Building St. Petersburg
Released 1999, re-released 2007
Dense, but rewarding. 9 songs, one cover, one spoken. Recorded in 1998 and 1999 in Riverside and San Diego. In glorious digital fidelity. Beautifully packaged using the Jewelboxing system. Download available in both mp3 and flac (lossless) formats.
Tracks:
Listen using the play button next to the mp3 download links.
Lyrics:
San Diego
Gotta raise up my glass to this country
Because in every XX there's a voice calling me
And if I said a word I might get myself heard
Or I might get uncomprehended
I mark every face in this hovel
And each in his turn takes his time to mark me
In this dim and this haze I've spent seven nights and days
And it hasn't worn thin.
With the fronds in the trees and the salt scent in the breeze
I can still see your face when my eyes shut
I still have my need of both drink and of weed
And my money should hold out for a week or two
Carry me on my back all the way to San Diego
Leave my body on that other side
Because the sun's getting red and there's a hole in my head
Where my love used to be
Turn out that harsh light, take my hands and hold me tight
I'll be sure to reward you
If last month I could see where at this minute I might be
What would have occured to me?
Some Kind of Magic
If I could take back last night
I'd give my first born
I'd swear off the wine and the waifs
And grow forlorn
With every long week rushing past
It's growing much worse
Subtle tones of disapproval in voices
At the Chamber of Commerce
And since you took my darling daughter
I interpret pictures made with an ink blotter
I feel my lungs are filling up with salt water
And I can't seem to focus
It's far more worse than if I'd gone deaf and dumb
Or if my spine should make my legs feel numb
It's as if you've broken both of my thumbs
With some kind of magic
How could I still my weak hand
When she walked in that door
And her cigarette smoke filled the air
While my heartbeat roared
I recalled she'd taken me in confidence
As we sat on the pews
How she revealed to me she'd had a divorce
And her parents were Jews
Last week I stood upright as rain
But there's a virus caught inside my brain
And I'm feeling a certain sharp pain
As it's starting to show
It's as if my body's covered in crust
Left upon me by last night's pure lust
Like a malicious imp's exposed this long-broken trust
With some kind of magic
I see the breaking orange of dawn
As I stir upon the neighbor's front lawn
Half my life has packed its things and got gone
And left empty bottles
I can see the pastor look in my eyes
With a look unfilled with grief or surprise
There's an ache inside my neck and my thighs
And I should get home
In the fading white stars straight above
I can see a bright cross
My muscles constrain in my neck
And my soul is lost
Never mention my name to the kid
So there's a chance she'll forget
In later years she won't recall my sick face
And fill with regret
Building St. Petersburg
My master sent me here
From Novgorod for half the year
I took with me some pelts and beer
When the harvest was done
All I see is wood and snow
The icebound boats shift to and fro
I work and watch the sky's deep glow
While the monks say a prayer
The Devil's come to walk these banks
His eyes are blind to birth and rank
My face becomes a flawless blank
When I see him pass by
How many men from Germany
Have traveled on the Baltic Sea
To vent their anger upon me
In a strange kind of language?
I awoke last Sunday night
Across the sky were flashing lights
My hut came into sight
And I walked for an hour
I saw the face of old Ivan
Who drank his kvass from dusk 'til dawn
The Devil took his soul beyond
And I heard his voice calling
I recalled the lovely time
We stole a keg of Master's wine
We went to fight after we'd dined
With the neighboring village
I further saw my Master's face
When he first told me of this place
I can recall the awful taste
That then came from my bile
A mental picture of my wife
Brought me more of my former life
I felt my fingers touch my knife
As I thought of the Swedes
I saw the fires in the trees
I felt the earth beneath my knees
The Swedes were riding on the breeze
And they took her away
I see the pictures on these plans
How on this swamp that statue stands
The engineer barks his commands
And I hear them translated
I count the days of this long year
They say the thaw is coming near
I run my fingers through my beard
And I look toward the forest
Talking Ballroom Blues
I looked in the mirror and what did I see?
This little ol' hair all over me
Like kudzu spreading out over the South
The stuff was even growing in my mouth.
It was on my eyeballs,
Between my toes,
In my intestines,
So I ate me a lawnmower.
I took my sweetheart to a special ball
Held in a purty bankawet hall.
There were all the animals, two by two,
And a little man playing a kazoo.
It was there I asked her hand.
I asked her hand if I could have the rest of her, too.
It said, "OK. Two's company,
And so's three or four."
Now there's some what's born with money to spend,
And some what's born with a million friends,
But I was born with a special packet
Consisting of fruit and a tennis racquet.
I laid awake nights trying to figure it out.
If I use the racquet to hit the fruit, I got no more fruit.
If I use the fruit to hit the racquet, I still got no fruit.
Then I figured it out last week:
A racquet's like fruit, only more so,
And vicey-versey.
I got three birds and a pair of hogs.
I even got six or seven dogs.
I once had me a little ol' cat
Until I hit it with a baseball bat.
I know what you're thinking:
"The man must have been drinking."
But it weren't true. It was an act of sober kindness.
It had one eye,
No tail,
Three toes on one paw,
Two toes on the other paw,
No toes on the other paw.
How many paws that make?
Wrong! Seven.
Ya can't count, but I like you anyway.
My uncle Elmer's a funny ol' guy.
He cooks his whiskey in a little ol' pie.
He sprinkles it up with a special juice
Made of pickled pigs' feet and a pregnant moose.
Once, when he was younger, he served it to the President.
What President?
The Bank President.
The Tea Society President.
The President-in-Absentia of the Literary Society,
Who showed up for the first time in weeks.
The President of the He-Man Woman-Haters' Club
With his new wife, Darla.
The President of Uruguay,
With whom Elmer attended some of the finest preparatory insitutions our nation has to offer.
All of these Presidents lined up in a row,
Each one of them in velvet from their heads to their toes.
They looked out their winder and what did they see?
They saw me--
And I was looking straight at 'em.
The Good Life
I see a long look on your face
In the dim light that spreads through my bedroom
The wind starts to pick up its pace
With the lightest of taps on the window pane
I put my thoughts on a paper today
And sent it up north to meet you
I rehearse in my head what I'd say
As I step of the airplane
I recall tiny things that we did
Making meals and discussing kids
I begin to lower my eyelids
And I think I hear hail
I imagine it would be a good life
With yourself as my wife
I sense a relative absence of strife
Though I can't see the details.
Your thoughts aren't in the things that you say
But I can sense an attachment in your voice's tones
I can feel your fingers find their way
Through the wires and out of the telephone
Though every third week of so I might grieve
On balance I am well I believe
But I'd be happy as not if I leave
All this dust and barbed wire
When it's time that you speak of your thoughts
If this thing's come to nought
It won't be that this climate's too hot
And loaded with brush fires.
It gets a little bit grayer each day
And it's seeming to cease when I think of you
I can feel you're not far away
And your picture's as clear as it ever was.
I'm awash in a dim light
In this stormy, purple night
I wonder if you think it's right
That you're somewhere away
I close my eyes and picture my hands
Slipping through your hair strands
As I dream of these fine, cool sands
By the sound of the tide
The Canadian Vacation
I got a terrible pain in my temple
And my stomach hasn't settled down
It's eleven o'clock in the morning
In this little undergraduate town
Five minutes ago I arrived here
But I almost didn't come at all
I made it down the steps to the station
After a trip to a stall.
Thank God that God has given me Canada
Where I can let go of my mind
Last night I hopped across the border
With some others of my kind
I'm losing my memory of your texture
I lost the color of your hair
And from the speakers there's a sound that is spilling
That's as harsh as I can bear.
I took a fairly strong dose
I went comatose
How heavenly I was feeling!
I put the keys in my car
Ringing electric guitar
And in a minute the engine was squealing.
I sped along the long, wooded highway
And the road began to curve
I could hear the shouts of people behind me
And I had a crisis of nerve
My eyesight saw a sheet of cold purple
Of alternating dim and sharper tones
I heard what seemed to me to be your whisper
As if spoken through a telephone
My eyelids arose and I looked back
There stretched out a streak of shooting white lines
My companions kept moving their fingers
And their voices intertwined
I turned myself to face myself forward
And the world stood still
The car slowed to a stop on the shoulder
And I was physically ill
My friend started to drive
My nausea showed me I was alive
The smell sauntered out of the window
I lost track of the time
Pictures flashed before my spinning mind
And when I next awoke we were home.
I've begun to sleep less than in high school
Since last year, when I arrived in Maine.
I can't bear to look inside a deep mirror
And I'm worried about my brain.
I would pen a little note to California
If I could still my shaking hand
And I'd recall to you the first time we'd spoke
After that practice of my former band.
The Stroke Victim
I awoke with a man's face before me
His eyes cried. He began to implore me.
What's the meaning of my strange look of horror?
Did I not recall our wedding?
I saw his hair. It was groomed to perfection.
In the mirror I saw the strangest of reflections
I saw a room with a host of fine flowers
With me in the middle.
I saw his gold pen and I knew then
Whoever this was, he was comfortable.
My eyes grew dim and I could hear him
In hushed tones as he spoke to a doctor.
When I awoke, I was alone as a dead man.
I saw a bureau, drawn blinds, and a bedpan.
Familiar smells wafted in from the hallway
And a woman brought me breakfast.
I arose and wandered halfway to the door.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the spotless floor.
I took the stairs beneath a shining chandelier
And went out to the street.
I looked behind to do my best to remind me
Where it was I was leaving.
I heard the traffic roar. The woman's at the door
With a strange man in tow.
"Ask her back, we won't need to use force."
I heard her say in a voice filled with strange remorse.
"Darling dear, you've gone out of your element.
Let me take you by your fingers."
I awoke hearing voices raised in anger:
"You've become a wealthy man, Dr. Erlanger--
How many months will it take with your medicine
To get her faculties functioning again?"
I drifted down, came to, and began to look.
A shaved face, a gold pen, and a notebook.
The other man wandered off toward the window.
And a voice spoke.
"I wrote your full name, our address on the lane.
At all times you will carry this with you.
This must stop here. Come doctor, have a beer."
And I flipped through the pages.
I saw the sunlight peeking in through the window.
A kissed cheek and a voice that said, "today you'll go.
Take a look at the message that I left you
On the first couple pages."
"I've discussed this tricky matter with the doctor.
You'll return to the department with Maria as your proctor.
I've arranged for some tasks to be completed--
And reread your identity."
So this is my house. The man must be my spouse.
A woman brought me down the stairwell.
I got into the car. "Are we driving far?"
For myself I recorded the directions.
I saw the building and I filled with hesitation
I was led by my wrist and his hand cut my circulation.
Strange eyes with a sad kind of bloodshot
While their mouths tried to smile.
Rise and shine this confused, early morning
Taped on the mirror large letters gave a warning:
"Don't dash off without a glance at your notebook:
So I flipped through the pages.
"You were born 50 years before this minute.
At 23 you made a marriage and you're still in it.
Your career was cut short by an injury.
But you'll die well off.
Your man's the money-maker. He pays the caretaker.
Furthermore, she cleans the windows.
He arranged your work as a file clerk.
And he writes your instructions."
Let me leave, I'll accept this as given.
If I can't drive, then let me be driven.
In the mirror I saw my face as if shining.
And I thought I looked good.
Put the book on my rosewood nightstand.
Stepped downstairs with a pill bottle in my hand.
My footsteps were silent on the carpet
And I looked at the door.
I saw her hand slip from his fingertips
Their eyes in a glance that lingers.
I turned around to see photographs before me
And I ran to my room.
My vision blurred and my chest became tight.
I felt around for my notebook by my reading light.
Tore the pages and began to write from scratch
And imagined my memory.
I awoke this fine morning unconfused.
I sat and read as the man beside me snoozed.
I am 25 years old on this weekend
In a sweet affair.
I seem to sense a tiny shard of a memory:
I am a Doctor of Philosophy from Emory.
I read again and dispel this suspicion.
I take a pill with bottle water.
I'm pricked by tiny fear--the room's devoid of mirrors.
Sounds arrive from the stairwell.
I close Venetian blinds. I leave the room behind
And a woman brings me breakfast.
The Governor and His Wife
If I had the chance
I'd take off my pants
And do a little ol' naked dance
For the governor and his wife. |
