1. |
A Given Day
03:45
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How to feel about a given day depends
on perspectives of beginnings and ends
Memorable or mundane a little or a lot
It'd be nice to get it right before we rot
A given day felt like pleasure
A given felt like pressure
A given day felt like it was historic
Rich in meaning somehow less than caloric
How to feel about a given day can hinge
On attention as a drug inside a syringe
Messy or precise auspicious or improvised
It'd be nice to get done before it's revised
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2. |
Blind Justice
02:42
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I wouldn't throw you to the lions
but I wouldn't let you live with lambs
I wouldn't choke you if you were dying
but I might block the doors with jambs
I'm so surprised to find myself wishing
the penultimate worst of all outcomes
You could earn my hatred with honor
but it'd take centuries and continents
You could get me to call you a goner
but I'd need accounting for expense
But if blind justice would rather go fishing
us randoms must stand struck dumb
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3. |
Consequence
04:09
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It's in a child's incessant cry
and the rasp of the elderly
In footfalls reminding why
shadows that won't float free
Don't know if you'll see it
Or if it will find you first
It doesn't easily tire out
Knows neither hunger nor thirst
It's in the things you miss
Tingling at awareness' edge
The innocent eye, the guilty kiss
A broken vow, forgotten pledge
So when desire encounters consequence
and needs a little taste just to make sense
but touch and feel and smell only incense
whose fault can it be if you're still left tense?
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4. |
Epiphany
03:04
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Can you even call it sudden
If everybody saw it coming
No blood out without blood in
And now everybody’s running
Watch what your eyes can see
Let it dawn on you epiphany
Watch so you recognize perdition
There you are inside sedition
Is it five years or five hundred
Or fifty five or maybe ten fewer
Who can keep track of the time
From way down here in the sewer
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5. |
Everything He Touches
04:24
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You can think of a name but if you start with names
you'll be longer than the man himself stuck around
You can think of a face but if you think of a face
you'll watch them slip from sight beneath the ground
Maybe you know somebody
intimately or tangentially
a paragon of truth and justice
a trafficker in the basest lies
Here at the end of all things
I feel like I know too much
reducible to only one thing
everything he touches dies
You can think of a law but if you start in on policy
you'll find yourself winding up where nature abhors
you can think of a wall but it's never high as it oughta be
or resonant as windows bridges tunnels and doors
What are you left with, you think
Every joke and idiotic nickname
Every link that slipped over the brink
for lack of imagination or surfeit of blame
Everybody he broke on purpose
or through neglect or lucky accident
A hurt little half-life who'll still hurt us
long after the plane makes its final descent
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6. |
Eyes And Ears
04:14
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Funny how it gets smaller the longer we stare
Still take a cure since we're past prevention
for these crooks' biggest crime laid bare
wasn't only theft of time but our attention
I remind you don't hide hopes or feed fears
For your safety only trust your eyes and ears
Funny how it gets bigger given your fright
So check the locks if you want reassurance
and try not to hold your beliefs too tight
Room to walk or to run beats insurance
Rasputins trying to work us over
Wanting more than money in the bank
Revolutions ain’t only in October
so signal if you smell something rank
It stays the same unless seen for what it is
Heard for how it harms not how it may sound
So remember to finish remember not to miss
when you start what you hit lest it rebound
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7. |
It Was Always You
04:34
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If I should go dark
If you don't see me around
It could be that I've gone to ground
Maybe it’s a little lark
maybe something went down
It could be time to get out of town
If I should go dark
Please remember to my peers
Tell them I wouldn't recommend tears
Maybe I missed a mark
got cut off by a wildfire of fear
you know those spread around here
The rules say I should destroy my notes
remember what I can forget what I must
nothing left to harbor if I burn the boats
commit to forecasts of an absence of trust
I will say that I liked my name
A small price to pay for blame
A small price to pay for what was true
It's not me, it was always you
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8. |
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We open up our story in media res
A fancy way to say the middle of a mess
Heroes and heroines saving the day
as villains and villainesses get in the way
Meanwhile back at the revanche
Shovel meets dirt and rope meets branch
Narratives assembled barely stanch
wounds to make a body politic blanch
Flashback to origins for insight
hoping to learn how day turned to night
Pretty potemkin plots turned out wooden
and caught fire gradually and then sudden
Tell me how you handle a victory or a loss
I'll tell you how to count and what's the cost
You can wave a flag you can even start a war
But is power worth what some seek to restore?
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9. |
No Muss No Fuss
03:33
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Don't mistake the land for solid
Or that guy who'll rob you
for your wallet and keys and phone
for a solid citizen, one of your own
He just looks like he's doing
what he ought to instead of
taking what you hoped to
hang onto and enjoy for a while
Earthquakes rely on faults
As do larger systems around us
Robberies are better than assaults
so do as they say no muss no fuss
Comply with his swift demands
and remember that you have eyes
to observe not just hands to hand over
objects in your rear view mirror
can be replaced but you can't get
an off-shelf life as easily as you might
imagine, not only because they're in style
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10. |
No One We Knew
04:02
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We can't break the law like we used to
Only so much bad from only so many goods
We can't slip the cuff when it comes to stuff
the way we could back when we were hoods
The law was what you could get away with
But in time what was play became complaint
These days it's often more what we pay with
until we are left saying auf wiedersehen
We can't wave the flag like we used to
Wander a main drag with shoulder shrugs
We can't smash and grab and then hail a cab
the way we could back when we were thugs
The law was a respecter of no one we knew
But in crime what was more crooked than crooks
These days it's crew against crew me against you
And judges' aims improved when throwing books
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11. |
Overthrow
04:03
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Power begins beneath flesh and skin
Behind both eyes under each breath
It exists to be exercised and to win
It exists to make life and cheat death
You want to overthrow the world
but you don’t know you overthrow me
You might be surprised to know
if someday you decide to get to know me
Power ends between enemies and friends
At the boundaries and edges of desires
It exists to be challenged and to change
It exists to balance familiar and foreign fires
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12. |
Reckoning
03:33
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When we work to estimate
Coolly count and calculate
Forecast based on run rate
Some call this a reckoning
Pursue punishment night and day
And retaliation to nourish the fray
Seek revenge come what may
Some call that a reckoning
If assessment and portrayals
of real and imagined betrayals
are barely restrained by defrayals
Then there must be a reckoning
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13. |
Silhouettes
03:50
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The guns won't stop singing, victims keep sprawling
evidence gets collected and the coroner keeps stalling
Trackers slipped in moneybags after threats on pain
find hazmat suited hoodlums hiding in darkened drains
Tonight I am your eyes, I squint into the darkness
I don't like caring much more than I am careless
I wish the people captured for others' inspection
were more than merely trapped before the amber sets
I wish the people enraptured and in need of protection
were more in every moment than just silhouettes
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14. |
Sinking
03:52
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We count down the minutes and seconds
We hope that we won't have to reckon
with decisions made and options chosen
We're trying everything we can think of
in the name of everything we say we love
but the ways we love need more thinking
we're reeling as our feelings leave us sinking
We leave what's forgotten to chance
and hope that we aren't asked to dance
while spines go numb and feet stand frozen
The hallucinations
extend beyond our skin
So find directions
to lead us out instead of in
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Saint and Kings San Pablo, California
I’m a singer-songwriter using guitars and keyboards to craft distinctive dispatches from intimate interiors, vast exteriors and all points in between. Drawing on years of pop, soul, indie, folk and dance-music fandom, I try to turn observations and narratives into succinct sonic snapshots. ... more
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