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1.
This is where we live, and this is where we stay forever. Here inside a comfort nest, peace can swallow pain, digest it whole, and pass it on through honey stomachs, midguts of our lives. To do the work and get paid well before the sweat even dries, we have to make it so, even if we’re afraid to die. There are places we won’t go. We’ve built a cage in getting old. Remembering can lock you in, no going back, no matter when. We’ve got pictures in our heads: nostalgia without regret. The storm has flattened our wings. We’ve been waiting too long. “Give us hope,” cried the strong. Nothing that obvious could ever be wrong.
2.
Impossibly persistent, waiting for the chance to take over for the head that was amputated or had simply withered away. So eager to take the shape of the previous container, like some vile liquid. Try to boil it out, but the oven is off. Piled up underneath, supporting their feet are the husks of their priors, hollow like their values. But, it won’t hold their weight. Eventually they will start to crack. That vile liquid leaks but the pilot light might keep. Tear at your sprained neck and suffer. Scream out your sprained neck and suffer. Never get better and never do anything. And, if it still survives, just burn the whole house down. It won’t burn with the oven off. That damn persistent slime, just burn the whole house down. Never get better and never do anything. It’s like cooking with the oven off. Keep trying to cook with the oven off.
3.
I crave more luxury disposables, a beautiful gym to have a heart attack in. Human life and burial is as important as survivors make it. Take my skin and make something. Burn the waste, leave my bones naked. You ate at your desk, life-wide pressure, stress-induced aneurysm. Dark spots cluster, a no-edged sword like an ATV on fire parked indoors. Human life and burial is as important as survivors make it. Take my skin and make something. Burn the waste, leave my bones naked. Everyone on my block who speaks English is drunk. Submit to the virus, un-bless yourself with luck. A rhizome of frayed nerves as the market bell sounds, dully wrapped in 20 suits stuffed with phoenix down. No church, no pews, no walls. Feedback drowns all of your calls. A curse on all our lips for the king who only sits. Deep breaths on a discount bus, ignore all else, put the price on us. The brain inside your phone knows how to get you home. Which of the three will you work for? Do you remember the name of the store? Rent space in a minimalist grid and dig for the treasures they hid. Which of the three will you pray for? Have you recalled the name of your lord? Tell the world how much you pay the man who prays for you. To Anne-Marie on my birthday, said she could help, but just sent money. Get an hour out of town, thought the state would turn around. Thought the job would work for you, thought the sky would still be blue. 23 by 84 by 28 turns to hope for peaceful death, evoked potential in droves. 23 by 84 by 28 turns to hope for peaceful death or at least two days off in a row.
4.
Our little box, this tiny room. There’s only room for me and you. We have to work, but when we’re not, we’re making sure we save a lot, because who knows when they’ll kick the hive? And, how the hell will we survive with $100 give or take? The mother bee has sold her stake while the price of food is getting steep. We pray the boss, our jobs to keep, but he was not there. He never was, and all is drowned out by the buzz.
5.
Burn the oil from the desert. Hire a driver so you can get some sleep. By the time they realize we’ve gone, there’s far too many hoops to leap. A gust of wind behind you whistling. The tune is one your ear remembers. Forgetting how fast dead grass engulfs, soon we will walk back on the embers. Saw birds through the hole in the ceiling, felt the arms around me tight. By the time they realize we’re gone, fire will be the only light. Bark won’t make a wound. There’s an axe for you. Soon, we will walk back on the embers.
6.
He handled snakes. He dared them to bite. He put his lips to the strychnine and he inhaled. He took the news advice, spent less time indoors, tried drugs, tried church. The combination worked. Confused, but more than willing, that’s when it all stopped working. Tried nihilism, couldn’t afford the vacation. He took the new advice, spent less time outdoors, tried drugs again, tried church again. At last, he heard the voice, a black cloud with a gray lining. At least we had a choice, but he was cursed from the beginning. Night and day, he struggled to make his own way in time. We crawl just like our fathers, 10 miles to get a dime. It took a decade, the flip of a broken coin, said he owed it to the pastor who said he’d save this boy. Night and day, he struggled to make his own way in time. We crawl just like our mothers, 10 miles to get a dime. It took a decade to flip that broken coin. It took a decade to get it in his mind. At the gates of hell, pretend you’re saved. At the gates of hell, pretend you’re brave. With an everlasting rust, we dragged our names into the dust. Stripped of love, stripped of skin, built a wall, but they let us in. A steel box never unsealed, isolated in a verdant field. A phony ring of protection bought online from a fake white shaman. Clenched my teeth all the way down when my therapist said to smile. Kill your mind, lit by fire. Once, I dreamt we heard the choir. Away with god, away with love. Our hands are tied and stepped on.
7.
Dissociate. Root-bound, in place. Try to relocate. You’re not made of your surrounding space. The container doesn’t matter when state of matter changes day to day. A graft on your cerebrum, a patchwork of formless juncture. Dissociate. Root-bound in place. Tongue of wet clay, only keeping shape by the pressure of bruxism’s face. You will never…
8.
Ohio river stomachache, pray DuPont, our water is safe. If we don’t die out here on the grass, we might one day be middle class. As distant now as frat parties, a labor strike, a Ferrari; the big house way up on the hill, the workers that its owner killed; my grave, my birth; being on the news, burning money, and feeling loose; thick clouds of foul-smelling air, polluted rivers, thinning hair. There’s a chemical spill in Parkersburg, the whole highway was overturned. I breathe the same air as the church, the football game, and worms in dirt. From Belpre down to Ravenswood, the trees sapped up with nothing good. Before the sweat dries on our skin, the faucet always burned our hands. A $400,000 drug versus one more time, my mother’s hug. A private firm of equity dealt cancer into my family. I saw there was a shadow bank. The landlord pleased, the economy tanked. May the lower class remember this and every rich man get what’s his.
9.
Trouble 04:42
Citywide on a narrow street side: a cold one, a mean one. Never took down the flyers, barely tried to get hired. Don’t look right, don’t act right. I swear the murals move at night, but I can’t record it on my phone. Continuity conditioned by interruption, whose history narrated by confusion. Dissolving in fluidities of dissolving work/life boundaries. Are you getting scared? You don’t look right. Warping figures in a distorted timeline. Keep our distance from the strangers in outline. We might take our lives too seriously. What else is comedy, but acceptance of the real when you can’t afford the hospital, and the ground is all banana peels? A crisp and brand new nightmare, some kind of clinical misery. The phone rings on a holiday. They rose and shook. I barely stood. They rose and shook the blood off. We put ourselves in cages, fed money through the bars, a career in trunks of cars. They rose and shook. I barely stood. They rose and shook the blood off. Citywide, they called it a promise. Clean your city, as if it’s our responsibility. Citywide, they called it a promise. Clean yourselves of depression and anxiety.
10.
It had to be 25 or so years ago in my uncle’s yard on the back of a motorcycle. My mom took a photo she still has. I was wearing shorts, some t-shirt then. I could only guess why I’m seeing stars, but everyone says, “You can’t go home again.” You can’t go home again. Our dreams get drowned in a river of present needs. The years float by like fallen leaves. Our dreams get drowned in a river of present needs, hung like echoes in these frozen trees. I had my feet up. I was sitting still. I couldn’t feel the air around. I’m leaving once more. I try to sleep, try to meditate that my mind gets stuck in the good memories, but everyone says, “You can’t go home again.” You can’t go home again. Our dreams get drowned in a river of present needs. The years float by fallen leaves. Our dreams get drowned in a river of present needs, hung like echoes in these frozen trees. The un-mopped tile of the pharmacy, the cost of pills, an un-mowed field behind the big box, rough asphalt, its parking lot on bare feet by the dumpsters speaking only Spanish. You can’t go home again. Our dreams get drowned in a river of present needs. Our dreams get scary when we have to leave. Our dreams get drowned in a river of present needs. The needs reflect them back to me. The years fly by. The years fly by, but everyone says. Day two, September, Poconos. I swear the murals move at night at the gates of hell. At least it’s life, at least for a while. It’s a delicate dance. At least for a while, at least it’s life. The objects we’re locked in, immobile and violent. Just fewer like that, fewer afraid, fewer afraid.
11.
Fewer Afraid 19:44
Some things I once swore were etched into my brain have disintegrated like tape decay. Echos crack through, but the sounds mix with others. They were there though once, unlike the phantom bruise from the lover’s punch which I knew the next day would be tender to the touch, but wasn’t. In the darkened mirror on the day Toni died, finger pressed to cheek expecting it to collapse like the softest part of a rotten° peach. I’ve sometimes borne the brunt of a lover’s pain spilling out, and some lessons I’ve learned past due, and others unfairly bore the weight. The calluses on my hands never were from praying by the way, though my mother would cross herself when she kissed me goodnight and whisper at her mother’s grave when she dropped me at the school. She was buried one parking space and a fence away from the playground where I first learned what it meant when your body is a nesting doll, and somewhere inside is the end. No, the calluses were from the palms split at the seams, violence made to please and harden. They have made and unmade rooms, been broken open in destruction and repurposed in creation. Once, they held a set of hands too small to even intertwine fingers and taught it to write their name, made ourselves into robots by putting shopping baskets on our heads and painted our lips to become mirrors. She spent a summer sleeping in the bed I slept on at her age. Her name for me, a pedal tone to all I do now. Returning and returning. Escape just requires a key. Mahmoud was right. Sometimes jail keepers beg for their freedom from those who they’ve held captive, and sometimes we are dynamite. I miss the one whose skin was the same as mine. I miss the one who gave me my name. I am guilty and repentant of so many things. I am absolved and unrepentant of so many others. These hands that once held theirs would like to be of use. The memories of what they can do have not faded. They split my palms and yours to take something precious from us that we don’t have words for anymore, but we try and find it anyway. Exhausted, trying to shield our eyes from the glare of all the violence bouncing off more violence, to try and make sense of the world, violence made for those who plan our obsolescence. These hands would like to be of use with yours. Somewhere, a hand split from making ends meet. Somewhere, another, seams in all our bodies bursting. They split my palms and yours, but when we sutured each other, we hid keys in those wounds. Inside others, dynamite. Inside others, thread and needle. Safety found together in planned obstinance, absolved and unrepentant. When we learned to grow food to eat near the end of our time, life winks and nods at us with roles to assign. First, all plants and animals, excluding mankind, will be shuttled like astronauts, so just form a line. Good people must hurry on. Get as far as you can. Make computers and alcohol. Soon, we’ll talk again. Carpets were cleaner then to sit and relax. Now, there’s streets, and apartments, and a federal tax, explosions in Sago versus trailer park labs making homemade insulin with what little they have. Treat “Killing an Arab” with SSRIs, short-selling coffins, kick sand in our eyes. So, just draw funny pictures of people in suits, grown men using toothpicks to poke at the truth, belief in conspiracy, illusory walls. The world is disgusting, but truth in it all. Hang what I say to you on the magneted fridge, and cut all the curses you said in front of kids. Come 50 years after now, with a limitless globe, the terror of savagery, now you’re coming back home. Come off and fall, so that I can pick you up. Our homes are not the kinds of places you’d own. They rose and shook. I barely stood. They rose and shook the blood off. The objects. We’re locked in, immobile and violent, just fewer like that. You were afraid. It seems the last 40 minutes were spent leading up to this. You’re just a stranger in a t-shirt to me. Time wore holes in my memory. What have you given just to be able to get closer to being alive with nothing left, but this song and the end of it? You believe in something watching over. I think they have a sick sense of humor. As quickly as it happens, they forget. Then, it happens again, and again, and again, and again. You cry at the news. I just turn it off. They say there’s nothing we can do, and it never stops. You believe in a god watching over. I think the world’s fucked up and brutal. Senseless violence with no guiding light. I can’t live like this, but I’m not ready to die. The world is a beautiful place, but we have to make it that way. Whenever you find home, we’ll make it more than just a shelter. If everyone belongs there, it will hold us all together. If you’re afraid to die, then so am I.

credits

released October 8, 2021

David F. Bello: Vocals and guitar
Steven K. Buttery: Drums, mallets and aux. percussion
Joshua K. Cyr: Bass and vocals
Katie Dvorak: Vocals and synth
Chris Teti: Guitar, vocals, bass, and programming

Produced by Chris Teti and Greg Thomas

Engineered and Mixed by Chris Teti and Greg Thomas at Silver Bullet Studios

Mastered by Kris Crummett at Interlace Audio

String Composition by Greg Thomas
Additional String Composition by Chris Baum on “Blank // Drone”

String Arranging by Randy Slaugh, Chris Baum, Jamie Van Dyck, and Greg Thomas

String Engineering by Zach Weeks at GodCity Studio and Chris Teti at Silver Bullet Studios
Violin: Chris Baum, Michael Hustedde
Viola: Roselie Samte
Cello: Ben Swartz

Additional orchestration produced and engineered by Randy Slaugh
Violin: Cymrie Hukill, Julie Beistline
Viola: Caryn Bradley
Cello: Lisa Williams

Additional programming by Randy Slaugh, Jamie Van Dyck, and Greg Thomas

Horn Engineering by Chris Teti at Silver Bullet Studios
Trumpet: Matt Hull
Trombone: Eric Stilwell
Saxophone: Travis Bliss

Additional engineering by Katie Dvorak and David F. Bello
Additional editing by Justin Khan and Dennis Tuohey

Additional vocals by Sarah Cowell, Adam Peditto, Connor Feimster, and Caroline Mills

Additional vocals and lyrics on “Fewer Afraid” by Sarah Cowell and Christopher June Zizzamia

Artwork by Brookesia Studio
Album layout design by Finnbogi Örn

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