1. |
Before I Leave Seattle
06:24
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Au revoir, California, bonsoir, hornet in a can of tuna, stings my ankle while hallelujahs, ring so faint and casually.
An elegy, for Osaka, mes amis, City Pop and Frank Sinatra tangle passages in Astoria, colliding in lighthouses, scaffolding, fickle colossus, to the tsunami that’s been promised before I leave Seattle
Speeding through tunnels and railroads, stranded like statues in paint, testaments to transit and leaving, that linger like sculptures and stains, cranes won’t collapse, despite all the rising.
Bundles of rain obscure our path while signs beware of boulders ahead, this anxious relapse, the numbing subsiding.
Sleepless, sunken vessel, after the stations shut down, the tension in my muscles won’t be relieved for another town.
Always depart, but never arriving, a benign, familiar dread from when I was six, it snowed on the gravel, rose from wood-chips towards heaven and meadows.
With the hinges breathing, I felt my legs slowly cramp, ear lobes, purple and freezing, I’d have been bored and damp among the clouds.
Streetlamp blinks while the others shine, programmed for work at a quarter to nine, to stay awake through the evening, motorist drives by half-past five, his engine like the earthquake we wait to arrive, the circuits and pistons sustain speaking.
Spiderwebs are bridges, crows are watchers, window-washers hang like a vision of Tibet in a Montana sky.
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2. |
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Reconstruct, the butterfly wings, resurrect, fluttering in the spring, sun-baked and undiscovered, with moths, gum wrappers under shutters, above my bed.
Pluck the pears before winter, suspect the autumn will fade like a whimper, bound by skin and bone like that of lovers or an unread book kicked by feet under the covers.
Upside down we cried, in the woodshed, amongst the pesticides and sheet metal.
Should I return to the snow and hollow, in the middle of August, the Big Swallow, dust gently sticks to my heels and knees, the brittle nostalgia of freshly melted cheese, clinging to the pan, carried away by the stream's persistence.
Clear comfort, of lucidity, to grip the intangible in eternity, stand amongst the remains with theologians and thieves, in Memphis, stocking shelves but still breathless.
The clatter sounds tremendous on the windshield on the hail and rain, on the side of the road, a mudslide in Spain, a riptide in Malibu, my plane delayed, and the fields of sugar cane, will corrode alongside rusting trains.
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3. |
Herk
03:36
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Foghorns, a rugged, unkempt trumpet, forlorn when I’m sleepless and unbecoming, in a hotel room in my underwear, above the nickel arcade, smoked a bowl on the balcony, alone and afraid of smokestacks, growing apricots, sores in my mouth, eraser in my snot.
So sad, by the seaside, last one in the pack, hope it’s lucky this time.
Styrofoam, brushes up on the shoreline, in between, a dwindling fire and a kite that sinks while orchids decay, shading taxis that line the street aside corpses astray wading through slime and sleet.
Demons, clutch the napes of toothless sailors, bored and impatient with ecstasy.
The seamen, stationary and passive blushed at, the craters on the billboards in the East.
On strange days I stand alone, near dark, dead-alive, brain-dead, in a shopping cart.
The gay-shoe clerk deranged and stoned, beneath the ramparts, deprived and congested in a police car.
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4. |
Starfish Ave.
02:53
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Triplet of wrinkles, tanned forehead, pressed against the car with the engine running, your curls on my forearms, palms caressed, the hump of my spine, headlights and the sprinkler like beads in the doorway or someone else’s signature.
In the cannery by the waterfront where the sewage spits and I feed the ducks, I sat on a fallen cement block, I kept my shoes on, on road-trips in the backseat, church pews, couches, or someone’s else’s suite.
On sale in Arizona, imported textile from Barcelona, radiant patterns that change but always stay the same.
Stockton, final stop but still passed through, cherry blossom expel that pink, I’ve had two bottles this week, for them, I’ll make it three, beauty is temporary in immediate infancy, whether it blooms in January or is doomed to join the sea.
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5. |
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Crush my stones, beneath buildings without bodies, that twirl and moan, deplete the city of silences.
My teeth hurt, tried to quench my thirst, slipped on melted soap on the sidewalk, a toy truck stuck in the asphalt.
Dried blood, caked in the canyons, of nails and skin, that hang like carpets, next to violins set aside for kindling.
Darling it’s only charming when you smile. Your lips are only cracking cause it’s been a while. The casket-maker whistles to the crocodiles, a hymn about missiles, plagues and a sea of bile.
In the margin of his bible, transcribed a film he’d never seen, sick of dodging turnstiles, lodging on pawned TV’s, he got himself a haircut, in the stairwell, hears a phonograph in the air ducts.
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6. |
Where Birds Go
04:20
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Corner of Nob Hill, neon-M, like dirt on the jacket of the dancing tin-man, pigeons conspire on the wires in mist, forest fires and the freeways that persist, why do the birds sing? Nine o’clock on a weekday in west-LA. Why aren’t they dancing? With rhythms, compositions, filled ashtrays.
I hope I’m old to help my parents move, see my hair grey and my throat removed, alleys, courtyards, crossroads, inclines, neighbors construction and the shaking power lines that sway with palm trees.
Graveyards, truck-stops, beach towels, plains, doldrums, book-keeps, side-roads like veins, smell so fragrant and free, consistent, restless being.
The olives will spoil aside vacant dancehalls and open signs, oil fields, depleted mines.
A cow nose pokes through a missing plate in a trailer door, the scent of salt from the sea shore, diesel, shuttered stores, stay stagnant for us to explore, some years from now.
From the imitation cobblestone, drops a cockroach, burns a hole in my passport, where birds go, from the breasts of bamboo wives, to mingle in your taste buds.
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7. |
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Weddings, birthdays and funerals, disclose, distract and distort like clothes covering over bare-skin that with the seasons contort.
The spins, the runs, infected tonsils, insects grasp at the rim, from a lake of whiskey, that stinks like straight gin, from the hours previous, well I’ve never been..
Onion, sharp cheddar, soggy tomatoes, plastic rice, vanilla extract, in a bed of soup to warm my stomach from fever, desolation and dread. For the sake of living, drink and go sprint, don’t be so serious, I’ve never been.
Anthrax, absinthe, codeine, for bed-wetters freshly fifteen, sewing labyrinths and sunscreen, simply abstracts the methods and means.
I’m not the son you want, I’ve never been, grounded, too wonderful. Scar on my shin from walking in moonbeams, those on my forearms that escape their stories, become fiction.
Like needles, boils and cottonwoods that shed with, reasons that rot and conform.
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8. |
Only Sweet Heaven Knows
03:12
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Scraping wax off a fireplace with Kitchenware, bending forks, dulling knives on brick that breaks in open air, as a steel drum is wheeled towards the doorstep, in its place an indent in the hallway carpet.
Seagulls sling shipwrecks from swing-sets half-demolished, by barons who torment moon-men with inventions for destruction, draftsmen craft contracts, deceitful and raucous, Miss Wednesday cleans canons says “I miss the machinations of the city lights” with a face like Jo Shishido carved with a buck-knife.
The beer’s flat from sitting on the counter, bruise is tender and stinks like day-old clam chowder, palpitations ridiculed by temperance, degradation that’s sensible and overwhelming.
Penance delivered softly, by scissors so sweet and costly, ashes of a cobalt summer, sinister and undiscovered, Norma sips at her milkshake, only when the wind blows, says “I was dead when I did that, when the levee breaks, only sweet heaven knows”, forsaken like a trajectory or a tomorrow.
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Scott McRae Portland, Oregon
A dude who makes tunes and writes things sometimes, follow me on the grum for song posts and letterboxd for movie thoughts. Also comprises one half of Ishroyale.
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