1. |
Nothing To Love
04:35
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These things are nothing to love, and what I love is nothing much: A certain hour of the day, a paler light muffling my face. I sleep for hours beneath the storm while all my friends cry, “Cover!” I wake up with my boots still on; I never needed shelter. My friends, they’re fucking aimless, shooting off their guns in fields of corn, or wheat, or endless rye — To ask would take too long. These things I love are nothing, they’re worth even less than that. I’m death dressed up in chimp clothes — The things i love don’t bring me back. It’s not like this is anything, so don’t forget to dance the next step. It’s not like this is anything — I’ve already hobbled all the horses. These words I speak are nothing new, and so now you know.
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2. |
Virtue
02:30
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Two days on, it still waxes thick, sweat lashing off of honeyed lips. Guts cramped up and neck gone stiff, and headaches when I think of my dick. The brutal five AM alarm, when the courage dries me up, and I’m in the bathroom panting — No chance of swallowing this one whole. And I’ve heard there’s virtue in not giving up, but so what? This is a world, this is a word, someone has to live in it, someone’s got to spit it out. Two months on, it’s nearly gone, but oh, fuck, oh, me, how I hate it.
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3. |
Just Don't Eat
03:42
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I won’t be hungry if I just don’t eat, I can live off the bile I recycle each week. But these are fertile times, I know, and it’s not like I’m living alone. Now that you’ve left each building I ever thought to know you in, our next attempt will be all new and we’ll rub against it differently — dogs on an empty beach. But who keeps it hidden when all they want is a bone to chew? I guess I hide that, too. Last night I saw two coyotes in the street. Like everything, they made me think of you.
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4. |
Ten More
03:19
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Fifty drachmas for my soul, and ten more for each time I’ve been left hanging. Not to accuse — Not to reduce you, no. I’ve fallen into patterns that it hurts to repeat. My time once felt valuable, now it’s just something else to swallow and shit out. If I happen to meet my maker, I’ll ask him for two favors: One, untie me, and two, bite down on this coin, I can’t be sure it’s gold, no. Not to complain, not to defame you, no. Fifty drachmas for my soul, and ten more for my liver, which sure as hell’s not gold, no.
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5. |
Anything
04:07
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Your majesty: Ask from me and you’ll receive. Here I am on bloody knees, take anything you want from me. Make me feel my organs where they sit inside — Any pain I will abide to see myself in fuller light. Your majesty, ask anything you need of me: I’ll hack up bile so biliously, I’ll cough catarrh catarrhally — Oh, anything to please you. The movements of your sinew spine break laws each time I lay my eyes on them in adolescent light. I can’t account, now, for these rhymes. Your majesty: I’m broken but don’t comfort me. I’ll county my limbs methodically. You are the only light I see.
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6. |
I Am Off
03:27
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Walking with a limp after drinking too much, after eating disease, after playing with fire. I am off, on the wrong page. Feeling a lout after beating it out while I choke it all down, after shaking my veins. I am not staring this out. Don’t come round cause I will beat you down and drag it out. Don’t come round cause I will take this mouth and stretch it out.
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7. |
All Math
03:33
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Any math is accidental, all math is a mistake. Put on my fair-weather face, for these, my fair-weather friends. So much I shouldn’t share with them but we all know it’s such hard work to cross the doorstep, and who has time for this shit anymore? Someone made the coward call to build around us a glass cage: the weather never turns to rain so long as it’s through seven panes. Put on my foul-weather face when I’m naked at the mirror, trying to become a bitter man enough that I can’t be coughed up easily. Oh, that’s just the worst sound — keep it coming. Oh, just the worst sound, but I love you when you make it. Any math is accidental, served up on a place, spat into a napkin, all math is a mistake.
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8. |
Comfort In The Marsh
03:04
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Hey, where are you hiding? I know what not to hope for — No grace, no consistency. Check it all at the door. I’ll play my cards as instructed, and I hear that you’ll pay handsomely, but first-hand proof is a luxury. I know what not to expect. I’m told it’s open season if I just peel back my lids, if I just engage the program, if I just open the valves. But over this hill lies trouble, and there’s comfort in the marsh. I can sink down through the warm mud, come out a newborn all in blood. So, hey, where are you hiding? I’m falling in the lamplight. In which direction, in what final pose? This theatre is a war, is a joke. Write a line then erase the one above. That way the tongue stays all rolled up and we go home smiling: mouths full of shit don’t fall open.
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9. |
Seams
06:25
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So, back to sleeping with my arms around my head, as if to keep the plates together, and waking to an aching jaw — the windows can’t keep out the cold. My skin is still to fair, my eyes still too old. I won’t wake up on the far side of winter without phoning everyone I know for their company, and their bad ideas, and the air they bring in with them. I keep forgetting lines that should be in my blood. But when the walls fold in at the seams, and my breath is short and sour, and my dinner sits cold on my plate, and I’ll drink anything but water, and my bed is all torn up, and my canted love is gone, they come back: “Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me.” So get your shoes on.
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10. |
(Hungry)
04:28
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If your love was something I could rip into with my teeth, I'd gorge myself until my belly ached, and then I'd eat some more. (Hungry).
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ibid. Seattle, Washington
Please check out my new band at adultmauling.bandcamp.com
"The reason why
everyone should move out of Los Angeles."-One Percent Jihad
ibid. is Gabriel Mathews. He moved out of Los Angeles.
Photo: Fay Walker
Background art: Dan Scowley
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