1. |
Really Great Stuff
06:08
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There is no person on Earth
who has never read a poem to a microphone alone
just to say, “I thought you'd show up,
I said really great stuff”
I should've gone cliff diving in 2011,
but I woke up sick that morning
Thought I was tougher than that,
tough as unpacked snow on a caroler's back
Whether it's escaped or behind the drapes,
I can't see the opportunity
You'd think the good times would wanna be seen,
pretty as a picture in a magazine
pretty as a picture from your late teens
“It could always be better”
I've got a wanderlust and a misplaced trust
in the nature of adventure
It's a vague thought, but I'm stuck in it
It's a life with a dream, then learning that wasn't it
When I was 17, something wiped me clean
like a big as life eraser
At 25, my thumb's in the air
A year for each arm of an octopus
I guess it was a little bit obvious
I've gotta spend some time by myself
If I called you
and I told you
I've been crying every day,
would you think I learned a lesson?
Would you think it's just attrition?
If I called you
and I told you
I've been crying every day
There's a forward line and a line behind
and two others and left and right of me
I'd say crossroads, but they've calmed down
Every end's dead, I'm always turning right around
Pace around, polyglot, Tetris, eat a lot,
write in writing journal
I might call a friend, I might not
Is this an educational opportunity?
Is this what it was like when my parents had me?
Hope you'll buy that I'm busy
There's always a point where I'm starting a journal
when I hope it lasts forever
Then moments lapse and weeds that blossom
Start to grow farther than forever can
I hope that age brings something I'm missing,
puts blush on every blemish
Starting and stopping and sleeping it off
I feel like a kind of comedian
I feel like a kind of comedian
like a kid again, almost
My time in the hospital 5 years back
is 5 years far too long ago
I loved it so much, even too much
Learned a lot, breathed, and avoided human touch
People say I can't run, people say I can't hide
They don't know what I can do
But am I running? Am I hiding?
Can't make a scene at a workplace
Gotta face the day with a straight face
Talk to you later
If I called you
and I told you
I've been crying every day,
would you think I learned a lesson?
Would you think it's just attrition?
If I called you
and I told you
I've been crying every day
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2. |
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Are you done? You seem done
You couldn't further disengage
Your life's a book outside your language
You fake it through each page
Someone has to fall apart
Someone has to fall apart
When you think, do you think
that the paintings in your cave
are the instincts you're ignoring
while pretending to be brave?
Someone has to fall apart
Someone has to fall apart
Is the spite of my fight
like a hammer on a whale?
You could hear a small explosion
3 floors up in Avondale
Someone has to fall apart
Someone has to fall apart
If I've gotta die,
this is how I die:
biking on the street I grew up on
I hit a stray lip of a sidewalk block
and I launch, I launch away
If you're gonna break down,
this is how you'll break down:
burning your arm in the oven
You'll scream, backing into a wall,
you'll scream, then cry into your dossier
Wave a wand by the pond
at my former boulevard
I see algae just like tea leaves
and I see what's in my cards
Someone has to fall apart
Someone has to fall apart
Dollop this, swallow that
Let the ice cream hit my tongue
You say it's no fun to sit around
You don't know what's fun
Someone has to fall apart
Someone has to fall apart
There are friends, former friends
now all sprint gold medalists
When they talk, their lips are curling
just like ropes that pull up wrists
Someone has to fall apart
Someone has to fall apart
I'll record every song
before they cross into too old
so in case I can't be found again,
the damage is controlled
Someone has to fall apart
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3. |
Still Right There
04:13
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Bought a record you showed me
I sent you the cover and counted the years
A whole outfit unfolding
You're married up North now, a blooming career
I don’t think I did justice
I wrote when you left, and when you left again
You were older and it mattered,
and I was a coward, a boy for a friend
I tried to summarize, to stitch it out,
your letter in my closet turned a faucet only cold
I write about being a kid so much
since you touched me, since I was shown and told
They see me here, I’m still right there
I won’t admit each part of it, I’m still right there
By the lamplight glowing red
You're living better, I am suspended
I'm still right there
“I don't blame you for anything”
says me in a bubble to the first girl I loved
“I swear I don't miss you that way”
says me looking desperate in boxing gloves
But in the front seat of your car,
each song that you played put my life in a bottle
So much of this is useless
You glide through the present, your memory full
2017's been like a bad dream
When I finally sleep, it's too much like waking up
I write about being a kid so much
and I'm begging you to interrupt
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4. |
Clock Collection
02:46
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Say that I'm good in my heart
Let me stay good in your memory
like Oscar before he departs,
heroin laced with Ketamine
I don't keep in touch with him now
I talk to his walk in my melody
Let me stay good in your memory
What if Sunday, I came by?
What if I drove in my own car?
Smart brown suit and a tie?
What if I had the same guitar?
Why do I see country road?
My fantasy puts you so far
What if I drove in my own car?
Time, a friend to no one,
is not a friend to you
Time, your rear-view mirror
You can be grateful, you can be hateful
It depends on you
Are you often tired?
You can say “no,” but I doubt it
Everyone thinks you're the world
You are a star they've counted
Sounds exhausting to me
It's not right, but I dream about it
You can say “no,” but I doubt it
Time, a friend to no one,
is not a friend to you
Time, your rear-view mirror
You can be grateful, you can be hateful
It depends on you
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5. |
Sickbed
04:24
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Sickbed inside her house
Talking to a person from South Carolina
Tried to breathe in a stranger's mouth
Tried to find a pulse, and could never find one
I wanna help so bad
I wanna slant his axis upward
I wanna help so bad
Wants to find the funeral and find the mother
Just to say he tried to help the sucker
I wanna help so bad
Sickbed inside my room
Sending little messages to somebody sicker
Must be a bad phase of the moon
Kissing on a hotheaded action figure
I wanna be a friend
I wanna help her from a distance
I wanna be a friend
Rather than a suitor in her reminiscence
I just wanna be a wall that listens
I wanna be a friend
Everybody's parents are in love in some way,
savage or solemn or separate
This is a belief that I'd rather not say;
some of my friends are real delicate
The sun moon lovers made a plan for your day
You only believe it when desperate
Are you desperate like I'm desperate?
Sickbed and sadder now
Trying to be levity for somebody's spiral
Wants to die and tells me how
Everybody ran away or gave an eyeroll
I can't let them go
Even when the people I trust insist to
I can't let them go
Chronically abandoning's a separate issue
Even if it wasn't, oh, how I'd miss you
I can't let you go
Sickbed reversal round
Apologizing every time I feel a new feeling
Rib cage of eiderdown
I think we're indestructible, so why isn't it healing?
I don't wanna head home
I don't wanna face my parents like this
I don't wanna head home
Tryna spit it out with laryngitis
Sorry that I acted out in crisis
I don't wanna head home
I used to tell secrets to a stranger by phone;
we governed as lovers discorporate
I felt liberated as an Easter rolled stone,
sifting the illness for sediment
It got real foul, like touching unknowns
A sickbed laden with desperate
Are you desperate like I'm desperate?
Mouthguard stripped by elements
Are you desperate like I'm desperate?
Sickbed bad as I let it get
Are you desperate like I'm desperate?
Epitaph reads: “That's not what I meant”
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6. |
Nobody's Delight
04:10
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Lately you've been acting far past just resigned
Is there something that you can't admit on your mind?
I can listen and not stir
and be the listener you were
Do you think that I'm combative when you try?
I can speculate, but I've got to know why
I won't freak out when I hear
you're not proud when I appear
You wake up with the sun
You come home in the dark
You say “fuck” to yourself
when you parallel park
You have days of your own
Why should I intersect
and leave a ring of rain
on your tired neck?
Didn't fold my hands once on Holy Week
I have fantasies where I forget how to speak
I dip my toe, but never dive
I'm no fun at 25
Thought of walking down to Southern Illinois
Find a nondescript town, become employed
Learn to drive in secrecy
Do you think that's the life for me?
Rhys was talking to me
at the Taco Bell
He had decade-spanning
sad sagas to tell
Is suspended grief
what you'd diagnose?
That is not what I want
That is not even close
I won't be found for a while
I've been making strange and secret decisions
I put my stuff in a pile
Let a card from my parents tear up my vision
Then I'll walk
like I planned to
It's all I can do
It's all I want
I'm so happy that you came, I really am
It's been lonelier than home with Abraham
Everything is printed there
Here's the money and the chair
We can go through every talk I floundered in
I will set it to dramatic violin
and to nobody's delight,
I might really get it right
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7. |
Just Like a Mom
01:34
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The lives of holy men
Your body as Bethlehem
You care so much, you're trapped
Just like a mom, trapped
Just like a mom, trapped
You can't
laugh
You can take a man so gone
he became the road he's on
and somehow guide him back
through echoes and claps
Just like a mom, trapped
You once found it funny,
now you can't
laugh
Your hair like an oil slick
Your hand held, and the woods thick
What once had brought you laughter
is now your captor, kids that kidnap
Just like a mom, trapped
Just like a mom, trapped
Just like a mom, trapped
Even when you laugh
you don't
laugh
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8. |
I Turn 25
04:37
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Somewhere there's a looping tape, it's showing you and I
You're always bathing, curtain pulled, I'm always waving “bye”
Somewhere there's a cutting room, the floor's a tape array
I'm hunched and making cuts until the memory's okay
Somewhere there's a skeleton that used to make you laugh
It's stretched to match your closet height, your error's autograph
You say a word and take it back in private rendezvous
You try and make an honest man, you end up lying too
Somewhere there's a mirror, and it leans to lick your face
You kiss it like it's drying up and picking up the pace
The mirror lies and tells you that your darkness nurses light
In a world of fairy tale, the mirror would be right
Somewhere there's a microphone that wants to be a wand
You've only held it far from me, I listen from beyond
A world where we can laugh again and show a person how
We'll never laugh that way again, I realize that now
Somewhere there's a photograph, its amber has us caught
We're hugging in the summertime, my smile is tall and taut
You've turned and you're not turning 'round; if not now, then when?
I'm standing at the widow's peak to see my friend again
Somewhere there's a video, you're golfing at the grass
Your hair was blonde and spiking up, your face was Sunday mass
I only become sadder when the video is through
I'll sit with it in front of me, and that'll be my you
It's okay
It's okay
I turn 25 on Tuesday
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9. |
A Call From You
01:41
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Colored lights and “Silent Night”s
presents under pine
Christmas cheer is living here
Sure wish it was mine
Let me spend the holidays
one half of a pair
hoping that a call from you
can take me there
Silver tinsel, tapestries
red and green and white
Someone take me home to see
how they shine tonight
Such a day comes every year
while your kiss is rare
hoping that a call from you
can take me there
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Anthony Jay Sanders Chicago, Illinois
I sing for The Island of Misfit Toys, I sing for myself, and I definitely sing for you. This is a place to gradually release everything that isn't TIOMT.
For TIOMT music:
tiomt.bandcamp.com
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