1. |
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I wish I had been born in
A more earnest generation
That still valued and rewarded
Displays of affection
All this instant evaluation
Has been killing my enjoyment
Different groupings of click baiting
Replace ornate demonstrations
But all of those derisive eyes
Henry Longfellow
Never would have survived
They used to name bridges
After poets and explorers
But now they just sell the rights
To the captive audiences
Driving sponsored highways
Watching as brands
Desperately proselytize
I'm a nervous suburban
Bored lonely follower
Killing time between emails
Daydreaming of your daughter
But I'm an old man with heartburn
Who's become too detached to care
For anyone but himself and really
Even he's barely ever there
But all, all is not lost
We'll have whatever's left
After the magnetic cough
Just a few decent copies
Of well-preserved classics
That survived all the attics moths
And if that day comes my dear
I will read you a passage
As we lay in the midday sun
Welcome to the future
Promised news martyrs and products
Just face the label towards the camera
So we can upcharge all the sponsors
Go back to your image curation
Selective edits to all of your photos
The fucking world needs to see me living
Through chronicles of my breathing
We've got a patent on you
For the shape and arrangement
Of all of the bones that you grew
And we've got great lawyers
We're keeping all the money
That we made from your forfeited rights
And this brief interruption
In the stream of commercials
There's always a cost to keeping on the lights
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2. |
Talking to Spirits
02:47
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If people are talking to spirits Lord
If people are talking to you
Well then why haven't I heard the voices
The way others around here claim to
Didn't I seem like someone
You'd enjoy talking to?
You don't need to make me into your messenger
It'd be nice just to hear from you
I've never met a living thing
From some far galaxy
No one has travelled by trillions of stars
Arrived at night to visit with me
Didn't I seem like someone
You'd want to take on a trip?
I'm happy to foster understanding
But leave your lab kit back on the ship
Didn't I seem like someone
Who'd appreciate your designs
Leaving love notes with bent crop stalks
Bower and Chorley out in the moonlight
If people are having visions
Manifest and materialize
I've never been haunted like a Hollywood movie
By the formerly alive
Didn't I seem like someone
That you'd like to terrorize?
Or maybe there's just something better
That requires your time
Maybe there's something a little more fucking productive
That's in desperate need of your time
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3. |
Stalker
02:32
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If I woke up as someone else
I would go and find the one
That I knew so well
Wait by the morning door
And I'd follow my old self around
The voyeur in all of us
Studies faces on the bus
Somehow it helps to feel
A little less alone
See myself from angles unseen
And I'd know what I look like in 3D
Fall in love with the back of my head
And I'd hear all of those things kept to a distance
And it doesn't belong to me
My presence in this scene
And somehow it helps to feel
A little less alone
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4. |
Smell Like a Cynic
03:30
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I want to bottle my depression
Into a parfum de toilette
And sell it to some rich kids
Make my scent into a sensation
With balanced concentrations
Of epidermal persuasion
All the sycophants are on my TV
While I keep outgrowing my dreams
The bootlickers of flattery
While the crows just wait for my body
When I lose track of all my money
And the kids are with the nannies
I will take stock of my dreams
My little disciples of dollars
Desperate for some savior
But haven't struggled since labor
If there's anything that you need
Just call on dear old daddy
Open up just to beg me for things
And wait to inherit my body
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5. |
1,000,000 Views
02:46
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Why do I have to be noisy just to be seen?
Is everyone lazy waiting for the next distraction?
Well laughter is medicine until you've lost all feeling
But at least you don't have to think
Remember
How they burned and drowned?
Thought better
but it was too late
Well now they're drowning us all in quips and irony
Those marketing dopes who think success is getting noticed
1,000,000 views and I can die with a sense that
I'll be remembered well
Fuck that
I would rather be
Just a good man
Who loves the world
Despite so many flaws
Can you hear me?
Or am I losing you?
Is this cool enough?
Look away
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6. |
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His life could be split into haircuts
And stacked up like old magazines
Sectioned like pieces of music
Variations on a developing theme
Tracked through a trail of devices
Disposed outdated outmoded machines
It's all there to see and be seen
To be perceived purely as binary
0's and 1's of you and me
The whir of processors in my dreams
And little tears of soldering
And timestamped ghosts of me
It's all there to see and be seen
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7. |
Nervous System
03:18
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Twilight is washing over
All the moonfaced dummies
Oblivious to the cadence
Ballooning pressure mounting
In my nervous system
And all of my best friends
Dark thoughts
Might push all to the edge of
Oblivion
Don't you, don't you be scared of it all
Dark thoughts
Might push all to the edge of
Oblivion
Don't you, no don't you be scared
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8. |
Designated Breaths
04:20
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You’ve been
Traversing the web
Leaving thoughts
In designated breaths
I’m armored
Under screen-names cause I have
Things to say
But shield me from my hasty
Conclusions
Of what I feel I know
Algorithms
Ruminate on you
Aspiring
Aesthetic dissidents
Called traffic
And quantified in stats, cheap
Content
With flashy effects and
Graphics, quick cuts
Dramatic keyboard
Patches
To keep you from realizing
How bored
All this TV makes me,
Still we watch, we watch
Show me ten things to fill this void in me
I see bits of my self in all my enemies
Tell me ten things to fill this void in me
Year end wrap-up of all the bourgeoisie
It’s so hard to focus
When everything’s just flashing
Headlines
To hook your starving interest
Still they
Don’t feel exciting
There’s a balance
So someone go and find it
We watch
as Hollywood recycles
Plotlines
Revives another torpid
Franchise
In three act structures
Set in motion
By incited expla-
Nations, sponsor
Every public object
Brought to
You by some purchased time
To sell you
Another set of eyes
To share what
They like, love, and despise
We’re lost, we’re lost
Buy me ten things to fill this void in me
Validate interests construct identity
Sell me ten things to fill this void in me
I see bits of my self in all my enemies
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9. |
A Song This Simple
05:24
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Oh these things that pass as love songs
Do they make your heart pulse as you're singing along?
They feel so familiar and conveyer belt made,
The recycled clippings of old turns of phrase
And if I were to write a song for you,
You know that a song this simple simply wouldn't do
With their verses of bodily harm
The bullets and trains they would stop with their arms
Endure any torment to save your life
The self sacrifice of love suicide
And if I were to write a song for you,
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
I wouldn't describe your celestial attributes
How God stole some stars and he gave two to you
And now your eyes shine like beacons in nights without light
And lead me through the darkness and keep my course right
If I were to write a song for you,
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
All of the innumerable ineffable ways unfit to describe you
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
Should I call you angel and begin to describe
Your heavenly beauty and time at God's side
How you couldn't be human, how He must've cried
When you fell to earth and left heaven's gates behind
And if I were to write a song for you,
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
All the innumerable ineffable ways unfit to describe you
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
I wouldn't tie up your present with these secondhand chords
Or wrap it in a melody that you've seen before
What I want to give you would make you cry
You would reach for my lips with tears in your eyes
If I were to write a song for you,
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
All of the innumerable ineffable ways unfit to describe you
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
You know that a song this simple it simply wouldn't do
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10. |
The Still View
02:42
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Does time live happily,
Beside immortality?
Or do all these moments die,
When dark hours give up their light?
And if there's a side,
High above all time,
I would love to freeze with you,
And enjoy the still view.
And like a lover's tree,
Abbreviated with he and she,
Written on love-scarred skin,
The rusted fence that keeps Eden in.
He left the tides behind for her,
A love note for a sunny shore,
And they would lay side by side,
Like beasts under the moon's eye.
"Quite frankly" spoke the crashing shore,
"I must admit I do adore,
The thing that I do love the most,
The way your ocean hugs my coast.
The way your night waits patiently,
For light to fade in gracefully.
These cycles of duality,
The sun and the moon above eternity."
She would sit and think of everything,
About that boy that made her sing,
And sit and laugh away the day,
To bring the night where she would lay,
Asleep at his side,
His immutable bride.
It took a stone this cold,
To move those tides.
Does time live happily,
Beside immortality?
Or do all these moments die,
When dark hours give up their light?
And if there's a side,
High above all time,
I would love to freeze with you,
And enjoy the still view.
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11. |
America Pt. 2
05:19
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America screaming our name has
Reached across the furthest seas
And landed beyond where ambassadors
Could reach
America we haven't spoken
Since Uncle Allen still had a phone
I have missed his voice since he went out
On the final road
America you want to be famous
You want to buy the hidden keys
You want the easy way to the top of
The heap
America were interconnected
Beyond our shirt tags and our trash
Floating islands of
Transnational garbage
America our kitschy knick-knacks
Are in the stomachs of our birds
Or sold as rare antiques to
Minivan escorts
America we worship the wealthy
But you can't love the things you own
In the time between superfluities
You just feel so alone
America you are still beautiful
Your debts, your warts and all
I love you
For shore to shore to shore to shore to shore
To shore, too sure
Allen:
(America I've given you all and now I'm nothing)
(I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations)
(Business men are serious, movie producers are serious, everyone's serious but me)
(I can't stand my own mind)
(It occurs to me that I am America, I am talking to myself again)
(America I've given you all and now I'm nothing)
(I can't stand my own mind)
(When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks)
(America this is the impression I get from looking at the television set, America is this correct?)
(America after all it is You and I who are perfect, not the next world)
(I've given you all and now I'm nothing)
(Business men are serious, movie producers are serious, everyone's serious but me)
(It occurs to me that I am America, I am talking to myself again)
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12. |
Retire Your Name
04:10
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Good night little Lili
It’s time for your father to sleep
'Cause there is a storm and it's headed this way
And its eye is looking for me
And the van smells like cardboard soaked with coffee
& the windbreaker’s fresh embroidery
When I was a boy
At the garage’s jaw I’d sit
And I would wait for those clouds to roll in
I feel the tongue of the rain
As it's lapping at my cheeks
I've been hypnotized by swirling winds
And tornado turns
Part of me is in meteorology
And so I lean into the wind
And into the gale I scream
Gloves grip the throat of the microphone
My words dissolve in the windscreen
And the eyewall is like an event horizon
It's pulling at everything and me
But particles of data dust won’t carry me away
I will carve your name into my history
When we retire your name
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13. |
For a Night
03:32
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On those nights when you can't sleep
Think of me
Let me lull you into a dream
And it's okay if you pretend
I exist tonight
I'll be there by your side
Until the morning light
When I stepped out to the edge
I fell for you
Never thought I'd hit the ground so soon
But it's okay if you pretend
We can fly tonight
We'll be far above the ground
The clouds won't mind
For a night
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The Most Americans Boston, Massachusetts
Spacey rock n roll from Boston, MA with sweet harmonies and a great attitude. Music you'd take home to mom and dad, then later makeout to when they're asleep.
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