You don’t understand how to understand me
I’m a façade of complexity
Marching down the street baton in hand
In fancy frills like I’m fronting the fucking band
The ground feels unstable and trembling
Holding hands we brace in waiting
Afraid of losing control to just let go 
And give up everything we know

We don’t know where the time will go
Or when the reaper will reclaim what she sowed  
We’re crossing bridges while looking down our nose
We’re superstitious crossing fingers eyes and toes
In a moment the moment’s gone
You could miss it if you sneeze blink or yawn
Like watching in reverse the moves you make
When you shake the dream and start to wake

You don’t understand how to understand me
I’m a façade of complexity
Floating down the street flower in hand
A fucking fool if I think I’m the magician
Our house of cards is rotating
Shuffle a vowel to see a new meaning
Skeleton tree dimensional
Keys endless tetrahedral

You don’t understand how to understand me
I’m a façade of complexity
Marching down the street baton in hand
In fancy frills like I’m fronting the fucking band
The ground feels unstable and trembling
Holding hands we brace in waiting
Afraid of losing control to just let go 
And give up everything we know

What do we know…

There’s something heavy about the weight of breath
Another thing that we can’t measure so we just guess
And what’s the difference plus or minus a few grams
There’s nothing here that we can hold in our hands 
Ancient forces twisting our fates
Holding doors and closing gates
One hand two hands four limbs eight
Chakras balance on spinning plates

Vowel Movement

Eventually you just become another name 
On an obituary page
Scrolling off of history forever
As one more wave
Of people passing over you bury you
In one more grave
Recycling the carbon and the molecules 
with the obituary page
Eventually you’ll just become a memory
A fleeting glimpse 
Of our endlessness manifest 
In this experience
Of pain and of joy and indifference
Living in human skin
That grows and sheds and falls again and again and again…

ownbit

Ownbit

I saw it standing next to me 
A face afloat in ecstasy 
I watched it turn and tumble to the ground 
The crowd was shouting ringing bells
Unleash on us the hounds of hell!
A fallen tale we love to tell ourselves
Into the flames I will return
Just close my eyes and feel it burn
My tri-colored world melting down

I saw it standing next to me
Avert my eyes like I can’t see
A world awaiting to unfold
This chemical smell of laundry
Electric sky breaks over me
While birds chirp out their alto hymns
Into the grave I will return
I’ll close my eyes and take my turn
In the disappearing game

I saw it standing next to me
A face afloat in ecstasy
I watched it turn and tumble to the ground
Broken by inheritance
Like stringed lights on a wind blown fence
Twisted blinking off and on
Nothing here makes sense to me
Everyone hates everything 
I try to relate what’s the use
The novelty train keeps rolling
Huffing down the track again
Soon it will be at your door
Into the flames I will return
Just close my eyes and feel it burn
My tri-colored world melting down
My tri-colored world melting down
My tri-colored world is melting down

Sensory Deprovision

Plaque on the teeth of an empire
Dirt pressed against my face 
Mind control for the children
Alive here and ready to waste

Away
Again

When you’re gone past the morning
With light half spent leaking through
The trees keep the quietest record
Of everything you meant to do

Ok?
Pretend 

Your seas are alive with the waving
Approaching high tide in your mind
A bob and float overtaking
The islands you never could find

Hid away
Again

Plaque on the teeth of an empire
Dirt pressed against my face 
Mind control for the children
Alive here and ready to waste

Fuzzmilk

Divine floating in the pool
Following the original rule
Inscribed in helix thread
Cells divide, get multiplied and spread

Across the face of the earth
This tired place we all got birthed
Into the sea with the spill
Baby we’ve got eons to kill

We belly crawl out of the sea
To survive in the shade of trees
Yet we languish on the land
And reach up for a helping hand

From our god who’s punching down 
And speaks a language made of sound
That we don’t know or comprehend
We’re unfit for it but we make translations

Peering through the sunlit leaves
Abandoning our homes in trees
To scrawl dreams in the sand
A voice barks down, “Hey, listen up man…

There’s a few things you need to know
If we’re gonna make a go 
At this antagonistic
Deity worship bullshit

Dear lifeless, lifted up
Every morning you’ll wake and fill your cup
Alive but mostly gone
Dawn til dusk til dawn and on and on

This wet and weathered, star-powered ship
Sailing through background cosmic
Radiation waves and time 
Your root is anchored to my vine

You’re dying like a song
Your movements bend and then move on
So don’t get too attached
The melodies fade with the notes you scratch

You’ll find yourself itching for the words
From the holy texts you’ll burn
At the altar of unknown
No need for taste and see, just touch your phone

A handheld god for constant consecrating
Let your fingers feel it’s gentle push vibrating
This buzz is for you
Remember god’s inside whatever kills you

Divine Noun

Thundering fighter jets rip the picturesque sky apart
Another casualty in the senseless war of art
I hear a woman say that’s the roaring sound of freedom
And I think to myself that her brain must be pretty numb
From feeding the insatiable war machines of the state
Sick symbiotic relationship used to dominate
One more, two more, how many more populations
For the prosperity of your great fairy tale nation

Oh say, can you see?
Patriotism ain’t the same thing as being free

Pledging allegiance is a control trick for human beings
Yeah I know that’s hard to grasp especially when you’re not seeing
The horrifying outcomes of the often spouted hollow phrases
Like “you can love it or you can leave it if you hate it”
Because here in the land of the free, thanks to the brave 
You’re free to disagree but you’re just desecrating heroes' graves
Kind of like the graves of men and women and little kids
They lived a whole lot like you, with regional differences
Different languages creation myths and skin pigment
Our cultural superiority is only a figment 
Of our state sponsored second hand imagination 
Natural curiosity entertained to sleep and calcified by education

Oh say, can you see?
Patriotism ain’t the same thing as being free

Peek through cracks in hands and see the nightmares we endorse
Because even if we’re unaware, we’re still passively pissing on the corpse
Of whoever, wherever, however, The Party next decides
Would make for a healthy bottom line Q4 genocide 
It’s easy to look away when it’s not your family on the business end 
Of the drone bomb, chemical agents, and decades of gene mutation
Is it blissful to be naive to humanity tortured and torn?
Can we see the hypnotic, free falling acrobatic, aerial bomber porn
As another jaw dropping tail spin tinging heir forced masturbation
Glorifying war for one more generation

Oh say, can you see?
Patriotism ain’t the same god damn thing as being free
What will it take for you to see?
Blind obedience will bind us in chains of slavery

Federal prism + virgin bleach (demo)

This is finally ending
With photos all over the floor
Summer’s sweet surrender
Sunlight streams through the door 

This is fine you’re repeating
To somehow make it feel so
To somehow find a new meaning
To somehow make you feel whole 

This is finally breaking
The best and the worst yet to come
Like songs to the words you’ve misplacened
So you’d fill in the gaps with a hum…

This is fine you’re repeating
This is fine you’re repeating
This is fine you’re repeating…

This is fine you’re pretending 
Like everything will live on
The distant sinking horizon
Reminds you to live like the sun

Far Away Afternoon

I don’t know what the words are yet so I’m singing this song so I won’t forget
There’s a feeling I get when I feel this way too long
The melody hits first and then the words they run their course
When they shoot out from my brain across my tongue
And my heart’s in there somewhere 
It’s always thumping pumping air
Well it’s blood I guess but it feels like moving sound
And there’s things around us yet swirling up around our heads
So I feel this close even though we’re so far apart

I don’t know what the words are yet so I’m singing this song so I don’t forget
The feeling I had when I saw you walking by
Caboose trailing on a looping track 
I’m always pulled and always last
You got hitched to an old fling I see her on your arm
Then suddenly Andy started on about Jeremy and all
The messed up party scenes and betraying a real good friend
I was tangled in those lines mesmerized by you and tiny dancer entwined
In the cosmic spin twirling spaghetti warehouse tines

I don’t know what the words are yet but I’m tapping along because I can’t forget
The time and place we tagged and chased and left our marks
I remember our first high school day when my new friend Jeremy
Introduced me to you and your broken limb
Now we’re not running trains through the depo or spray painting factories or boxcar doors
Or breaking into buildings to explore
An adolescent urge to fuck things up while young but old enough to see the demons running
Can’t slow down while they’re gaining ground gnashing at our heels

I don’t know what the words are yet but I’m singing along to an old cassette
I miss the way we spoke and laughed and smoked in the summer air 
Remember driving around with the windows down
The heat rolled in and we sang our lungs out yeah
We know every word and yeah we’re rocking out
Rolling up roll a joint while we roll around the parking lot where Big K stands for Kingdom
In our mainstream college Main Street shopping town
Fuck it all and we got our kicks for free and stole any merchandise we could carry
Guns and clothes and stereos and art supplies

I don’t know what the words are yet but of all the friends I ever left 
I miss you the most
A friendly ghost with heart
We were the kids who ran our town is what it felt like when we were all running around
And we were living in a song
Fade out to a naïve lullaby or electric clock radio’s static cry
Unplugged it screams and wakes me from a dream…

I don’t know what the words are yet but I’m saying this all because I haven’t said
Many things to you like “dead turtle crew for life”
Pumping our fists on the car roof
The night was endless was the honest truth 
But the yolk’s on you and the joke is on me too
We were only egging ourselves on cause nothing good seems to last for very long
Like books and bands and life changing friends
Do it yourself scene you hooked me on but I was self absorbed for way too long 
And I judged you for vices that made you smile
But you had your own weight you were carrying
Man if I could go back I’d change some strings
I think you’re great 
I hope you’re happy now

Hell Awareness Month

ǝɹ,ǝʍ
  llɐ
    ɐuuoƃ
      ǝʞɐɯ
        ʇᴉ

EMP/ATH

Sandy Hill Camp. North East, MD. Summer 2003.

Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Cover with Zach Tillman)

Sweet Home Alabama 
Will be playing while we disintegrate into oblivion 
With our uniforms on, these costumes we don
To feel a part of the wave we are on

Towers stretch the world
Amplify the fear 
And the panic unfurls
I saw it all fall out through the teeth of a girl, in an exhale swirl

Forces push the tides
Out of our control  
Like the news on the rise, waxing truth, waning lies
Flowing in through the holes in our eyes

What good is a foot on the floor 
With the ragged howling at your proverbial backdoor?
Where the sheets drape the walls, shadows creep down the hall
Without a witness at all

Don’t save or touch your face
There’s a price to be paid for living here in this place
Keep to yourself if you care to keep pace
With the new human race

Sweet Home Alabama 
Will be playing while we disintegrate into oblivion 
With our uniforms on, these costumes we don
To feel a part of the wave we are on

Sweet Home Alabama

Standing underneath the pink flamingo 
Crooked knee locked in place to say “relax enjoy the show”
Inebriated stumbling aimlessly
I see the you inside of you and inside of me
And I wonder how we got so wound up in this place
Drunk on equilibrium leather and lace
The law man’s big brown brimming hat serves to let us know 
Although we paid big top circus prices still order reigns below
Flex a sexual muscle incite a pleasure riot
The motto here is ‘it stays here’ and so ‘when in Rome’ you try it

Falling into this temporary bliss
Where none of us will remember this
Thrill to deeply penetrate a memory left to rot
Among the refuse we consumed we purged and we forgot
Our favorite tricks and masquerades devils we all know
Just tell me you like what you see in me a hole inside a hole
You want me need me you live to please me I’m irresistible
My darkest dis-ease distancing my body from my soul
And here we swim in pools of pleasure and delight
Where narcissists and egotistical manias collide

Whatever influence evaporates societies
That same destroyer lives inside of you and inside of me
Collective unconscious’ death wish hangs on us like a prophecy 
The end of divisions and all our religions and Jungian symbology
A formless hand reaches through the veil 
Finger flicking us insects’ unwitting economies of scale
Networked neurotic lights in fibrous conduits signal our distress
Too late for feedback all you’ll hear are the gasps of shock on every breath
Hacking through our human roots to dig a loamy grave
Where future culture carbon testers will date us here one day

Fluid Situation

Ohmme covering Cloudbusting by Kate Bush. Recorded at Johnny Brenda's in Philadelphia on February 29, 2020.

Ohmme - Cloudbusting (Kate Bush)

I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums
This half-life is decaying with the medicine 
There’s no here and there’s no there, just empty rooms or deadly air
So I recline, I bide my time, I unwind, and turn off my mind because
I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums
I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums

Claiming time and claiming days, with charts and stats and brain decay
Busy hands and idle minds keep a song to sing to pass the time 
If work is freeing you from the toil, punch season’s clocks until Spring uncoils
I’m starved for oxygen, real breath, this mask eye wear will be my death
I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums
This half-life is decaying with the medicine 

Quiet rolling through the house, loaded wires hum as the dark comes down
To bless the light with blackened grace only temporarily trading places
Dragged into the binary days predetermined and no novelty 
Push within me and pull without we race toward checkered flags of doubt 
I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums
I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums

Sleep and dreams used to come easily now I close my eyes chemically
Electric sheep on acid driving royal, Christened, semen riders
While you call on me like an endless prepaid telephone your mother gave you 
Imitating life or art? There was no audition but I got the part in
Screens of stories on some four chan, get your front row Truman Show pass while you still can because
I can’t stand another day in the pleasure slums
This half-life is decaying with the medicine

Pleasure slums (demo)

Everything I know is correct 
There’s no need to reflect
On the words stacked in my brain 
That I heard and rearranged
When I was some odd kid years old
Before the timewave fold
So I drift and ride the wake
Of growing up and growing old and growing by mistake

Yeah I know this isn’t me
There’s plenty of positivity
Put it back up on the shelf 
I’m already dead so I can’t kill my
Self-assured and rearranged
And maybe somewhat less deranged 
Flicker on and Peter out
It’s never what it is is what it’s all about about about...
And now our health is running out
Running sick and running thin
Look and wave through worried window panes and grin...

worried_windows.wav

Pressed for answers I can’t give
Held to standards, I can’t live
To come and go and do and be
As someone else expects of me

If time is all I have
It’s mine not yours to grab
And I won't be happy until if I’m free
There’s nothing wrong with me

Destined to fall, destiny failed
Unhinged and insanity prevailed 
Learned first hand how to copy
Chameleon complexity
Defensive necessities
Entanglements of wants and needs 
Analyze what I can’t see
Become the forest through the trees

If time is all I have
And it’s mine not yours to grab
And I can’t be happy until if I’m free
There’s something wrong with me

If time is all I have
I’ll take some time to laugh
A new way to be free
No specter will define me

Untime (demo)

Friendly smiles passing with open eyes
Crystal memories delude us all in time
We see just what we want to see
An idealistic view imbues the memory

Like now is drowned in river current
An arrow curved around a sphere
We’re here to learn how long it takes to get back here
  
Fear of fear our cultural belief
The time we get to give and take to keep 
Drip side down for hurried hearts
Brown to blonde from end to start

Like never ending nested Russian dolls
An arrow curved around a sphere
We’re here to learn how long it takes to get back here

Carry us all shouting trending memes
Nothing that you know is as it seems
Flip perception on it’s head
To find old concepts we can blame shit on instead

Like now is drowned in river current
An arrow curved around a sphere
We’re here to learn how long it takes to get back here

Riding on the pendulum 
It knows that where we’re going is where we just swung from
Triple check my napkin math
Square the root and follow on the circle’s path 

Like televising television sets
Recursive screens cascading video playback
A chrysalis will bloom into a re-spawned pupal butterfly and so will you
You die like you’re a skipping track
You’re gone before you know you’re back
To come and slip into again
The consciousness you’ve forgotten
Like dreams you lose when you describe
How waking up feels less alive
Than everything you thought was real
By now you’d think we’d know the deal

Like time repeating time and time again
An arrow curved around a sphere
We’re here to learn how long it takes to get back here

Like now is drowned in river current
An arrow curved around a sphere
We’re here to learn how long it takes to get back here

Popular tracks by eric adams