TRUCKS LEAVING
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Songs from We turn you on you're a radio (2002):
Confessions of a shapeshifter
Get out of Madrid
Everything
Purr
California
Take your photograph
Shadows
Sometimes I bring you down
She is the chorus of a song
Songs from Wipeoutpop (2005):
Wild hurricanes fly
Every song a photograph
Crush crush
Songs without words
Other songs:
Oaken cruelty
Pulse omission
Harm-lit sky
We walk on Garrison Creek
Confessions of a shapeshifter
I will be a poet, baby, I will free my verse because it's fabulous to be misunderstood. I will be an activist if I can find a mask, because my mother thinks the IMF is good. Take me over; I don't want to be left out. Think I'll take up smoking and tell everyone it's stress. I bet cigarettes would occupy my hands. Think I'll take up rock 'n' roll and write a hundred songs. Have you noticed how the fast girls dig the bands? I'm a shapeshifter. I can tell you want me to be sensitive, so I'll agree with everything you've ever said. I've been drinking Jager since I was a kid. Of course I've heard The Wonder Stuff. I mostly like their early stuff -- the really, really early stuff ('cause no one knows the early stuff).
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Get out of Madrid
[Do yourself a favour and purchase the book The face of war by Martha Gellhorn.]
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Everything
Julia loves to bleed. She's got a hole in her arm she fills with me. Marcus has to have the top. He pretends that I am the girl from the girl from the coffee shop. Jaime's crying on the swing, and so I take the blame for everything. Can we work it out? Can you work it out with me? You left me at the holiday parade. You stopped our favourite song halfway through its fade. I'm a broken trampoline, and you're a spoiled child with everything.
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Purr
Baby, all curled up next to me -- naked in my bed: Didn't mean to wake you, honey...okay, yes I did. You see, it's just the dawn is about to break and the city's set to whir. So let me pet you, kitty cat. Gimme a purr.
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California
California, you've nothing left for me. California, I've everything I need. You can keep your shrivelled sunset strip; fashion is a threadbare charm. All the lights in California disappear when I'm in your arms.
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Take your photograph
Let me take your photograph. Don't let this moment die. I know you hate your look in photographs, though I can't reason why. Memory is such a fleeting thing; my past will fade away. So let me take your photograph, and we might keep today.
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Shadows
There's something in the air, here -- a ghost beneath the trees, the shadows on the tombstones, the shaking in my knees. Midnight traffic flanges. The parkway is alive. Summer skies are open, and I'm lost in your eyes.
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Sometimes I bring you down
Sometimes I bring you down. It's something I do. Don't know why I bring you down -- why I take it out on you. Sometimes I run, sometimes I jump, and sometimes I look away. But if you think you can just ride out the storm tonight, tomorrow will be a sunny day.
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She is the chorus of a song
Summer's twisting like a flag hung in a hurricane while all the gods are sleeping are their beds. Love is finer than the sand, but it's bought and sold on TV shows hosted by an automatic man. She is the chorus of a song, spun in a crowded room and it takes you back to where you once belonged. She is the chorus of a song -- a shot of a better time when radio could never do you wrong.
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Wild hurricanes fly
Stuck in a clock, I got my hand on a glockenspiel. I'm waiting for you. I want to bury all this foolish talk that I've been trading with you. And, if you want, I'll bring instruments. And, if you want, I'll lose arguments to you. I'll work 'til I tire. I'm a dog in a fire. You are one of the few who are reaching an obstacle mount to the sky -- and I am climbing with you. And, if you want, I will hold your line. If you want, I will give you mine. If you want, I will stay behind. If you want, I'll forget the time for you.
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Every song a photograph
We are smoking common brands. We are grazing strangers’ hands. We are making five-year plans. We are sifting lighter sands. Our friends are dressing better now. Another boys-and-airports town. Circle ‘round the sky, my love. Weapons laid aside, my love. We are in the undertow. We are sticks that children throw, pulverizing all your bones. Sing in your homes. Every song a photograph. Some I’ve lost and some I have. I am the one who you really love.
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Crush crush
If you are some kind of paperweight, then I'm your forms. You fill me out when you hold me down. Are we practicing breath control? Because I'm dying to scream. You drain my lungs when you hold me down. Love is like a pressure on the small of your back, and sexual attraction is a panic attack. I'm crippled. I am bent in a crush crush. Mr. Napoelon Bonaparte: this is your Waterloo. Drop your arms, baby. Lay 'em down. Have all the girls you've blown apart found the high road back to you? Take me in your arms, baby. Lay me down. I will be the army standing guard at your back, and if everything is lost in an insurgent attack, the villages will fall in a crush crush.
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Songs without words
Composers of derivative, digestible drivel: I reject your copyright claims. You do not own cliches, nor may you wield them in a holy war for love. God-thankers and lord-praisers: Yours are hymns to an empty sky. There is no chart for the human heart, and no eternity -- only memory and history and herstory. Just because there are sounds coming out of your mouths doesn't mean that you're saying anything. It's the portraits we paint, not the shapes of their frames. It's the songs, not the notes you can sing. To sonic swill-merchants, in all of your incarnations, I command you -- as the pied Saul Williams freed hip-hop from the bling -- to EXIT THIS BODY, LEAVE THIS BODY. In the name of _____________, you will EXIT THIS BODY, LEAVE THIS BODY. The next revolution will be lyrical and profound. We will storm the Brill Building and burn it the fuck down. We'll put John Rutter and Dianne Warren on trial, and you status-quo solidifiers can walk the green mile. I sentence you to seventeen consecutive lifetimes in an elevator jammed between floors, while your sweet, stupid, puppy-eyed songs without words burn your flesh like the bombs in your wars.
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Oaken cruelty
Friday: Late-night basement audio wires. Sunday: Fiber optic women's choirs in the walls of your home. Break the habits of your oldest friends. Bleach your curls and sing some Violent Femmes; these are the days you hold. "Girls like you don't go for guys like me" is just another oaken cruelty that I've outgrown. Drunk and crouching at the New Year's fling, you will be a stranger by the spring...and the credits roll. Let the credits roll.
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Pulse omission
All my boring friends adore you. I need a cat, I need to beg for my pride, I need subordinate shame, I need tears, I think I need a new thrill. Our debates are friendly banter. I need a muse, I need to squeeze off a thought, I need to see that I'm wrong, I need words, I think I need a new thrill. We can't shock this pulse omission. I need a loan, I need a fistful of pills, I need a lover you know, I need out, I think I need a new thrill. You'll be better off without me. I need to fail, I need to miss you again, I need a reason to try, I need doubt, I think I need a new thrill.
:: ::
Harm-lit sky
Gave up a perfect night of nothing much just to see you again. Cut a swath across the top of Nathan Phillips Sqaure, to find out that you'd found god and Mr. Jones and don't need me any more; you just called 'cause I was there. Remember when we camped out in my bedroom through a storm? I begged you, "Lover, keep your glasses on." But they fogged up and they slid too far down the bridge of your nose, and before the war was over I was gone. There's a forest in my harm-lit sky of pine trees in rows, each a replica of that which came before. But a single, giant maple went and grew through them all. I wonder if it stands there any more. I'd give up a perfect night of nothing much just to see it again (cut a swath across the fields, and swamps, and streams), to reach the circle clearing that its root system made, and catch the echo of my adolescent screams.
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We walk on Garrison Creek
We walk on Garrison Creek every night. The river's lost and buried. Mother, we are blocking out all your light. We're dropping what we've carried. We will eat your heart out. Let's absorb our moisture from the air. We should swallow the sunshine, but we are all emaciated bears -- bound to forward our bloodline. And the water is tasteless, and it's hotter, and we're blameless.
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