01 the archduke descends upon me [instrumental]

02 mating song of the north american dork your reflection is this equation, but in the other direction. the equals sign a twist, dance and kiss in parentheses, brace the embrace of this. complement the geometry, the jigsaw cut me to anomaly. the pieces finally fit, osculate and oscillate, spoon on the inverse bit. puzzle math, play it intricate, take the shortest path if the algorithm fits this amorous synthesis, the sweet symmetry of this. truncate and shape, play it isosceles, splice side number three and scissor-angle silently. convoluted infinity, we sit at zero focused tightly. leave a trace, this acid-base explosion precipitated your name on my face in covalent bonds, electrons holding hands in place. centrifuge rotates, we're pressed tautly against the plates, then left to iterate, first you smile then we disintegrate. water and heat, bring this beaker to a boil, add electricity, knock the shocks off this tesla coil. this chemistry is so advanced, complex but simply balanced. make a study of thee, coin and term -ologies, you've got a master's in me, it's time to get this phd. all gone to expertise, this heart is an essay, a treatise. your didactic fractal, polydactyl, fingers treading the instruments of science, stepping on toes and shoulders of giants, we apply to play the students, mutant caffeine plays pollutant, the unspoken promise to hunt for truth and knowledge with jurisprudence, i just want to watch the sun come up on you. you and me swing from this binary tree, wishing for sweet symmetry for you and me.

03 your penmanship is deplorable don't pick up that pen just yet, this crossword may just prove your intuition a little wet. and your ambition to play the author, filling in the missing fiction, only digesting clues you find palatable. when playing storyteller, it's always easiest to think that from mere chicken scratch you can play the career ghost writer. and manipulating the etch-a-sketch, amortizing the penny-a-liner and hammering out new identifiers until you've explained that person into your lexicon. with your razor serif sharpened calligraphy, trying to excavate the facets of personality, peeling layers of fustian fruits away. obsessed with a stress-test upon this palimpsest you guess to best inspect this text you find so alien, sesquipedalian. but i won't throw the spelling bee to capitalize on your favor, this losing race. you'll have to play your lower-case and sympathize, orthographize, in your articles the half-truth lies. now i know why i block-print and you write in cursive. you think i'm out to play jawbreaker, a photo spliced within vocabulary, the copy editor for "hostile takeover" in your devil's dictionary. if you allow me to pontificate, i can not countenance your face superscribed on that of ambrose bierce, for a rapier wit should stem from wit not fears. this belief burns in me something fierce. this ode akin to something much more dillinger, an icy finger on an inkslinger. i catch freezerburned epithets like epitath, this encyclopedia sold behind my back. so while squeezing the letters in, across and down in constant conflict, please remember this alphabet won't always bend to your writer's instinct. no matter how many pencils you break or erasers you stubble, know that you're free to fix number two graphite mistakes. after all, it's only a puzzle. but that pen might get you in trouble. before you color in those bubbles, if i'm free to give advice this one last time, please take me at face value. and don't pick up that pen.

04 ever so convoluted ants in the pants, they circus-dance circuits inside my body and head now. weltering helter-skelter, catalyst, my fuse shorts and lights i twitch and flip this switch. mind set to swivel, rivulate a little and slanky thoughts meander and twist. in my helical wake, i create a pile of books and clothes and notes, how the room chokes on this sweet centrifugal chaos. roll out the curlpaper, i prefer the cochlear sound of things unravelling. i'll give it to you. try as i might to alphabetize this soup, the vowels now inside-out and i turn the consonants to dissonance. my bed a sheetless mess, my house a treasure chest that best represents an endless index of my effects. tortuousness you may find torturous, but before i afford this rigor mortis, i'll disconform this ever so convoluted. mom says clean your room, you will be consumed, life is not a typhoon. but some secrets best not be exhumed, best lay entombed.entropy occurs naturally. to defy disorder is to defy honesty. and sometimes a comes after b, and four before three. it's the layout of the labyrinth that blueprints individuality. and i won't give you a map to this mystery. and you can call this a bluff, but if you're looking for hints, i won't be dropping enough to blow my cover, since i'm at home in this cyclone, deranged to you and arranged to me in place. you can't bubble-sort a poker face.

05 paradoxing i proffered my first steps toward you, and in that advance moved twice as near, but in calculating a foothold, thought that i'd be there and you'd be here. but the second stretch was not such a stretch, and there lay one quarter between us seamed from the half. i'm trying to reach you but i'm thrown off by the math. should throw physics to the dogs and just jump, not crawl or creep, but if i run half of the distance there'll be the other half to leap. and of that half there'll be one half with two halves of its own. the two of us have negative powers that avail us to stay alone. i pictured a balladrome, not a ballet in which i've proved i can not breach the inch left to traverse without crossing halves and fourths and eighths and sixteenths. and on this backwards escalator, i'm slipping in cut time. you really can't get there from here without eternally stopping on a dime. don't want your infinity to suffer my concerns, it's just that my feet are getting smaller by half-sizes i can't discern. circumscribing concentric circles, a tetherball chasing a polar kiss. the two of us have negative powers that invisibly part our lips.

06 the glass engine room [instrumental]

07 my year as a grouch cobwebs of sweat, hot gossamer tethers, the net that suspends me far from sweater weather. promised september this note of promissory, the school year is yours, get me off this rotisserie. snow-buried february, this groundhog plays pugilist, gone sun-blind from staring, nails his shadow to the crucifix. and dear rapunzel, belfry ice caved in your tower. i sold her out, the dear valentine, for chocolates and flowers. tear down this calendar, tear down this calendar. check's in the mail for one year's tender, shred the stamps and shoot the sender. manipulate these pleasantries to sell themselves, while fabricating holidays for months one through twelve. you're stockpiling greeting cards and construction cutouts, and posting and stapling reindeer and snowflakes and shamrocks and shillelaghs, fireworks and flagdays and raindrops and bluejays, and dozens of other simulacrap notarized with cheery guarantees. this can never be for me. april cadence on the rooftops, rain niagaras in the gutter, sun violates the silver lining to make a rainbow so cookie-cutter. delusions of sentiment, peripatetic romancer, except it won't make you younger and it won't cure your cancer. call me a grouch, you're a see-through magician, can't manufacture happiness by playing politican. i will evaluate things for the way that they're built, and you can't flag my convictions, not with fifty-two weeks' worth of guilt.

08 the sound of five a.m. all of those things, centrifuging in my head, a tight little sphere of doubt, but you at the center like some sweet magnet. agent of chaos, architect of happy lament, turn this question inside out. your muted beauty in the back of brain, the tender dolor. burning xylopyrographs of your eyes on mine, incandescent retinavore. the savory trademark of your heart, confectioned under lash and lid, annealing needle skip and skid. this labyrinthine kiss, dendrite twists and sparks the battery. mind's eye with hanging portrait, green and blue sugars written to memory. the perpetual bus error refreshing your sweet visage on a continuous mobius strip. train of thought absconding with the rational thinking, giving subway thieves the slip. somewhere up the head, nothing left but you, me and a "this space for rent" sign. somewhere up the head, the dull ignition of the land mind. singing sad songs of maryland, singing sweet songs of massachusetts. notes dripping seraphim, your liquids blowing fuses. this letter in your grip, my entwined hand in luck. forgive me endless metaphors, a filibuster clusterfuck.

09 an allergic reaction i walk between shelves of files, push in the wedged folders that stick out, straightening my tie. six more weeks until school starts again, i mentally place another x on the calendar. behind me, the fax machine belches release forms signed electronically. they scroll out and waft to the carpet without a sound. a discordant string of notes and noise rings, alerting me that the machine is jamming, punctuating the hum of the air conditioner droning on and on. leaning over the fax, unhinging rollers and uncrinkling paper, i lean my head out the window and smell hot asphalt and cool grass clippings, summer's dying outside. lean back in, surrounded by odors of rubbing alcohol and air conditioner coolants that merge with the fusty musk of mothballed once-a-month clothes of elderly patients waiting to make a good impression on the doctor. age does not matter to allergies, they can be treated, not cured. behind me, the fax machine abruptly beeps and disgorges five sheets of medical formalities. falling quiet, it segues a muffled screech from room three. five year old thinking that she's enduring the finality, but only the fifth of the thirty-four pinpricks of a scratch test making her skin sick. but we've got to know if she's allergic to oranges. shot six delivers the verdict on cashews. the girl lets loose with another wail, softened by the thick door. her mother sits outside the door, a quiet curse as she fumbles through her purse. she's probably forgotten the insurance card. i approach her, speak to her of deferred payment plans. she waves me away, goes inside the room to stop the costly exam. this time her daughter's scream escapes unhampered. takes her by the arm and mother and daughter scamper under the look of embarassed eyes. copy repairman looks up, shakes his head and returns to his weekly surgery, his hands tattooed with dried toner. speaks of his thirty years in the business, of daft secretaries who someone never remember to aerate damp paper like it's a crime. a nurse walks by and gives me an emphatic smile, then runs off speaking of shot schedules. copy man mumbles to me from the optic wiring, i nod pretending to agree. this man is strong, and i fear insulting him, like i've insulted everyone else by opening my mouth. try to keep my eyes shut so my dead eyes do not betray my disgust.

10 coriolis waters, spiral stairs [instrumental]

11 ars oklahoma the bulimic am gorges half vomit-sick on the pinprick-thin balm that lacquers my confidence. oklahoma turnpike, moribund night, the town of lone chimney the only guiding light located the absolute threshold of sight. i'm low on dashboard change, this tour is taking its toll. on arkansas roads, the waffle house beckons, "put grease in your throat, there's no shame in seconds." onboard computer, tell me something new," it says "sorry, andy, that option's not open to you, i'm programmed to navigate, can't be your friend too." my imagination runs away, i harmonize with stale cassettes. with four dollars change i got at the show, a wishbone that breaks when i wish not to break down on the side of the kansas state roads alone. and i drive through the night. hit missouri at dawn, the headlights go off and the sprinklers come on, i'm just glad it's bedtime. curtains are shirts and the coat is a sheet and i'll thumb through the atlas 'til i fall asleep, counting off states like they're disfigured sheep, and rest 'til the rest area folks ask me to leave.

12 to sweat the synapse measure for measure, this music permeates through stale vacuum-sour air, a path of entropy and dissonance. dispersed to dissidents, who've long since spat on radios and yearn to shatter rigor mortis, paralysis toward conformist sounds abound. a refusal to salute the records hung on stars, verdigris grown on platinum, a patina of rust on gold, a half a million records sold. instead, for the price of your cassingle we go to basement shows. the signature of independent music, played by sweaty live human beings expanding from sardine packaging and handling. straight from the van, and even odometer-worn, interstate-borne, their emotions focus-sharpened on and on cracked floors covered in wires. a desire to exert the self, a product you can't buy shrink-wrapped and sent from high, twelve for a penny with nothing more manufactured and delivered to your door. this is something else, you must be present for this. songs transduced through scarfskin awakening an impulse, refreshed on crisp amp-driven waves that settle sweet and strident. convolutions of verse-chord structure twisted in the musculature and resonating at angles, vibrating cuboid and trapezium bones. a harmony of tuning forks pinging, singing between nerves. pinball-vesseled to the brain and served, a cocktail of energy, treble-clef swizzled. first ossified in the body, now a cerebellum drunk your mind and body synchronize. each synapse awash in sound, chords catabolized to notes, frequencies flooding the saturnine apartments. the lead out, exuviae and an exit sign and with pulsing palsy, the body stretches, and flails. sweaty textures, rivers over pellicular patterns, paroxysms towards dots in space, lines connected by flesh, driven by song, a half an hour of catharsis art exploding from the heart. and intellect empowering the aesthetic journey, and we dance, and we dance, and we dance.

13 congratulations on your decision to become a pirate yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, poured in the sea for the purpose of shipping a letter inside cork-sealed, mailed by shark or electric eel. you have buried my heart at sea, standing weak on swashbuckled knees. i've traced dashed lines on maps where you've travelled far, withhold your x's and o's and give me a hearty arr! i will batten down the hatches, cannons i'll provide the matches, trim this ship on even keel, then i'll pirate this kiss to steal. i would swim five hundred nautical miles to freeboot one of your patch-eyed gold-tooth smiles. study quartermastery or apprentice the boatswain, if this boat's swayin' i won't complain. i'd eat barnacles, drink seawater brine, live on tar and salt and strike-me-blind, smoke your herring and juice your limes just to navigate across your plimsoll line. be my private privateer, i'm shanghai'd in your clutches here. at hookpoint, make me walk the plank, a lover's leap, i won't have sank.

14 do the staccato hey rent-to-own camcorder: you stayed the same while documenting me getting older. and some of the best parts lie on the editing room floor. hey precious pose and picture: remember the self-induced embarassment and discomfiture? where are the negatives of those? and if i ever validated my life via time-lapse photography when the light was right, i reject it and refuse to perfect it. and if i've learned one thing from my mistakes, it was how to recreate them when much more was at stake at future dates. thankfully, there's some things you can't erase. my life is not a connect-the-dots, the only memories i haven't yet forgot. there is no joy in saving face when the cost is having the ugly half erased. hey character sketch in motion: your lackluster shine is contrived without emotion. blood is thicker than ink. and to the dear departed: i hope you left behind your memoirs to your broken-hearted families, the unabridged diaries of your dynasties. and dear ego, you yourself put on the ritz. you extrapolate my features from yearbook portraits. but if you squint, i guarantee you'll spy the gossamer fault lines in my angelic eyes. the best of intentions, the worst of fates, a few missteps epoxy to make bits and pieces you regret and times and names to give the slip. but i for one acknowledge every day and night: i have not lived a staccato life.