past epiphany revisited

I am atop the highest mountain. I see my feet fall years below me. though memories may disintegrate, by our own doing or by time's (which may still be one and the same), I will remain in this lossless state, shamelessly talking to the wind. love. we fall apart. we believe our bodies to be the end-all, we do not breathe any further.
but beyond the void i walk over, there is a suffering unlike anything we may know - and a pure joy too, coexistent, all-encompassing, utterly free. as I move my soul moves - those who left theirs behind remain inside their shells eternally. I pave a road towards the silvery moon, I march onward through fire, psychedelia and dream-tattoos.
And if in every leaf-vein pumps our own blood; or in every sputtering exhaust-spewing excuse for speech echoes unfulfilled hope; or below every concrete brick metal sewer dirtdeathdisease wasted earthlayer lies immeasurable possibility; or just behind the horizon dotted with anemia and fear so devout it is a religion in itself, pure love still breeds; or in your fingernails compressed are the ashes of millions of wars for nothing and just past nothing; or inside every perfectly spherical note resounding between your heavy brains dream countless dreams - never allow [myselfyourselfourselves] to forget, even if the words are long lost, a suicide spanning universes.
I am pleading with myself now, I have ceased to care if my feet rise or fall - in no pejorative sense, utterly neutral - never forget. Never forget.
never forget. never forget.

out, feel sick in the morning. drive, dirt/gravel and a thousand or so kilograms of moving force make the break. i didn't see, i was trying to buckle my seat belt. but then i got out, then i went closer, oh and how i saw.

broken leg. clean break, through the fur & skin, other leg partially skinned & also broken, possibly. tufts of fur pulling away with the breeze. breathing, shock. she's young, this season's offspring.

pain soon. agony. and only strange creatures and their strange white virtually-unscathed machine for comfort.

he's distressed. still feeling sick. pacing a little, getting a little angry. the march flies are huge here, we lift her into the back of the van. i stay in the back with her. i calm myself and try to work out what to do. blood is pooling slowly, sticking to fur. her eyes wide open, muscles reacting instinctively.

spasms. paws clench and neck stretches, mouth opens and closes. confusion, shock after shock. pounding noises. sound i do not know, flesh i seldom see, and all surpassed by suffering.

there is a pattern to the movements. they must be involuntary. no sound escapes her mouth when it opens, paws scratch once in while as if to get away. legs do not move at all. i am holding the back of her neck. i can feel it, every few seconds, spasm, perhaps a breath, release. and over and over. while i wait to see what will happen. while she waits for it to happen.

people react, i am steeling myself. 2 others get in the car, we drive up the road far enough away. we pick it up, move it to the dirt again. she seems dead. no, still breathing, not as distressed perhaps.

closer smells more like i recognize closer eyes open closer pain closer breathe closer


a knife? he cannot, i think i can. but the best way perhaps - something heavy. i squat beside her and pull her head back, imagining what it would be like to end another sentient creature's life. eyes open. he returns with a rock. i move the head into a better position, i apologize silently and step back.
once.
may not have been enough.
again.
enough.

they go back to the car. tears come to me. i pray to the earth. turn around



rough, man. heavy shit. make a joke. defend. numb? okay. feeling okay. did the right thing. did the right thing. goes back in, comes back around/out of the ground.

so continue, heart heavy as it is fathomless. float for a while. get blurry.



coming crushing down. lost, lost, deny, lost, explain, reject, re-explain, reject, lost, anger, words, lost, hurt, lost, love, hurt, lost, leave.

okay. has to be okay. did the right thing. has to be the right thing. heat, transfer, hurt, change, heal.

but time broke the skull. and we learn. in time.

bre a k

how do i keep holding onto the desire to watch it grow when i have been defined as the wrong path?
as wrong?
there were two leaves stuck in the car door. i felt them pull away from the tree. when i opened the door to get out, they fell. i placed them on the dashboard. it is not my car.

feel. something. break. i feel break. push something out and it becomes break. crush. destroy. any desire, of all - i need broken.

step 2. step one is pure reaction without definition, it must be followed by composure [in a way],
so put it back together oh it made a glass bottle i knew that before i threw it at the concrete why do i need to reconstruct things when i knew what they were before they broke?
because it is part of the process.

step 3. fuck the process because your anger has overcome all other reasonable sensations.

step 4. listen

step. it's a baby! a tiny tiny bloodied dependent thing, yeah she's smart and says some cool things but man you should live a little first hey? burdens are for the stable and bored.

step step step and jump. the last defense mechanism you had for this sort of bloodboil was smashy, or slicey, pain and whatever comes up between the lines
what now, hey? you will have to sweep it up this time because it's your house. the lines are more noticeable with a second set of eyes/hands. but does it even make a difference? haven't you told yourself about, oh say, 10-15 times that it is all gushing outta your earholes now? you know it must be, i mean, if you can see your own eyes looking dead... pretty sure that's a sign hey...

c'mon, c'mon i mean just a little bit won't hurt. well it will, but that's the idea, i mean really it's not like you do it all the time, c'monnnnnn i wanna see some blood i wanna push faces into broken glass i wanna

well i know it's shit, but the shit it tastes so good.

this is what i could see. foretold you so. would think it is good when its not and we would not be there i would not be here and you would not let the anger go and when you get the next chance it's a swift BLAM to the forehead and you're seeing bulletholes for days. until some psuedo-resolution is found as an excuse to fuck, psuedo-peace is made so we can continue our psuedo-lives. in what? in happiness? in joy and in love? in sickness or sorrow or anger no no no that's just silly, expecting someone to know what is going on if you don't tell them.

yes. it is. and i am silly, sometimes, because my emotions can get the better of me. but you are silly too. you just think you are the way and the light. and you end up looking like a shitty comedian who doesn't know what irony means, and the down spot is too harsh and bright when you're dressed down in your clown clothes with only crickets for comment. it's sad. everyone feels sorry for the guy. well keep on fucking around and saying the same old jokes, man, because i am so close to done here.

i keep trying. but i will stop. you can only convince yourself it's okay for so long. the veil thins. the veins thicken. the jaw clenches, and dark and break and eyes and blood

so. exhausted. enough, oh lord that's enough.

open your eyes before you die

you wake up this morning, i had been dreaming about getting my precious world stolen from me. you woke up this morning, you tell me you had a hard dick. you have been so horny the last few days. driving you crazy.
i tell you i'm not that turned on. you shut off, almost instantly. you don't think, 'i can turn her on' - do i even want you to think that? - no, you roll over. you defend.
and of course when i say that i have been trying to give you the leg-up into my brain that you need because we are so many leagues apart, and that you will reject that more often than not, you deny/dismiss. i wish i could make love to you. i want to. you say it's not fair. you'd be right.

it's an endless loop, babe. but the more you go around it the more mass it accumulates, and it has become so heavy that even the earth can't hold it up anymore. it slips straight through, into the pressure centre. so now every time we slam our bodies together it is out of desperation, not love. the centre's density rises. i contract. i don't know what it does to you. i don't know how you can listen or observe or be told and not be aware of its relation to who you are - instead look at me and ask why i am not aware. you say i don't understand. you'd be right.

none of us do. do not separate yourself, otherwise you will be separated. and you are. and you wonder why. when you say, I did. I am the one who(...). Out of everyone in the situation, I am the one -


who is blatantly unaware of himself as a human being?

but you will not hear this.
even if you did it would be rejected. not in on ear out the other - in the opening of the ear canal, hit a wall, ricochet, bounce.
but no, a small sliver of shrapnel slips past, and it is lodged in the back of your mind along with mountains of metal rusting away. what can i do with that? claw away, kick, even steel-caps only last so long. my hands will be well torn up by then. the toxin crawls up my spinal cord. my jaw will clench. i will spasm, and eventually be unable to move at all. twitching periodically. overtaken by brainrust.

we are hoarders. we keep. we collect. but i collect because i love, i treasure, or am inspired by. you collect because you cannot get rid of.

maybe i should have just shut up and fucked you.

excerpt

walked past wet-faced, smelling like old clothes left in the rain. whole block of chocolate in the back pocket. blood sticks thick to the walls of my veins and pumps my pounding brain into submission - heartmuscles can knock out any little kid who thinks they're smart, and send 'em insane.

it's gotten to that point where i hear myself saying "it's gotten to that point..." every day.

and if six months can push past this easily then three weeks will hardly be a nudge.

i know i'm leaving, but i don't know where to.

it does not exist.

movement between yawning rifts. the first signs of life. go. go now. it's enough, i have seen something and it is enough to force you to shudder and creak open and out just -

balance does not find its place here, every beam splinters and each corresponding weight swings aimlessly. light is consumed instead of

liminal crystallisation

and here is where the beginning starts to take form.

listen - the spectrum has shifted. there is definition, refraction, complexity. there are the patterns, you see? crystallised.

with each extraction there comes a reaction. mostly gestation. observation and reply. of course the whole thing spirals, as always. it has its own gravitational pull.

and
well, from here it's a re-cognition of communication. some sense these instinctive curves, while others find lateral - us or limbo
disconcerting.

i could try to tell you as plainly as possible. it's an echo of the abject allowing me to re-cycle. it has been entirely subconscious up until now. but if the range is lost, well… you lose information. the definition dissolves, static. hissing. you know. loss of depth. of signal quality.

and so it tends to span some broader sense of self. only a compulsion has brought me to the point of surprising my conscious self with proof of my own process, and while consciously observing that i can react instinctively and re-create with minimal effort - at least in the general sense. surely there is some little-known driving force, an internal level that can only move once the depths are plumbed. the push and the dig.

and the limbo, the gestation, the compression. that may be what lives (and breathes) between the movement. the re-action.
the proof seeps upwards and condenses and falls. it is what i am made of,
mostly.


have you ever seen your self echo?

reminder of vibration. and i could try to tell you

but it's awfully hard to keep up. infinity does not go on forever, it circulates. i get ahead of myself too, sometimes.

liminal crystallisation. it's where mathematics rises, stretching, from its godlike slumber. and observing myself becomes testing myself.

and so i fall in love with the idea, over and over and over again in different ways. incarnations. frequencies. patterns.

it makes sense to me, good, logical sense, that eight eyes could pierce a little more of that veil. noise. so perhaps i am simply trying to turn into a spider.

the imagery, it has a sound. that is how you listen to me.

that is how i breathe.


of course, now my skin is reacting. igniting on contact, but i have long since let it become a background buzz. it is propulsion.
and now the rest,

a pet bird caught in a jet-stream, that's me

you're a big kid. you'll be ok.
without me, i mean,
that's not what i want.
to say
i want you here and ready and barrier-free
i want you to lose yourself in me
i want you

so there it is. i want you, and you need to change.
and when with me it is harder for you to.
but you must.


the nature of the beast is to dig, the earth is soft and ready. the nature of the beast is to fight, not take flight. you are not a bird, now.
your mind twists and turns into itself. long loops locking
until the grave chain cuts into your flesh. your muscle and bone.
only skin
separates
but further and further until even my longest arms aren't long enough
and my eyes grow tired trying to look so far
what with the rift mist

and the lifted fist
don't beckon, i am estranged.

and yet i have this insatiable urge to stay firmly-footed,
ankle-deep and dirt-covered
just dig myself in, the beast is burning up
and from the inside out i still do love you and you have to believe that but you have to
you have to
'cause i can't -
don't let me get stuck here as tree amongst forests.


i often forget just how precarious these cliffs can be
just sheer stone and the water, crashing and rolling all unfathomable depths and salty shadows
it's not unlikely, and my love that is not what i want

i want you
with your hands open even if broken
i have the splint and you have the twine. we can bind
them back and my skin will crack like bark so what is the point in getting root-footed?
there is more point in getting split open
i have the axe if you have the swing, you can show them
you can show them


i spent a lifetime looking through the year just gone.
and so i hear it only gets faster from this point onwards, so good luck, lady. you're in for it now.
they'll pile up thick and fast, and before you know it you've broken the donkey's back and your books are in the mud. so are your feet. they've been there so long your knees are growing branches. chapter after chapter smothered. words snugly sentence settled under the cover of dirt-night, as if never born.
these things are precious to me. perhaps it is why i hoard.
the thought of losing them is like
is like
when you are diving out of your depth and your chest constricts like your heart is under so much pressure it can't even beat for fear of implosion
or like
just before you wake from a nightmare of falling and falling and you are about to hit the ground and it is so, so very real yet you try to wake yourself and instead you find your physical self has stopped breathing - how long for now? when will it end? will i wake up again?

and you give yourself over with total abandon, just to keep it all between your ears & hands.
i wonder if you know that feeling?




show them.
show me. show yourself.

i can't think of any other way to save this, so please.

Halfway Home

Things have been breaking for a while now. It's not often that losing the leg off a table you don't even own makes you reflect on your life situation.
A haze sits solemnly over the city, turns the air into gold. I go outside, halfway down the chipped steps. The sun is framed halfway between our neighbour's deck and roof. I find myself stuck momentarily, that all-too-familiar red orb dull enough so that I don't look away.
I have things to do, of course. I have to tie up the loose ends and tape up collections of half-read books, fill half-full boxes. At least I still have my optimism, that much is whole. The rest: I have stopped caring. To be completely honest.
It's at this point in the process where every stain begins to surface. Previously smothered by desks, couches, letters addressed to no one you know. Piles of - of what? Nothing, really. I don't spend any time shuffling through it - there's no point. The walls are empty now, apart from half a quote: "...ere the weather is decisive". Apt. Everything was going well until the weather went bipolar on us. And then all that you know as stable becomes a shadow of itself, or so it seems. It's not like things were perfect, I mean, confusion and frustration had been no stranger for a good while before the atmosphere built up enough to bring down a deluge like that. I had been concentrating on a circle so tiny and distorted and seemingly close that, by the time I looked up, we were hurtling into the earth, utterly unprepared.

I'm sure we all like to think of ourselves as balanced people. We have the ability, the opportunity to focus on things like our personalities, the importance (or lack thereof) we place on material possessions, whether or not we get insurance and how long our showers are. When placed into situations that rattle your sense of stability and control, these things get lost. Not in the pejorative sense - it's simply that you find yourself with more important things to think about. And in this process, while dissolved in limbo, you might lose your shit. Your legs might go weak, you might freeze. You might assert control and find yourself stronger. Or weaker. Or with no change, at least initially.

There's a poignant beauty in destruction. Small things nestled peripherally for so long are discarded, stale emotion often discarded with them. Prioritize, organize. File it away. You crystallize your world, your only reference point being yourself.

I find myself reminded that the progression, the process of organic growth & decay, is a constant. It fuels itself and burns simultaneously. I am not separate from it. I am in the middle of it right now, and even if I stare at that sun for a bit too long it won't blind me. I'll remember the colour well, the feeling of watching things split & scatter. Old chairs, clothes, dust and songs and time and thoughts, not just your own, definitely not just your own. And for some reason, even if it's guilt or love or basic human growth, I feel responsible for this house, the people, the life I have known well; in all its half-broken glory.
In the half-light. The halfway home.

shake it up baby, now

it's rushing and rolling out of me and into the air.
sleeping and living and slow moving and losing out
the sound is awake and, although lights are low
i don't need to hear it,
i mean i really, really don't.
it's like somehow the lack of solidity leaked into me
and i am locked away too, i don't want this -
i have what i have, too
maybe i have missed

that desolation is intoxicating.
so i'm wired, hey
all over the shop

warmth is warmth is not here
3 hours, 7 hours, 30 minutes
it's shifting and inconsistent it is a mirror image
it tells you how your mind is moving through the space around it
it breathes you in and you forget and you have it all laid out delicately on a non-existent surface
so it just falls through and lands on nothing
into nothing
and by the time it gets there the order has changed and this will happen again again again
yes i don't understand
yes i am okay
yes i care
no i don't want this
yes i missed

tangles
tangles
twists and shuddering and birth and shadows
that grimace scares me if i am completely honest
and weak
confusion has reached a new peak, i am impressed as the other
i marvel at it, even. but it doesn't quite deserve applause.

missed

and all of a sudden it is achingly cold again
i know it's the beginning and warmth is warmth is
not something i can provide
it's not my shoulders, it's these feet
now that is a lie.
i don't ever wanna feel
like the only string between the next place and this
but of course.
i couldn't possibly understand, and therein lies the same old headfuck.

yeah, yeah. it's whatever you make it i guess. what else am i supposed to say
i have no say in the matter but i speak like i will not have another chance to and the words and thoughts wind themselves into each other and what else can i say
they'll end up in the same (dis)place
as the destructive urge
as the hollow tone
as the self-forming miraclemachine
whose name is inappropriate
whose name pushes you away as it drags you
whose name is down, down
in the misplaced dawn
in the core that still won't still
in the awkwardly locked fingers dig them in
now
now
2 hours, 5 hours, 30 minutes

you can't take me with you and you can tell yourself whatever it might be
you think and you observe and your loss is not my gain
don't tell me again
don't ask me again
i have nothing for you
as it becomes an offering
i don't know
maybe it's a question
or a challenge and if you take it and win then there you go
nothing
return return to

layers peel off and smothering and breathing shallow and gone
so
so
so
far gone

shake it off, baby
now
it's not for your shoulders or your feet
it's not enough ever and even if it was you still could not
it's not you
it's your self
it's not you
it's your suffocating sadness

what am i supposed to say?
it's more than one facet of guilt
even when even when
you are right
even when
it's nothing
no promises, i mean, meow
but

yeah. i got nothing.

yeah.

worn

a dog barks in the street out the back of this house where the stranger was beaten up last week
his blood rolled thickly between overused flagstones facedown faceless
all i did when i heard him groaning was close the carport roller door
it sounded oddly silent
like the man i did not see used up little to no energy splitting his face open
only the grunts as the hits connected
silence, the roller door closing. it got stuck on the flood-damaged mattress
i took a breath, moved it, did not look in the direction of the sounds i had overheard,
even a physically dysfunctional separation can be symbol enough for one to believe in safety
for the time being.

the dog's bark changed to growl changed back
to bark
i will not miss the terrible stillness of my nerves desensitised

and perhaps it was only because everything had already happened so why not something else, i mean, when it rains it pours it hails it ruins your home it makes strangers bleed it crashes cars it

steals the song from behind your tongue still sitting stagnant deep inside yr throat

the concept of opening your fingers and only static spilling out is something i fear more than
blood or danger or betrayal
i have to believe that this is something powerful and magical because otherwise
baby, otherwise -
shit. i don't know. i suppose i'll lose it all over again.

ten minutes to 2am. if all i am is experience where does my emotional self enter?
i must be nervous. i must be overtired and fed up with this shitty house and electronic music and inability to even hold you close when you are purified nightly
with so little time to take stock
i am still unsure simply because another self is losing out here
someone i thought i was,
waving a little hand around quiet but concerned:
you are changing.

do your friends still know you?

loud sounds, similar to gunshots but not as piercing
the dog is barking again, distressed perhaps

my eyes hurt again
i am not alone and i know this
but i am not who i once was and it is confusing me, love i am so confused
the way you move tends to eddy around me and between the break and the rip i get stuck
my incessant need to share has never been a curse until now
and i hate
disintegration

but i am dissolving in this
if it pushes me away i suppose that's just how it is, you know
yes i care, but i am also accepting enough by now that intensity's uncommon appearances rattle me internally and steel me externally.
stop numbing it all down, baby
you need to and so do i now

but with every esoteric utterance your brain refuses to curve in line
with mine
like there is some soft insanity waiting
just around the river bend

the more i observe myself the more i believe in denial
but subjectively; integration just won't do right now. no sir. she likes a challenge, i mean
it says so in her resume.

give the kid some hallucinogens, for fuck's sake
something to shake it all up nice good
or, more so, to condense it all.

yes. it should be done.
you have logic and love behind you.
it should be all you need.

past here - i hope i'll sleep
and slow
and lie less
and kick contradiction
hey it's a tough one. give me a break, i'll get there eventually.

yeah. give me a break, and when it's broken i'll break you too. but it doesn't hurt, in fact

i'll just

stay awake and look in the window every now and again
it's warmer inside so it tends to fog up
don't breathe too much

no sound now, other than your generic city sounds and the fridge buzz. and my static love.
you don't
and you
will do

it's all gonna break

the last week and a half has been a bit too much.

not just in the usual justine sense of the phrase. it's actually been an overload by anyone's standards.

i was falling apart. i escaped, and tried to get my head/heart straight. i was somewhere else entirely, not just somewhere i hadn't been in a long time, it was more than that. there are curses involved in learning shit about yourself and the world.
i thought i was working it out. and to an extent, it was making sense.

then it rained.
and when it rains, it pours, baby
when it pours it hails
and it floods what you called home and the cracks in the ceiling spread
and the cracks in the walls lengthen, it leaks through
and everything precious has to be shifted and put away
and you can't find anything
and you are confused because surely this sort of situation is not what you deserve.

but it won't stop there
and sleeping becomes a task, an irritable adventure
or if it will only just stay standing
but the ground is changing
it is growing and it is slowly sickening you
until you can't sit and breathe any longer, you are limbo embodied
frantically aching and coughing and pushing at nothing but air
it will not move! somebody, something, make it move;
i can't do it. i have tried. it is wearing me down after only 6 days.

you must. so you take a deep toxic breath and heave
and when it pours it shits down, baby
because growing up is not about taking the easy way out, running or hiding.
you must
set your sights on something and just pull your tangles through
(and i have realized now, you look like her. it's the jawline that sings out to me)
so i do.

and oh there is a cure here, more tangles than i knew here
could possibly be moving unnoticed behind your head
i am already permanently stuck, unless i use my teeth to cut
and i am not ready for that yet.
and when it hails it breaks things, when the sky hath no fury like
a woman mourned -
no. sorrow.

maybe something is moving now?
surely it will take a form, like a real physical form
with mass and texture and light refracted
surely
it will resonate and i will feel whole again i will feel condensed instead of
split and scattered

i don't know
i don't want to, but i can plead
it's not really me, but i can do it if it needs to be done
it will grow and twist into me now
that's okay. i don't mind. i'm gathering my strength
for the sake of stability.
and when the shitstorm buckets on down,
where will yr fingertips be?
stretching up & out
or pointing inwards, and piercing yr palms?

or scratching away at me?

and my skin forgets to breathe
it's all rushing and rolling inside the sea
yr heart's a cloud now
maybe it'll break me

but keep on pushing
keep on keepin' on

this is it, it unfolds.

sometime soon, things are gonna turn around.
it's the only way.
sometime soon, there'll be another downpour and all of this will wash away
fresh and clean, i hope i really truly do
because i don't know i don't know now and i never will know and i know that now
but someday soon the oceans will bend my way
soon

today

i implore you! it's a crucial time, i never expected this - but here it is. help me. whatever you are. give me that little boost, a leg up, a shoulder, a hand, an eye, a fingertip
to balance on and reach that last rickety rung
cause it's a long long long way but i am young
and i am right this time.
finally.
i am right this time.

it's all gonna push me in the direction of home
i haven't been there yet, and i'm nervous
but my hopes are staying above those heavy clouds
every drip drags the dirt down
and the air clears
and yr eyes are bright
autumn is thick with nostalgia and churning with change
i'm feeling so light and so strange
i've never been here
and i'm itching to move on and on and on and on

up and up and up

and i'm still easy either way
but i've lost my listlessness

it doesn't bother me

please
overwhelm the noises of the street
i need my silence.
the shadow of a beatbeatbeat
i am only flesh. i am only one.

i am happier when i am honest, and insane.
it soothes me

dlsfhvasjdknkjaksdjkds

fuckinghellfuckshitfuck.
justine is going to break shit soon.

losing my fucking mind.
it's all babble mindless babble bullshit nothingcomesoutnothinggoesin and i am a wreck of broken thoughts and half-remembered dreams and emotionchaos.
i don't know.

i've gotten to this point again. how. what is it that pushes me to this point. what do i usually do when confronted by it?
i run.
and i don't want to this time but escapism is so ridiculously appealing, i want nothing more.
nothing?
nothing.

but i can't self-diagnose, that's not going to get me anywhere. i just have to push on through,
(starfish)
and see where it gets me.

maybe this is the most fucked up i've ever been. i don't know. key phrase at the moment apparently.

the options are endless and daunting, my mind is endless and daunting, my heart is endless and daunting. i don't want to face any of it.
but

break something. for the better.
break it because the other option is all too far down to climb back out of
and it could be it could be it could be worse
it could be much much much worse
yet i still feel the same
dulled
and sometimes emptiness makes for a good cover-up.
but it doesn't even put a bandage on it, it's all smoke and mirrors and tricks to make you think it's not there.

hearts burst open/wounds bleed fresh






just crawl, now
it's a start i suppose

dirtdustdreamrust

go now, little one, down the road it could only

go somewhere, little one, go

there's many a path near this road, little one you will go
far away from your home, you will go


summer air in the city streets
the years rush backwards, even then
the sun shone stronger, i swear
same time same space but a different when
all the trees looked the same in the backseat

the dirt rises behind my head, i
have stopped looking for it.

the way shadows fall in the morning light
splitting your dreams into fairies into dust
shaking them out of your hair as you move
time will solidify and time will rust and
ripple
upwards and out of the night

the earth forms inside my head, i
am a vessel for it.

and the most attractive people are the wrong way 'round
and the city turns to dirt it turns the brightness down
you keep a-tickin' but the tockin' is what's got you now
when the tension goes, all the cogs will break
and you be left down on the cold ground
you be left down

oh, down to the path on the way to the river on the way to the road to the oceanside
i took a little pity on a dyin' horse in the middle of the one-horse town
and i lied
to the people
to the clocks and the alleys and the broken nights

and the dirtdustdreamrust washes off
once the rain starts a-rainin' down so hard
it'll wear you smooth if you stand out here too long

and the dirtdustdreamrust will dissolve
once the salt starts stingin' in your eyes
it'll take you home if you need to go


now, little one, down the road it could only
go somewhere, little one, go

there's many a path near this road, little one you will go
far away from your home, you will go