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1. |
Archaeology
06:04
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There’s a ghost living in the polygraph
First a scream and then a laugh
From the waveforms I find nothing
There was you digging up the ocean floor
Treasures unaccounted for
Tell your friends you can’t come out to play
I am one trinket on a crowded shelf
Would you notice if I fell
And broke into a million pieces
Line it up straight and I will knock it down
Burn a forest to the ground
But weeds will always find the room to grow
I could have done better
I could have made a movie
I could have listened in class
I could have learned to draw from observation
I could taken care of our backyard
I could have used my eraser
I could have done better
I could have learned how to swim
I could have traveled
I let my fucking passport expire with one stamp in it
I could have gotten in shape
I could have distinguished myself in a comments section
I could have avoided prescribed opinions and landed on an original thought or feeling
I could have done better
I could have called an old friend
I could have cooked more
I could have eaten less
I could have taught my dog the difference between acting pathetic and learning from her mistakes
I could have had better ideas
I have so many bad ideas
I could have followed through
I could have found a new hobby
I could have gotten really good at I don’t know bowling or poker or chess
I could have read a book
I could have written 300 words every day after work and ended up with a ton of usable material
300 words is just not that much
I could have self-published a collection of humorous essays on the psychological tolls of near constant injury
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2. |
Stilts
03:53
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Sharpen garden shears
Overgrowth to clear
Jungles strengthen roots
I belong to you
Walk around on stilts
Walk around a clean target
Be more flesh than ghost
Scared but not alone
Walk around on stilts
Walk around, be seen
Walk around on stilts
Walk around a clean target
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3. |
Sequoia
03:49
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Airplane crash lands in the pond
Nervous people braced for the fall
Redwood throwing its weight around
Get square with younger version of self
Grand sequoia
Protection comes at a cost
Give no quarter
Cut my memories off
Stand tall in adjacent rooms of the house
Nightmare flowers rattle and cloy
Send more permafrost from the grave
Sacred geometry stacked in a maze
If I shut my eyes will I dream of millipedes still?
Grand sequoia
Help me prepare for the spill
I’m so tired of fighting invisible vines
Give no quarter
Cut my memories off
If I shut my eyes will I hear the millipedes call?
Hew my memories
Help me prepare for the fall
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4. |
Flowers
04:56
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Take me out to find
The criminal enterprise
Busting out the windows
Of unsuspecting cars
Magnifying glass
Over backyard termite hill
Swaying with the flowers
You’re a dancer
You’re a perfect symmetrical shape
Waiting on the sidewalk
Taking in the air
How long can one breath last?
I am everywhere
Light a roman candle
Point it at a hornet’s nest
Swaying with the flowers
You’re a dancer
You’re a perfect symmetrical shape
Minutes become hours
With abandon
Making perfect symmetrical shapes
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5. |
Ivy
04:27
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TV face the wall
Make a list of goals
Ivy
Lay still, limbless giant
Get drunk every third night
Ivy
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6. |
Photosynthesis
05:15
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Wake in a hole
Sit around and act
Like you’re in the frame
Even as the checks bounce
Find a way to make
Time capsules today
You won’t be deterred
By armloads of snakes
By defiled graves
Clinging to the face
Of a fatal sun-kissed bluff
Wish for stronger hands
Laugh like a king
Peel apart the legs
Of wicked water bugs
Hiding in the grass
Feels somehow profound
X’s over days
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7. |
Carbon
04:11
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Well dries up
Why aren’t you shaking?
No sky
Why aren’t you shaking?
No land in sight
We’re lost at sea
Mountains open up their tops
Ash clouds rain onto us
I tighten up my grip on the ripcord
Earth was never round enough
Rough edges, jagged crusts
Canals and causeways
Killed the dinosaurs
Lake’s gone dry
And I’m still shaking
Loud noise
And ivy strangles
At every point of intersection
There’s no carbon left in this sour heart
You should know
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8. |
Green Thumb
02:35
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Here lies he who broke new ground
Dug the hole where I woke up
Strange new flora I have found
Open up my mouth for more
Here lies he who broke new ground
Artifacts from ancient tribes
How will history describe
Your achievements in the yard?
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9. |
Unorganism
03:39
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Sidewalk chairs got no one else
I miss the life
The razor’s edge
And the fire that once compelled me to stay all night
Sanding corners into nubs
Stingray, take me to your hole
Where mariners go to disengage from life
And waste their time
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10. |
Overgrowth
06:07
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Inhaling dust from the page
Boney hands over lines
Digging for treasure
My mind is a rotary saw
There is a garden
Where hemlock has learned to hunt in packs
Insects are cavalier
And sunlight is only memory
We will do our best to make
This overgrowth a home
Reagan has learned how to walk
Down the stairs on her hands
Damien’s new Rottweiler
Barks at the scent of new blood
Theirs is a house where
Square-footage is likely to change
Build strong, build high
With triangles to ward off
The flies and the pack-masters marching in file
“Today,” I said, “I will produce, not harvest. I will not become lost in the details.”
And still, I began to wander almost immediately, purposeless like a grieving specter in the attic of a remote farmhouse. Hours passed. I could see through the cracks in the blinds that there was still sunlight, so I put on my boots. The dog pawed at the back door and whined. She had carved acute streaks into the paint, and I reprimanded her to the best of my ability. We went outside.
The stalks were the highest I’d seen them yet. Through the filter of their latticework, the sun cast copulating shadow creatures onto the concrete. Jerky movements. Malaise. General discomfort. For a moment my knees became weak, and I sat on the bench to collect myself. The air felt thick. A putrid stench. Shouting from two buildings down the block.
In the spring we had agreed to a scientific approach. On a rotating schedule each of us was to assess the rate of its growth and log irregularities in shape, color, behavior, appetite. I had Saturday and Sunday, sometimes Wednesday night, sometimes Friday afternoon. Already my notebook was a jumbled wreck: phrases on phrases, shaky grids on unlined paper, a crude ballpoint pen drawing of a flower with rows of teeth like a shark, holding in its jaws the limp body of a boy. I have failed spectacularly.
A pair of gardening gloves lay side by side on top of the cellar door. I picked them up and checked for spiders then put them on, stretched my fingers, cracked off some of the caked mud with phantom applause and caught the attention of the dog once more. She was ready to go back inside. Her tail was low and she stood at the door with her head spun around backwards and her eyes wide and scared. It wasn’t time yet. My nail beds itched. We had work to do.
We will do our best to make
This overgrowth a home
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Monster Furniture Brooklyn, New York
"Giant Egg" out now!
Monster Furniture is the moniker of Brooklyn-based recording artist Gabe
Smoller. Across genre-spanning albums and with a rotating cast of collaborators, he writes songs about dogs, death, containment, illness, and home renovation, finding complexity in the mundane (and with just enough DIY eccentricities to keep things from getting too heavy).
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