House Show, Late December

House show, late December
Three noise acts
Mixer feedback
Busted four tracks

Clusters of cables on card tables
IPod DJ standing in the corner
Playing the best tracks
Chandra, The Make Up, and Silk Flowers

The dirty coat congregation comes together
For a short talk session that feels like confession
For tall-boy communion
Gathered to bemoan the bad year
Gathered to bemoan the bad year
Gathered to bemoan the bad year

And the deep freeze outside just punctuates how markedly miserable
These last months have been
This year can't end soon enough

Let the new one in
Let the new one in

January 1st
No one's waiting for a shift in eras
No one's waiting for the anxiety to dissipate
Because we all feel it daily

I feel it mostly when I'm dazed and wandering around at Target
Or at the airport
Always two hours early
Worried about security

I get the impulse to curl up in the fetal position
Lie down next to the drug dog
And say, "Help me, help me get through this
I know we can do this, you and me"

23 years old
On my first tour that really made it out of the neighborhood
Lovesick and aloha
28 shows in 31 days
Three hundred one dollar bills in the band fund
U-Haul trailer dragging up hill
Disposable camera that never left my hand
And every picture I took
Was a vacant storefront
Telephone wires, a cloud, no people
I was searching for meaning in everything
I was chasing some kind of feeling
I couldn't describe
I couldn't talk about
I could only reach for

Seventeen years later, I'm still in the same jail
Sending out these cassette tapes in the mail
Still dreaming in scenes
Of high fructose corn syrup corner stores
Blunt wrap bodegas and now [?]
A 3,000 page manuscript
For a master class
In colloquialisms of the working poor

I see murders in the vape shop
Yellow tape marks the scene off
I got in a car with a stranger and he drove off the side of a mountain
As we fell I just saw Emily's face
And I felt my head smash in
Before I woke up
To piles of the same stuff
Crushed cans
Recycled psychic life spans
Personal brands

And fate love, made of
Waxy chocolate
Bags of dog shit
Backseat nauseous
Taxi vomit
Bathroom carpet
Nasty apartment
With a mattress
In that tiny closet
Casket coffin
Sophomore drama
Takes a grave to make the language soften
Small town. Toxic
So angry, so awesome
It's fucking nonsense
Non-stop talking
The extraction tax
And the added cost
Fully lossless in the rawness
The moldy ceiling and the leaky faucet
And that dismissive pause

Before you tell me there's nothing wrong with this
All those things you say there's nothing wrong with
There's something wrong with
All those things you say there's nothing wrong with
There's something wrong with
Everything you say there's nothing wrong with
Something...