1. THE ORACLE OF NASSAU

There are no crowds out on the streets
No neon lights, no beautiful people

Just vacant windows staring down
At the heaps of ash and charred rags
And the avenues yawn between
Ruins that spike like polygraphs
At the half remembered husks
Int he cordwood-bundled clouds

Why won't you fucking listen to me?
I'm so close to finding the right words
Look past the sores and the slurring tongue
And take my reality into your heart

You think I'm pathetic
But the truth is mine, not yours
Because when they cut me open
I saw the future coiled up inside


2. WHITE FLAG

It’s amazing what you can give up
If you just want to survive
You’ll discard cherished convictions
And spread yourself wide for your ravagers
When they approach to defile you

Voyeurs hiding behind the skyline
Peer down at me, but I try to ignore them
They track me through the aisles larded with treasure
And mock me at night when I’m begging for silence

Don’t want to be held responsible
You can take whatever you want from me
Just make sure I don’t notice
You can take whatever you want from me

And the waltzes play on in halls of gold
While the misfortunates slop back and forth
Between the flophouses, clinics and prisons
Until their weight carves ruts in the earth

Don’t want to be held responsible
You can take whatever you want from me
Just make sure it doesn’t hurt
You can take whatever you want from me

This is the world we’ve made for ourselves

But our acid abstentions
Will dissolve the limestone beneath us
And when the sinkhole opens up
We won’t deserve to be pulled out

It’s amazing what you can give up


3. SLEEPER AGENT

Reality’s wilting around me
Words turn to liquid
And run from of the pages of books

My dreams are all stock footage
Skipping and twitching, stuck on repeat

And the official channels are all going silent
No more vapid assurances
No alarms, no surprises
Just colorless light and featureless sound
Blemishing everything

Reality is wilting around me
And my wetware is drying up
So I squeeze myself into wires
And course through the copper to
The cone of the speaker

And ride a shudder through the air
Until I slide into your head
Where I cut through the wax
And caress the little bones

Oh, I’m coming close now
Oh, I’m coming close now

I gently part the tiny hairs
And plant a serrated shard
Between the dusky folds within

A stowaway from a wilted world


4. BALKANIZED

I’m standing on the platform
And there’s a pile of trash bags
Swollen with former objects of desire
Stripped of office, like corrupted priests
In black plastic vestments

And cast out to vagrancy
So now they wait with me
Twitching with the palsy
Of the rats in their guts
That shriek as the train approaches
To take me home

There’s a negative copy of me
In a bus station on a dusty plain
A thousand miles away

And one day we’ll meet
Swept up by different flags
We’ll lock eyes through gunsights
And I wonder which one of us
Will die beneath the other’s knives
And I hope it will be him

It’s not personal
But I’ll rip your throat out if I have to
I’ll tear your guts out if I’m asked to
You’ll rip my throat out if you have to
You’ll tear my guts out if you’re asked to

It’s nothing personal
Because we’re both the same
Lemmings rushing away from a mirror
And towards a cliff


5. ETERNITY IN A BREATH

The world without is thin and strange
Like the last moments in a dream
Of lying afloat on a vast, lightless sea
Where vague premonitions loom up from the deep
To rasp at the half-truths that buoy your weight
‘Til your mind is dissolved by the brightness of day

How can you stand the confusion?
How will you bear the pain?

Breathe.


6. IMPLANT FEVER

Sometimes I stare for too long into the sun
Until my vision grows grainy with pixels
I can feel the dials in my forebrain turn
Someone’s in there, tampering with the controls

Each new day sweeps the boundaries away
And I’m left to redefine
Where the machines end and my mind begins anew

In this place
The background chatter is digitally remastered
And thousands of lenses bend the light
Until riddles are all I can see

Each new day sweeps the boundaries away
And I’m left to wonder why
I should trust anything that I hear, see or think anymore

They’ve filtered and vetted the input I’m getting
And cross-referenced it with the finest algorithms
Ensuring that all content will seamlessly sync
With the receivers they’ve built in my brain
That’s the just the way that we do things these days
And it’s improving at an exponential rate

They’ve made my skull an echo chamber
It clangs with thoughts they’ve designed

There’s no room for me in here anymore
Time to shut up and accept it


7. INVISIBLE INJURY

I met with the white coats again today
They fed me another optimistic prognosis
And pills that chip away at my strength
Even as they keep me alive
Count me among the enlightened ones
Who know that they've been cursed
I'll have decades to fight a losing battle
And to bleed from invisible wounds

They tell me my body is beautiful
But my innards turn sour as the years tick by
It's a glorious cage with luscious fetters
That will bind me until I die

And dogs stalk me in the street
I can feel their eyes raking my back
And dripping down my thighs
Their teeth seek the targets
That grow like moles on my skin
Whose light shines through my clothes
They can't be hidden away

They tell me my body is fertile
And that each pore bursts with the gift of life
But it's a glorious cage with luscious fetters
That will bind me until I die

I'm trying hard not to feel ungrateful
But it can really get you down, man
Being locked in forever with a weakness
That fate bestowed with a smile
And all of these gifts are good for nothing
But god keeps giving me more
Schedules to keep and payments to make
Blessed art thou, my daughter

I met with the white coats again today
They spoke to me in soothing tones
As they repaired the walls of my cell:
"The boon of beauty comes with a price
And it is your duty to pay it
Day by day, day by day"


8. THE PARASITE IN WINTER

The cold darts in like a scalpel
And cuts away the scraps of sleep
It exploits my weaknesses
‘Til cracks creak wide in my old skin

Shivers flow down my body
The muscles jerk and snap
Livid flags in February wind

The lightbulbs gutter as I roam
These frigid, bloodless halls
Where the enzymes drip down slow
And despairing villi beg for my warm breath

Silence rests a velvet hand
On all the starved pests and empty beds
And the time draws near for me
To leave this place behind


9. THE MOTHER OF VIRTUES

The first time it was an accident
We cursed ourselves for months
But its liquid eyes and little fists
Smothered our principled objections

We were doing what our bodies told us
We were vassals to our lust

It got easier every time
We were praised and congratulated
Fecundity is the mother of virtues
We didn’t feel bad about it anymore

We were doing what our bodies told us
We were vassals to our lust
We did it again and again

The spirit is willing
And oh, how the flesh is willing
We’ll thrust ourselves into the future
Again and again and again

And the birthing cries will bury
The echoes of the old koan:
Limitless flesh, limited means

It is right and good to drown the earth in seed
It’s what we were put here to do
And by God if we aren’t good at it

O, rejoice!
For soon the world will burst with wombs
The sun will claw for the trees in vain
And an ocean of bones will creak below