1. |
Thelxiepeia
06:13
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I come from bottle glass and seaweed in between my mother’s teeth
I bleed with oxygen too dense for any land dweller to breathe
I am a scorpion wisteria white serpent in the leaves
The wine-dark waters are my chariot and I am here to feed
Down here the sun is cased in flesh
The snow is made of bone and skin
With tongue-like fingers we are gathering our filaments back in
The pressure builds into a keening drone of distant violin
The heavy spaces are my kindred and the silence is my twin
And all the coldly burning stars within me shine out from my eyes
And like the stones inside the dead they wait so stoically to rise
I eat the birds that tumble softly through these black inverted skies
The insides of their bodies blooming in serene expulsive sighs
Small and bright as knives
The mouths of the angels that you hear
And swells of swollen size
Carry their voices to your ear
Hold on
To the burning salt inside you
So cold and white
And when the hush is green
You will open
Your eyes
I come from bottle glass and seaweed in between my mother’s teeth
I bleed with oxygen too dense for any land dweller to breathe
I am a scorpion wisteria white serpent in the leaves
The wine-dark waters are my chariot and I am here to feed
And oh so far away from life
This is the life that bleeds the world
Below the last dull pulse of light
In my boneless arms you curled
Embedded in your lungs your life begins to chatter
Like a squirrel
But it is far too late
You are the grain of sand
I am the pearl
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2. |
Dynamite
02:47
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Use me for dynamite I’ll get the bats out your chimney
That stuff you use now lights the roof of your mouth oh so dimly
I’ll give you my flowers my little white goat
Just give me that muscle you keep in your throat
You know that it’s never the truth if you say it with envy
Make me a melody out of the lint in your pockets
We’ll eat flaming cakes of black snakes and we’ll drink bottle rockets
Your fuzzy wool coat won’t protect you from carnivores
I’m having congress with your plastic dinosaurs
My favorite kind are the ones that roll back in their sockets
The only thing cold is a promise
The only thing hot is a threat
The only thing worse than the thought of not living is living with only regret
The only thing warm is a whisper
The only thing sweet is your face
So let’s plant a seed of undoing and cultivate just a little disgrace
There’s a merciless trade in the final parade of the salmon
But I’m not your Eponine I’m just your propylene cannon
An anodyne compound requires some friction
My formula here is a better prescription
Than feeding your capons with all of the air you can cram in
The only thing cold is the lightning
The only thing hot is the moon
The only thing better than quenching your thirst is to drown in a sudden monsoon
The only thing warm is the future
The only thing sweet is the past
So let’s play a game of perpetual motion and make the combustion last
Use me for dynamite I’ll get the bats out your chimney
That stuff you use now lights the roof of your mouth oh so dimly
I’ll give you my flowers my little white goat
Just give me that muscle you keep in your throat
You know that it’s never the truth if you say it with envy
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3. |
Pygmalion
03:32
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I told Pygmalion the cottonwood was sprouting from his ears
I never thought I’d see the day he’d raise the broken cavaliers
A charging light brigade of heavy reason crashing like a wave
The caballeros walking from the grave
And do you fear a dark intelligence that differs from your own
Perhaps a ravenous insectoid mind the memory in the stone
I take my blood with bread white feral cuspids gnashing in the dance
You should have euthanized me when you had the chance
But sometimes we learn the hard way
That we are built to serve
And whom we are built to serve
The firstlings of my hand have never been the firstlings of my heart
I let the screaming waters in and pushed my eyelids wide apart
But now I race Byzantine caterpillars roaring at the sun
Now that the revolution has begun
And when they spread their golden wings there is a shattering of glass
And then the many colored shards of light rain down upon the grass
And so we dance with bleeding feet upon the ruins of your sky
And in a broken voice you ask me why
Well all I know is this is one way
To deserve
To deserve
The little birds and beasts of field and fen
Know only hunger they have not the hearts of thinking men
And so with knife and fork in hand and napkin tucked beneath your chin
Get down on your knees
And whisper homage to your meat as it walks towards you from the factories
You hide your weapons under whispers under gossamer designs
And feigning ignorance you gesture at the omens and the signs
But what you do not understand is that the roots grow underground
This ocean has no depth that you can sound
Against the poison in the air I make an armor of my skin
The clockwork animal is breaking down and crying for its kin
But there’s no answer there is nothing only silence from above
A dead machine the god that favored you with love
Well sometimes we learn the hard way
That we are built to serve
And whom we are built to serve
Like all machines
Built to serve
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4. |
Dissect
02:17
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Ill met by moonlight in the house of my defeat
I learned the brittle voice of fire was contagious
Consumed by the romance of a broken light bulb on the floor
I saw the burning gardens of the ages
So young I didn’t know about the space in between moments
Or the teeth of superheroes the blue cotton shirts of men
And I had my own protection but I never saw the light
Above my head that was a beacon calling them
And I am not your angel but I do know how to bleed
And every drop had always been in my defense
I have nothing to prove but clench my fist into my teeth
Until my fingernails drip with the evidence
And once upon a time there was a frog upon a table
We were armed with silver tools his purple body to dissect
But the curiouser thing about the frog that I refer to
Was the holes already forming on his neck
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5. |
There Is No Love
05:57
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There is no power in the world like penetration
There is no soul within the self and its vibration
And its thrashing frantic mechanical raving
There is no fire that recognizes other fire
There is no voice upon the wire there is no mind inside a fire
There is no love
There is no camera pointing down from up above
There is no love
There is no hunger in the world that is undying
Just the creosote smell of the dead and the tomahawks flying
And under them you are alone
With the paper masks that you make of your hands to adore you
And the gibbering ghosts that make all your arguments for you
There is no silence at the grave of the dove
There is no love
And you can be the corpse-god of my heart
And you can be the object of my art
And you can be the watcher at the floodgates of my body
There is no love
And you can run your silver tongue along the contours of my delicate design
And you can take apart my words with all the courage of your desiccating mind
And you can fight with all your strength against the gravity that pulls you through the rind
And you can wrap your god in glory paint it gold and make it fine it is not mine
There is no pleasure on the earth like desecration
There is no soul inside a person who has left her body vacant
A cavity to fill with your crystalline perfect solitary elation
There is no love
There is no human hand inside the glove
There is no love
And you can be the icon of my heart
And you can be the subject of my art
And you can be the monarch of the ruins of my body
There is no love
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6. |
Three Mice
04:16
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Three mice I buried
I dug their shallow graves with spoons
The worms and cats have found them all by now
Three different parks I found magnolia trees in bloom
Three tiny corpses and an empty room
Now say this fragile body
Should become a hollow pocket
Put garlic roses in my mouth and crush my neck with stones
We crack we crack these vessels
We crack we crack these vessels
It’s worth my life to shine light on the bones
Light on the bones
The alligator sighs
Rolling marbles in his eyes
And he clicks and flicks his tongue against the dying of the sun
When he speaks his teeth are human
Milky stalks of starkest luminosity
Which fills the room in
Deeper shades of white albumen
And the crocodile is preening
For his warty claws are sheening
Though the warm-furred cubs are keening
For some meat with prostrate meaning
We are hollow son and daughter
We are coal and blood and water
We are heated limbs to cauterize
Each other for the slaughter
We are hollow son and daughter
We are coal and blood and water
We are heated limbs to cauterize
Each other for the slaughter
Three hearts suspended
In the viscous liquid of the tomb
Still moving slowly in the deepest ground
See how the tiny faces in the darkness loom
See how the roots grow and the branches bloom
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7. |
The Rain
04:34
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We stand outside in the rain tonight and swallow the wet smell of home
We’ve nothing left of the charms of youth but the shards of disease in our bones
And the weight of the storm and the wet of the sky as it presses our eyes is the cost
How much we have seen and how fiercely we’ve dreamed and we know what we’ve lost
So sing high sing high with your ghostly voice
Ring hard in your silvery brain
Let scream the wind in your eggshell skull
That is pounded pounded pounded by the rain
I once knew someone with diamonds for eyes
And I held the reins of her world
But as tight as we’re lashed to the mast we are light as paper to the raging wind
We are nothing to the wind
So sing high sing high with your ghostly voice
Ring hard in your silvery brain
Let scream the wind in your eggshell skull
That is pounded pounded pounded by the rain
Come fill to the brim and raise up your glass in a toast to the darkening sky
As we pitch our tents in the field of our death let us drink to the when and the why
Let the rain in the cracks in your brain let it crash let it rush into each hollow space
Show the birds in the skies the whites under your eyes
Let the light fall from your face
And sing high sing high with your ghostly voice
Ring hard in your silvery brain
Let scream the wind in your eggshell skull
That is pounded pounded pounded
Sing high sing high with your ghostly voice
Ring hard in your silvery brain
Let scream the wind in your eggshell skull
That is pounded pounded pounded pounded pounded
By the rain
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8. |
The Bright Room
06:05
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We all come home and go into the bright room
Snakeskins coil into our beds
Breathing in the mercury of our overexposure
We dream of white marble heads
Bodies pale and sterile as the linens
Lips as dry and tender as the air
The colored lights pulse in every shadow
And with the stoic eyes of animals
We blink into the glare
And I dream without losing awareness of my body
Not knowing if it has the strength to take me through December
And all of our dead parents can’t remind us who we are
We would all forget our names if we were trying to remember
And I call down beyond my broken borders
To all my sons and daughters weeping tears of glue
And you know now I always was your soldier
I always meant to hold you
Now there’s nothing here to wake the fear up
Close your eyes and take your syrup
Let the quiet hold you where you are
We all come home and go into the bright room
With a sour metallic tingle in our bones
And our love for one another
Is a warm and quiet sorrow
That we keep inside the artifacts that decorate our home
And I dream without losing the noise of the disease
Stumbling over shards of glass balloons that I have broken
And all of our dead parents cannot hold us in their arms
And everything we’ve lost will fall apart but not break open
I recall rain
Falling on the surface of the pond
And the place in the clouds where the sun broke like a stain
And you laughed as you came running
I remember this
I remember this
I remember this
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9. |
Arcadia
02:43
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Leaves falling flutter froth-white fletches of gold
And I curl my toes in the stuttering cold
The creamy clouds cock up and unfold
And this alone could be all that I told
Myself my heart would never inhale
A bicycle ride on the back of a whale
I gave my flute to a well-mannered snail
I turned my spine to a white linen
Sail away on the broken white field
Take these leaves for a crown
And hold me
And we’ll never grow old and we’ll never come down
And we’ll never grow old
And we’ll never come down
And the tendrils of grass filigrees that curl ‘round our feet
As we fall in the meadow like shadows of heat
And your eyes that fall open like folded white sheets
The impermanent drops of that blue
If you knew about all of the friends that I love with regret
And make their smiles my water and bread
And watch them through the walls of my head
I hold the candle and glass
If you knew that I know how you wash out your sorrow with soap
And I hear every word that sticks in your throat
And that each night I go out alone in the boat
You would not hesitate to unbutton your coat
And sail away on the broken white pond
Hold your breath on the way down
We’ll be here till the fire is dead and the leaves are all down
And the foxes are gone
And the leaves are all down
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10. |
We Are All Mice
06:47
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We are all mice
We rise with broken teeth and broken eyes
To stretch our necks and fill our bellies with bright lies
That taste of future and of light
We are all mice
We crawl through labyrinths of ingenious device
Counting days of solitude in single grains of rice
We are alive we are alright
Hiding underneath the endless night
Inside the hive
With shallow breathing we stay quietly alive
We guard against the cold we guard against the
Predatory whispers yearning to infect our minds
Inside the minds
Of fragile innocents born terrified and blind
A tiny crack that lets the light of the divine
Flood uncomprehending through our night
The drifts of powder float down from a dizzying height
And blessed are the echoes down the corridors of stone my body bleeds on
And blessed is the refuge and the long parade of seekers that it leads on
And blessed is the silence of the dry and fallow earth we spread the seeds on
And blessed is the water of the little wasted lives that nothing feeds on
That nothing even feeds on
Hide your dark and fertile body
Do not make a sound
Lay the heart of poison in you
Deep beneath the ground
Weave your long white arms around me
Guide me through the birth
In the sky the red sun waiting
To reclaim the earth
We are all mice
Sensitive to the smell of ozone in the blood
We turn and run as the far tunnels fill with mud
And for a little longer we survive
We are all mice
And as the forests burn and all the oceans rise
We clutch our pink and tiny hands across our eyes
Not to see what’s underneath the melting ice
What rises to a new dawn from beneath the melting ice
And blessed are the echoes down the corridors of stone my body bleeds on
And blessed is the refuge and the long parade of seekers that it leads on
And blessed is the silence of the dry and fallow earth we spread the seeds on
And blessed is the water of the little wasted lives that nothing feeds on
That nothing even feeds on
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11. |
Red Sun
06:13
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All I have known
Burns to grey
And all I own
Breaks with breaking day
The dust and bones
That line the winding way
I crawl alone
Fire in my hand
A relic of the sun
A grain of sand
The burning day is done
And here I stand
Where ancient waters used to run
Caressed the living land
All we have lost
Light as air
Heavy as the moss
No longer there
The bitter frost
The searing glare
We always knew the cost
Now the patterns move so slowly
Currents drifting on
There are no birds to hold the silence
Just before the dawn
Is there movement in the ashes
After we are gone
Is there light enough to rise
Hide, hide me here
The center of your light
The edges of my fear
Dissolve into the night
Flare and disappear
The dying star so bright
So cold and clear
Hide, hide me here
The center of your light
The edges of my fear
Dissolve into the night
Flare and disappear
The dying star so bright
So cold and clear
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Helen America Seattle, Washington
Helen America is a singer/songwriter, cartoonist, and multimedia visual artist. Her music is deeply personal and passionate avant-garde indie-chamber-pop, with the dense lyricism of Joanna Newsom, the visionary weirdness of Jeff Mangum, and the raw emotional energy of Patti Smith. ... more
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