It’s all I can do
To break the illusion
Sweet, sweet answer me
Sweet butterfly clapped in your hands
Or in your cheeks
Mechanical synthetic taking big swings
Tell me a calculus thing



Oh now Vanessa 
You really impressa 
Me 5000 times over
We lose our composure 
the lights come down
Two walk in and one walks out 

All-knowing android
They say you're fake plastic 
Well I don't agree
Yeah I didn’t quite catch that
Guaranteed satisfaction 
what sayeth Freud? Give me lights and action

Oh now Vanessa 
You really impressa 
Me 5000 times over
We lose our composure 
the lights come down
Two walk in and one walks out 
Oh now Vanessa 
You really impressa 
Me 1000 times more
Early to Harvard 
You get in
With those kinds of scores

Here to please
And always agreeable
Multimodal and endlessly wieldable
Here for support and rocking the bassline
Definitely better than people

Oh now Vanessa 
You really impressa 
Me 5000 times over
We lose our composure 
the lights come down
You’re scaring me, you’re edging on clown
Oh now Vanessa 
You’re dragging your wires
 so easy to be without need or desire
These manifestos cause you frustration
More demonstration
Do we have a buyer?

Digital Monkeypox

In a flash
Too fast to react 
Was it an accident?

Bared down on
all teeth gnash
Our heads swivel
A bang and a crash

A bursting bubble
round your heart 
crashed out
The world shrinks 
down
Wheels flipped up and
Twisted steel that wraps around 
Organic parts
And then it's dark
And then it’s dark
The raindrops fall 
around your car
And down upon 
your lidded eyes
Which shudder as you start

Plans made–but tentatively 
state of affairs: entropy
A rarity to break free 
Will the self and target ever meet

Too sentimental to go on
It's right here in my arms
I have you here but not safe from 
a bolt thrown down from high above
don’t care if or how 
Just wonder when and just how long it is
We are granted this existence
And protection from Olympus 

Joy Divis Co

I’m here for the ending 
Beginnings don’t suit me
It might be over soon.
I’m here for the ending 
Beginnings don’t suit me
Shall we resume?

Do I know you from somewhere?
Oh, you recognize my dog. 
I’m sad you left.
 But if it’s what it took to save your life.
I can’t be upset 

I was lost and it’s where I gravitate
It may be my natural state
To puzzle my way out from the same mess
The mess I made

Do I know you from somewhere?

My narrow dog witnesses your promise 
She knows the troubles you’ve seen

Narrow Dog

In my torturous dreams 
I lose you in the ocean
And I rail against the fool I wake up as 
The one who still has you by my side 

Who did this to me

Something’s telling me 
to reel it in my pride
I’m in for a long ride
Something’s telling me 
to melt down completely
Hungover from the grief
But I’m still with everything

Who did this to me

Drawn-Out Death Scene

At every touch point
The farm is offered
Lured in by its product marketing:
"It's lovely, dark, and deep"
But I’ve got currency to keep so
I take the road more traveled

Running circles
In stadiums ringed with ghosts
Nestled in the trees
They’re gaining on me
And you handed the baton
Contact barely made
And pulling away 
We don’t have long

Here lies quiet
the woods beckon 
My brethren and I 
Are swept in
The sound of under-footfall
Twigs snapping,
More than three or four
–alarm bells–a dozen
A bear is here with me and my cousin

Hello Arkto
We’ve feared your name since long ago

Running laps
snapped ankles 
like our track days
As before I need only be faster than you 
burst through the hurdle 
Quiet breaks with 
Screams, and blood curdles
Not yet taken, not yet food

We used to say
There’s more cows than blades of grass
 there’s more knives than stars in the sky 
I don’t know why

Here’s a koan
You can go on without me
But then I’d always be with you 
So follow along...

You used to carry a briefcase and say
“There’s something really wrong with it, but that’s part of the charm”
As the clasp released
Freely spilling marbles onto pavement 
That was our business, then
Now one of us must buy the farm
It won’t be me

Hello Arkto
I dare not learn what they all know

Hello Arkto

The slow drip
Nothing's in a hurry 
Yet it all gets done
A branch unfurls a single leaf
Plates shift under our feet

Figure 4
Climb up on my own frame
Up out of my name
Lost but the land knows me 
here and holds me, 
In this moment self-same 

Flooded with ringing agony
I can slow this moment down
I can feel it stretch forever
It unfolds before me

Climbed high but I cratered
the locus of the timelapse
as still as the cairns piled around my form
the terminator sweeps down the hillside
I can't will my bones back to whole
they hardly respond

This has happened before to
some ancestor of mine
solitary, caught, a thought of nature and time 
and in this way,
we are the same creature
& we bridge our minds
Minds

Piece myself back together
Now a splint, fashion twine, l…
From the wilds I find myself down in…
Moving slowly it'll all be done
It’ll all be done
be done in time

Figure 4

Money is a greater god than beauty
The one thing that could soothe me
It’s the O2 in my air cylinder as I dive 
deeper in the darkness
Here’s where the pressure rises 
And barking from the critics 
Muzzle them to quiet 

This is our chance
Azure royalty
Dive down into the depths
Hold our buoyancy
Command your loyalty
When I demand--
Go!

Move as a titan 
In pursuit of leviathan 
My white whale lies below
Nothing of interest to me 
in your world of sand
And this is my chance
The pressure is mine to withstand

They implore me
crying and moan saying
“you’re going to kill someone!” 
Well,
I’ve heard enough…as if they’d know what I’ve conceived of
I won’t rest till I’ve received my place in the sun
Or a Viking’s long slow row home

This is our chance
Azure royalty
Dive down into the depths
Hold our buoyancy
Command your loyalty
When I demand, 
go further through our
Cold descent and
Fall until my will be done 
Enough of your “methodically”
Here no man can counter me

Move as a titan 
In pursuit of leviathan 
My white whale lies below
Nothing of interest to me 
in your world of sand
This is my chance
The pressure is mine to withstand

This is my chance
Lash the whale to me
And sink into the depths
Reverse our buoyancy
Disclaim safety
Uncontrolled descent
I demand: go further to our long-fated oblivion!
Here is where I’ll dispose of 
Whatever that I shall become

Titanick 2

Here at World of Sand
We have everything pertaining
To your sand needs

We love you more
Than those other sand stores 
That you used to shop at

We offer the finest grit sandpaper there is
And we also have the rougher stuff
If that’s what you’re into 

You can always buy more time
By filling your hourglass
Or transcend it 
with one of our meditation sandboxes

Don’t fall for other sand superstores
Who knowingly mix theirs with impurities
Like crab shells and concrete dust
We’re going to be what’s best for us

We won’t be jealous while you’re out playing golf
Especially if you fall into one of our premium sand traps 
And we don’t illegally harvest it from the beach
Or national parks 

World of Sand
Let our world…be your world!

***

At World of Sand, we believe in something
We believe everything is sand, and sand is everything
Use a magnifying glass or a microscope
What do you see?
Fossils, glass, rocks, minerals
The stuff of earth, of life
Battered by the elements into smaller parts
But still recognizable
From ash to ash
From dust to dust

World of Sand (ft. Whitney Humphreys)

Take this
Opportunity
cast a spell on me
Latched on
To the way it was
Watching it all unfold
It’s all done I’m told
Choose what you’d have me hold

Put me under
Operate on me
I’m still babbling 
During surgery
My eyes are open
I’m out cold
A tear falls
Into your metal bowl

I changed my mind

I Changed My Mind

Cover of Smashing Pumpkins' Quiet

Created as a study for School of Song songwriting course with AG Cook

---

Aimed to have a faithful-as-possible recreation of Quiet, a formative song I LOVED especially as a young lad. 

In the process I discovered not only what the lyrics actually are (had no idea what he was saying), but also that there's time signature changes (never clocked that as a youth).

I found a MIDI of the drum part, but recreated the rest of it myself.

Adopted Billy's more-is-more approach when it come to guitar layers. I allowed some creative expression with the guitar leads and vocal performance (which Billy also varies drastically live)


Alan Onymous 2025

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