1. |
Ruined Morning
04:32
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On ruined morning: apocalypse kitchen.
Open the window—let the sounds of disaster in.
Telephone ringing: little alarm bells
Flaking the paint off. Colours slow down the spin.
And the jackhammer raindrops,
The crushing of clanging,
The shouting, it stills your tongue.
And then you remember,
The point, it has left you—
You cannot feel where it stung.
On ruined morning: pretentious collisions.
Cast iron railing measures angle grinder time.
Rude hesitations, arguing hard hats—
Convention of rubble: punishment defines the crime.
Careening concrete,
And clamorous boltings,
The sun-launched asphalt steam—
A cyclic upheaval,
A bulldozer nightmare,
But this is not a dream.
On ruined morning: the vertical highway
Terrifies no one, for the sky is far from here.
The satellite photo, the thing you don't mention,
Peculiar direction—it is not to do with fear.
I wish you good luck—
See the quiver of arrows,
One of the points has your name.
A feedback collection,
A speaker excursion,
A cruel and deadly game.
On ruined morning: you recognise someone.
(All the faces look the same.)
-
© 2009 Cary Grace.
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2. |
Narcissus
04:49
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3. |
The Answer
04:28
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Agents of anarchy, whirling in scarlet,
Pounding a rhythm of blue.
Beneath the ocean, the night is eternal—
I'm tumbling, luminous, through.
Through the terrible window, a plague of connection
Consumes all the letters you sent,
But why would I shatter in thousands of slivers
The meaning, to know what it meant?
On the edge of a blade,
At the turn of a corner,
At the top of the sky
In the golden light wander—
And there is the answer,
Always, the answer—
But when is the answer
Always the answer?
I know I am not real, but the knowledge is helpless—
I'm rattled by blindness of sight,
I'm spinning on wheels, and turning on tables,
Dropped from an impossible height.
And now there are words where there should be spaces—
White sky filled with birds with white wings—
This much is clear: nothing here is transparent.
The truth, unfamiliar, it rings.
On the sparkling eye, on the drift of a feather,
In the dome of the shade, we will wander forever.
There is the answer, always, the answer—
But when is the answer always the answer?
On the crest of a tear that is falling forsaken,
On the burst of a flowering joy,
The reaches are endless—we follow the river—
That which we create, we destroy.
And deep in the caverns, most desperate of whispers,
Whispers a word still unknown—
Drowned by the seagulls, the syllables falter,
Fall under the paradox drone.
At the end of the wind, on a wave of confusion,
With the politic prince on the throne of illusion,
There is the answer, always, the answer—
But when is the answer always the answer?
Come with me now, there is no time remaining!
Upon perilous carousels whirl—
Gathering ghosts drift like pale ballerinas,
In costumes of opal and pearl.
Run from this place! I was never a dancer!
All the motions are only for show.
This is demolition, this is revolution—
The only way left we can go.
On the brink of collapse, in the terror of sundown,
On the bridge 'cross the chasm, standing outside the picture,
In the wheelbarrow mouth of the captive announcer,
On his tightly stretched skin, chasing metronome whiplash,
Deep in eyesockets burning over mountain range rushing
All the furniture useless to any remaining
Dehydrated husks of the mountaineers crumble
Bolted to avalanche, driven through snowdrift
And whenever they speak now, they are saying the same thing:
There is the answer, always, the answer—
But when is the answer always the answer?
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4. |
Alive
07:24
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Tear velvet curtains
Plateau unfurls
Tunnel vision,
No edges,
Shape of sound in mouth
Mirage, shifting, looms:
A whirlwind of birdsong,
Torn from claws,
Torn from claws
Is this inner space?
Are you outside watching?
Are you made of thought?
Do you think yourself alive?
Black insect flash
Thunderbolt dawn
Flower of potentials
Crushed beneath pavements
Green sky burns
Swim through flame
Impossible future
Is this inner space?
Are you outside watching?
Are you made of thought?
Do you think yourself alive?
Faceless (back turned)
Eyeless (won't see)
You move not once
(As if not at all)
Winding a long road around your hand like a string
As a cat chasing the end
I leap too soon
Or too late
It does not matter which...
Is this inner space?
Are you outside watching?
Are you made of thought?
Do you think yourself alive?
-
© 2009 Cary Grace
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5. |
Spinning Plates
04:03
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Flow like a sunspot, liquid blaze,
Into this shape—we're painted in
Networks of echoing delays—
Into the map I place a pin.
Catapult me to the end,
There to dance like spinning plates—
The light is easier to bend,
But through this prism many fates.
And when you trace the signal flow,
And when you chase the hands of time,
And when you know which way to go,
You'll know reason doesn't always rhyme.
Would you take another way,
Or would you change the road you're on?
Winding serpents through the clay—
How would you know if you were gone?
Bleeding from the veins of then,
Emeralds in your eyes are wired.
Add it up, and count again—
Burning gold and ruby fired.
And when you trace the signal flow,
And when you chase the hands of time,
And when you know which way to go,
You'll know reason doesn't always rhyme.
The carpet of the rainbow twists,
Beneath your slightly moving lips,
And hands will often follow wrists,
But then and there your heartbeat skips—
For falling through the atmosphere,
Meteoric, raining down,
All things come together here—
No vengeance, and no thorny crown.
And when you trace the signal flow,
And when you chase the hands of time,
And when you know which way to go,
You'll know reason doesn't always rhyme.
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6. |
Released
07:57
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Maybe it is stillness that I dread
Memory is fluid; on the surface it will spread—
Until your voice completely fills my head.
Shadowy outside, but through my eyelids glowing red.
Were you ever really there?
Panic twists a knot in every thread.
I'm begging you to follow, but I'm dying to be led.
Somehow every word remains unsaid—
And then you disappear and I am standing there instead.
Were you ever really there?
My eyes are closed, but I know where I am:
I'm at the top of my favorite hill, at the seaside cliff of dreams.
At any moment now I will hear the cries of gulls circling.
That is when I will lift my eyelids and see what I already know is there.
Someone will be waiting for me here—someone always is.
I'm in no particular hurry to find out who is here today.
I'm content to listen. I hear nothing.
Not even the sound of waves breaking on the shore far below.
Were you ever really there?
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7. |
Down in the Zero
12:07
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The paper didn't carry your suicide note.
They didn't call it what it was.
I remember the time
That we spoke of the things
That we couldn't discuss—
I guess that it meant
That we weren't close enough.
The paper didn't carry your suicide note.
They didn't call it what it was.
But somehow I know
That would have been
The method you chose,
When it came time to fall
Down in the zero.
Down,
Down in the zero...
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Monday Machines UK
One day, Allan Coberly's morning was ruined when he was rudely awakened by jackhammers and bulldozers. Cary Grace talked him into recording the noises from his window, and the rest is history.
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