07:00

(Album Songbook)

Songlist

* Aubade
* Love Never Disappears
* Symmetry
* Become Everything
* Gone
* The Beginning is the End
* Back Outside
* This Land is Your Land
* Beyond Time
* Daybreak
* After the Storm

Aubade

Verse (F#m-D-D-E)
The tip of your finger / Illuminates the night
Cast back the darkness / Feel the night sky
Let there be light

Wake up the sunrise / Can you feel it
We’re just on time / Feel this moment
Stretch out forever

Chorus (A-A-E-D)
The wind speaks secrets to madmen and fools
Close your eyes and let love rule

Bridge
Break free from the silence
Let the darkness puncture you
Your feelings are madness
Da da da da... da da da da

[Break free from the silence breaking you]

love never disappears

(verse: Am-F; extremely slow, ragged blues)
Am F E7
is there a thought we could think, let us swallow the stars
Am...
tearin’ down the iron bars trap life inside? Imprisoning life
inside finite time.
(very soft and slow)
is there a game we could play, turn the world inside-out
set the colors free, let their fever shout in our hearts? Within our heart,
we’re never apart.
[still very soft and slow]
E7-Am
wake up the spark within your soul
don’t you wish you were slightly more bold?
i’ve learned love always falls apart
i believe it makes a new start
(verse 2: Am-Am-F-E7)
is there a song we could sing
which would make peace in our soul
which would calm the turbulent seas in our heart?
exploding in waves [of broken light]
is there a love we could live
which could transport us through time
and make everyone feel alright?
do you feel alright, yeah we feel alright
(chorus: E7-Am)
feel the silence within your heart
come on and surrender, just fall apart
let the cosmos swallow your fear
love never disappears

symmetry

(Em-G-C-D)
the soil’s screaming breathe again
fading out and fading in
what’s out to catch us unawares
we’ve got to smash these snares
to follow the fault lines in the earth
past the point of no return
what is given is a cage
you’ve got to escape

the light is crying for our souls
tarnished fragments of a perfect whole
a pattern written in the earth
beneath the soil there is birth
with our arms outstretched in love
you hear the signal from beyond
a tiny diagram of hope
a twist in time, a coiled rope

become everything

E-D-A (first note: G#/Ab)
stop the world and disappear
there’s no one here, there’s no one here

E-D-A
this darkening cloud, that lightning bolt
this cracking dam, that burst of cold

E D A
for better and worse, she said, we’re all in this together
love is free and don’t you forget it for a second
let your sorrows be a terrible sea, then let the landscape sweep it away
let your joy become the sky and flow away upon a thousand lines of light

A-E-D-A
clarity can conquer kings
condition your unconditioning
wake up the spring could finally come
to wash the frost away

gone

(D-Em-G-D)
glimmer of light, early morning
a movement like you have never seen
changing so fast you’d never believe
running on past me just running on past

G D Em
i’m gonna leave this time and never come back
if i don’t get away i swear i’ll have a heart attack
and if her echo comes to find me
well i won’t be called back so easily

she’ll have to handcuff me

shimmer of shadow, late evening
a slowness like we’ve all been
trapped within a flowing river of noise
running on to the sea running on and on...

the beginning is the end

(softly, developing)
D
time,
A
time has unwound.
Bm
thrice-crossed pavement,
G
shadows and crowns
underneath the stair.
vanished into the royal air;
A G D
i say broken, you say divine
i say hope and you say it shines
as quickly as an hourglass
your love flows bright through me
as swiftly as the hours pass
i know you won’t fly from me
i say hollow you say divine
i say love and you say it’s mine
awake, love, awake the world is right on time
everywhere it is shining, this land both yours and mine
i say awaken, it’s time to arise
kings and queens, you’re right on time

Back Outside

A rosy day like this should not be wasted on a book to read
or even some movie to see, or on your internet’s t.v.

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where anyone is everyone again

Let’s turn off all of our machines, try out some human reasoning
Give up our social anxieties, we’ll dance until the sunrise rings

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where everyone is anyone again

Between us there’s no proximities only pure and flowing intensities
A day like this should be shared with those so close nothing can intervene

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where anyone is anyone again

You are the world when you feel joy burst
Within your hearts, we are never apart

Let’s go back to playing out in the sun where everyone is everyone again

This land is your land

C F C

This land is your land, this land is my land

G C

from California, to the New York Island,

F C

from the redwood forests, to the Gulfstream waters,

G G7 C

this land was made for you and me.

C F C

1. As I went walking that ribbon of highway,

G C

I saw above me that endless skyway,

F C

I saw below me that golden valley,

G G7 C

this land was made for you and me. + CHORUS

C F C

2. I roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps

G C

to the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts,

F C

and all around me a voice was sounding,

G G7 C

this land was made for you and me. + CHORUS

C F C

3. When the sun comes shining and I was strolling,

G C

and the wheat-fields waving, and the dustclouds rolling,

F C

a voice was chanting and a fog was lifting,

G G7 C

this land was made for you and me. + CHORUS

(Arlo Guthrie)

Beyond Time (In My Head)

C-G-Am-F (fast shuffle)
i don’t know why, but the sun sets slower for you
you’re always writing about the seasons flowing
you say they tingled your spine, is it all in my mind?
i can’t tell you the reasons but i can ring the rhymes
you want to figure out why, you think it’s all in your mind
it’s time to flow with the seasons and breathe in the times

(chorus, slow Am-G-F-G)
is it all in my head, she said as i walked towards the bed
is the whole universe in my head

i don’t know why but the world beats stronger
when you’re around / it’s like there’s an ocean of energy
and we’re floating away
let’s lose ourselves in the stars and meet again in the light
let’s love each other until there’s nothing but good life
i hope we can follow the same stars and one day meet in the light
i’d follow you beyond the veils of time

is it all in my head, she said as i walked towards the bed
is the whole universe in my head

i don’t know how but the moon shines brighter just for your smiling eyes
not all who wander have lost their way you say
is the world in my mind, are we all going blind
chained to terrifying nonsense are we just wasting time
is the daylight bright enough to chase away the night
is our vision weak enough to see the light

daybreak
C G F C
all of us cried when we heard the sovereign had died
and that night our sadness was a thousand knives in the sky
piercing through the silence just waiting for his dream to pass
i heard voices dance in the light that the shadows cast

F G C
we’ve got to do so much better than what was done before
or this dream just won’t have a future anymore

hey, dylan, old man, i wrote you a song
about a funny old dream that keeps pushing on
it’s torn through the stormy embers of tomorrow’s dawn
and woken up in the whispers of yesterday’s fog
we sure could use a voice that clear and strong
i guess we’ll have to just hold on

until love breaks through the barricades
and we learn how to shake the dark
with songs of hope we open the doors
there’s nothing but our voices and the light they shine when you sing along

but we’ve got to do so much better than what was done before
or this dream just won’t have a future anymore

we’re still crying for that bright sunrise
that day of clarity thats coming soon
when the fires of tomorrow will
burn more brilliant than the moon
when these images we spin
shall lay no more safely on the loom
and brother, that long-awaited day,
you better believe it’s coming soon

after the storm

(Bb-F-C-C)
all it once, it will come. after the storm. after the darkness and the light have died, after the ends and means and tired dreams have deferred their last good-byes, with some familiar alibi. after the tired earth sheds its last lifeblood. after the nations come undone. all at once, it will come.

With love

2008-05-04T09:05:00.000-07:00

Two athletic young women from the city make their way across an endless sea of sand. They move silently as the desert. The midsummer’s day is sweltering and still. Everything is motionless, other than the few distant hawks who seemed overjoyed simply to be the sky -- to glide and then to tumble through the void, borne upon invisible bursts of wind.
Acceleration!
Sammy’s bright green eyes follow the hawks’ wide curving paths with inexplicable longing. She sighs inwardly, closes her eyes, and looks over to her partner, who nods and raises her eyebrows.
She wipes the sweat from her Juliet’s brow with a damp towel. And then Juliet looks back at her, smiling that incredible smile, the one which liked to send a familiar electricity running through Sammy’s toes and legs and fingers.
--The sun seems much closer than millions of miles to me. --Yeah. You’re not kidding. Are you thirsty? Sammy manifests a bottle from nowhere. --No, thanks. --You sure? --Yeah, really. I’m good for now.
The bottle disappears.The girls hike on silently until evening. The Mojave desert looked spectacular, even better than Appalachia. No clouds, no paths, just unbounded desert, and the limitless sky. And, of course, each other.

* * *

But for all that, this place was deeply unsettling, and in a way neither could adequately express. If they were forced to put it into words, they would have said their subterranean feeling of horror came from the very earth itself beneath them. The landscape surrounding them was alien, glacial, angry -- indescribably beautiful, but also profoundly chaotic. It was as though the world actually were shaped by ancient, unbelievably powerful forces.
As though the earth itself were somehow an artist.
--By the looks of it, a tragic and troubled one, Sammy murmured. --I love you, Juliet shouts. --I know, Sammy calls back.
Their fingers intertwine.
It was around then they decide to stop for the night.
Darkness descends swiftly upon them. Brilliant pinpoints of light break apart the emptiness like blasts of dynamite. The desert reflects the otherworldly light of the stars as a spectral, bright blue aurora, which ripples endlessly over the surface of the dunes.
Like a crackling electric fire.

* * *

Sammy roasts meat while Juliet prepares fruit and vegetables. They drink green tea and eat slowly, feeding one another, laughing and licking their fingers. After dinner, they smoke cigarettes and sit holding each other beneath the stars.
--You’re the most beautiful girl in the world, Juliet whispers.
--I am going to fuck your brains out, Sammy whispers back.
Juliet looks away and smiles.
Sammy slowly glides her long fingers over Juliet’s legs.
--How?
She says nothing, but stands up directly in front of Juliet.
Sammy undresses herself slowly, smiling -- removing one after the other her thin blue t-shirt, black sports bra, blue jeans...
--Lay down, she says, standing next-to-naked before Juliet.
She began slowly, softly kissing Juliet’s neck. The salt of the desert tasted sweet on her lovers’ tanned skin.
With a single finger, Sammy gently lifts Juliet’s shirt from her chest, simultaneously caressing the soft skin between Juliet’s stomach and legs. Far away, a wolf howls to the moon.
Juliet moans, her back arching. Unconsciously, she starts to unbutton her pants, already beginning to feel overheated, already weakening beneath Sammy’s expert fingers.
After what feels like a century, Juliet’s heavy breathing broke into a primal scream, expressing a feeling beyond pleasure and pain.
Joy.

* * *

After a few moments, she wordlessly begins to return the favor. Resolutely caressing Sammy’s toned body with her hands, her agile fingers deeply explore every inch of her skin. Once Sammy’s excitement reaches the critical intensity, Juliet sinks her teeth deep into Sammy’s yielding back.
She gazes in wonder at the tiny leak, the deep red blood flowing from the wound, ever so slowly, pumping gently out of her lovers’ beautiful body, at the same speed as her rapidly-beating heart.
With her nimble tongue she draws a thin, cursive line in dark red blood from the break in the skin to Sammy’s right breast. At this Sammy cries out and clutches Juliet close to her.
Their legs and lips flow over one another rapidly; their fingers slip into each other.
Another bite, much rougher this time.
--Hey, Sammy squirms in ecstasy. Go easy.
--I am, Juliet smiles. She bites down even harder. Now that was hard. Sammy moaned beneath her. --Yeah, she said. Fuck, yeah.
--You like it?
--Fuck me, Sammy shouted, biting her sharply in return.
They came together.
Afterwards, they hold each other for hours, silently smoking cigarettes and losing themselves in the undulating patterns of light and shadow the fire cast upon the sand. The moon rises, colossal, above them.

* * *

They dream in each other’s arms until the sun’s heat awakens them. Emerging from the shade of the tent, they greet the sun with squinting eyes. They kiss one another, cook breakfast and break camp. The sun is almost directly overhead by the time they are hiking again.
They pause near a complex of caverns near lunchtime. Sammy wants to explore them. --They look like they go back a long way, she says. Let’s see what’s inside. --I don’t know. --What could be back there? --Exactly. --Oh, come on. --Well, okay. But as soon as I feel scared, we turn back.

* * *

David Archer sped across the Mojave desert in an unmarked FBI Land Rover.
The minimal details of the case circulated menacingly through his mind.
A group of hikers discovered three corpses in the desert yesterday. All young women. All brutally raped and strangled to death, approximately three to four months ago.

* * *

Eight or nine squad cars were arranged in a circle around the approximate site of the murder. Archer parked his car and scanned the horizon. Something tickled at the back of his mind. --Sir, over here. A lieutenant was gesturing to him. We’ve got something we’d like you to see.
* * *

The lieutenant looked nervous. --Beautiful day, Archer smiled. The young lieutenant replied a little too seriously. --It is nice to get some fresh air for a change.
Archer looked out at the desert. --What do the bodies look like? --Not too good. --What do you mean? --Well, look. They were at an ambulance. The lieutenant was pointing to the first of three gurneys with white cloth laid over the bodies.
Archer pulled off the cloth. --Jesus Christ, he couldn’t help saying. --Yeah, it’s kind of hard to describe. Archer sighed. --Extreme facial lacerations combined with post-mortem degeneration and. And. The body twitched. Likely some kind of parasitic infestation. He pulled a set of plastic gloves from his back pocket. The hair, Archer said. --Yeah? --It’s singed. Fulgurated. Like it’s been burned off, or. Arched sighed, understanding. --Or what? The lieutenant asked. Archer was silent for a moment. Then he pulled the cloth back over the corpse.
--Where’s the medical examiner? --I’ll go and get him. --Before you do, call Headquarters. --Why? --We’re going to need some extra help on this one.

* * *

parasite

2008-03-05T13:49:00.000-08:00

when will i learn
not to ask you
to give me a reason
i ask you and you just gave me dreams
and now you’re asking
for forgiveness
but all i have to give are your wire figurines

and now i am that black shadow
opening out upon your endless field
glaring white
so bright it blinds my eyes

every time i
sink my teeth
in to bite

i asked you to
feel the seasons
you told me to
become all of time

i kept asking you for so many reasons
you kept shouting it was going to be alright

but now in our hearts is that darkness
which strangles the light

we are the parasite

this

2008-03-05T11:54:00.000-08:00

this is
your first window
onto a world of noise and shadows

if you are the distorting
mirror in the hall
i am the thin layer of snow
upon your grave

she’s waking up to light
the obscure choir streaming through
flowing over the walls

are any of us are saved
or are we just replaced?

Your voice still reverberates in this empty room.

2008-03-05T00:28:00.000-08:00

it all began with

a spark of electricity
i notice you noticing me
even now it’s
beautiful

to feel you
bursting
through my skin
can you

pull my
hair again?
i love
it when
you come

around my
place
you take up so
little space

it’s like
you’re a ghost

so how can
your words
cut into
my world?

there’s a
million paths to take
a million
fractured lines

of light breaking
apart the darkness
beyond us and
inside us

seeking to ground

2008-01-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

the substance we are and
have yet to find --
lost in the frame,
eyes tight against night,
burnt liquid light, in flames

a truth is disguised,
a break in the way,
twin depths of pure light:
the sound of her pain

the light in your sound:
broken in time,
speaking through faces --
seeking to ground

dual errors: in mirrors,
a cinematic refrain --
this lust is semantic:
she's burnt the edges, again

Unlord

2008-01-02T13:30:00.000-08:00

harsh black soot of coal
smoke aglitter with diamond dust
slowly fills the tremulous lungs of the ungod

like the membraneous boundary of the skies
trickles the shadow over his corrupted temples
ice-cold foundries of the unworld

softly coagulating the chapel pipes, frozen bars
upon a cage of pig-iron, the hearth of hell
a frozen throne for the shivering unlord

still echoing the terrifying amen
for the unking of the unearth;
echoing "amen!"

god of love

2008-01-01T19:08:00.001-08:00

biting emptiness.
the florid cold.
from faces dripping
with mud
burst vivid white
crystals.

blossoming in muck.

the world opens
and closes
its innuerable mouths
in noisy and endless celebration.

being sings
for the young god of love!
could once we sound
him speaking
through cracks
in stones?

even to resolve
in lucidity
a god who is
as the angry summer ocean?

could once we abide
this nullified echo?

a lie
trapped
in a perfect shell?

for having become
a mere fragment of bent wood,
love yet resounds
in mystical nocturne--

even through
the hint of opalescence
in the midnight sky.

Morning

2008-01-01T19:05:00.000-08:00

dawn erupts
in fervent song.

a flushed green
melody blossoms
across the flowing
surface of time.

a signal gliding
upon a bursting
flow of warmth.

as fire
shatters darkness,
life ripples through
the early chill.

love melts the
calcium frost
creeping over
the bearded face
of the earth.

Two Poems

2007-12-22T20:42:00.000-08:00

have you?

listen! you have been touched,
chosen for,
that fleeting word of hope --
the one that shivers, that crawls
sloughing its ragged skin
flown dangled and screeching
through stinking alleyways
down sunburnt fields
through mud-streaked skies
marching towards the timeless horizon of love
like a violent whimpering
folded within a wordless but eloquent spark
of reconciliation

some even say the word names
the downfall of the legislator
the end of god
but others insist this means already
that there must have been a beginning

have you?
arisen?

gemini

the soft blue light of morning dances upon
her fluttering eyelids as the brutal tumult rises
from shivering apartments below
cold (suffused light)
awake (escape outside)
again (the sun flows unreflected)

listen, the street howls
alive with pain
stark conduits of thought
intoxicated delirium of transport
war torn and singing their suffering
listen, the roads are weeping
o lamentable celerity:

listen, she is breathing
every photon harmonizes
a sweet optic melody
concatenating sidereal empires
listen, our half-mortal eyes catch
only the faintest glimmering

listen, the sun cries
for her double
for her rival
for her

Casting Off

2007-07-20T23:13:00.000-07:00

A boy dreams of walking along a river with a girl.
He remembers how sweet and delicately she would smile at him as they walked, hands intertwined, away from the house and towards the river late at night, with the wintry skies magnificent and dark and overhanging.
Sometimes there would be a mean, chill look to the clouds towering above, and sometimes they moved so slowly, you thought you could see the intricate traces of crosswinds cresting in pirouettes, deforming and unconstructing elegant drifting castle-tops between the skies.
Below, gentle rows and flowing columns of prefabricated houses stretched to a dizzy infinity before them until they exploded at the horizon, in a bright asymptote of light, only to merge with the floating city and flow joyously into the illuminated smog-fires of the heavy-industry smokestacked parts of town.
The city breathed.
She is quietly murmuring, sipping on a beer, while he is lighting a cigarette.
Alone and yet they are bemused, bright points of light, resonating with love, gesturing with their hands--
They do not know it but they are both wondering about the other.
How can we re-inject energy into the machine?
She whispers: ‘How do we unfold the universe?’
Those were the crashing days when they could finish each others sentences. He remembers: every second marked and traversed with enjoyment. She remembers: being filled-in and crossed-over with pleasure.
They could extract so much surplus energy simply from the nonsense of being young. They were in love with the nonsense of being alive in a wildly irresponsible age.
They are wondering.
How to remove the outworn idols, without attracting new ones?

“A taste for black humor drives you,” he laughs.
She is thinking: ...but what’s the point, after all, if you can’t use it? Constraining to think reasonably about a world which is effectively and essentially nonsense is nonsense. If it’s not an instrument, to one degree or the other...
“To be young,” she spoke slowly, “is to have to cast off the guilt of being-included, of socialization. To grow up is not to belong, not to assume guilt, but to rise to your responsibility.”
He says: “Whether to do something from guilt or responsibility is the only difference in the world?”
She nods: “So how do we wake up?”

Now they’re sitting down by the river and the skies are starting to warm up. The morning is glow-stretching its sleep-numb arms towards the dark black dome of the sky, still pinholed with tiny jets of light.
‘Love is like a comet,’ she cries out, against the night.
And I pause, and wonder whether she was right.
Then she smiles at the boy, and they wonder whether any of this is to a purpose. And then they don’t wonder at all: they are one, they are rolling through one another, they are inside and screaming to be let out. Casting off guilt. She screams between moans: sacrifice yourself for me.
‘I want you to die for me.’
And he collapses, having come from within, and falls upon her, pretending to be dead.
They begin laughing: “Was it good for you?”
“Of course.”
Then the talk would become less introspective, and (they couldn’t help it) more social: my life, yours, what have you been doing, hows the everything... so much worrying and wondering, how are we suffering today for a distant future, worrying about the money-- for the food, and the car, and the rent, and: when?
When are we ever gonna disconnect-- from these stupid, schizophrenic machines?
But their love was an escape, a dream of flying that stitched them back onto their bones, a cynical lie that showed them the truth about themselves:
They were addicted.
“You’ve got it bad,” she would tell him smiling.
They couldn’t escape.
The only universal paranoia is the one that strikes the heart of every systematic attempt to explain.
“It’s all built on lies,” she said. “And some lies are worse than killing someone.”
This was the same thought that shot their love down, like a comet, as soon as there was a truth to discover:
But is there even a reality to uncover?
“Yes,” he whispered in her ear: “if we want there to be.”

A Word

2007-06-23T13:06:00.001-07:00

A word ought to be
the same when it means the same
but a word is not the same word
when
it doesn’t mean
the same anymore.

But a word is never even the same
as itself
and the self-difference is always
“our”selves.

A word converges indications,
induces the movement
of images.

A word melts impressions
into signs.

A word breaks
apart the gravitational pull
of all ideas to one another.

A word is a force felt on the inside
of every concept,
a violent yearning felt
deep in its soul.

A word is the force of time pushing
all things together and pulling them apart.

Words are cosmic.

A word is a vibration felt by every
soul, each one
pulling
the other,
from the inside out:
in inverse proportion
to their distance,
and in direct proportion
to the average
of their weights.

I am Radio Waves

2007-05-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

I am radio waves.
A voice lost in time.
Flowing and blinking and scratching and screaming,
For no one, or worse
For anyone.

My life's but a tension in the air,
A violin string wavering
On the edge of an accelerating vibration
A single fierce piercing stab of the bow
Suspended motionless in time.

I am the violence in air,
Through, upon and beyond the air:
Inaudible but not unheard,
A voice and nothing more.

My world is a cocoon of light
overflowing into emptiness.
But light is only sound sped up,
and Nothing is not silent:

Am i out of time?
Playing before a finally imaginary audience:
Am... I?

Submerged in this nebulous void,
I am a coded transmission to the Universe
I alone cannot decipher

Yet the air is identical to the signal,
And the one message is a song
Whose refrain was the rhythm of the universe
Whose emptiness and density were one.

You see,
Every once
And again
We escape forever

All's Made of Air

2007-05-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

All's made of air: the fortresses of nothing we build to prepare
But love just fades away, unperturbed-- the world just turns: another day but
I once explored! And--
the intimate patterns of
the reflection in your eyes
answered unspoken questions
in the newmoonlight
And you would try to explain with such sincerity in your eyes
you exclaim that there’s no reciprocity; there’s only idiocracy
there’s no democracy there’s only mediocrity
justice is, what we make: and if we’ve made it a little broken
then man that’s just our fault you say
after all we must protect the truth once spoken
and there’s only beauty if we try and if we look
up towards the vanishing sky
only if we yearn for its inexplicable height
and learn the truth just passes us by
but you’ve got to own up to the truth anyway, she says
when are we ever gonna understand
you’ve got to stand up for the truth, she said
and after all these years you finally understand

Until Every Echo at Last Tumbles Out

2007-05-17T21:25:00.001-07:00

i can’t keep my mind off you
it’s drifting off in waves that encircle you
rippling through the space that keeps us apart
nostalgia for the start oh my god we’re doing it all over again

until every echo at last tumbles out
onto the clouds
all the dreams we would laugh about if we spoke them aloud
they’re burning down
we’re running out
of time

i finally found an illusion to believe
a sacred little fragment of light in this endless night
you’re exactly what i need and
i can’t find the courage to stop
run smack into the edge of the void
we’re going to drop down forever
now there’s no sound, no sound

i lost my faith and so i lost my way

As Love Awakens

2007-05-17T21:17:00.002-07:00

Light erases space closes the emptiness between your hand and mine:    You  open  up this  Silent universe: too  much (and still not enough) why  when meaning is broken? When every   Love collapses?       (Unnameable) remnant of being: eyes blink  When, promptly, disappears-- just what you think it's not but:  Time flows strangely now  with you here next to me  Beyond memory and the  light of your face a  mystery    Disclose the world again  As love awakens

Fumbling for Words

2007-05-17T21:17:00.001-07:00

Fumbling for words,
I cannot say what you mean
Or capture your flight in a static thought—
Impossible
And
Undecidable—is it the deficiency of language or
The excess of your being
That threatens the fabric of speech?
Folding our worlds,
An erotic zone—
Bodies in battle
Angular edges overlapping
Like the monstrosities of a Picasso—
I tear away at the fragments of your body
And fling them onto an artistic surface tinged with time:
The pure poetry of becoming.

Omphaloskepsis

2007-05-17T21:16:00.001-07:00

They laid you in the grave
To nurse you in the artificial womb.
The tears that feel the emptiness
Of my navel can never fill
the connection

cut between us.

I am your aborted fetus,
The sum of all you never wanted.
You thrust me under the dirt that became mine
Only life, my self. I only wanted to feel you
Forever.
They bury you in the stone's stomach,
In Mother Earth's cold, impersonal gestation---
That's why you left me,
For you could not bear the warmth of it,
Or did the gravity of your stomach fill him with envy?

Did his jealousy make you vomit
Me out of your hearth?
To live again, I am your Oedipus,
And always will be. I shall bury inside your-
Self so I may rest.

Pubic Hair
They spiral haphazardly to greet you,
Kept in cages from children's eyes,
Like in a zoo.
The constant war between matted rugs and snaggle-teeth
Rages as nervous people wriggle in their seats.
Swiveling about in each other's arms,
The little ones shout fears of the shears
Of aesthetic hygiene.
God, surely the Da Vinci of his time, grew
Tired of sharp curves,
And doodled.