PREFACE
Some-when (perhaps the present has already planned its future). We step into the life of a young man who is perplexed at what he sees as a world fashioned for the art of self destruction. There are rumors, there is death; predominantly in the guise of what has become known as the "chirp", because of the high pitched wheezing that accompanies the illness. No one knows. Authority declines comment.
Meanwhile most of the populous carries on business as usual although there are sporadic protests and riots in which the participants call for the immediate shut down of all industry and transportation and anything else deemed harmful to the environment. The people who take part in these riots have come to be called "poets" because of their seemingly quixotic ideals.
Another group (unofficially led by a radio personality named Russ Lawler) called the "Red Church" is militantly opposed to any interference with what seems to be happening, because they see it as god’s will.
Pulled this way and that by gravity and thought, we watch the world’s will bend our hero’s will into the grotesque shape of guilt, fear and doubt as he struggles to find the sense in living a life that is killing us.
Pulled this way and that by gravity and thought, we watch the world’s will bend our hero’s will into the grotesque shape of guilt, fear and doubt as he struggles to find the sense in living a life that is killing us.
The last song is taken from the pages of a scientist’s journal who was working to help solve the environmental problems man had created.
BABEL
I’m awake or I haven’t gone to sleep, Pulse in motion; world in deep, All we get is famous talk, Sense is just the killer's stalk, Blood broke heart; fist in heat, Another paint job soul; cracks the street, Information age in a feedback loop, Tiger trained mind; jump thru the hoop.
Butchered logic, Pertinent babel, False feeding, Death dressed up.
Tongue tied poets and empty clouds, Scared silent heroes; eloquent dumb crowds, Seems to me death is dreaming, Picture perfect life; not being just seeming, Mask of language hides the face of silence, On the walls of the will dance the shadows of violence, And it looks like truth and it feels like sense, But it’s vile enough to make the hangman wince.
It don’t mean nothing and it thinks it means me, A cane don’t help a blind man see, Just a puppet's tongue with a puppet's taste, Just a sleeper's dream and the morning’s waste, But if the paint dries up what can the painter do, But scratch the color from the dirt and try and start anew, When the fire is dead and the embers glow in the night, The flame is spent for the illusion of light.
Rhetorical wind pelts the mean; mean streets, The rich man begs; the beggar cheats, But it’s just the way and the way just goes, Until where it’s going is all it knows, And the dead man laughs and the fat man diets, But they both love to watch the poetry riots, And so here I am and there I go, And I have to guess what I just don’t know.
Sacrifice, Flesh is word, Anthropomorphic sky, Must be true.
It’s more real than what I say, It’s more game than the game I play, There’s more oil in water than water in the blood, There’s less water in the cloud than fuel for the flood, And this babble is the thunder of the coming storm.
May 93
THIS CITY
THIS CITY
This city scares me sometime, This city is always on my mind, This city is always following me around, This city just tried to gun me down.
She smiles so sweet with her generic personality, But spiritual treason is her specialty.
This city makes its own rules, This city treats us all like fools, This city is mean and hard, This city just shit in my back yard.
But she plays erotic until you believe, Until you just don’t know why you just don’t leave.
This city is vicious and rude, This city has an attitude, This city is what we are, This city is our brightest star.
We say we don’t mean it but that ain't what we mean, Every debtor's soul this city holds in lien.
This city is a greedy whore, This city just begs for more, This city is our worst fear, This city is not really here.
The city of god or the city of man, A neophyte's plot or a master plan.
I am alone; I feel untouched, My name is a number; my ego is crutched, It all seems real and makes me feel so fake, But I move in motion for the motion's sake.
This city is mine, This city is blind.
This city is mine, This city is blind.
May 93
THE LAST VIRGIN
THE LAST VIRGIN
The pavement strains from the weight of the world, The paperboy hustles to turn our shame into the news, And I go to work and my job is just some job, Good morning; how are you; ah man I can't even hear that shit no more.
The sacrifice, Stoke the fire, Desire the flame, Burn desire.
The mechanics of living we’ve offered our lives to our god the machine, I get off the elevator and kill my way inside, But it’s alright; I’ll be alright as long as I lose my mind by the rules, That receptionist there; what a beauty dare; could she be the last virgin.
The sacrifice, Stoke the fire, Desire the flame, Burn desire.
Now we’re studying the demographics of the average drug dealer, Strange how they're so close to the average faith healer, The divine made a present of the future and we gave it back unwrapped, But I see the point and the point just got sharper; it’ll end by stabbing us in the back.
The last virgin, Pull back her hair, Bind her wrist, Fuck her care.
Kiss her mouth, Then lick your lips, Watch the sky, As it rips.
Staring out the window and I don’t know what I see, In the glass my reflection stares back at me, Am I lost in this or is it my definition, Is there a god out there that’s beyond superstition, And if there is well than he must play dice, Because a rich man's secret is a poor man's vice, And we kill with words and ways and knifes, And we move like silence thru the holes in our lives.
The darkness comes from nowhere until the darkness is right here, And I don’t fear no evil; I just plain old fear, Somehow wrong got tangled up in what seemed right, But we just kept on believing in our electric light, But now it all seems so black and white as the colors vaporize, The truth stood to bold and naked so we draped it in disguise, And now the last virgin will burn in the last sparks of my sense, And the world will rise from her ashes to keep on dreaming in past tense.
Man time to go, I didn’t get shit done, Wonder what I’ll do tonight, Oh man there she goes, I wonder what she’ll do tonight, I’d like to follow her home..........
April 93
THE NIGHT BEFORE
We’re braced against the darkness; in the tangle of our touch, Shop windows for our dreaming; main street for our crutch, You're the key to my house-desire, We’re the hottest part of a melting fire, It’s a beautiful lie and you're a beautiful liar, In formal strides we trip the wire, Everything we want; teases our reach, But my conscience sucks the blood from my fingertips like some kind of leech, And we move inside and we move together, Trying to get out of this wounded weather, Into where the mood is light as a feather, And the skin of my soul is as tough as leather.
Something in the air doesn’t remind me of the air, Who ran off with the blame and left us here to care.
We’re just the evening’s pawns but we crave a bigger game, Our passions have been dulled and our instincts are to tame, I’m living life’s short fuse, Where you can't win you can only lose, Where you can't do you can only chose, And the dead sky is leaking blues, And this doubt is in our dancing and this hurt is on our tongue, And that star that shines in your eyes died when the Earth was young, Don’t let it bother you this time, Life and death won't ever rhyme, It cost a dollar to spend a dime, Is faith a law or a crime.
Something in my mind doesn’t remind me of my mind, I feel so less than human and all to humankind.
And I’m walking with you on my arm, And I feel you there and the magic of your charms, And we move among the people; free and proud, And we’re all lost in ourselves and lost in the crowd, There’s truth in your love and you know I love you too, But my mind keeps improvising with what is true, And I can't stop thinking about the end of the world.......?
March 93
IS IT ME?
I wake up dreaming about dreams, Slowly the night merges imperceptible into the day, I see her hand in the frame of the sunrise slip from mine, The moon is out of season but the hunter's howl, The world's pitiful neck in a noose; I the hangman, But then the knot; my neck I’m broken; I look up it’s you, A false dawn or maybe a sunset; I’m bleeding back to life, This dreamer who just found flesh; is it me?
It might be a nightmare, Might be the news, Might be light thru a funnel, I get confused, Maybe I’m just a straight line, Throwing myself curves, Brain inside my thoughts, World inside my nerves.
And I sink myself into my role till I can't tell me from I, And something that wonders who can't help but wonder why.
I know I hurt her last night, When I ran off like that, But I’m tired of pretending, That this isn’t ending, The news is all good news, Because news makers run the news, It’s been falling for years, Then they stopped counting tears, And we keep the game in play, But it’s all just desperate motion, It’s run out of steam, This insomniac's dream, Looking thru the ruins trying to find my ruins, I don’t know which is me, Machine in the man, He’s his own master plan.
Come on watch me lose my mind, Come on world don’t fall behind, In the whim of this psychic accretion, And the physical friction of the muscles of frustration, I hear something falling; wind rushing by, It must be me that’s falling - or something I’m standing on - I could join the Red Church and just laugh at the joke, Or the poetry riots try to fix what’s broke, There just ain't no escape from this fucking game, We’ll keep playing till it don’t matter who we blame.
It all started when living took control of life, Money in the hand became a knife, Now the homicide lingers and the suicide jumps, And the best laid plans are in the city dumps.
And I, Where is the road map for my life in this city, In this world; in this universe of complicity, What will this tombstone say about this life, And what will it take to raise a future from this crumbling moment, And where is that safe place inside where the world was just a shadow, But the luck of the rain is the fate of the water it seems that us and them are we, I want to blow a hole in my conscience to set my innocence free.
June 93
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS
Blood red moon; two headed goat, My haunted head; it’s happening I know, The confusion of day and night, The transposition of wrong and right.
Fish are drowning; sky is deaf, We copyright every prayer that’s left, That couple that just stepped out of that Jaguar, Just gave birth to a full grown lawyer.
Here I am; my hand is a sign, I drew a life in the sand then I crossed that line, The circle complete; the circled they hide. Now they postulate theories on how the truth has lied.
Time is running backwards yet age flies past the clock, I saw a Red Church member pass his hand thru solid rock, I know it’s happening now; seems everybody has the chirp, Life began with a big bang it’s gonna end with a big burp, Our god the machine is hungry and it’s eating us alive, Created and destroyed equally not even money will survive, Lovers on dead mornings; coffins sculpted from the dark, I lie awake all night to get a good shot at the lark.
My body shits illusions my mind dreams up new worlds, Anybody is nobody since I lost my girl, Now my story is the silence of the space between the words, The difference of my flight that of airplanes and birds, Ancient bone weaved in rock and root and sky and grave, A free man is his own victim a free man is slave, But the stuff that dreams are made of is only found in dreams, The real is blood and numbers; the birth of the unreal.
July 93
THE HANGING GARDENS
When I come here the world is just a rumor, And I don’t have to be anyone at all, If beauty is a thing of the past, Then take me back thru ancient days, Even though man's world is dying, The Earth I see is so full of life, Even though the truth plays tricks on my mind, I don’t blame you any more than you blame me.
We live in this wonderland at the expense of wonder, But from here even the city’s rumble has the charm of distant thunder, And it’s so beautiful I’m filled with hurt, How can this Hell we have built still contain Heaven.
Now I know that I am blind, As I see all of this, But I’ll leave my sweet world knowing, That I have tasted its kiss, Though I trashed your bounty fair, I always believed in your beauty, And I never once in all times play, Ever believed in my duty.
July 93
YOU’LL NEVER KNOW
When did it happen? How; I mean what did she do? Poison chemicals, Oh god, Did she have the chirp? Well then why? She’s the last person that would ever give up, Yeah but she wasn’t a nihilist she was an idealist, Yeah I guess there isn’t much difference in a world like this, Yeah she was always saying while the body has breath there’s still hope, If I jump I won't fall; what does that mean, Did she leave a note or anything, I follow the only trail hope has left.
Driving home from the funeral of the world, I’m wondering was it homicide or suicide, My heart is broken open and my soul is leaking out, It’s like the keeper of my faith just ran off with the payroll, I know if wisdom had a voice she was surly its tongue, She was like a diamond on the surface of the moon, I feel like a dog dying on the side of the road, What the fuck we living with to make us kill ourselves, When the best die with the answer who’ll be the last to know, Oh Sophia can you hear me; my thoughts have gone blind, Can you stir your dead body back to life in my mind, You’ll never answer and now I’ll never know, Where time dries up the river and the blood dreams flow, Come and take me with you; I’m all chalk and bone, Yeah we live in the billions but we die alone.
Now I can hear the earth’s pitiful whine, Or was that yours or is it mine, You were always joyous even when you were sad, You said all is good even when it was bad, Did you do it with a smile or did you do it with a grin, Did it feel like salvation or did it feel like sin, If you were confused you never let it show, What did you think; yeah what did you know.
July 93
TRIAL BY ORDEL
The world is trapped inside my head, It’s digging a hole to bury its dead, The river is pushed with water and blood, Wine water dreams all stuck in the mud, Confusion is real in the death colored sky, A wedding for bridesmaids; honeymoon fuck and die, Man talks to himself; thinks it’s god talking to him, Details of death drawn by his dream life whim.
I know it’s happening, I’m not innocent, I know it’s happening, The machine my will.
Since Sophia died can't get these bloodstains off my mind, In the residue of her soul there is no trace of humankind, Her consciousness lingers in my head like a ghost, Now hell is all that’s left of the heavenly host, Angels are circling my head like vultures, They fly thru the skies of this trash can culture, The river has swallowed every sinner's last breath, Blind justice is served by the mercy of death.
I know it’s happening, I’m not innocent, I know it’s happening, The machine my will.
Don’t live for that moment never is now, We never knew why so we figured out how, I did my best; it never amounted to much, Trying to teach my feelings how to touch, But this god spinning globe; this ink rot map, Smelled like the bait and turned out to be the trap, Words commit suicide and news cheats on his wife, They took the dead body of Babylon and brought it back to life.
I know it’s happening, The machine my will, I’m not innocent, Trial by ordeal.
Taken in the night by a horse with no rider, The moon whispers her shape and suddenly I’m right there beside her, I know you're dying lover; will you die for me, I will do anything to set your beauty free, Then take down my hair and wrap it around your throat, And jump into the river and see if you can float, If you don’t I’ll kill you quickly if you do I’ll choke you slow, Because there’s only here for me no matter where you go.
It don’t mean nothing and it thinks it means me, This drop dead night; I could never see, My mind is near; I can hear it mumble, The storm is coming; I can hear it rumble, Christ has turned the water to rust, The second coming; the gospel lust, I feel different now; more star than light, I’m as heavy as the belly of the night, Take a killers kiss and then burn your lips, Pump your dead man’s semen between her hips, This globe now hangs in empty space, No judge-drunk jury to hear our case, I feel the night eternal hush, I saw the last virgin blush, A world for a world and an eye for an eye, We lived the way that we wanted to die.
It’s happening, Virgin, Sophia, God, World, Death, Gate of god.
Aug. 93
THE LAST DAYS
May nineteenth, The sky looks like hell turned upside-down, I guess the only invention man neglected was his salvation, But this thing happened so slow we didn’t see it coming, Yes; it started so long ago; when man found religion and lost god, The instant man fancied himself created rather than creator he tossed responsibility, It’s ironic the Red Church essentially had this same idea, But somehow this never struck me so much as dying for dignity as for spite, Man just never noticed the wake of destruction caused by his marvelous creation.
June eleventh, I saw a man on the street today babbling it’s happening; it’s happening over and over, He walked up to me and looked me in the eyes and said "I keep having these dreams and I’m not in them", He said he must find Sophia and walked away; he had the chirp bad; he was beyond help, I’ve never seen the the chirp affect someone’s mental health but perhaps it was this world that did that, But then; to sad to ponder; cause and effect, The world of possibilities couldn’t help but fascinate but the possible always exploits the actual, And then money became the standard measuring unit for anything and everything, And the whole thing became a game of trust; based on mutual distrust.
June nineteenth, The government issued an order today no one is to go outside without their sunsuit or air mask, This may have helped about two years ago but not now, Besides the planet itself is dying and we can't wrap it in a sunsuit, But the serpent will feed on its tail until dinner is over, Everyone I work with is agreed there is no way to reverse the situation yet we work on it everyday, I guess it’s just some kind of desperation or just another manifestation of the mania for possibilities, Hope would be a superfluous ingredient in this recipe for doom, I wonder why I even write this but I guess even Mozart will be trash now.
July fourteenth, I find myself more withdrawn into myself in a way I never have before, For the first time I really realize the value of my life as a distinction from rather than a part of everything, I guess I’ve always viewed myself as what I do; not what I am, It’s ironic though now I feel more a part of everything in a much more profound way, My existence is everything and only me at the same time, Now it seems that life is the mystical experience and death just seems; easy, For some reason I keep thinking back to the man I saw on the street a few weeks back, There was something more than insanity in his eyes; understanding; maybe?
July twenty-fourth, Things seem a prelude to chaos; radio and t.v. are barely functioning, The machine is breaking down; food is getting scarce; suicide is a common antidote, John and Ann both died this week now there’s no work to do and no way to do it, If anybody ever reads this; don’t pity me; scorn me, We didn’t have the luxury of foresight just the excuse of hindsight but it was never too late until it was, I think I’m getting the chirp but I feel more sorry for the dead trees than I do myself, It’s funny I still can't believe something like this could happen even now while it is happening, Life seems god given and indestructible but then so did the sky.
August ninth, I had a dream last night; vivid; incredible and heart wrenching, An angel appeared out of a fiery sky; she slowly descended to stand before me, White gown and gentle face but armor across her chest and a sword on her side, I asked was she the angel of death; she said no she was the angel of mercy, And shall we receive mercy with a sword? Yes it is all that is left, I asked had we really lived off the pulp of forbidden fruit, She answered "it needs be that these offense’s come but woe to the man by whom the offense cometh", And is life now no more than a dream is to the morning’s wide eyed stare, The dirt will receive your dry seed but eternity’s rain will always bring the blossom.
August twenty-seventh, I am dying, I am dying, I am
Aug. 93
Released August 27, 1993 All songs Composed, Performed and Recorded by M.M.
