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lyrics

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.

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from Illusory Walls, released October 8, 2021

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The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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