1. |
Intro
00:10
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2. |
This Isn't My House
00:45
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I get out of a car.
I hear it drive away.
The past-midnight sky
doesn't quite have a color.
The faint-orange street-lamps
disrupt the blue-blackness,
making the whole night
a pale wash of none of them.
I crash inside and feel a couch.
I hazily cognize that
tomorrow, I'll be in trouble,
but most of me is too comfy
not to believe in my fellow man
to do the math and just let me be.
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3. |
Wilderness Poem
00:43
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There are trees about
and the sun doesn't touch them.
The sun touches nothing;
does not ruin with its heat
or an excess of light.
There is the brook.
Small silver fish swim lazily.
The ground is damp and flat
and a rich black-brown.
Moist grass shades the brook.
Unseen birds make soft sounds.
The peace is low and deep.
If something walks these woods,
it isn't me.
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4. |
[untitled]
00:50
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"It's like falling asleep in the ocean,
this stuff," he says and takes another swig.
"I can feel waves -- like, actual waves --
of tranquility rolling over me,
rocking my brain with pleasant nudgings."
"Yeah," the dream-man says, "it'll do that."
"Why doesn't anybody have this shit
in real life?" he asks.
"Because this doesn't exist in real life,"
the dream-man replies.
"It could though -- couldn't it?" he asks.
"I mean, like, if I remember it later,
I could actually make this real, right?"
"Well," the dream-man slurs, "you can try."
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5. |
The Mind as a House
00:41
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The basement is flooding
and I'm afraid the roof
is going to blow off:
so much crazy, flying shit
out there and the storm
keeps changing directions.
I'm in a madhouse,
pitifully staving off madness
in a swirling, mad reality.
The raging, space-consuming
cyclone takes my roof.
The bottomless sea
swallows my basement.
Where is anything in all this?
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6. |
Apology Poem
01:41
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I found myself on the receiving end
of an apology today,
which never happens.
It's always the other way around:
๐ did something stupid;
๐ did something wrong;
๐'๐ฎ sorry.
Now here was somebody
apologizing to me.
I wasn't sure what to say.
On the one hand, I could've
just taken the apology,
which is what people do with me
only if I've fucked up with them
a low number of times;
and I that's supposed to be fair:
๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ง๐ถ๐ค๐ฌ ๐ถ๐ฑ ๐ข ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ต
๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ธ๐ฆ'๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ช๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ธ๐ช๐ต๐ฉ
๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ธ ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ค๐ฉ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ง๐ถ๐ค๐ฌ ๐ถ๐ฑ -- ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ด๐ต๐ฐ๐ณ๐บ.
On the other hand, receiving one now,
I'm embittered by the whole concept,
like someone who chased fame
until it took everything out of them
and, by the time they get it,
they're just resentful of it;
I could've slammed their apology
to the ground as an effigy of all apologies:
fuck that. Don't apologize to me.
Don't ask me to make you my dog,
begging for some bone of forgiveness.
We are all fuck-ups to some degree.
I don't know how so many people
avoid being the guy that always fucks up,
but I know this much:
it's a ruse that they're not that guy.
The Fuck-Up is you too, pal.
When they apologized to me,
what I said was,
"I'm a better friend than you."
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7. |
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I was gonna get it
and you were gonna give it to me
and it would've surely started me
on my long quest for vengeance
against the world and against life.
I would've drawn a samurai's blade
and bought a big-ass motorcycle
and talked like I was in Tarantino-Land;
but someone came and broke us up
and pulled me away from you
and I was robbed of that whole future.
You're probably off now living just like that.
I'd ask you to come by and have at me,
but it'd be too late to do me any good now.
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8. |
Strange Noises
01:22
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Something is heard.
Someone is awake:
it's me.
In the two seconds
before personality returns
to the brain upon waking,
lightning bolts of cold
shoot up from the floor
into my bare feet.
I hate the hard-wood floor.
I miss the carpeting --
the dog-pissy, discolored,
faintly-damp carpeting
that didn't murder
the nerve-endings in my feet.
We had to remove it.
I cross the floor to the door.
Outside, the sound
is billowing from three streets over.
It's equally mammalian and inorganic.
There's lights too and I can't tell
if it's just streetlights
or the lights of far-off buildings
or a house-party at this hour.
I'm in my undies and sockies
and it's fuck-o'-clock at night
and I really should go back to bed,
but I'm pretty sure it's aliens
because I don't know
what the fuck those sounds were.
I'm just standing on my lawn in the dark,
seeing nothing and hearing nothing.
Show yourselves.
I dare you.
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9. |
Poem About The Man
01:50
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On a bad T.V. show,
I watched two FBI agents
driving the speed-limit
down the highway
in black sunglasses,
headbobbing in the car
to a band I like.
It wasn't an ironic scene.
These were the good guys.
This was supposed to be
a badass moment.
Seriously? . . .
I don't care if it's a show.
These people are not good guys.
They are not friends of the people.
They are above the people.
They are the Man
and the Man keeps everyone down.
They are your overlords.
They make way more money than you
and they get to invade your privacy
and they can take your whole life
away from you, should they feel so inclined.
It's unethical to paint an FBI agent
as a good person
who genuinely tries to do the right thing.
I'm sure good FBI agents exist,
but it's simply contrary-to-history --
not to mention, insulting --
for T.V. writers on a show
that reaches thousands or millions
of stupid moms,
stupid dads
and impressionable kids
to produce such a false, sanitized fantasy
of an upstanding and moral bureau
every single week,
like it's not hurting America.
It is.
Stop it:
the Man is not allowed to rock out.
Rockin' out is for human beings
who stand against the Man.
The Man must listen to something else --
country-pop maybe.
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10. |
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The room is cold.
The bed is warm with body heat.
The blanket is thick and prickly.
My bladder is full.
My stomach is only half empty.
My eyes don't stay closed.
I'm not normally up this late.
I drift with the current of the hour.
My left thumb has muscle-spasms.
My forehead feels heavy.
The pillow muffs my ears.
A leg itches.
The future is a damming boulder
to the flow of the river of time.
It should be the sea, but instead,
it's a boulder.
I am not properly broken up.
I am awake when I shouldn't be.
I don't have an answer for this.
I didn't think I would.
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11. |
The Farm Cat
02:14
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The farm cat wags its tail for months,
awaiting a pat from the farmer.
It gets one:
the farmer scratches its head
and under its dirty chin
and rubs his knuckles between the ears.
The farmer leaves in the truck
and is gone for two weeks.
The farm cat stalks the acres
and the mole-hills within,
turning up field mice and gophers.
The farm cat survives,
but more than food, desires the farmer.
The farmer comes back
and the farm cat springs to greet him.
The farmer notices the farm cat.
Possibly, next time, the farmer
will put both his hands on the farm cat,
like when the farm cat was small
and lived in the farm house.
The farm cat goes about being a farm cat
and the farmer tends to larger things
and months pass without eye-contact,
searched for nor happened upon.
In the autumn, the farm cat
limps to the house with a fucked-up leg.
It calls for the farmer.
The farmer does not come.
It sleeps by the door for three days.
One morning, the farmhouse dogs
break loose from the backdoor
and chase the farm cat into a tree.
They bark at it and it does not come down.
The sun sets, then rises again
and the dogs beneath the tree have gone.
The farm cat climbs down
and walks away from the farmhouse,
into the wild acres of land beyond.
It crosses through a hole in the fence-wire
and keeps going
until it comes across new fields
with new mice and gophers.
The farm cat slowly forgets the farm
and the farmer.
One morning, the farm cat peers
out of the grass and sees something
in the middle of the country-road:
it's a dead cat with a squashed-in head.
The farm cat approaches the body
and looks down at it
the same way it once looked up
at a man.
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12. |
Anxiety Poem
01:18
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Whatever the fuck I'm on this month,
it's not working tonight.
I feel like my body is sinking into my bed
and my brain is sinking into itself
and, if I don't keep them both tense,
they'll never get back above water again.
I fear I'll be blind in my own sunken skull.
Writing this poem takes my mind
off it a little, but the feeling is still there.
I fear falling asleep and never waking.
I fear turning thirty and shit getting worse.
I fear having to be responsible for myself.
I remember being boredly-unaware
of the full extent of my own uselessness.
Now I'm all-too-aware,
but still not aware enough to be prepared.
People get drunk and kill themselves
trying to cope with being useless.
I'm not cut out for homelessness
or discomfort
or having absolutely no money,
but it's all probably what I'm gonna be.
I suppose I ought to get ready for it
and maybe study up a bit on dying.
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13. |
Anaxaminder
01:00
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11 ร 12
the base of the skull
Felix's rat in the corner
crying
crying
a chandelier over Buckingham Palace
the inopportune
the Dallas Cowboys
62 rubles
an unrelenting groundskeeper
the field, the field
the corn of Charlie's rictus-year
animated
voracious
the delay of the Tennysonian rebirth
actual
actual
the giving fruit
the monastery of forced vegetation
all the ladies -- every lady
a song
a song around the garden gates
a rhyme for the penultimate age
and the final, lucid wave
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14. |
Rest Assured
01:09
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Thinking again, are we? . . .
Your face has that look again:
a concentrated forehead
and eyes, green with the disaster-light
of articles bright on your phone
in the bed beside me.
This night of love, for you,
is something else;
this night holds you tenuously,
like a mother with arms full:
you're the swaddled baby
that she could very well drop.
Don't be that thinking brain for awhile.
Be one with this soft bed
and this peace-snug, song-aired night;.
Take the sensation while it's here --
while it openly invites you into itself.
I wouldn't go in when it called me
and so, I missed out on happiness a lot
and thought I just couldn't have any.
I tried to teach myself not to need love,
but you taught me how to be love instead.
I think I can remind you of how it feels,
if you'll let me.
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15. |
Medication Symptoms
00:33
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You say it felt like
your head was full of cotton.
I say it feels like
a head full of chewed gum.
I'm sure we're both close enough,
but in the frenzy of
the occasional panic attack,
there's all the difference
in the world between
a head full of cotton
and a head full of chewed gum:
it's the difference between
the stranger being just
a noise from down the hall
and the stranger really
being in your house.
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16. |
Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow Poem
00:42
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I'm not one of these people
(and I'm grateful for that),
but something's somewhat
appealing about lovers who
not only still fuck each other
after years and decades,
but have moved beyond
the mere clutch of tits and cunts
and cocks and balls and asses
to a phase in which it is more
a ritualistic interlocking of
bodies; a transferring of chi;
almost non-sexual, and yet,
closer than all other kinds of love.
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17. |
New Books
01:14
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I got some new books today
and didn't feel much
of anything.
Usually, getting new books
makes me feel energized,
at least for awhile.
I started reading one
and still -- nothing.
That's never happened before.
I think my Prozac
has stopped working.
The doctor did say
that might happen
a couple months in.
He may either
have to up the dosage
or put me on something else.
I may have to start
trying blends.
The back of my head
is starting to feel
empty again
like it did months before
and my foot-tappings are back too.
I'm afraid I'm epileptic
or that my brain is gonna seize up
if I don't keep my focus rigid
and keep wiggling my bare toes
like the incessant, flapping wings
of some headless bird.
Shit to get you to forget,
shit that doesn't make you less crazy,
shit that just makes you
able to live with being crazy,
shit that just gets worse
at doing even that much,
shit to tide you over
to the grave --
that's what it is.
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18. |
Jazz Poem
00:56
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Man, I tell you what:
I've seen mountains risin' up out them seas like dogs,
and ol' Fritz, my boy,
what he wouldn't give . . .
and it weren't no sassafras day,
the day we went down --
down into that red canyon together,
with Serengeti smiles
and slathered, whitened tubes
on display.
We weren't knowed Hell like it be.
Ain't the way fraught?
Ain't it?
I'm up in them mountains always
when I come to think of it
and sometimes the music
is so purple and messaging
like evening winds,
I'm simply good --
excited, even --
and other times,
it's all insensate
and I can't feel like I belong
anywhere in the world.
What it be to know,
and to ain't know . . .
man. . .
I'd tell ya.
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19. |
Outro
00:19
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Adam Crawford Simi Valley, California
My name is Adam Crawford. This page is where I post audiobooks of me reading my dumbass poetry.
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