1. |
Carl Sagan Cosmos Song
03:54
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Carl Sagan Cosmos Song
Today I couldn’t leave my bed because I felt so anxious
I watched 6 hours in a row of Carl Sagan's ‘Cosmos’
and I guess it helps a little bit to put things in perspective
and think about how the universe is so complex and infinite.
So I made myself a poster of geologic time
and I put it on my wall so I could try to memorise
the names of all the eons, eras, periods and epochs
like Hadean, Oligocene, Jurassic and Cretaceous
So when I’m overwhelmed or too absorbed by my own ego,
I’ll remember that the earth is over 4 billion years old
and in that time it’s seen so many drastic transformations
from meteor bombardment to five mass extinctions.
And every organism that’s ever lived and died
has had to fight tirelessly in it’s endeavour to survive
each minute protozoa and mutant camelid
fungus as tall as skyscrapers and color changing squid
So if I was a tetrapod on some late Devonian shore
would I cry my little tears of slime for lack of something more
than legs to walk and eyes to see, would I dream of wings or antlers?
and spend my days hating myself for not evolving faster?
An eternity is all very well
but you still haven’t called me in three months now...
and maybe when this all is said and done
I could transcend the laws of space and time
'til we're just drops in a blameless ocean.
and I would see it all so clear in flawless high definition!
the swirling shapes and contours of this whole situation!
the struggles and the triumphs would all make perfect sense,
and I would stand back and wonder at it’s beauty from a distance
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2. |
Loomis
04:19
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Loomis
Loomis,
you were the oldest flesh
at first we didn’t know what to name you
animal or plant.
you stored ancient sunlight in your body
and brittle stars clung to your chest
it was 500 million years ago
that you first broke from the sand.
Do you still dream of how it was back then?
the water hot and thick with phosphorescence.
are you still waiting on that ordovician moon to rise?
and do you tremble with the thought of it?
I know the world has changed before
and it will change again
cause here on land...
we’ve all got big plans.
And soon all those technicolour arms that hold you
will be a mass of white scar tissue
at the bottom of the world.
It won’t be long now
until where the dust blows through these hills,
a new shining sea will form
once more.
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3. |
Grouper
04:03
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Grouper
Lately you say you take comfort in these corridors
Where it is cool and lit like a jewellery store
Tropical fish gleam like painted gargoyles
propelled by unknowable forces in their mercury hearts
So we drift through these rooms as if deep in a dream
transfixed by the effortlessness of absurdity
and in praising the grace of these impossible bodies,
somehow we too becomes guiltless and free
Until stumbling back outside to blink in the sunlight
confronted once more with the shapes of our lives
you cry on a park bench as strangers pass by
and even though I feel hopeless I tell you it’ll all be all right.
And when the aquarium coaxes you back again
with it’s pearly lights, with it’s living lanterns
you’ll be safe for a while from the things that your friends say
and the thunder in your chest might drain away.
Though somedays I fear I’ll return to find you still there
taking refuge in a miniature shipwreck
feeding on bloodworm, your skin a colourless gauze on your skeleton
as the coral binds your ankles and wrists
and the minnows cling to your greening eyelids
and squinting through that blue mist you’re say
“whose there? who is it?”
And I won’t have the courage to wrench you out of the water
to gasp and contort on the tiled floor
if that’s what it means for you to live in the world.
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4. |
Lilith
03:57
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Lilith
There’s a reptile petting zoo just off the city bypass
it’s a simulated jungle in a greenhouse of plate glass
where the heat curdles the smell of rotting fruit and deodorant
as the visitors press up against the rows of tanks
Just past the nocturnal house and the terrapins
there’s the python enclosure built eight feet by ten
where you lay, a coiled ghost, in a plastic basin
water falling on your back from a motorised fountain
I wanted to save you
from what you’ve been condemned
from that finite index we both long to transcend
for they do not speak for us - they never did
and you and I both know that boredom is the true original sin
But our time will come
and we'll shed our final skin
and be free from these bodies we’ve been so long locked in
they’ll see that you were never a snake
just as I am not a woman
And as the horrified schoolchildren look on
we’ll burn like primordial gods
and we’ll tear through the gift shop
and make for the stars
leaving the mounds of stuffed lizards all scalded and charred
and the traffic along the M8 will screech to a halt
as two arrows of light pierce lingering fog
and for a moment the whole world will know what you have endured
Until the ozone falls away like a sheet of cellophane on fire
the oceans boil over and the planet expires
but by then we’ll be careening through that exquisite dark
with nothing discernible in our liquefied hearts
but the ease that is
finally ours.
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5. |
Jungftak
04:39
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Jungftak
Just over the ridge past the park
and the used car lot where this city meets the sea,
I ditch my bike by the side of the road
and scramble down through the typical shore-line debris
and there in the shadows of decrepit nautical machines
I watch as two gulls fight cold-blooded
for discarded remains of a KFC.
It is moonrise on the empire of the obsolete.
But I still wonder what wisdom the water has for me
and I stand at it’s edge waiting patiently
“just to move”
that is enough, it would seem.
But lately every time I start to speak,
I am parrot-tounged and locked in repeat.
and by the time the words hatch in my mouth
it’s already too late.
I feel the push of sharp shell on my gum
and the shudder of bone on the back of my teeth
I say “hey pretty bird, I love you”
but I don’t know what it means.
And you reply but how sweet it would be
to disappear into that infinite blue
some days as clean as copper ore
some days as dark as a bruise
and you can’t tell me that I didn’t try
but I couldn’t take the weight of all that blue you had inside.
So down by the docks at the end of the day
my boots sinking deep into the heavy black clay
I am alone
I am a fiction
with a hook of bone
and one useless wing beating.
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6. |
Laika
05:50
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Laika
hey Andromeda!
hey Pleiades!
Can you hear me?
I was thrown into this ocean
as black as oil
Oh how my heart blazed and buckled
like a tesla coil
And all the red giants
gathered ‘round
and dragged my body from the machine
and they carried me away on the clouds
of helium that they breathe.
Roh Cassiopeiae!
Cor Caroli!
Can you hear me?
My limbs darken now
at their mineral seams
I shed my fur,
my phantom claws and teeth.
And they scatter through the sky like seed
as I become a deathless thing,
bright as a blade for all to see,
and for their measured space and symmetry
their golden domed observatories
their astrolabes and careful cruelty
I burn.
I am burning.
But here from the heel of orion
the galaxy is quiet and pure
below me, I watch it opening
like an artichoke flower.
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7. |
Monkey & Flea
05:01
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Monkey & Flea
I’ve been staring down this same feeling for weeks
It sits there in the corner like a dark heap of laundry
and I go through all the pockets
Like I’m looking for a lost set of keys
that will unlock a sealed vault that holds the truth
about what you mean to me.
I’d display it’s contents in a cabinet
Each kindness a polished stone
dated and accounted for.
The battle-axes safely secured
to a smoothly painted wall
beside the masks and various disguises
And the story of our lives would be told by a paling tapestry -
cotton threads would bind it in a neat chronology.
And poised beneath the bell jar, we would be the centrepiece.
you could be the monkey, and I could be the flea.
We’d be deaf to the shuffling parents
as they whispered to their babies
that we were sorry untameable beasts.
Our enamel eyes would be fixed upon each other eternally.
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8. |
Toy Comet
04:10
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Toy Comet
The ultrasound showed a dollhouse universe
Revolving just beneath a veil of flesh
and you, a toy comet,
had got loose from the place where you were kept.
They pointed out the region
where you had collided with the mass of rising breath
and told how you had begun to swell
how you would soon have arms and legs
And so sure you were on a path to land here
and that the earth would shake with the impact
they sent a shuttle to retrieve you
before you have the chance
And so, what became of you my love?
When they prized you from that expanse?
Is there a chamber where you live?
Beneath this white washed labyrinth?
Are you happy there?
Have you made any friends?
Now lying in this unfamiliar bed,
enveloped by the smell of bleach and supermarket orchids,
you’ve come back
to visit me again.
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9. |
Black Rabbit
05:36
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Black Rabbit
We drove through the night
with that spectral smoke clouding our eyes
you saw a black rabbit on the roadside
and you said it was a sign.
You were seventeen when you first touched the glass
and felt a spirit with your bare hands
and all at once the world fell open and you could never look back
And I know it makes you feel deceived
when I tell you that i don’t believe
in ghosts or supernatural stuff like that
But I don’t claim to know
what happens when we die
but for what it’s worth
I know what it’s like
to ache to see beyond the confines of our short lives.
"These towns are full of sharks", you say,
"how do they just look away
as this whole fucking valley burns
in the wake of their lies?"
Sitting out by flathead lake
you point to lights so far away
yeah, there must be a better place
and when they come for you
you won’t hesitate.
It’s a wretched world
and I feel it too
but when I’m lying close to you
I lose the will to locate what is true.
So if I put on this white sheet,
and appeared to you as if in a dream
would you notice me?
Or is it enough that love is something
no one has ever seen?
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