I discovered the Old NASA Ferry Dock
At the end of the wharf, in the tidewater marsh
There were deer bones, there were ship bones
And ghosts of dreams of astronauts

I went down to the old NASA ferry dock
And I stepped to the edge of a spinning rock
And I felt like an atom in a finger
Reaching toward a god 

If I’m reaching
It’s cause I’m part of a bigger reaching
I’m not alone on this pier
If it’s just in my head
If it’s in all of our heads
Could we have made it to here?

I went down to see the shell mounds
Forgotten behind the tourist town
Are we all indigenous to this gravity well,
Shirtless kings seeking higher ground?

I read about the ISS
Eight billion under a lonely orbit
Payloads docking in silence
We'd probably pay it more mind under less duress. 

Chorus

The launch was right on time
Weapons systems and hunting blinds
It could have been beautiful against the blue and pines
But mosquitos and our phones buzzed and whined

It’s an escape plan for a man
A virus and a monsoon for mankind
It’s nostalgia for the future
Fast forward or rewind

Melissa Sullivan's Album

The Old NASA Ferry Dock

The Run-Around (demo)

Lady Necessity spin my fate
with a two-car garage and a steady gait,
folksonomy and the family tree
rooted in the substrate.
 
Ptolemaic with a silent p,
shouting "me,"
certainly I am the locus.
Add a "t", see them swarm around me.

Subtract a "t", and this polemic stresses every consenant,
a paragon of self-aggrandizement,
heaven-sent from the center of the firmament.
 
but then...
 
 
Copernicus, you wrenched me free,
Galileo Galilei, king of insight, recite 
the new ideology.
Reb Yochanan,
steal through the night in your coffin.
Our cosmologies have crumbled
but the temple is within.

Medieval mystics as my guide,
unfurl the pages and the pride.
Find the kernel of sweet seeking,
roll back my eyes, 
cloistered in ecstatic predawn light.

No, actually I'm just getting along,
a Wikipedian writing wistful songs
about epistemes and unknowns,
truths of the day texted to my phone.

Oh, Copernicus...

Subway station to station,
find myself in negation,
indie hymns and indecision.
In the crowd, can't comprehend,
but walking home i transcend,
precisely there, without precision.

Now, I'm leaving this throne, this boardroom biome.
I'm floating in a purgatory.
Purged of the story.
From the one book to Borges' library.
This agnostic omniscience,
acknowledging ignorance,
adds the "a," now we can hear the "g,"
that stands for the gift of agency.

Copernicus...  x2

Subway station...


Cosmologies

When the veil it fell, it fell, it fell
Eyes blinked for a spell, a spell, a spell
Those fears dispelled, dispelled, dispelled
You felt better

You read my face, It read you back
Flip to the answers in the cracks
A salted wound, unsavory truth
But the story told that you regrouped.

When the veil it fell, it fell, it fell
Eyes blinked for a spell, a spell, a spell
Those fears dispelled, dispelled, dispelled
You felt better

Feeling like a nudibranch
Skier slugged by avalanche
You saw it all in advance
In time you knew, you'd feel better

When the veil it fell, it fell, it fell
Eyes blinked for a spell, a spell, a spell
Those fears dispelled, dispelled, dispelled
You felt better

Felt Better (The Nudibranch Song)

the paste, the polish
the minor cities of the mid-atlantic
Cede to the newsfeed
A refreshing habit

The rowhomes where we shelf our grandparents
I love you like a wallet photo
Like a New York art scene
Wagon wheel on a white wall

The midwinter museums of the capitol
Abstract sculptures, preserved shrapnel
Air and space and Brutalist metro
Pigeon spikes, commuter flow

The doctors have your files
Librarians know you better
Browsing history like a diary
Photostat from a Life magazine
Masks made of cowrie

You're not a profit or a paradigm
Pregnancy test plus sign
Not a probability, pentabyte
Nor a Buddhist's delight
In my mind, gray diamond

Whittle the boughs of the white firs
If you feel like Albert Schweitzer
If you feel like Paul Farmer
Beyond the beautiful forevers

The paste, the polish
The minor cities of the mid-atlantic
The view out the window
The tumble and collide

You're not a profit or a paradigm
Pregnancy test plus sign
Not a probability, pentabyte
Nor a Buddhist's delight
In my mind, gray diamond

And when you're hemmed by the horizon
Each suburb, each drug store
Turn again to your young diamonds
They wait for your attention

You're not a profit or a paradigm
Pregnancy test plus sign
Not a probability, pentabyte
Nor a Buddhist's delight
In my mind, gray diamond

In my mind, gray diamond

When you feel like nothing
Look behind the nothing

Gray Diamond

1:37 am

The world contracted on a Tuesday
The first thing to go were the routines
We turned on the newsfeeds
But what was there left to say?

The neighbors weren’t so lucky
Odd-numbered doors were the casualty
There will be a ceremony
On the next bank holiday

We thought we were so global 
Following the dictates of the rise and fall
But it fell apart so fast

Reassess progress
No, but I say the decline coming since the nineties
It still surprised me

Everyday is a Wednesday
Nothing to work towards
Calendar in disarray
Watch out, I’m spreading pathogens
Yeah, I’m spreading thin

We thought we were so global
Following the dictates of the rise and fall
But if fell apart so fast
Today, tomorrow, forever
Until a setback
I took a step back
I will ride this out as long as I can last

One wrong step on a crumbling cliff
It’s a groundhog’s day with a pink slip
It’s an error in the JavaScript
It’d a human-indifferent planetary shift
Sorry, I’m spreading pathogens
I’m spreading thin

We thought we were so global...

Pathogens

We were walking in a city of travesty
The tiles were covered in grime
In the vegan cafe, over nutmilk parfait,
You grinned, said “everything’s fine”

I felt perturbed and I’m sure I looked
More than just a little resigned
You lifted a spoon in that dank room 
You said, “Liiving...is not a crime.”

Cause if you have a cause
When strolling through town
It won’t bring you pause
When shit goes down
We are pamphleteers

We went down to the man made pond
We went up to the petting zoo
We talked to the people living in the park
Cause that’s what they told us to do

Chorus

Feeling closer to fine
So made some protest signs
Found a good place to stand
The sun peeked through the soot
As the police pushed us into the van

Chorus

Pamphleteers (w. Chris Magee)

peterlehu

Related tracks