1. |
Fixing a Hole
03:49
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I've got to be more playful.
I've got to be more assertive.
I've got to stop quoting from Simpsons all the time.
I've got to be much less boring and less passive-aggressive.
I've got to take control of my stupid mind.
I've got to be less spineless.
I've got to be less distractingly horny.
I've got to learn to be spontaneous.
I've got to rein in my temper.
I've got to be more thoughtful.
I've got to separate myself from us.
I'm really not attached to who I am.
I can squish and squash and fix myself for you.
Although you'd never ask/make me, I must redress these things.
There's got to be a way to start anew.
I've got to be less weepy.
I've got to stop making assumptions.
I've got to stop giving off angry vibes.
I've got to get my life focused.
I've got to be more ambitious,
and vary the things I eat and I imbibe.
I've got to be a better listener.
I've got to stop nagging.
My fantasies have to cease and desist.
I've got to be more patient.
I've got to be all-around better.
I've got about a week to accomplish all this.
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2. |
God Said, "Plastics!"
03:15
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There's a pile of broken-necked angels below my window.
Their kamikaze raids won't let me sleep.
They give way to grim hallucinations:
Her kokigami games that make me weep.
Should I be sticking Chick Tracts into trick-or-treaters' sacks to forget her new course of study?
Or meditate impaled on a bed of nails to forget her new sleeping buddy?
Would becoming a monk halt the hollow "thunk" in my chest where she had been?
My pleas have become drastic, but God said, "Plastics!" and God always wins.
Prayer has been reduced to a cheat code I can never recall.
Faith has been reduced to the loopholes of mischievous genies and monkey paws.
I'm bellowing demands that He reveal His plans to explain why she gave me up for Lent
(now that I spend my days thinking up ways to make it look like an accident),
or even a flowchart showing how her departure corresponds to all my sins.
Some hope would be fantastic, but God said, "Plastics!" and God always wins.
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3. |
Vending Machine
01:28
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You complain I never tell you how I feel, but my mind is a broken vending machine.
I can see the thought I want to articulate behind the plastic's smudgy sheen.
Sometimes I come out with an entirely different thought than I indicated with the buttons I pressed,
and sometimes the hypnotic coil turns only halfway and stops without turning the rest.
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4. |
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It's like being punched in the face over and over and over.
I wish we could be erased and taped over with porn, because my ears are gushing.
It's the long, hot rush of a concussion.
My head drawn on a Spirograph.
So this is what it's like to rot (like the backside of a bulimic's teeth),
to curse the time you chose that wrong door (like the spiders we swallow in our sleep),
and watch yourself crash into things, because you've just let go.
Secretariat pupates.
Everything's weird and incorrect.
Possession? Obsession? Fate?
Select all that apply.
It's too late now for facts.
I've moved on to the sickness.
So I'll pop some blister-paks while you start your post-navel drip.
Breakin' up is hard to do, but breakin' down is easy!
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5. |
You Ruined Everything
02:05
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So it's all gone.
Six years vanished in a puff of smoke so thick with tainted memories you couldn't help but choke.
All those promises you made melted and vaporized and stained my glasses with the salty residue of lies.
You ruined everything.
You took our past and you stripped it of meaning.
You ruined everything.
I got screwed.
I'm reeling from the absence of a love I thought I'd earned.
Your heart's not the one that's broke, so you are not concerned.
No explanation and no time to dodge the knife-
just a coldcock at the center of my life.
You ruined everything.
You smashed my forelegs and dumped me in the stream.
You ruined everything.
I got screwed.
So I'm now the facedown crown jewel of the offal pile.
I'm certain that I'd throw up if I tried to force a smile.
The contrast burns, being fêted, fellated, and filleted.
Wish I'd known ahead of time it was all a charade.
You ruined everything.
Our friendship has been reduced to decanting.
You ruined everything,
and you say the pain you've caused is "exhausting."
You ruined everything.
You left me hanging in a noose of smoke rings.
You ruined everything.
I got screwed.
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6. |
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I fell for you like an old man falling for a credit card scam.
You showed me something beautiful at the crooked carnival,
and while you played the Great Criswell, I lost you underneath the shells.
That's not the one that's really you. Generic shoulder blade tattoo.
You can push your thumb through my soft spot and wiggle it around to make me march.
You suck the goo from your fingers as you discredit my memoirs.
I won't let it happen again.
The tempo's changed; it's all wrong. Nothing is where it belongs.
You know I'm slow, so you moved fast, and as of now, I have no past.
My dreams that you gleefully cleave [and] the reasons I had to believe are all gone and so are you.
Generic shoulder blade tattoo.
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7. |
Mufasa Kisses
02:59
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I don't want to know what you do for him that you never did for me.
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8. |
De Sitter Horizons
04:16
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I never thought I'd rebuff a hug from you…
and if I do, I'll just seem rude and petty,
so we'll mechanically embrace one more time, and it feels like a handful of cold spaghetti.
This is not the least bit satisfying to me.
There's no comfort in something so lopsided.
"Still friends" works for you because we're defined by the distance, decorum, and rules you've decided.
I'm giving up. I'm sick of bailing water--I'm in the mood for a fucking swim.
It's more effort than I can bear to put forth for a knotholed Xerox of what we were.
I declare us two de Sitter horizons. Feel free to label my choice as "immature,"
but I won't adapt.
I won't pretend.
I won't scale down my feelings.
I can't, I can't, I just can't.
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9. |
Hell
03:45
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Your name is stitched into my back:
a rejection jersey I can't get out of.
Unwanted metronomic fool stuck in a groove and damned never to topple.
In the end, the love you take is inversely proportional to the love you make.
Though I'm plastic flash on your life, you're my Siamese twin removed by hacksaw.
My phantom limb that wakes me up to find that I'm still on the rape rack, howling.
In the end, the love you take is inversely proportional to the love you make.
And I wonder if I've died and gone to hell.
It doesn't seem all that unlikely at this point.
And I know there is no chance of this ending well, so I'll just hope there is an ending.
Your pissing face in the clouds laughs.
Wadded-up piece of paper in a puddle.
Naïve prose, still half-legible, but you won't let me salvage myself, will you?
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10. |
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Although I guess that I will never truly know all the things your heart can do,
I'll offer up my withered olive branch and hope it looks like a Christmas tree to you.
I know that I have no legal recourse, and all the pleas in the world won't alter things.
Impossible, but I must accept I've fallen short with the girl of my dreams.
I wrecked your intricate stipple art by trying to connect the dots.
My good intentions alone couldn't make up for all I'm not.
The shame of failure dictates that I act as oppressed as the Falun Gong.
I can protest all I want, but wrong for the right reasons is still wrong.
Though I deserve to be with you by any rational measure,
I also know love's not about staring at a ledger
and keeping score with tally marks and accounting equations.
Your heart's in charge and I can't argue with its dumb-ass proclamations.
Please give me time-maybe we can talk
and try to construct a bridge over the abyss.
But for right now, all I can hope is that
at some point I'll believe a word of this.
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11. |
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I'm an M-80 burning at both ends.
There's a perpetual itch inside my skin.
The next forty years are closing in on whatever's left to smash.
And I promise when I self-destruct, it'll at least make a funny sound.
Wouldn't want her to go unentertained for a second when I'm around.
She slant-drills and she undermines.
She's the anti-bird spikes on the pet store sign, burning everything she's left behind.
"Little heartbreaker, ha ha ha."
So combat fatigues and war supplies.
No one sees all the nothing in my eyes,
and I won't wear your smiley face disguise.
Happiness is no longer an option.
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Disclaimer Bangor, Maine
Disclaimer is multi-instrumentalist and music critic Chris Willie Williams. He writes black-humored electro-indie-rock songs about government corruption, heartbreak, and things generally crashing to an unpleasant end. He loves puppies.
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