1. |
The Beginning
01:19
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2. |
Bag of Snakes
05:53
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As the curtain retreats let us review:
What was supposed to be a summer preview just turned into winter's sequel, left the people seeking warmth under the ground.
And now at long last as they arise
and the callousness is thawing there's a malice in their yawning that will kill them in their caves if not let out.
Every single one wants to be someone, someone worthy of being reckoned in the night.
Every single one wants to be someone, and the everlasting rule is eat or die.
Everybody knows the green and gold can't stay for long this way it's hanging on a thin and fraying wire.
you better stay on your toes when the light grows dim and the night falls in this city squirms like a massive bag of snakes on fire.
Every single one wants to be someone, someone worthy of being reckoned in the night.
Every single one wants to be someone, and the everlasting rule is eat or die.
One by one they all slither out of their holes.
Spitting gasoline on a mountain of coals.
Presently the bag is drawn and tied,
and the hand is poised and waiting match held high.
The giants that surround us stand guard drooling, and it's pooling into the lakes. From the lakes to rivers, tributaries like systemic capillaries, once they helped the mountains breathe and in a twist of fate now bleed them into the sea.
And the people tied to the land form one blood boiling, from the old to young and pissed and seething, just like infant children teething, grab the first thing they can chew on and proceed until their gums are numb and raw.
As they stumble home alone not sure what they're looking for as they roam, hating streetlamps for their brightness just to marvel at their likeness in reflective bits of glass that they themselves had just then smashed out over the curb.
One by one they all slither out of their holes.
Spitting gasoline on a mountain of coals.
Presently the bag is drawn and tied,
and the hand is poised and waiting match held high.
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3. |
Meat Lockers
05:43
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Six straight hours in a frozen cage, taking out his rage with a carving knife that rips right through the bone.
Eight more straight working on the line, slinging red dead flesh to fat cats in their vests checking their wrists for frame of time.
They better check again for pulses if they find the nerve to part their lips to whine.
Checks the count in the walk-in's cold, hits his number in the clock and leans his shoulder through the door into the air.
And so he goes, from one meat locker out into another.
Wrote his own philosophy:
Don't need no handouts and suckers pine for sympathy.
Cut him open any way you want,
and he'll keep coming back for more.
Favorite song on the headphones, takes a drag and breathes out slowly as the downtown cars are noiseless passing by.
Lets his eyes for a moment close, the tendons in his knees screaming "won't you sit down please, the day is sold."
If you're keeping count that's fourteen hours no break no rest cuz carnal got soul.
Wrote his own philosophy:
Don't need no handouts and suckers pine for sympathy.
Cut him open any way you want,
he'll come back stronger than before.
Racks the bar in the quiet room, the metal echo ringing with the stinging of the sweat in his eyes.
X-ray frames flashing through his mind, but the sickness is receding and its a hell of a day to be alive.
So he vows to atrophy each moment from each day from first of rise.
And so he'll go, from one meat locker back into another.
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4. |
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A demure disguise betrayed by venomous eyes, gone unseen as they bicker and lick their plates clean, she remains silent, quietly waiting, always near.
It's been three years. Making seventy-five cents to the dollar to men who flaunt the color of their color like a crown.
But the fall from the top is a long way down, and she is coming like a focused, foam-mouthed hound.
One day they will all bend the knee.
You better beware when you're breathing her air. She's not your suck-off secretary she will bury you if you put one toe over the line.
Not one for wasting time, spending all of her down hours to hone and sharpen all of the finer parts of a finely tuned mind.
All these men of arrogance want her to come up with her hands clasped and gracious.
All these men of blind inheritance, only willing to concede if she is faceless.
One day they will all bend the knee.
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5. |
Event Horizon: Seattle
05:38
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Metallic castles, all of their rigid backbones alike.
The eyes in the windows they linger on his purple-tipped fingers and hollowed out eyes.
Third avenue is a black hole that glints like an emerald in the morning light.
Third avenue is a black hole full of cold people casting hooks in an ink-ocean night.
Snow on the sidewalk, a book full of boot prints frozen in time.
Still the same dead end of a circled out drain painted over in white.
Third avenue is a black hole, broken finger-nailed souls clawing up toward the light.
And the 49 bus is a spaceship, the devil of gravity's hand 'round its ankle clenched tight.
Count out your bus fare, sail of to nowhere tonight.
Ruffle your greased hair, sail of to nowhere tonight.
Sail of to nowhere, hope it turns into somewhere tonight.
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6. |
Horseshoe
10:20
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If all this toiling and misplaced stress somehow found a way to coalesce into some semblance of success what would I do with it?
What would I do.
All these big small talkers who smile through their teeth, rolling eyes at my wasted degree while I'm singing songs for free to my friends and family. Am I wasting my time?
When I think of you I think of me, waiting on the front steps impatiently just to see my sweat soaked Jesus coming back home at the end of the day.
And in the failing light the echoes would ring, fill up the yard with the clang and the cling and I'd bring each one right back to you. You'd ruffle your filthy hand through my hair like a faithful hound.
As my years unfurl, what am I in the frame of the untamed world?
As for my legacy, it's a wait and see.
I could only hope to be everything in the eyes of my son.
Fifteen years in the waste treatment plant, nights on call with your hat in your hand, kicking rocks through the west beach sand on down the line.
In the throes of change you shook up your life, seeking the warmth in the light that would fill up the eyes of the former students, recalling the fondest of memories with your father's name.
School loan debts and test after test, computer glow headaches relentlessly embedding their stress in your sandpaper eyelids. Thinking to yourself, "am I wasting my time?"
Then looking back on the footsteps you'd traced, as a kid splitting logs on the beach that you'd stack by the fireplace, and when the work was done I like to think he ruffled his filthy hand through your hair like a faithful hound.
As my years unfurl, what am I in the frame of the untamed world?
As for my legacy, it's a wait and see.
I could only hope to be everything in the eyes of my son.
The day that we put Papa's body in the sea, we watched it swell up with the tide as it rose valiantly, swelling with pride, just to hold the remnants of such a life.
We tried to play a quick game at the spot on the beach where you both used to split logs but the tide came up quickly to breach, and leave us unfinished. What's a horseshoe but a misshapen circle forever incomplete?
Some have said when the world is burned and barren all that our soot-soiled hands will have left to inherit are the sins of our fathers, but what of their virtues?
And if all this toiling and misplaced stress somehow found a way to coalesce into some semblance of success what would I do with it?
What would I do?
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7. |
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Wound up tight like a rusted old spring, looking to loosen it up and find the right frame of mind.
All he wants is all he's been getting, and all he really needs to unwind.
Spent all sixty-two of his years living simply, a couple of bucks in the bank and a handful of friends.
And when they ask how he's been living he says "even the longest of days they all have an end." Cuz all he need is
Two chords and a glass of whiskey.
Hop in the ride take flight through the lights of the city, same old two-song set every Sunday night.
All of his friends at the bar say "hey what's giving?"
He says "whatever come my way I will be alright, cuz all I need is"
Two chords and a glass of whiskey.
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8. |
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The grass beneath their feet still wet from the raining, and the grand luminescence laid out like a painting on the water.
She is somebody's daughter, he is somebody's son, and they're just trying not to grow up.
Each of the two still laments their last lover, but they've found a brief reprieve from a long lonely summer in each other and a water bottle full of gin.
The way that the wind whistles crisply, humming with history as it rips across the face of the stone.
We could sit here commiserating in sadness or we could leave our clothes in a pile on the grass and haul ass kid. Are you with me?
Yes but swiftly, before the wind rising up off the lake up and changes my mind.
Thumbs in his waistband, his cheeks red as embers, he said "the night is cold, I think that's something we should remember."
She said, "it only just turned September."
And they laughed with their stomachs til the muscles in their faces hurt.
Now the coast is clear, hearts pound in their ears.
Have no fear, shed your skin and run.
I could run til I collapsed a lung, I hope that I do. Hope I die with you tonight.
How bout instead, we both gather our heads? How bout we stay alive and do this again?
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9. |
Blooming
06:23
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Lord knows that I hate feeling stupid.
No wonder lately I've been so full of hate.
All the shame on me for every opportunity that I've wasted.
At what point in time did my being patient turn into being complacent?
Consider this my birth, my nascence.
Bare and naked.
Breaking free.
Lord knows that I hate feeling stupid.
No wonder lately I've been so full of hate.
All the shame on me for every opportunity that I've wasted.
At what point in time did my being patient turn into being complacent?
Consider this my birth, my nascence.
Bare and naked.
Me.
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10. |
Save Me a Spot
06:54
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I can see myself at fifteen, like a vibrant lucid dream.
Standing on the dock, watching my best friend jump off in the technicolor moonlight. Oh what a scene.
With a crash he ripped through the skin of the bottomless black ocean, streaking star-like sparks, cutting through the dark of the vast inverted galaxial ether. Framed in phosphorescent green.
And now I think to myself oh, oh. How can life somehow be drawn out slow and done to soon? And what can I do but hang these strips in the forlorn film room of my ever waning mind?
And the absence of the night bug's drone tells me that I don't have long.
This year on the fifth of July I smashed a fan off of the wall in one of my turns. The unearthed aftershock of a burried, blackened, nerve. When will I learn?
A few weeks later I turned twenty-five, mulling over my fleeting life at the bar with all my friends. Trying to think up ways to slow down time again, and I went right back out again the very next night.
Hello my old friend how do you do? It's been a while since I've seen you, what are you drinking? Well while you're thinking, here's my friends and all their friends and shaking hands I found your eyes and all was still.
Save me a spot by the stage. Save me a place in your heart. Save me from myself completely. Lead me up out of the dark.
Cutting through a forest of flailing belligerent limbs, you caught the brunt of an upturned drink.
Softly blotting the stain on your stomach with a rueful smile, you could have crumpled me up like a thin piece of paper in your powerful hand.
But you took mine in yours, and the ugliness within me I abhor dissipated for a moment, and I felt I'd known you my whole life.
And the absence of the night bug's drone tells me that we don't have long.
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11. |
HOS Silver Arrow
04:41
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Another day, another loop along the route complete.
Another day, another endless road stuck on repeat.
By the lake, the ship docked in from New Orleans.
Where have you been?
Calling the scenery out the window like a pilot.
As if the bus had wings unseen and he could fly it.
He is a good man, full of big plans.
Is he waiting for the right time? Is he waiting for some kind of divine sign to say:
Take my love into the world beyond
on the Silver Arrow run.
Another day, another kid with empty pockets laying in the street.
To stay the hate, silently recites lines from memory.
Word for word, Angelou and Hughes and The Rose Has Teeth.
By the lake, the ship dormant for years it seems.
Where are your dreams?
With a hiss the bus sinks down to its knees.
Sighing low, like a beat-down beast with broken wings.
He is a good man, full of big plans.
And how easy now it seems, for him to step on deck and sail out to the sea.
Singing "take my love into the world beyond
on the Silver Arrow run."
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12. |
Jesus Slugs
07:58
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Well he's watching from the wharf as it swallows a hundred cars whole and churns away leaving a great white trail of roiling sea foam.
Oh to be wasting away with a belly full of new souls day after day, only to cough them up and turn right back the way that you came.
Like a jesus slug crawling through the salt into the sun.
They've been tearing the waterfront apart. Damn near a year and a month since the start. Since he saw his little girl walking the stage in the college auditorium back row dark.
He's been standing firm in place, holding his flag through the sodden six months of gray rain. And on equal fronts, be it the daughter or the water, nothing has changed.
And the jesus slugs keep crawling through the salt into the sun.
There's a bar a couple piers down where he gets his stiff drinks and a solid view of the sound from a young girl his daughter's age who helps to dispel the monotonous day saying his name out loud.
She leans on the bar too hard for just twenty-two, and she cut herself up pretty good with a mess of tattoos. They eat their words and study the space between their toes and the tip of their shoes.
While the jesus slugs keep crawling through the salt into the sun.
Now the time is drawing to close. He calls for the check and draws a long breath through his nose. Walks to the door as she gives him a wave while she's stacking the crusted up glass in desolate rows.
On the way back to his car. Thinking bout ten hours today and ten more tomorrow. Thinking bout loosening up his throat, making her laugh with a stupid-ass joke to distract from their sorrow.
While the jesus slugs keep crawling through the salt into the sun.
The next morning as the gulls start to wail, sees a young girl leaning out over the rail. Couple of bags clutched tight, squinting her eyes in the early light, waiting to sail.
With what faith he has left to convey, he watches the ferry pull out into the bay. He hopes with his aching bones she's on the road back home not running away.
Riding a jesus slug, crawling through the salt into the sun.
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13. |
Sing Your Way Home
06:36
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Chasing down her counterpoint note.
Her trusted compass, the lump in her throat.
Rolling on slow through the reticent Sound.
The fog-hidden, ghost-ridden, seaside towns.
The moon hanging like a lantern from her front porch swing.
She baptized her eyes in the swollen green sea.
The fog horn washing over the salt-licked stone.
Pick up your bags, put your feet on the road.
Sing your way home.
Wandered her way through the last four years.
Out the back door to lay waste to her fears.
Now the town that she knew is an old faded dream,
lined with gutted out malls in place of uprooted trees.
But the bend in the road 'round the lake has stayed true,
and the gas pedal shudder shaking up through her shoe.
The driveway Madrona and its beckoning arms.
As far as you've gone you've still known all along.
To sing your way home.
Out on the wild line, free to roam,
she fell in love with being alone.
No one to speak for and nothing to lose.
The road will always be there whenever you choose.
So sing your way home.
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Josh Eacrett Seattle, Washington
Josh Eacrett is based in Seattle. Feel free to contact him at josheacrett@gmail.com. Follow his Facebook music page (link directly below) for updates on shows in the Seattle area. New full-length album, Sing Your Way Home, released July 19th!
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