1. |
A Seat at the Table
03:58
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I heard the sigh of the tired collective
Bellow above me
Then it’s muffled in austerity
Familiar, another disaster
In my generation
Body counting as a ceremony
Bury, bury it deeper
I should work harder
Metal bursting from machinery
The spirit, the beauty of patience
I should drink water
Oh the fiction of autonomy
Please don’t let it go to waste
Please don’t let it go to waste
Please don’t ever go away
I felt the beat of the passenger pulses
Drumming around me
Disappearing from our memory
Familiar, another event
And the victims by proxy
The promise of prosperity
I’m chasing, or being chased
I just have to be smarter
Needle the bandit coming after me
Get even, climb up the ladder
That keeps growing taller
Maybe bring it up in therapy
Please don’t let it go to waste
Please don’t let it go to waste
Please don’t ever go away
We see that our seat has been taken
Our seat at the table
The wrong place, the wrong time
The wrong reasons
Fish in a barrel
Existence of evil
The bedrock of my memory
Shifting, clang in the darkness
I learn who I am
In the crush of an atrocity
Set on us, since we got started
Since we began
Able-bodied for the company
Please don’t let it go to waste
Please don’t let it go to waste
Please don’t ever look away
Please don’t ever go away
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2. |
Sleep Paralysis
03:46
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To be disarmed
To be disarmed, arrival
Solemn ghost
gripping smoke, wherever you are
I am disarmed
I am disarmed, arrival
Am I awake
Can I call your name
Now I feel a weight I know is real
Is that you here
Is that you here
I wish you’d know the lengths to which I’d go
To keep you here
To keep you here
What’s gone wrong
You look tired
I taste salt
I smell fire
You look wrong
I’m like steel
I can’t move
This ordeal
Am I coming undone, see your shape in the doorway
Am I falling or not, hope I wake before landing
I know that you’re gone, leaking light as you’re able
An electrical hum, the dint of survival
I am disarmed,
I am disarmed in your arrival
Commanding form
The room is cold and my blood is warm
Panicked shout, both dry and drowned
I am disarmed, I am disarmed
My collar tugged, which way’s the ground
I’m in your arms, am I in your arms
Now I feel a weight I know is real
is that you here
is that you here
I wish you’d know the lengths to which I’d go
To keep you here
To keep you here
What’s gone wrong
You look tired
It’s my fault
My slack jaw
What’s gone wrong
I’m like steel
When is dawn
Is this real
Am I coming undone, see your shape in the doorway
Am I falling or not, will I wake before landing
When I do you’ll be gone, we put your things on the table
An impossible thought, any trace of survival
Am I coming undone, hear you speak in the hallway
Am I falling or not, will I wake before landing
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3. |
Proof of Life
02:57
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Consider this proof of life
Consider the ransom too high
If they release me and I’m saved
Soon I will be making similar mistakes
But maybe this is just what it costs
To find meaning and to never prepare for loss
Prepare for loss
Consider their demands impossible
Consider their intent unknowable
What if they release me and I’ve changed
Who would you come barreling through to save
You’re too late
When you measure the cost
Is there meaning, is there always meaning in loss
This loss
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4. |
Tether
04:19
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Another lie, another new and pained implication
I can’t count on you and I am mistaken
We are lined up at the side of your altar
A ceremony, but with lead in the coffer
I wonder why, living in an infinite pattern
You consume and we are spinning the platters
It’s so foolish to expect for a moment
I’ll handle anything, not disappointment
Words are anodyne
And never remembered
Mourn ahead of time
And wait for the letter
On a final high
Or you’ll maybe get better
I am on your side
At the end of the tether
Is it possible, person I am touching is vapor
This is helplessness, all of its rancor
We are lined up at the side of your altar
Wondering why we even bother
In a dream of mine bring you to the bank out of water
And then I blink and you are pulled under farther
Eyes are marble, you don’t seem to remember
That you went missing on a night in December
Where’s the finish line
When is surrender
Mourn ahead of time
Collected in embers
On a final high
Or you’ll maybe get better
I am on your side
Gripping the tether
You are material, worn away, drained of its color
You are the ledger wet, rinsed of its author
You are structure stripped of its copper
You keep saying let’s just wait a bit longer
Tracing fissure lacing in the foundation
Will it collapse, or evacuation?
You’ve collapsed, doorway is darker
I am witness, terrified
Where’s the finish line
When is surrender
Path without a guide
A shot to the center
On a final high
Notice the tremor
When I’m at your side
Untying the tether
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5. |
Solace
03:53
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After a season of loss
If you could, you would never be seen
Wounds are licked raw and you’re hiding
You go pale, with a visible pulse
I can hear that you’re grinding your teeth
Like you’re scanning the room for the fire
What chases you in the dark?
What phantom, what bloodied claws?
You stutter and you start to leave
The solace your solitude brings
The solace it brings
I tell you we’re safe as we are
You say that nothing is just as it seems
Some invisible violence arriving
You go pale, a circular thought
You’ve hushed, but who’s listening?
You’re the conduit sealed over wire
What chases you in the dark
What phantom, what bloodied claws?
You wince and you struggle to breathe
Silence that solace could bring
The silence it brings
Is it natural, this fear, this wound agitation?
Ready and primed at the first indication
That the moment has finally arrived
When that menace has come to eat you alive
It’s waiting there, gleam in its eye
Your sorrow, your rage, the glint in the light
That heartbroken thief is inside
Rigging the walls, you’ll be buried alive
Rigging the game
Someone is calling your name
A sound that reaches your grief
Stings like a pin to the heart where it’s creased
What chases you in the dark?
Cruel in your memory
If you go it alone and withdraw
Have you found the solace you seek
The solace you seek
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6. |
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Today things will be different
I will open up the blinds
Make an effort or pretend that
I don’t know why I’m so tired
I’ll keep walking past the grocer
Lost spirit to the divine
But I know he’s got my medicine
And I know he’s got the time
To face it
Don’t relay or replace it
Cause I have a name for it now
I have a name for it now
(I have a name for it)
I wake up freezing in the kitchen
Swung in a cyclical decline
In my throat the fume of desire
Regret, to resent my material life
Why not slip away unconscious
Be unfixed by pulling tide
It’s a disorder, no it’s habit
No it’s condition, I’ll be fine
To just face it
Please don’t call it a crisis
I have a name for it now
I have a name for it now
Tomorrow things will be different
I’ve heard of new innovations
Dissolving pills in my mouth
I have a name for it now
(I have a name for it)
I don’t want to say it
A disease, and it’s latent
In me it’s been waiting
But I just need some more time
I can’t see the light
It is blurred, it is mired
I’m nauseous and I’m scared
And I know why I’m tired
Catch myself on the wall
Oblivion in the tiles
Dead drunk and alone
Warm glow in my spine, warm glow
To just face it
I may not know desperation
Until I name it somehow
I have a name for it now
One day things will be different
I’ll figure out what I’m missing
And draw it out of the ground
Draw it out of my mouth
Draw it out
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7. |
Off Guard
03:46
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This is a provident peace
And now here is my answered call
All of you gnashing your teeth
Underneath a descending wall
It’s in the air you breathe
And I’m sealing the door
No matter alarms that ring
You won’t catch me off guard
Taught to give, not receive
But I always protect my own
A slip and you fall off the beam
If you’d looked then you could have known
It’s on the hands that reach
And I’m bracing the door
No matter alarms that ring
You won’t catch me off guard
Panicking the cattle, glimpse of the blade
There is no reason to suffer
Harness undone, the net giving way
The stricken, the worker, the gutter
Rung in the grip, in the hand of the state
Juice the demand, it’s just a matter of time
Til you’re deserted here just like the others
Those dogs in the road with the fear in their eyes
It’s in the rot in the street
And the heat of your glowing home
I pity your faith, your belief
In the hands that are not your own
Only enough for me
Stay away from the door
No matter the word you preach
You won’t catch me off guard
Clawing at the sand, under a wave
Current too great to recover
Quiet cataclysm well underway
The givers, offended corrupters
Coughing and pale in the struggle to beg
For the fruit that you could never have picked from the vine
You better turn around and follow the others
The dogs in the road with the fear in their eyes
Whimper from over the ocean
Lash of the earth, a germ weaponized
I have readied in myself for the culling
I am among the strong that survives
A witness, exsanguination
Hand caught in machine, look me in the eye
I’m the one who rebuilds
I will find new way
Quiet cataclysm well underway
Two steps ahead of the others
The bridge from the city fell into the bay
The wanting were first to go under
I know it has come for me
And it’s shaking the door
No matter alarms that ring
You won’t catch me off guard
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8. |
Sediment
04:31
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A storm comes in, raging from the south
Your body stiff, a thunder hits, a shaking house
In a sudden fit, you hide behind the couch
A temporary haven, but it’s been so long
That’s where you found cover
Face down like the others
An old man in the jungle
An agent in the water
An ancient fear, born in Vietnam
You still possess the fury meant for your clicking gun
The war was all, and the war was wrong
An American, a syndrome given without a cause
I will find you cover
Face down like the others
An old man in the jungle
An agent in the water
(I’ve circled the house
I’ve locked the doors
I found the source
And I buried it)
Now I know time is sheer
Guess I had the wrong idea
Sediment moved and cleared
Put into the blood revealed
You said she’s here, and you said she once
Asked for help then followed you for decades on
The war was all, and the war was wrong
An American in the yawning dusk of the Florida sun
Hearts and minds recover
But you can lose the struggle
A shaking hand pulled under
The agent in the water
(I’ve turned on the light
You can look now
You can look up
Look at me)
Now I know time is sheer
Guess I had the wrong idea
Sediment moved and cleared
Put into the blood revealed
(Unclench your hand
Stand up with me
I’ve circled the house and I’ve locked the doors
And I’ve found the source, its matter
Not created nor destroyed
Not created nor destroyed)
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9. |
Vessel
05:04
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I see you speaking, I’m trying to listen
To break away from grip of vicious obsession
Still I’m afraid, but I can’t name the reason
Maybe the passage of time
I am a vessel, have no religion
I am the shell housing a rattling engine
That’s where the action is, hidden, suspended
So from the outside it’s quiet
Stoic, paralyzed
Juvenile hung from a limb
Mind immobilized, hollow grind
Locking of pins
And I’m sorry I shudder
When you’re brushing my skin
Let me in, let me in, let me in
I am a vessel, drifting position
Count things around me, run my finger on edges
I am a vessel, losing momentum
Who am I standing behind
Why is he blocking the light?
Motor setting fire
All the while, body descends
Please don’t panic
I’ll handle it, steady the pitch
I’m so sorry I’m terrified
To be who I am
Who I am, who I am, who I am
Motor setting fire
Feel it as you’re gripping my hand
Please don’t panic
I’ll smother it, learn to pretend
That I am satisfied, cooling in the fog as it lifts
Who I am, who I am, who I am
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10. |
Vital Return
04:10
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I have seen indication
That I know nothing and know it well
Woke up in the clearing where I murdered my ego
Startled by the sound of the morning bell
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
But I remember the decimation
I had built a city then burned it down
Now I know my grief is somewhere under the wreckage
For the first time I will dig it out
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
Loosening the yoke and developing patience
Swallowing the air, letting pressure be felt
Exiting delirium, snapped into focus
I will listen this time, even with blood in my mouth
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
Eyes dilated, convalesced, nerves firing charges
Learning to speak to something bigger than self
Exiting delirium, snapped into focus
I have my regrets, for now I’ll see them in hell
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
Vital return
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Big Bliss Brooklyn, New York
NYC outfit over 20 feet tall and 400 lbs
'VITAL RETURN' out now on Good Eye
Records
Stream and buy our first record 'At Middle Distance,' as well as EP's and singles here:
bigblissesr.bandcamp.com/releases
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