1. |
Boobs Are Real
02:04
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They stole my tires
They knocked down my house
They killed my father
They cut off my fingers
And I thought, "And I did like those fingers."
They pierced my eyelids.
They scalped my brain.
They ran their sweaty fingers down my sweaty back.
They played me music but it wasn't music.
They loved me and then they didn't.
Somewhere in there I grew these enormous boobs.
At some point what they took away
Was given back
In the form of boobs.
What they took from me
They gave back
Just like, as Lydia Davis says,
When a limit has been reached
What is real but does not help
Is lost forever and replaced by the unreal.
The difference is: these boobs are real.
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2. |
Chia Pet Cemetery
02:19
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the plot has been overgrown since the last good rain
visited fractured pottery to the grave
just the size of a posthole will do: le petit mort
if there is a sheet of fog, it is a fleece, it is a circling flock
the night comes as a flag of crepe waving us down
down fills the finest pillow, you said, wiseacre
wiseacre, I said, because I didn’t yet know its root
you said you’d take care of everything, as if
the very wish to be an umbrella could expand
first: you need a good haircut and a shave
second: what were we going to tend if not ourselves
not children. adopt-a-highway. a home for wayward beagles
water the plants, I said, water the damned plants
well, you did manage to water the plants
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3. |
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Junk flares inside me.
Junk it flares inside me.
Like this caterpillar burning in newspaper
Life is a ring of red beads
My father once said that
and now I know what he meant
Life is a sable coat
it drags along the ground behind us
It weighs on the shoulders like a hundred silky dead.
She wore it the opera one spring night
the yellow light of enormous windows
blew through the darkness.
Here's the trouble with the heavy-assed-ness of everything
in a pink velour pocket a tiny soul stirs
it needs to die
you think the soul is mine but no
it's hers
She stares out the window
her young eyes like bits of dead mouse with the feet still attached
she stares at the exact spot where someone is smashing her windshield with a day star
the darkest heart isn't dark at all
it is a white flower
it unfolds and sits alone
in red rivers.
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4. |
Twins
03:02
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She has a dream and she has the same dream.
She says moon and she says moon and both put their she-phones to their chests.
She says in my dream I slept between your mattress and box spring
and she nods and she hears her nod.
She says I was in the blue dress before you put in on
and after you put it on, like a soft paper flower she says
and she says yes, like a soft paper flower.
She nestles the phone in her crotch and she nestles the phone in her crotch and the
pubic hairs say it was warm in the dream.
She puts her face against the cool window and they play where's my face and she
guesses against the cool window.
She says I hung up the phone an hour ago and
she says I hung up the phone last year and still we go
on talking she says and she says we go
on talking even while I am dead
and even when I'm coming back to life.
She is two places at once and she is two places at once
which is four places at once.
She has to go back to sleep now and she has to go back to sleep now.
She says are you asleep now and she says yes and are you asleep now
and she says yes and they go on
talking about being asleep now.
She has a dream and she has the same dream and in the dream
she is dreaming what she dreams and she is dreaming what she dreams.
Then it rains.
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5. |
Pennsylvania
02:44
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In the forest writing on a tree
I found a tree
a naked tree
a big fucking deal tree
I've been your girlfriend for several minutes
and it's been grand but I must be going
to the starcase to climb a few
sprockets of Denver
to the balcony over these unbuttoned lights
* * *
if I could see it I would rip it up
goodbye, but don't forget the lilies
sweat-soaked and frond crossed
on the bed we shared
Now just alittle bit of
what WAS
LEFT
and just a few minutes to find your
shoes
why
that's a fabulous idea
crossing Pennsylvania separately and not meeting until the border
when I will present you
to the authorities as the x factor
as the snapping conundrum of the Allegheny valley
as the summit named for the shittiest day in state history.
Then you will rise into the air mouthing
olive juice olive juice olive juice olive juice
like technology you are like technology
everything you do otherpeople wanttodoit too
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6. |
Opera
01:47
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Opera pouring from the tenement
dark sobbing into the light
Callas drinking absinthe under an assumed name
In Toulon then singing Calypso for sailors asleep in a basement
those great songs are not our songs
songs we know crown us like flowers
Songs of the past Noelle their white walls
all around me
return gold sounds
big clean amps once chimed so sad and transistor
machines played drums it was the fashion
now distant and cold enough to trouble the ghost in you
still riding your bike under pink hi fidelity thunder
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7. |
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Calmly grass becomes a wave
See the body parts you name
unsoothes you where you slip
trying to write or wake up
The songs overlap each other baby
an echo knell a creased pit
an animal
an animal
Hello call me
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8. |
Florida
02:31
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When I was a kid my dad told me the stars made the sounds of crickets.
The silver trills that had kept me up until then every night
weren’t spilling from the legs of little black insects
but brilliant points of light in the sky.
He said this to me from outside my window in the early morning
or deep night in a sleep voice I thought was the Gulf of Mexico
fumbling into the shore, so I whispered back,
the ocean was a liar
and I knew it because the other day
my dad told me the stars weren’t spider eggs but distant silent suns
so far away they may already have died
and only the light exists of them now in the great invisible net cast out by our eyes.
Then something strange happened. His giant bald head rose into the window frame
followed by his one green eye, one blue eye,
then his red veined nose and finally his beard fuzzed mouth
which sang out in a clear human voice I have been afraid of ever since.
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9. |
Fall
02:20
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The sun goes down but the light never goes,
rain moves through the orange
night but doesn't fall.
The cypresses swell like everything else
in the world and in the air, turning
in cycles.
We are happy and then inexplicably sad
then happy again. Like the clouds
in the sky.
Rain slants across the yard,
over the graves of our lesser pets.
I don't know
if their lives were miserable in their little boxes
or if they just lived,
without news of the world,
until they died. I can see their bones
clearly when I think really hard,
they make a pattern my training hasn't prepared me
to understand.
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10. |
Birdman
03:56
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I feel this tragic figure sitting on me
as stars dot to dot over the water that is potable.
As shoeblack in the hair will defoliate the scalp.
As lyric, lyric cries the verb, speaking of the thing.
(As the lawyer looks around for an ashtray.)
The ferry's arc the ferry's lamp
the inchoate sumac the inchoate sumac's blonde wig
tossed casually now above the rocks.
City as the merciful end of perspective,
city as.
He said may we talk briefly so that God can be glimpsed
and alongside human conversation.
Heron. Hilarity. Time,
hilarious white spoonbill that cannot be held in the mind.
Erotic ripple marks on shore
failing to prove one's presence,
my halting attempt in the gusting spray.
Yes, sir. Yellow pine.
Some are more released by words. For some, hell is other people.
He wears a green eyeshade cap, like an aging umpire,
in January 1943 issue of American Canary
Title: "I Wonder."
He spoke for the pillars, the bars, the sea air, the perpendicular pronoun,
the little gods running around the rocks with small black cameras.
Sometimes I too feel like a motherless
says the lawyer,
neural damage, agrees the doctor, each to each and in their horrible penmanship.
And nature does not abhor.
Once I was a House Sparrow
now I am a Yellow Hammer.
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11. |
Storm Window
01:45
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She sat writing little poems of mist.
And he in an armchair, reading
blood-red leather novels.
Their three-legged white cat
wandering between them.
Twenty-four champagne glasses
sparkling on the shelf.
Never a one to be broken.
And two stone dogs on either side
of the driveway.
For these reasons
they have gone on precisely,
undetected, for centuries.
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12. |
That You Go On
02:22
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That you go on that you do it too
or once have done to tear at that
I fail your want
and sweet sound and watch them wait for my failure.
Future people I went to the museum and saw all so curious and substantial
make its presence known above me.
And so thrilled with the gifts of humans I was, their talents,
that soon I departed.
The cold and pleasant sun, the midday
a business in great excess
of the cruelty of people.
And in this and my own joyous way
I returned home some day or so later.
I looked from the sky upon a warm occupant glow.
You learned a better way
and I filled myself with silly pills
for years we floated this way
your husband never knowing
a small circle of salt around your body.
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13. |
My Grandmother
02:13
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my grandmother
doesn't know pain
she believes that
famine is nutrition
poverty is wealth
thirst is water
her body like a grapevine winding around a walking stick
her hair bees' wings
she swallows the sun-speckles of pills
and calls the internet the telephone to america
her heart has turned into a rose the only thing you can do
is smell it
pressing yourself to her chest
there's nothing else you can do with it
only a rose
her arms like stork's legs
red sticks
and i am on my knees
howling like a wolf
at the white moon of your skull
grandmother
i'm telling you it's not pain
just the embrace of a very strong god
one with an unshaven cheek that scratches when he kisses you
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14. |
Civics
01:28
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She had been the court stenographer
in the little village for two decades
when she disappeared into the mountains.
I was part of the search party that day
snow was pending and the bare branches
looked like mounted antlers on the canyon walls.
I walked with Glenn from White Moon Insurance
for hours through columns of shimmering firs
and over ponds frozen into opal tables.
Until, arriving at an overlook at dusk we heard the cracking of a hammer
echoing through the burnished valley
and saw what looked like the old judge and twelve other men and women
pitching camp for the night.
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15. |
Word
01:44
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We'll begin with what's irreplaceable
if you have one photograph for instance of someone you loved
someone who's gone now.
We'll begin with that.
Put it in the fire.
Isn't it like felling at once a whole herd?
When the dust has settled
you feel like you should say a few words, don't you?
All the words begin to fall
and you will not live to hear their dust
settled.
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16. |
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I have been asked: Why did you choose to work with the Negro?
Call me librarian in the stacks of almost-lost melody.
I journey this colossal quaking book they've
authored in the space between their legs.
Over blind fool hearts beneath stomping feet
in the liquid engine of their crooned breath.
And sometimes the splintered edges of voice
root me in their tree of singing sunlight
take me back to something that doesn't have a name.
Our buried sense.
A burning we lost along the way to civilization.
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17. |
From an Island
02:13
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Fogged in all day.
The long low horns announcing the passing of another ghost ship.
But we see nothing it's as if a curtain had been dropped.
Go back into yourself it says, none of this matters to you anymore.
All that drama color movement you can live without it.
It was an illusion, a tease, a lie.
There's nothing out here but smoke from the rubble that was
everything, everything you wanted.
Everything you thought you needed.
Ships passing forget it
children bathing there's no such thing
let go your island is a mote of dust
but the horns of the ghost ships say
Remember us.
We remember you.
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18. |
Last Words
02:10
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So long see you sailor
it might not be new but it's new for her.
Put this apple in your pocket call me when you get there.
The flowers are blooming in the highway meridian.
Everywhere I look I see things you'd like to take a picture of
I shutter my eyes but it comes out blurry.
I ate all your favorite candies
but left the wrappers in the bowl
you might not have noticed but the suitcases are down from the attic.
The paint peels from the ceiling in meaningful patterns
Last calls, sign my cast
hidden hip flask and ask me anything.
Under the empty stadium seating
does every city have a Roosevelt High
she hiked up her knee sock blue jacket
blue kiss
good
By the seashore huddled and cold
by the way
by the way she couldn't say it
took me twelve years to get correct postage
I just meant to tell you
static on the line
holarctic blue coppers
cut up the sky.
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19. |
Brother Poem Number One
02:32
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Some wrong turns you make
get you somewhere blank, like a parking lot
outside a stadium
the leaves barking
I had a trouble in my nature
I paced the sunlight at my borders
still the crumpled city slept
I am writing this for you because I think your music
has a traveling nature
and I am right now traveling through
my friends also have shadows
there's very little complaining
and we suck up love everywhere we go
How do I get to the swimming pool
where I can shave the moss from my blood?
No one trails.
No one talks.
Only the carousing merchants can tell me what to do.
and so they will while
I consider other things about your nature
this was written by several men
today we have to sort out our blood
consider the artificial creek
making the artificial houses seem a lot more real
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20. |
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Now I could see I'd been stirring the pot
For almost ten thousand years.
I could see I'd be stirring forever.
So far nothing had changed.
Nobody appeared.
I stirred myself into a bottomless sleep,
I was the smallest thing in the world.
Fragment of spit, rumor of mud.
Something that almost might have been.
I no longer had skin or fine hairs along
My arms for wind to chill or an ant to wander
Over. I no longer had friends.
No sister, no brother.
I hadn't cried when my father & my mother
Waved goodbye and their ship exited the harbor.
I hadn't asked them where they were going.
They left me no instructions.
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21. |
Song
02:17
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Before opium that soul-sick summer,
ageless and alone. Infinite June nineteen
ninety nine holds to my master. Sadness
arrived like an empty Chevrolet.
I have terrible symbols. Symbols that come
in sleep beginning to interrupt, come
desiring to speak with me downtown.
A heart as filled as Persia with twilight.
Death stops death, strangers who envy.
Lydia, ask the gods to exclude us.
Only gods grant gestures that destroy.
Ashen waves like autumn, abstract your
being into a silent ship, sail quietly full
of wind traveling to Lisbon. Listlessly
thoughts tumble through the street,
audible as fallen leaves. There is sicknesses
like a sky's blueness, a quiet boy inside
a church. Rain mysteriously sudden.
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22. |
Book of Life
03:38
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The phoenix rose from the ashes
And decided to keep rising.
A forgetful monk basked in its shadow.
“Bananas taste expensive!” exclaimed
The monk, to no one in particular.
Suddenly, the phoenix swooped down
And landed on top of his head.
“I am no longer wedded to Eros,”
The phoenix warbled, “And I’d like
To live with you in the monastery,
Though my wings are still singed
And I only eat live things.”
The monk rifled through his powerpack
And pulled out a squirming worm.
“Here you go, my fiery friend,
Take it and eat it, and do not worry
About the other monks, they
Mean no harm. You are to go back
To the monastery with me.”
The phoenix flapped its wings
With happiness. But seemingly
Out of nowhere, the phoenix
Drilled a hole in the ground with its beak
And descended into the core of the earth.
The monk was sad and alone,
But since he was forgetful,
The memory of the phoenix soon faded.
He hummed, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”
On his way back to the other monks,
With a dim recollection of his
Younger years, when Eros lorded
Over him, and he was happy.
When he returned to the monastery,
He died of a fatally broken heart,
Not remembering exactly why.
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Michael Zapruder Austin, Texas
“Michael Zapruder makes beautiful folk-pop ballads resonant of the voice of Rufus Wainwright and wordplay of Andrew Bird" – Pitchfork
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