1. |
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We were out hunting complications
Waiting for the skin to bruise
I felt embarrassed by still acting
Like I had anything to lose
It wasn't a ruse
Just a youthful thing
The urge to create conflict
Cobbled streets twisted your ankle
I thought someone stole my wallet
You said "wait...
Why are we always waiting
When nothing ever happens
In this biscuit tin town?"
And it was late
The clocks had all stopped working
Pompous pricks vanished to nothing
Beneath the skeleton of a town house
Your parents were still up getting high
There was mushroom tea left to decant
Watching your sister feed cold coffee
To the marijuana plant
The depth charge sank
And I sat drowning
Made revisions to the play
I used to think I was a writer
Somehow the scenes just never played
And you said "wait...
What are the characters weighing?
There's nothing but exposition
In your furrowing brow"
Another page
I know I'm never gonna finish
All my attention's sorry limits
My imagination finally gave out
There's something I circle to in between breaths
In my pre-sleep breathing exercises
And it’s this
What if we’re dreaming off the same death?
And we just never realised
And it’s too late
Rewilding tape cassettes
The tape spooled roots out in the garden
And it was okay if maybe some people
Started calling you an artist
The lighter died
It rained tobacco
Eyes turned nicotine yellow
I said if I jumped the barrier
I could still get the train
You said "wait..."
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2. |
Uhtceare
03:46
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The world is still dead
And I alone am poking holes in it
Oh, the arguments I'm having with myself
And the threads that don't connect
The words are too old
For me to fully recognise their power
How I cower from invisible attacks
How I’m plotting my escape
They come to me in second lines, as spirits
The chattering fangs of all my neighbours
The clawing wallets of my creditors
They tell me to do myself a favour
But I won't
The world is still dead
And I alone am bating my misgivings
Oh, the devil I’ve been broiling in my fever
He wears your teeth around his neck
The air is too close
For me to fully regulate my breathing
How I panic when I notice I am breathing
It makes ghosts of my legs
They come to me as hand me downs, like cancers
The blackening white lies of my father
And the braying long cons of the grifters
Tell me I'll be happy ever after
But I won't
The dawn is readying its choir
I'm laying ice cold in a room that's on fire
They come to me in second thoughts, as killers
The fears I train as labourers and builders
They carve their monolithic alters
For me to beg forgiveness for my sins now
But I won't
For me to beg forgiveness, but I won’t
For me to beg forgiveness, but I won’t
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3. |
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The quiet life made just enough low-level noise
For me to hide somewhere beneath my breath
I never dreamt of escape
Because I never slept
I focussed my obsessions on insignificant choices
Replacing appliances was an impossible task
I got sick on your birthday
You got impossibly mad
Everyone used to say I looked young for my age
No one says that now
Every mortgage payment felt like a spade into the earth
I would give unconvincing smiles to my friends six feet above
While we worked through a printout of task-driven love
I was too much of a coward to ever get into a fight
So, I just wrote my poetry on bottle labels
Hanging myself from my heels
Until someone told me I was stable
Everyone used to say I looked young for my age
No one says that now
In my episodes
I don't recognise my home
Nowhere feels safe
I hide here in an app on my phone
I knew for sure
That I needed something more
I knew for sure
When the panic stopped
And I still felt lost
When the panic stopped
Everyone used to say I looked young for my age
No one says that now
It’s no surprise
No one says that now
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4. |
The Negative Twin
03:59
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Sea salt in the wounds
Blood dripping from my teeth
Got menace in my heart
From the whiskey in my tea
Lice on my skin
Chalk on my hands
I'll outline my corpse
Mixtape in my bag
Dark energy, this inverse state
The talons in my back that carry me away
Man, I dream weird
When I'm this fevered
Sea salt in the eyes
Sand in my fists
Spitting violent slurs
As if God exists
Trouble in my veins
Ringing in my ears
Armed with bad advice
And pruning shears
Dark energy, this reversed state
The negative twin, here to take my place
Man, I dream weird
When I'm this fractured
Gnawing at the bracelets on my wrists
Fighting hard against a captor that I am not sure exists
Death note in my shoe
No return address
Mandrake in my throat
Teeth marks in my neck
Stutter when I talk
Thomas guards the gates
Just another cold call
He says
All I hear are snakes
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5. |
Bat Roost
03:20
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Head like a bat roost
Somewhere up in the eaves
Lost like a tangent
To lucid sleep
A dream of the rare kind
Lit up like Foxfire
Could've sworn something moved
Out in the trees
Tracing the cat scratch
Down the back of your hand
Speaking a language
I don't understand
A breath in a hot box
Infinitely lost
Fearing my organs
Will turn to sand
It's a calm ruin
Losing
Whole weekends
It's a blind proofing
Of forgotten Poems
How many people will I get to be?
Can you forgive me?
Head like a bat roost
Somewhere up in the beams
Reconciling expenses
Here in soliloquy
A dream of revival
My phosphorus cycle
Pretending to know
What redemption means
It's a calm tsunami
My body
Left floating
It's an astral projection
Through imagined moments
How many people will I get to be?
How many people will you let me be?
When I lose my mind
We will be happy
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6. |
Holy Smoke
04:14
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St Margaret's is a memory
I'm just not sure if it's mine
It comes to me like suicide
Then leaves me just in time
Am I your passenger?
Are you my creaking spine?
Will we haunt these gardens
Just like sheets pegged to the line?
I don’t know
Holy smoke
You know I don't
Like the way it tastes
Christopher belittled me
Then he kissed me on the neck
I felt the teeth burst through the skin
And woke someone else again
Am I your Christopher?
Are you my latest Saint?
If I give my darkness
Will you take the pain away?
I don’t know
Holy smoke
You know I don’t
Like the toll it takes
Condensation
We could run the length of the wall
Soak in like damp into the floorboards
You leave me totally absorbed
Hotel sex is a memory
I'm just not sure that it's mine
It speaks to me like blasphemy
Turns poison into wine
Am I your passenger?
Your microfiche slide?
I’ll hold all your secrets
Until I’m ruined by the light
And you won’t know
Holy smoke
You know I don't
Like the way it tastes
Holy smoke
You know that I don't
Like the toll it takes
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7. |
Concrete Feet First
01:55
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Hailstones, plastic awning
Staccato sleep, fractured morning
Peter's leaving, time is swollen
Kitchen sink is overflowing
Mold is growing
Chemicals in Leanne's purse
Father's eyes, mother's curse
Dogs are calling, weekend slurs
Barely recognisable words
The dials turn
It's faster falling concrete feet first
For what it's worth
It's faster falling concrete feet first
Red brick, compass scratches
Teenage grief, sewing patches
Old skin, young passions
Holding on to burning matches
Button bashing
Stolen clothes in jacket pockets
Didn't need it, didn't want it
You told him no, he isn't stopping
You can feel the image cropping
He’s still not stopping
It's faster falling concrete feet first
For what it's worth
It's faster falling concrete feet first
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8. |
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I carried my picture frame
Posed for the satellites
Laid down in a pentagram
Of upturned roots
I bled like a sacrifice
Remembering every punch
I was a bullied kid
I must've lost every tooth
I ran all the way to my brother's house
Along the river past my old school
Along the river past the train station
I thought about trauma
Slept on his sofa
I'm so heavy
I'm so rain-soaked
I'm so heavy
I'm so damn stoned
I carried my poetry
Read for the wild night
Lost sense in my fingertips
Bit hard into the skin
I sang in an altered state
To visit a future self
It looked like a past life
I never learn anything
I walked all the way to my brother's house
Through the woods behind the hospital
Through the woods where all the bombs dropped
And thought about fractures
Natural disasters
I'm so heavy
I'm so rain-soaked
I'm so heavy
I'm so damn stoned
I'm so heavy
I'm so iron clad
I'm so heavy
I'm so damn sad
I'm so heavy
I'm so rain-soaked
I'm so heavy
I'm so damned
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9. |
Freybug
03:06
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I found a way to visualise the shadow in my lungs
I saw him dart beneath the tire swing and into the underbrush
In the copse behind the satellites, in the village where I grew up
I took a penknife to my palm, and offered up my blood
And that's where he lives
Ever since
That’s where he lives
He joined me in the reflection of the coffee shop windows
I try to medicate my hopelessness but they draw him in the foam
I feel guilty for his feral lust, but complicit in its throes
I let each meaningful touch pass through me like a ghost
But I still exist
At least I think
I exist
It's the inversion of body and soul
Making way for my subconscious
To wake and take control
It's the formation of some ungodly animal
It's the formation of some ungodly animal
I've found a way to coexist with the fever in my dreams
He lets me hold on to a job, I let him kill me in my sleep
He drags my body through the woods, buries me deep beneath the trees
I wake tired from the hunt, but thankful to be free
And still I live
With it
That’s how I have to live
It's the inversion of body and soul
Making way for my subconscious
To trap me in crystal
It's the formation of some unholy animal
It’s the formation of some unholy animal
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10. |
Skotograph
03:37
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Ghost notes and love letters
I hope you get better
I know it’s been a summer
I found a Spirograph
Somewhere out near Matapan
Circles on a skotograph
Couldn’t explain it if I tried
Anisotropic readings
If anybody’s listening
Meet me in the early evening
Born and reborn listless
I never finish any business
Burnt sage and eucalyptus
To see what it would do
Nothing is changing
Watching the cars all phasing
A rearranging
Of objects and spaces
And I….
Couldn’t explain it if I tried
True crime and history podcasts
Falling asleep in the bath
The mirror message won't last
I'll jump an astral plain
Sleep in like a stowaway
Spend a week at Pluto's Gate
I swear I found it open
Nothing is aging
Watching the reruns playing
There must be an arrangement
To keep the painting frameless
And I….
Couldn’t explain it if I tried
I tried to stare forever down
Ended up a haunted painting
Following your form around
The room
If there's a correlation
Between our estrangement
And my fever dissipating
Then I….
Couldn’t explain it if I tried
Nothing is weighing
I live in absent spaces
And I….
Couldn’t explain it if I tried
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Lee Switzer-Woolf Reading, UK
New album Annihilation Signals out May 5th 2023 on All Will Be Well Records.
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