LYRICS
HOSPITAL MUSIC
Noone
Have you ever seen God before she started breathing?
skin the color of aubergine
then evolution kicks in, forgetting it's some sort of sin
and her lungs color her skin
have you ever seen God before she started breathing?
Have you ever seen God breathing through tubes?
rib cage the size of a bird?
His worshipers gather to pray over numbers
have you ever seen God before she started breathing?
Sane
I used to want to be wanted, now I just want to be sane
I used to want to be haunted, now I'm not sure
I can take the pain
Live was I ere I saw evil,
now I do not wonder at all
This chemistry , this beast
I have seen the dark center
Live was I ere I saw evil,
now I do not wonder at all
and I'm afraid
I cannot see through the grey wall
of what I was like before I lost my shit
I cannot climb the gray peace wall,
all I've left is to lob molotovs over it
and I'm afraid
Half Yr Face
I've grown afraid
Of the same damn highway
I drive it every day
To see half of yr face
I'm just another tube
Stuck in your body
I'm not fluids nor food
I don't belong
we named a small new woman
a a small new beast in the kingdom
just today some cops held guns up to children
and cursed their dark skin
will you soon curse us
for this world we have named you in?
Chemicals
Christ the elect
has forgiven my rent
but when will my brain's chemicals relent
God may forgive
but the body does not forget
when will my brain's chemicals relent?
in soil, in sweat
the bruised reed is bent
when has the rain not gotten us wet?
there's mud in our bones
and blood in our plans
when have we not been let down by my hands?
Mothers
You should be one of the smiling mothers
Wheeled down through the revolving doors
With Flowers and nurses and phone photographers
Potent husbands with which you'd never grow bored
the parkway the parking lot
the lift and the doors
the washing of our hands
there is nothing more
the beeping of the heart
the breath inside the tubes
the flesh of our flesh
never untethered from the cords
You shouldn't have to be watching her numbers
Like the shadows of the kids you can't save
You bare your breasts in our plastic nest
Our flesh and blood tries to eat without choking it away
I can never know the kick inside you
Nor can I convince you my weak seed's to blame
We both stare alone out on our flat unchosen home
Until the void can respond with our names
Absolutions
Christ under a marble canopy
Pressed by the sky, plaza-throned
Rung with the thousand
Keeping-blinks of visitors phones
Past the polite militia
Inside the tourism booths
I ditched my companions
And their crudities, to root
If you're like me - loneliness is a feast
Praying broken Latin with an unseen priest
In the bowels of a hospital lobby
In the annoying tourist colony
breaking the bread of His body
And counting the pulse of His bloody wrist
I'm always praying for solutions
But His only answer is a silent kiss
I'd Rather Die
I'd rather die than be embarrassed
I've known that since I was a kid
And I've never gotten over it
I'd rather die than be embarrassed
eyes be closed and no one is there
but if i tell you what i am now
this new beast will just dissolve in the air
Do you remember when I was afraid
Of the knives - I'd always want them outta sight
Strong men take the body they're given
And send their minds off to hell or heaven
Mine has stayed sun-shaded and riven
Spaded dirt that no spirit would live in
How long can I go
Where no one knows
My compline prayer
My sweet little pill
I just never taste it
But I'd rather die
Than be embarrassed
Kerygma Blues
It's said you are
A brake-less truck of wrath
With the velocity of history
You cannot help your need
To split me under your wheels
So I will run from you
Just like my friends do
I think I have heard you
Placeless bare whispers
Redemption of the body
Substance silence
No moment neglects you
So who are You?
And can I run to You?
Can I bring my friends too?
Will You crush us?
Will You collect us?
The Needs
You are all I need
Well, You and medicine and sleep
Can I quiet the demon
And keep the Ghost?
You are all I need
And money for bills
Insurance for pills
You are all i need
we keep saying it but I'm coming clean
You are all I need
Is not what I mean
A Canopy Hymn
Prayers that hit the ceiling
No hole in the roof
To let them out or let us in
Brother of all the forsaken
Your hands have plenty of room
to let her rest for one minute
If God is love
Then you won't remember this
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GEOGRAPHIES
geographies b
time and enough I
can't remember
if there were some clues in the light
when we were flashing
our midwestern eyes
at unblinkable, unthinkable sights
time and enough I
can't remember
how us mortals can sense the nearby sea
like a stake in
the blank face of
our hemmed-in geography
with debt as fat as
baobab trees
counting our limits
by the ghost in our genes
time and enough I
can't remember
what's a good distance to stay safe from kings
now we hide our babies among the reeds
where we used to make love
and make up battle scenes
we're just trying
to save our seed
from growing into
our most-average compromisings
sea monster gods
chorus lyric from Paul Celan's "Psalm"
I know better
and you know better
we should throw our treasure
at the open mouths of sea monster gods
girl we can trade
an ancient cask of strong fear
into modern work
loose the fount and
do it like (it's your) a career
"praised be you, noone"
tell me: who could carry
a life untethered to Leviathan?
you see all of them doing it:
they're just showing off their granaries
we all know better
than to genuflect before
anyone
but sea monster gods
their blue and grey eyes
are easy now to see
and we've all grown a bit too flush
to scratch at invisibility
"let us return to earth, to fear, to loam"
the bloody sea
I saw a poor man
walking on the salty sea
ambling to genessaret
just stepping on the bloody sea
if there is a ghost in this story it's me
in my peregrinations
what's necessary about his eyes?
despite the storm of my locution
i'll float the gale for the surprise
if there's a ghost in this story it's me
crooked heart
outro lyric is from WH Auden's
"as I walked out one evening"
put your fingernail to the sidewalk
and you will feel it bend
yellow cabs will roll down their murky windows
and everything primeval descends
with what I'm made of, I won't feel anything about it
pull on a t-shirt when you hear the click
8 million light switches at once
make a visor with your fingers at 6pm
your mind will color in the sun
I'm keeping up with Grand Army Plaza
and the smell of the traffic in the spring
of all of the people who can't afford it
we might have the least to bring
"you shall love your crooked neighbor
with all of your crooked heart"
basic earth
You have emptied out our eyes
leaving them to a mean fate
spading out the basic earth
our first and final mate
we've not fallen far from the tree
if by the tree you in fact mean
the green golden one with all the sweets
that left us naked and in retreat
Your silence is too much for us
if anyone should know better
than to leave us with no words
it's You, and Your ageless eyes
it's all we've ever heard
will You leave us then
to our basic earth?
inferno tourist
would you lend me your dialect
just for a few public moments?
leave it with us through love's neglect
to hear You when the noisiest saints relent
give me two breaths to work out this new found lex
where I'm promised good land
and promised fiery death
our puissant shepherds are now armed to their teeth
though it's been blazoned some kind of ashy mercy
it's only (an) inferno
how many years can we hide our flesh from our flesh
and fill these ruddy bags with frightened prizes?
bless the bloody teeth of our latest winner's righteous face
his brave dominion over the spoils he confused with grace
so owe me an inferno
seriously, seriously
zoo glass, i'm seeing the world through it
i have smudged it with my fists
with my simian thumbs i will write all my wrongs
and when my speech has gone numb i will pull out my tongue
i was once warned of uselessness
but rare is my heeding
such squash-faced seriousness
hand over your plastic trust
and fly me up like Icarus
all i can think about is convincing
my friends that i'm just like them
but none of sees each other so close to the ether
with our best playing dumb
we could never go wrong
and with our simian thumbs
let us make nice with thin songs
kings! kings!
am i so different from a tree, in the hatchet eyes of a king?
it's worth my head on a pole, made from the wood of my bones
that grew in the soil, in the peat
into our grey neighborhood fief
gathered into a halo, around a blue radio
a Warsaw Pact for the cul de sac
God's own blessed envoys are telling me
to turn my eyes to a man's proper reaping
I'm sure a missile gets lonely
until its usefulness in the hands of certainty
and we are all aware of our betters: with silos erect
and war chests and trophies and fetters
I've got the right anatomy, apparently,
to storyboard her morality, apparently
while the remainder in the math: the women and children in the back
are defecting over the few frozen seas
are we so different from a tree
in the hatchet eyes of kings?
spare a flag?
our empire lost it's market
our king buried under
a wafer thin battlement
the treasury is up for rent
our new halfway palace
with chlorine marble floors
our beauty was the ballast
but who can stake that waste anymore?
a sexless eunuch's demigod
and his royal food
is giving us brand new Chaldean names
and changing our clothes with his mood
all the flags have changed, and we still feel the same
water ghost
the nosy rain
darkening the surfaces
matting our hair
and bending the branches
putting on blinders
to the ghosts on the waters
just barely there
but shrill as sirens
chasing the golden grid
like i know where i'm going
and the native prosody
will fill my gut to satiety
the evening boat
stirs up the brown water
politely seismic
known more for the effects
than the blunt presence
geographies c
you fell someplace across a wide, grey sea
sometimes, baby, geography is everything
dislocated every bone in the bag I bleed
sometimes, baby, geography is everythiing
all lyrics by dustin ragland
copyright 2013, 2016
Six and One Half, Doesn't The Other?