1. |
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Every time we fill the floor, I can't find a key to please the dying. And it's gonna be a long, long time until we're home. But the catch is, I can already feel my spleen begin to unload black bile through the passenger window of your car. Just like that, I feel pretty like a strawberry in Eden after the Fall. Never thought I'd live to see my heresies catch up with me, but I'm old now, so I'm a little apathetic about it all. And a black cloud moves across the parking lot of a nearby mall.
One deep breath should last us 'til it gets here. One deep breath should last 'til it arrives. One deep breath should get us to the next small town.
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2. |
14th C
04:16
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On the front steps is where I like to smoke. Killing time as the flagellants go by, singing praise for Jesus Christ's impossible, immutable pardon and mercy.
But there's never enough of it to go around. Not even hay for our ponies. The chimneysweeper does his rounds, barefoot as a newborn baby.
I see the dead look in your eyes every time you say "Fuck it all."
Don't know where I'm from. I don't know where you're going. But I woke up in the room where we fought and I threw out your clothing. If I loved you so bad in spring, then maybe I could have loved anything. Centuries ago...
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3. |
Heal Us Immediately
04:53
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Wandering. Wide awake. Counting, counting. Stay still for us.
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4. |
Sally Mann
02:08
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I was momentarily fixated on a speckled stone on the left banks of the river where the martyr's bones float to Mesopotamia. There's a riot in the square. Suddenly your friends are there, and so are you. It's a big dance party.
The city's made of silicon, and everyone needs a hundred bucks to cook anything at all. My mirror has a face full of desire and disgrace, and that is all. Kind of like how Sally Mann does it. Green eyes exposed too young.
Days like these have been unkind, and my love struggles to unwind, like a firefly ablaze beneath the sun, perceived by no one but the man who holds two pistols saying "I'm listening now," but he covers his mouth. Is it safe to say the day is done?
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5. |
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There was a time when I pulled your body from the well. Tried to resurrect it with flame and paraffin. After an hour, I called the paramedics in. If they say it's just "bad air," then I guess it is. As long as you live, I might be...
Stranger's van killed the car in a hit and run. Fucked the transmission in the ravine at night. Walked until the Korean church in the moonlight. I also can't breathe right. As long as I live, you might be...
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6. |
Be Fine
02:17
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Snowcap slides off the edge of the crow's nest to the ground. I'd like to imitate its motion. There goes all my life passing by in a few last remarks about my mood and the season. "Just be fine, just be fine, just be fine, just be fine."
And there goes Madness and Death at the top of the road, pulling leaves from the gutters. Old comrades in thick sweaters stand 'round the casket 'til one of them mutters, "Just be fine, just be fine, Kevin, just be fine, just be fine."
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7. |
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Holes cut out of a black paper curtain to invite the zeitgeist in and out and in to my life, another posy'd victim crying in the parkade of the Coliseum. So, don't bother me with motions. My body, like yours, is always aching for transference of soul.
Do I drag my body, or is it just my sickness? Do I call the black hounds to come and claim me?
Light...
We are not mushrooms...
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8. |
Keflavik
04:40
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Guess it's true. We were real. Napping on two benches in Keflavik, salt-stained boots and enough kronor for return bus passes.
Count to five. What do you hear? A mouse in the wall suffocating, and our baby never born, never cradled, never lied to, never held or dropped, never damaged, never known at all.
And it's true that I don't need you, and you don't need me.
What we are, summarized, is two small bodies trapped in glaciers slowly melting out to sea to find another slightly smaller flooded island.
'Cause it's true that I don't need you, and you don't need me.
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9. |
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If I were to pace aimlessly in time, olive branch in hand, I'd always hold it sideways.
Nobody is crying in the middle frame, in between the garden and the rising death cloud.
The government may fake you, cash will overtake you, pain is going to change you, but your friends will save you now.
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Kevin Holowach Edmonton, Alberta
Detours and delays. There are no alternatives.
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