Anna tied one on.
Looked up at the ceiling
And took her sweater off.
Took off all her feelings.
She looks good. Goddamn.
And she buries me in it.
And the piled-up feelings
Put their wrinkles on.

A part of me
Doesn’t like it at all…
It flails,
Freshly wounded.
Apart from me,
I try not to wonder at all…
Her details.
I play it stupid.

And she leaves...
Remember reading Still Life
When we were seventeen?
At Isabel’s house, some part you read to me
About making love stay…
Well, what did it say?
Then you went away…

Now, I feel tied down
To a world with you in it.
I tried to cut the feelings off,
And God buried me in it.
It feels right. Goddamn.
My world with you in it.
Like sulfur in my blood.
Every song wants you in it.

It’s part of me.
My love is building my bones.
It wails,
Like a little baby.
All of me
Has to linger upon your details.
Breathe your mystery.

I awoke.
Panicked in bed
At what you said to me.
My sleepless, space head
Floating off of me.
My love isn’t easy.
Like a great work of art,
It has to be hard.

I wear my lies on top.
But, I’m underneath in it.
Glowing in my feelings.
Floating to the ceiling
She looks good. Goddamn.
But, I can’t enjoy a minute.
She takes her sweater off.
But, I can’t remove my feelings.
There’s a world with you in it.
There’s a world with you in it.

Torn-to-Pieces-Hood

Sweater

The moon was rusted.
Her man looked shot
Like Honest Abe...
And that light coppered the Mesa.
She said, "No more secrets...
A penny for your mind!"
Well, divine Ancient,
It hurt bad to know her,
And worse to say goodbye.

I'm like everything else that feeds.
Time, love, blood, mud...it's all meat.
And in the desert's bone jaws,
In his sunbeam teeth,
I know nothing will spare you or me.

America, the beautiful land where I consume,
Born of ancient Indian burial womb.
Flown on hot air of Negro Spiritual tune.
Oh, the hatred is sacred, too.

We the people of frightful, distracted attitudes.
Lonely fools running out of fuel
On big roads built post-WW2
By men who would laugh at you.

But, America I was moved to stay parked there watching you,
Like the Holy Rood, alone, walking through
The field in the long light of afternoon.
I craved the grace that surrounded you.

Cobalt blue,
The sky poured all its paint inside of you.
Airing out the heart's hot and stuffy rooms.
The boxed-up regretting, unopened forgetting, false prophetic peddled dust settling.
And the Big T-Truth:
Lord, I never knew I was at war with you.
Like a desert-sucked bone, I'll be your hollow tube.
You can come here and get it.
I said it. I meant it. I whistle. You fetch it.
And slobber right on through with it
That shining, grinning, loving spit.
Put this old, dancing dust-bunny-boy to some use.

The Way of All Meat

What’s it mean to really be,
If today you’ll pray for what you’ll soon pray against?
She apologized for being high
I kissed her forehead, but could not say it was all right.
Oh, though, aren’t we all just pulling straws…
And trying to talk like we made them that long?
Still, I can’t feel it, the forgiveness, to heal this mess.

Well, I’m grown…
And mom and dad will never hold me again.

Look at me. Through my teeth.
I grin and bear you; my caged heart underneath
Is speaking tongues. My fainting lungs:
Slain in your spirit of…well, I don’t know what…
But, can you get out of my head?
I can’t be near you. You’re air without breath.
Watch, as in your wake, my heart shakes
The bones of its cage.

Well, I’m grown…
And love will never feel the same as it did.
But it’s a nice lie, like when I told her:
“Yeah of course, we’ll be friends…”
But, the leaves went on painting up the mountains instead.

Fee-fi-fo-fum…Fee-fi-fo-fum!

Well, I’m grown
And I will never fall in love like that again
But, it’s these long nights
When somehow all the lonely gets in.
And, you’d sleep, but the dog-eared memories won’t quit.
Like when the street light
Had you glowing like my rosary beads did, and
You leaned, held a breath, and said:
“Oh, Won’t you come in?
Won’t you come in?
Won’t you come…”

Grown Giant

Any way that I turn my head:
Your candles lit, dripping upon my lips.
And every night when I lay my head,
Sugar plum fairies prattle on about it:
They say that at the end of the last life
We crossed our hearts, hoped before we died:
“In the next one, love, well I’ll meet you there.”
But, Saint Peter’d forgotten to mention
A soul pile-up on the inter-dimension,
And we both got star-crossed getting born.
And it cracked the demons up…
To tear our angels up…
Tear my angel up…

Aimee, I know better,
but I’m no better still…
Blood glow, dripping feathers,
Flying to you still.
My stray-cat heart
Drug you in one morning
And now will not leave.
God, what a mess,
When something he’d keep
Gets set in his teeth...

But, You’re the best thing I ever saw,
You’re the best thing I ever saw...
And I'll never have or hold you at all.
You’re the moments that get away
You’re the moments I can’t erase
Now every one between is just a waste.
Especially with that long hair…
Something with that long hair
Daddy said the key to long life:
Consult your heart; keep your own advice.
Turns out my heart’s an arrant fool.
If I followed its best intentions,
We’d have drama in multi-dimensions,
Demons looking to string-theorize us up.
They’d tear our angels up.
Tear my angel up.
Tear my angel up.

Aimee, I know better,
But I’m no better still…
Blood glow, dripping feathers,
Flying to you still.
My stray-cat heart
Drug you in one morning
And now will not leave.
God, what a mess,
When something he’d keep
Gets set in his teeth...

Tear my angel up.
Tear my angel up.
Tear my angel up.
Tear my angel up.

Aimee

Spend all day in my room, retracting.
With thin lines, from my heart, subtracting.
I am the Rat King!
Tails tonguing inside till our wheel enshrines you.
Oh, we’re such a precious thing!
Alone, so alone,
With our brilliant sniveling…
And so on, in the same vein,
Through brain-blood membrane,
To calm the squall again.

All day, in my heart, I’m lacking.
Fed lies from my head for acting.
But, I am not a precious thing,
Alone, so alone, like the rats keep screeching.
I am just the noticing, quiet spelling of space
That keeps that tangle churning.
But, how many more knotted times,
Will I see crown jewels for beady eyes,
And fail to recognize the cell of self?

So said a convulsing Earth: “Does my laughter bother you?”

Rat King

You know that I want you.
And, I don't just want you now
I want you forever,
Like gravity pulling down...
You know what the deal is.
One day we'll be underground.
Oh, let go...hey, girl, let go...

Out on the edges,
Past us indebted fools,
The screen dream bubble
Breaks upon the huddled truth.
Need something for the chaos.
Need something to take the edges off.
Oh, go have fun. Oh, go get the gun.

But, here come the real men,
Carrying on with the real plan.
Dropping the big bomb.
Folding over their big arms.
Spewing them small words
Like spittle over the small earth.
Like no one's saw. We'll kill them all.


It's a lie...
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!

I can't hate the hatred.
I can't turn the darkness off.
To be right's a cheap high
And works as well when you're wrong.
Give them something to worship, baby,
And place their blame upon.
Oh, by the toe. And so it goes.

Well, I'm implicated.
All of my products reek
Of greed and coercion.
I bought them on credit, cheap.
I don't think about it.
I think about being chic.
Oh, what a deal. Oh, what a steal.

It's three in the morning.
I'm up communing with my screen.
Looking at your photos.
Releasing that dopamine.
Taking the edge off,
And inward the chaos creeps.
Oh, Holy Ghost, bless my unholy glow.

It's a lie...
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!
AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY-AY!

The sun came up.
A measure of peace fell upon me.
I guess we're all just doing our best…
Whatever that means.
Through the leaves, freckles of sun
Dappled her cheeks.
Aren't we all just doing our best?
Whatever that means...

Glow

Sentimental Custer
Shifts himself to get the right light,
Squares up his rugged genitalia,
Captioned: I’ll impale yah, sweet Libbie, my bride…
And in an accompanying letter,
Our Custer, with erectile pride,
With bonny bayonet articulated
How the West is penetrated:
All the cherry men will die.

But, can you still hear me?
Felt more like open water than waving wheat.
How low!
Crept up like great brown sharks from the grass below.
Still, we settled the West,
But, the West never ends; it’s
Inside our skulls, not underneath…
Where they bury us dead,
But our meat’s such a strange seed,
Blooming up rocks with shit to read.

Meanwhile, Sitting Bull, sun-dancing
Envisions locust-like whites
Spilling from a hundred fresh incisions
The air, blood-honey brimming,
George is gonna die…
In the end, though, Wasi’chu will defeat you
Oh, Lord, why?…Try as one might,
You imbibe an enemy’s tactics.
The creepy, crawly fact is,
We become what we fight.

But, can you still hear me?
Above the fields, through hissing mists of Atrazine…
Hallowed?
The ground’s sterile enough for the great white greed to grow.
You settled the West!
But, didn’t you get unsettled?
Stacking buffalo skulls under your feet.
Just put your children to bed.
Tuck their heads in tight corners.
Scour their minds with shiny screens…

Bloated and floating in likes,
All the dead go scrolling by.
Pay them our homage in swipes:
To your scattered egos, go!
Go, go!

Like an acetylene torch to the pipes up inside you,
Weld the wild western heart shut!
Like an acetylene torch to the circuitry inside you,
Settle the mental frontier up!
Take an acetylene torch to the chaos inside you!
Cauterize thy kingdom come!
From the skull-skinned corpse
To the crucified Lord
Kumbaya, Kumbaya!

In my dream:
You writhed like you had been hurt,
Popped up like that’d be absurd,
All giddily!
Well, it sure felt like the end of time,
Gathered birdsong on dead power lines,
A sunshine smirk on his lip
As he read out our varied crimes.
We did our best penitentiary dance
As Christ delivered us up to his man.
In spite all the Lord’s evil,
We forgave him as equals then.

Sentimental Custer

Cold Turkey-ing my mind.
Dark thought injection sites
Quiver purple for what’s left behind.
Squinting, leery of all that shines.

Pain. Brain. Good God.
Mother, we’re all insane.
Here’s Hermann Göring
Shrug at the trough, whatever you’re ordering.
Pain. Chained. Brain. Good God.
Lucky, we’re all insane.
I’m Herman Boring.
Stutter-step you with my Cyanide poisoning.

Some nook of anxious night
You play charades with your most convincing lies.
Four Words, rhymes with “Why me? A slight.”
By dawn again living like it’s a waste of time…

Pain. Brain. Good God.
Mother, we’re all insane.
Here’s Hermann Göring
Shrug at the trough, whatever you’re ordering.
Pain. Chained. Brain. Good God.
Lucky, we’re all insane.
I’m Herman Boring.
Stutter-step you with my Cyanide poisoning.

I want a medal!
I want a medal for all I done!
I want to mutate your sad ovum!
I want to smother you in the sun!
And we could lay by the side of the ocean.
I could inject right into your bones...
Savor these brain stem motions,
Lick with electrostatic tongue.

Herman Boring

Lyrics by Pat Phelan-

No reply when I asked to get coffee.
Once more you checked my profile.
I guess I wasn’t your style.
Some defect in my looks or words.
And the socioeconomics just made it worse.

Still, I lingered on your digital footprint,
Found you on multiple platforms…
Looked with diminishing returns
At selfies with your friends and cats.
Could cut your brother’s cheek bones out of a magazine.
I can laugh, it’s absurd, but it still burns me bad,
The magic trick of voyeuristic intimacy.

It’s like shit at the mall that you can’t afford:
I look at you through the glass and I get sad and bored.

The patterns we consumed in youth still filter me and filter you.
What are little boys and girls to do?
I get all scared: “She’ll laugh. She won’t like me.”
Meanwhile in your head: “Will he kill me?”
Then I read your Dad died…
Shot by the woman he left your mother for in the middle of the night.
Trauma like that doesn’t come cheap. I sent my love, though we’d never speak.
May you be at peace…he be at peace…she be at peace…we be at…
Well, we offer up our privacy in gratitude, unreservedly.
Baptize our billion baby heads in the data stream. The data stream. The data stream.
But, Lord, all my life, what have I done? Avoid a gaze, try to outrun
The me inside you. You inside me. Me inside you. You inside me.
We.
We.
We.

Ships in the Digital Night

Credits:
from Torn​-​to​-​Pieces​-​Hood, released May 15, 2020
Drums: Chris Flynn
Guitar/Voice: Pat Phelan

Written by Pat Phelan
Produced by Adam Lepkowski

Lyrics:

The whole Earth felt stuck.
“What a dull star to be in orbit of…
What tyranny of laws!
Your gravity spins me ‘round in handcuffs!”
“Oh please! Go wish upon some other sun…
And when you leave, let the vacuum hear how you don’t need anyone.”

“Father! Don’t cut off my strings,
Don’t make me be a real boy.
Don’t make me feel the tug of love.
The shit flesh is heir to.
Tell the fairy when she comes:
All that freedom’s painful.
Keep her magic to herself…
I want the smell of fast food.
The artificial,
At every interstitial.
Nibble at the drivel.”

“No, Adam don’t. Now, I know.
The more you know, the more you don’t.
Adam, no. Adam don’t.”
“Please! Let me eat…I want to see!
You can’t just leave me by myself…
Under a spell! I won’t tell!
Lo and behold! I’ve awoke!
Eve, I can’t look Him in the eye!
Was something born or did it die?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Let it go.
The Lord can hurt you all he wants.
The Lord can hurt you all he wants.
The Lord can hurt you all he…”
“Shh…”

The father cuts the newborn’s string.
It’s his pride and his joy,
All caged up in flesh and blood,
In the time of fast food.
And of all the voices in our heads,
Why does the good one whisper?
Why take such pains to hide yourself?
Like God’s too much to ask for.
But, I’ll ask…
I’ll ask for…
I’ll ask…

Viper Pit Recordings