1. |
Keep Calm
03:51
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Push uphill
Read a dead letter
Hope for silence
Maybe one better
Keep calm
When the bad news arrives
Keep calm
When it’s written outright
Lose calm
When realization comes
Waste the whole night
Find new life
Closing in around
Overwhelmed with detail
Come unbound
Keep calm
When the bad news arrives
Keep calm
When it’s written outright
Lose calm
When realization comes
Drive the whole night
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2. |
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My mom’s brother passed away when I was eight years old
His death was sudden and cruel, from an undetected cancer
We flew out to Virginia for the funeral
Barely two weeks after he went to the doctor
Three cousins left without their father, the oldest barely ten
My sister and I sat around with them and played with toys
Every so often one of them would comprehend what was happening
And erupt into emotions and actions I couldn’t understand
And the scariest thing I ever saw was him
In a box
Where they placed him at the end of it all
Standing there, a little kid alone with a corpse
Telling him I wished I had appreciated him more
In my early teens, my family witnessed a motorcycle accident
We were on our way up the coast of Door County
A weekend picking cherries and eating ice cream
She wiped out a few minutes ahead of us on a winding road
By the time we approached there were people at her side
Someone had picked up the bike and moved it to the shoulder
The rider had a helmet, which probably saved her
And the world paused right there to make sure she was okay
But the scariest thing I ever saw was her
On the ground
Where I briefly, truly thought she was dead
Where they told her it was best for her to stay still
And it was clear to me I wouldn’t forget
[interlude]
And the scariest thing I ever saw was you
In a room
Where they took you when you wanted to die
Learning I couldn’t always be stronger in support
Than you were in collapse
And it feels selfish to even tell this story from my perspective
But I’m still learning, and you’re still here, and that’s a start
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3. |
A Brick
03:23
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It always seemed inevitable that the little house was doomed
Vines cascading over its face, garbage bins permanently pushed up against the front door
Cream-colored metal siding on the raised main floor warped and pitted
A lonely leftover of its kind, neighbors replaced by newer buildings many times over
Nobody left to care for what was left there
The very last man to live here left reminders of himself
LB made crude metal cutouts in whimsical shapes of rockets and planets
Affixed to the tall front fence by barbed wire; he was afraid of his surroundings
But he held onto the house until he physically couldn’t, and it sat empty when he left
Nobody left to care for what he left there
On a Friday in the fall, the inevitable fulfilled
A decade after vacancy and seven months after LB died,
His little house left us, too. One of the oldest in the city;
It was too far gone. Crews came to wreck it as soon as they had a demolition permit
Nobody left to care for what was left there
I came by to pay my respects, to a man I’d never met and the home he inhabited, both subsumed
The little house a pile of rubble: ornate rotting wood window frames, tin siding, asbestos
I took some tools with me, hoping to save LB’s rockets and planets from the fence
Couldn’t get them off, fused onto barbed wire by rust, I took a brick from the pile and headed home
Nobody left to care for what I left there
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4. |
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The clouds explode and then the desert blooms
Someone will need to mop this floor for me
When I emerge, I find my car
Like a cathedral in a dream of the future
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
Pull over and blast off when I get the chance
Clear as an insect's wings in the sunlight
Flip on the high stakes radio
Try to sing the words right
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
I had his arms tied up behind him
We were together all day
Maybe make Culiacán by sunset
Try to, anyway
High as the clouds now
Flying
Drive 'til the rain stops
Keep driving
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Justification Chicago, Illinois
Justification is Soren Spicknall and various collaborators.
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