1. |
Exitus
02:57
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ANDREW: I have no memory of starting,
I have no knowledge of my end,
my birth I heard from my mother's word,
my death I learnt from dead friends.
Oh, were I raised by wolves or made
by science of unethical stripes
to not once think the thought that once I was not
nor know it's my lot to say goodbye.
'Cause I shudder like a limb laid on a live wire,
not from fear of birth or death but of their mutual child,
'cause if I come stamped with 'The End' and 'Once Upon a Time'
then in-between the two I've got to choose a life.
So I moved to a city on the eve of Eschaton,
post-industrial to judge the drugs and dust her throat caught on,
and summing up the Spirit thrilling in her breast and mine
I cried, "I'll try and be the kind of creature that you like!"
I subsequently shattered like a wave upon the dock
or a crucifix of plaster catching atheistic rocks.
My mother made a unity of me, body and soul,
but it's thirty-four or more I heap at her when I come home.
So I'm smashing window-glass to let a little light
inflame into a single shine my dark mosaic mind.
I'll fall in love with anyone who, lifted like the sun,
promises to draw all things in me into one.
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2. |
New to the Neighborhood
03:05
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ANDREW: I miss you.
I'm not talkin' 'bout havin' the blues.
I'm talkin' 'bout havin' my heart chewed up and spit out.
I miss you.
It's not melancholy, this is a hole
that I burnt in the floor of my apartment kitchen
while my neighbors are lookin' in
and they're singin':
NEIGHBORS: Boy you've got to get yourself over her!
ANDREW: What her? Did she come over? Did she leave a message?
NEIGHBORS: Boy you've got to learn some self-control!
ANDREW: Ooh, I'm doing fine.
I miss you
and no sonnet will do
to describe the pain that's inside
as my stomach's thumb-tacked to my spine
twisted round, double-helix, oh I feel it,
my feelings are dope
my heart's the dealer
the latter got busted
the former he gets shot down.
NEIGHBORS: You'll be alright, you'll be alright, hop up off the floor boy, you'll be alright!
ANDREW: I'm freakin out on my bathroom--
anybody have an aspirin
for my passions?
They've got no relation towards
my rationality.
I'm a leaf in the wind of the principalities--
alright, it's principally me
responsible for being
not one, not two, but three.
NEIGHBORS: Woah, have you ever seen a man so low?
Can you make what's broken whole?
ANDREW: Ooh I dunno, but I sure hope so.
NEIGHBORS: Woah, have you ever seen a man so low?
Can you make what's broken whole?
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3. |
The Emperor of Ice Cream
05:58
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ANDREW: I cannot talk to girls
'cause each of them is a world
a life to live,
possible horizon.
I could be your paramour, or
I could be family rising.
Every kiss every touch costs
other lips, other loves.
Blessed is he, full of hope
who gives up space, gives up roads
for walls and doors, blood and bones, he
has a home, and his home is called Rising.
What of us, looking up, who
see the stars, every one, as
destinies we could choose, but
choice is death,
so we end up choosing nothing at all?
REASON: Woah,
stop the press,
I love you
but you talk too much.
Think about your neighbors
they've got work in the morning
and they've probably had enough
of your all-containing sigh:
"Oh me, oh my, oh why!"
Just pick a life and die.
ANDREW: Oh take the keys,
Sweet Reason, leave,
for the festering forest of other living things
is an oxygen-thief, I cannot breathe
nor tax photosynthesis. Oh God
are you still into us?
I wouldn't be.
Having fathered-forth a universe of possibilities
and palm-trees to have to see
the weight with which we worship
our college degrees.
"You can be what you wanna be!"
screamed the cartoon I saw when I was three.
It's made a cartoon out of me:
Watch me panic over reruns.
If I could approximate to manliness
at least to the degree with which my forefathers imagined it
I would kiss the blistered feet the lips of every inhabitant
of Rust Belt Ohio and like an emergency baptism
I'd sprint to every accident: I the Junior Jesuit
you the Bitter Landscape
in the flavor of the Sacrament,
but oh God the sacrilege
to posture as an offered gift
to call my all what worldly wits insist is split in fourths and fifths.
They don't teach you this in high-school.
REASON: Woah, squeeze my hand and show me
how much it hurts.
Still, I don't think your problems are cosmic
or God-sent.
Have you eaten lunch yet?
It helps.
I'll love you till you die.
I don't care if you don't find
this thing they call a life.
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4. |
The Shadow Cast
06:00
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ANDREW: I'm cleaning my room
and ordering my shoes
(I'm doing it for you)
from red to black to blue.
I'm waking up before the dawn
and falling on my knees
in a room that's oh-so-clean.
(Now do the dishes, son.)
I'm washing the forks and the floor
'cause I can't scrub my soul
though the bleach bore to my bone
it won't reach the catacombs
where I buried all my virgins and my saints.
So don't let me back in
'til I can be your friend
the most singular of men
who is what he seems and seems what he is.
I'm gettin' my affairs in order.
I've got guards round all the borders
and a jar of laundry quarters
and corpses in the courtyard
to scare the child in me,
the one with A.D.D.,
who's only seventeen
and seen some things no grown man should see.
Brother, have you ever felt like three-in-one?
The one that did, the one that does, the one that shouldn't have done?
And if so, have you found a manual for becoming whole?
Can you read it slow?
Fearing death, disease
I touch, I taste the light and sneeze
my flesh on fire, fever fixing burning brows to burning bushes.
There's some demons grown men groan to see,
believe the bright-red blisters
fickle-feet are forming warming
on the ground that shifting. Sifted
through my room and found
a box of Yuengling,
toasted life and now I'm singing,
knee-deep in the froath and the foam I am exposed to
every gorgeous gull pecking out my cliff-face soul
into a coffin for their offspring
singing: "Wisdom is not to know."
NEIGHBORS: Boy, get up!
ANDREW: What?
N: We think you had a heart-attack!
A: Impossible, see, I was just, uh-
N: How many fingers are we holding up?
A: [pause] Three?
N: Four! Can't you kids keep away from drugs?
A: [taking offense] I was just dreaming!
N: [skeptical] Mhm.
A: Or possibly the subject of a vision, or a Marian apparition!
N: Sounds like drugs.
A: Well it's my condition. But I swear I saw Heaven open up! And furthermore-
N: We've heard this one before, the one where your eyes see the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Enter God.
Exit God.
A: Yep, that was it. In incomparable cool he sits on ideal geometric shapes and into the ground he spits fire, healing water, blood, the love and life of a Father-
N: [interrupting] Look, have you got some place to be?
A: And he said to me-
BOTH: Son!
N: We've got things to do besides listen to you.
A: I am your judge,
N: the one that you ignore
A: present in the present
N: and at the end of the world.
A: How'd you guys know?
N: We've got a lot in common
us and the Lord
equally abused
equally ignored
making minimum wage
at the grocery store
watching you live one life
while you pretend your living more.
BOTH: Oh.
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5. |
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ANDREW: Death purchased property
in my arteries
on Fourth Street
at the corner of head and heart.
Death bought a gift-shop there
selling skeleton dresses
to the skulking, scheming, scared and unbelieving
girls around the park.
Business got bad,
Mondays got sad.
He told Mom and Dad
he's coming home.
Oh, business went south,
these people don't look down
they look about
and I've torn out their tongues
but I can't tear out their hopeful sounds.
Death got his I.D. made
at a border state,
bored and weary, he said:
"Ohio you can burn in hell."
So I rose, a rising rose,
and marveled at my body
my apartment, my city --
oh the glory!
We are one, come,
ring the bells!
The wave,
the plaster split,
the million men,
the crucifix,
I'm all of them,
come exorcist,
my legion longs for a final fix,
and finally found,
if hope can find,
in other lips
and other eyes
to whom I'm a whole,
a body, a soul,
a single life that lives and dies.
Oh how high this highest candle lights the dark!
Being here with you, it is enough,
my lack is everything to eyes long-lit with love.
NEIGHBORS: Boy you've got to get yourself some self-control
Boy you've got to save your shipwrecked soul.
ANDREW: And there's nor drug that I can take
to make the ache go away
but that's okay
life isn't comfort
it's a flame
and Death, her hottest heart,
draws me down to deepest dark
melting all my disparate parts into one.
Jesus, oh Jesus, Jefferson Valley's full of bones.
Jesus, oh Jesus, won't you make what's broken whole?
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Dear Other Steubenville, Ohio
Dear Other is a band centered in Steubenville, Ohio.
Marc | Maura | Caleb | Dan | Brodie | Albert | Harrison | Maria | Liam | Sean K | Rob | Sean B |
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