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lyrics

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

credits

from Achievements in Large Scale Topiary, released September 14, 2018

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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). ... more

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