1. |
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Somebody got shot on 28th and Nicollet
We’re just in time to
See the corpse
wheeled into the ambulance
There’s nothing too worthwhile
In any of these people
There’s nothing to worthwhile
In you and me
I just want to watch the ambulance
Slide away
I just want to watch the ambulance
Slide away
Red and blue lights in the snow
At night there’s only ever one way
There’s only ever one way
You better smoke cigarettes
Turn your back, just forget
I don’t wanna go home tonight
I don’t wanna know
Anything anymore
I just wanna sit in silence
In the back of the ambulance
Better people die every day
Someday soon
That’s what they’ll say
About me and you
You and all your friends belong
Bleeding out in the back of an ambulance
I’ll meet you there soon
Need to yell about death a while
Beneath the sarcastic winter moon
Nobody ever answers my questions
Nobody looks me in the eye
I don’t mind the silence
But I can’t stand the fucking lies
I can’t stand the fucking lies
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2. |
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it begins with
2 grand worth of cocaine
in a bag in an alley
we spent 4 months
up till 6 in the morning
red-eyed madmen
laughing in the rain, in the alley
so in love / with Mary Wells
the right wrong turn
down the alley
thru the rain
I threw myself away
I’m never going back again
Let’s have some darkness and doubt
Let’s twist and shout
Fun doesn’t have a thing to do with it
Listen for a second
Zak sold some of it
bullshitting in the bars
lost from God type fit
or God’s got nothing to do with it
so much cruelty
my poor liver —
four months we were
ragged dead-eyed coke-dealers
a neon-light lit match
our own glorious reign of terror
the right wrong turn
down the alley
thru the rain
in the whiteout / I threw myself away
I’m never going back again
A knife and a fork
A knife and a fork
that’s the way we spell New York
Downtown boys don’t know shit
they just wanna live their long healthy lives
Drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade
And cheating on their wives
But the Dum Dum Boys and I
found a better way
All it takes is a little
crazy, fucked-up luck
the right wrong turn
down the alley
thru the rain
in the whiteout
I’m never going back again
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3. |
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|
Based on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop //
|
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4. |
Psych Ward Boogie
03:11
|
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|
I see youve checked into the psych ward at bellevue
Let me tell you: EXCELLENT CAREER MOVE
Amy hasn’t had a full meal in 14 years
she’s lived off
Nuts and leaves and orange peels
Johnny shaved off all his hair
and tried to get run over
Tried to explain it / to the paramedics
But those do-gooder sons of bitches
Just didn’t get it
I don’t wanna
go back there
I cant ever go back there
People just like me
People just like you
Omar and Donna / have matching wrists
gauzy bracelets
Nothng to do but bitch
No alcohol, no goddamn shoelaces
Do the xanax shuffle
you know how to do the xanax shuffle, don’t you?
You gotta shake and slump
And fall asleep in the hall / on your way to the common room —
Now you know the steps, everybody do it!
Everybody do it!
I don’t wanna
go back there
I cant ever go back there
People just like me
People just like you
I came back to the psych ward
After I’d been doing fine
I came to visit a friend - her first time
Said she just couldn’t - take it anymore
Terrible weight of it all
But before she died a miracle, somehow
She managed to call the hospital
Don’s trying to throw up his lunch
Before the nurses bust in
Danny’s seeing shadows
Demands to up his - gabapentin
Just when I thought I was out —
THEY PULL ME BACK IN!
Now she’s sitting at a table in the common room
Calming dose of Vicodin - visiting hours
Strange look to the light / it doesn’t much matter
Nothing much matters - NOTHING MATTERS VERY MUCH
I don’t wanna
go back there
I cant ever go back there
People just like me
The world will crush and kill you
The world just doesn’t care
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5. |
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|
Kitty Oppenheimer / lost in the lights
of another Princeton mixer
The smartest, vainest people in the world
all here for Robert
They say she’s a lush
The wife of the genius
Everything she does
she does too cruelly,
everything she is, simply wrong
(Excuse me, madame
but who the hell are you —
My husband invented the atom bomb)
hope she doesn’t fall
hope she doesn’t fall apart
tonight she’s had —
6 martinis and a demerol
They all just tolerate her
Everyone looks sideways, if they look at all
At Kitty Oppenheimer
Perhaps she should leave all this behind
to disappear —
the same thought she’s
thought a thousand times -
But wherever she goes -
it’s always back Princeton
Or fucking Los Alamos —
6 martinis and a demerol
They all just tolerate her
Everyone looks sideways, if they look at all
At Kitty Oppenheimer
The light like yellow glass
Shone strange on Robert
As he held court across
the room —
What was it then who knows
why we do the things we do —
But Kitty was compelled
to interrupt the party and yell:
“I LOVE YOU!” I LOVE YOU
The smartest people in the world
Stared anxious at their shoes
Thought yet again —
what a gauche thing to do
And Robert, man of her dreams
said nothing too
just smiled and looked away
Kitty quit the party
walked into the night
sat beside the garden wall
to enjoy alone alone alone
her 6 martinis and her demerol
6 martinis and a demerol
The smartest people in the world
And nobody can tell me/ what’s the point of it all
These people have got
A lot of goddamn nerve
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6. |
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|
In three days I was broke
But a hero
I don’t understand you people
In 3 days I’d lost it all
On my way to score
Christmas Eve
Goodbye, my love
Hello, snow-storm
I want to spit in your eye
Used to say we’e kings
just as god-damned lonely, lovely
as everybody else is //
Ever present as the atom
Sick of songs and books
Sick of everything save boredom
I’ll leave you alone
Guess I’d rather
Hit a blizzard for a high
Than spend another moment home
I want to say goodbye
(like I) Used to say we’e kings
just as god-damned lonely, lovely
as everybody else is //
I don’t mind the snow
I don’t mind the trains
Don’t run on time
Goodbye, goodbye
You outgrew the
life of crime
A pickup stalled in snow, a ditch
off University Avenue
maybe being a son of a bitch
isn’t so charming to you
Me I’ll keep scribbling my riddles
coffee and tobacco
till the dealer brings more pills
Maybe oblivion’s better, but
who’ll then complain of
All I gave away, or lost?
Who’ll say
Everything I’ve lost
Who’ll say
You just threw it away
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7. |
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|
I met a traveler from an antique land who said
Howdy my name’s Piss-Bucket Joe
What can I do for you?
I’m just a simple man
I say - who says / who says
Who says we can’t burn it down
And start again?
Who says we can’t
burn it down and start again
I’m afraid we’ll murder you and your children —
out of pure spite! It’s nothing personal, champ —
We stood in the snow, an alley
near Portland Hospital
where I’d just shot the doctor
who’d said without insurance
we can’t continue the wife’s chemo
I told the doctor, listen here you ugly motherfucker
If you’re gonna let my wife die
I’m gonna shoot you in the face
The doctor still refused, so I kept my word
And quit the place —
Thus I’d come upon this man
in my flight from the cops /
through the night, through the snow
Thus I came upon the strange wanderer
Piss-Bucket Joe
He’s just a simple man
He just doesn’t understand
Just doesn’t understand
— Who says we can’t
Burn it down and start again
Who says we can’t
Burn it down and start again?
I told Joe how I’d shot the doctor out of spite
How I’d do it again
How i wanted to burn down the whole city
that very night —
Old Mr. Piss Bucket smiled and nodded
and said I once did something very similar
I shot an insurance agent, along with a cop and a doctor
Now I roam from town to town
Meeting folks like you — who’d like to
Burn it all down…
Burn it all down —
Piss-Bucket Joe / Piss-Bucket Joe
Waddaya Know
It’s Piss-Bucket Joe!
Mr. Piss-Bucket I cried
How can you live like this, an outcast
With back bent —
He said:
Because I know one day there’ll be
More of us than them -
One day there’ll be more of us than them
Nothing wrong with some
bloody vengeance
of those who would rob us of our dignity
said the man named Piss-Bucket Joe —
You’ve come to join me
And more like you come every day
Mr. Bucket I cried, I see what you mean!
One day we’ll be legion
One day we’ll see
the return of the guillotine!
We say, who says, who fuckin says
Who says you can’t just
burn it all down and start again
I wanna burn it all down
And start again —
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8. |
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9. |
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10. |
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|
I wanna riot in the street with nobody but you
(davai vstreitimsya)
bring on the crushing defeat
torching cars, breaking glass
to the tune of BABY I LUV YOU
you’re cleopatra, Cruella deville, and Frank Sinatra
and the skyline’s a highway of fire
I say we run for our lives
the streets are thick with
diaperboys and spies
but always remember
the golden rule —
You don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of
Minneapolis
There’s no place for us, my dear
There’s no place for us
you don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of Minneapolis
i know in the morning they’ll say
how terrible, what animals
sentenced to death
by the world’s dullest people —
We’re the only living left
in the ugly husk of this city
it’s up to us, then
to turn this town to ash and dust
the diaperboys are always so happy
to fight against justice
by bursting into tears
before muttering something racist —
Take that Nazi flag of yours
and shove it up your ass
You don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of
Minneapolis
There’s no place for us, my dear
There’s no place for us
you don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of Minneapolis
Ignore the cousin-fuckers
piss-drinking racists
wanna-be fascists
fuck these sons of bitches —
I don’t know where the diaperboys
Get their misplaced sense of pride
To you and me their lives are clearly
propaganda for suicide
they don’t know what you and i know
they live off (desperate stupidity and lies)
if you got any guts at all
if you think the gallows’re the only place for a fascist
you don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of Minneapolis
You don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of
Minneapolis
(everything they say /goddamn lies lies lies)
There’s no place for us, my dear
There’s no place for us
you don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of Minneapolis
everything they say’s a goddamn lie
everything they say’s nothing but lies
just remember the golden rule:
you don’t leave a comrade to die
in the streets of Minneapolis
|
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11. |
KOMPROMAT
03:48
|
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|
Sunday with the day off work
I went out walking / thru the snow
once it got dark
Past the old apartments
places where we used to live
the terrible, criminal things we did
make me laugh now —
you can see the same snow fall
and feel the same things
from your apartment
daylight in Moscow —
All my old friends got kompromat on me
all my dead friends got kompromat on me
used to be a certain intimacy
used to be so adept at outrunning
everything
the snow, the light
memory remaking you and the people
you used to know
lingering in the old doorways
just the vanity in me
preference for shadow
we must’ve run out of a certain type of time
we can still look back and salute
our mostly good-natured
life of crime
All my old friends got kompromat on me
all my dead friends got kompromat on me
Used to be so adept
at living beyond these memories
Chris has vanished, some commune
Outside Sacramento
Harper’s gone to find himself
in a dive bar in Tokyo
And back in motherfucking New York City
Ellen just had a baby —
there’s so much more to do
shit never really ends
you just can’t go back
you can’t change anything
All my old friends got kompromat on me
all my dead friends got kompromat on me
Used to be so adept
at outrunning everything —
Goodbye goodbye, good luck
you maniacs, your sunken champagne glow
goodbye to all you sons of bitches in Chicago
|
||||
City Barricades Minneapolis, Minnesota
Hello we are Apocalypse music
And CIA
assets
Do not
be afraid
We are
switchblades
&
cohesive outfits
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