1. |
Throwing Roses
02:24
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“Throwing Roses”
I don’t know why
The world never loved you back
After everything you gave
You were born again
But never pulled from the depths
Drowning while singing that you’re saved
And it’s easy to hide your tears
When you’re still sinking
And you can always keep your
Eyes closed tight
And pretend you’re only blinking
A golden heart just adds more weight
And pulls you further below
Until you give up that part of yourself
That still treads water when you’re halfway down
You give yourself away to
Those who’d rather walk across the water
Than extend an arm to bring you to the surface
I’ve witnessed all my life
You throwing roses to
Calloused hands
Ready to pull the petals off
The moment you begin to bloom
Do you ever pray for gold to rust?
Do you ever wish that thorns can kill?
I do.
You call to God to protect you from harm
But prayers don’t float from halfway down
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2. |
Theseus
02:08
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“Theseus”
Will I feel regret? Will I know what I feel at all?
I’ve never learned to understand myself without
Screaming into friends’ and strangers’ faces,
Temper tantrums with an audience--just a spoiled child
With a God complex
And like my heroes, I’m obsessed with earning a good death
Anything worth loving shouldn’t last forever
The best stories have their endings written from the start
The last step planned before the first
And my feet are getting tired
Will I feel remorse for the parts I’ve lost along the way?
The broken, the discarded, the stolen, bled out, wrapped up, fixed, replaced
I measured the years in set lists and demo tapes
And even I’m surprised how many songs I have survived
Despite how hard I’ve tried
My body betrays me like I thought
Only a lover could
How can I know that when I come home from this
I’ll be the same person who left?
Will I be lost at sea while someone I don’t know
Sleeps in a grave meant for me?
Are the discarded pieces who I am, who I was, or who I’m meant to be:
A spoiled child with a God complex
Who never got his good death?
It’s only the ends that give us meaning
Only in death do we have names
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3. |
Wrapped Up
01:17
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I’ve only ever been addicted to sorrow
And I’ve chased it so long I don’t feel it much
Like my meth-mouthed uncle with the brand-new track marks
I’ve grown tolerant; I need something harder
Growing up is giving up
I’m Bored to tears with love and laughter
And Forever seeking the mourning after
Growing up is giving up on love
Because you hunted for hurt till you felt nothing at all
You abandon being able to be scared
If you learn to love your nightmares
Poison your heart all that you want
But what doesn’t kill you makes you go numb
I went from “Woe is me,”
And, “Nobody’s ever gonna love me,”
To sneaking out while they’re still asleep
Just a little bit too abruptly
A Trojan heart designed to protect you
From letting your compulsions infect you
Surprise, surprise, safety comes with a price:
Wrapped up so tight not even the feelings can get through
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4. |
Curtain Call
01:50
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This isn’t a repeat of “Last January”
This is Death in June
A six-year sentence punctuated by a blood-red dot
And the rips in your tights where the flesh pokes through
Because you’ve gotten so
Used to wearing costumes
They’ve started to replace your skin
Cut and sewn, formed and molded
Every detail designed to replicate perfection
And were you lying next to me
While you were lying next to me--
Whispering rehearsed sweet nothings
Through your photogenic teeth?
What’s a disguise
But a lie for your body?
What’s your body
But a collection of lies?
I went home with nothing more than
A set of stray hairs stuck to my chest
Every single one a different color
You played the part of a person
Who longed for something more than
Someone to reach up her hand-sewn skirt
And you pulled me in closer
With plagiarized body language
Promises never meant to keep
Made with bedroom eyes in love-stained sheets
I’ve seen you more naked than nude
I have peeled back your skin
And though you bare it all for the cameras
There’s still something hidden behind the curtains
If my flesh were stretched over someone as ugly inside as you
I’d hide too
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5. |
On the Waterfront
02:26
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And it feels like I am
Standing on the waterfront
Watching everything I ever was
And everything I could be
Drift away as it’s set ablaze
And I want to be aboard the ship
Desperately seeking purpose in
The flames
I live to die alone
With lies of love and tales of
Longing like,
“I could have been somebody.”
I grasp for words I heard somewhere before
But my hands slip through and I am
Gripping nothing
And it feels like I am staring
Into mirrors at no reflection
Blank, and empty, and endless
I search through every book I find
For the perfect word to steal
The one that best describes this life
But still I come up short
‘Cause nobody’s dreamed one up yet
And Shakespeare? He’s still dead
Nostalgia kills
You can’t prepare for what’s coming
When you’re always looking back
But the songs your friends loved
That you never knew the words to
Linger long after the people have left
The pyre sings my name
The call of the void is sweet
Road maps are timelines you can travel
Here we were lovers but down the street we were “friends”
So I go slowly when the light turns green
To put off crossing into the present tense
And if home is where the heart is then
I gave my home away
In fragments like glass after I struck it
And as I’m clutching my fist
Watching the boat turn to ash
I’m still learning words to songs
I haven’t sung yet
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6. |
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The dream tastes sweet
But when shoved into your mouth
It rots your teeth
With sugar-coated myths of
Love unconditional
From sinister, manipulative hands
That push your face down into the muck
Then ask you why your lungs are blocked
The dream, it taunts
From atop glass ceilings
And it haunts
Like ghosts wholly American
Inexorable spirits of the living
Who refuse real death
And thrive on your fear
When it’s they who should be afraid
Of you, your anger, the greatest gift
You have against machines
Fabricating fantasies
To stalk you in your sleep
And take what they looted
From your history
So I hope you find the power
In your lungs to
Scream into their faces
And when the void never answers back
Don’t let it swallow you into the Nothing
Because you are art at any volume
And you can drown out the white noise
Some dreams deserve to burn
Some dreams are made to die
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7. |
Psalm 38:9
02:04
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I watched a man die
And where was God
When he took his big, final breath?
I stared at his face
To find what was left
I’ve watched a man dying
And I don’t know which is worse
When I look into his eyes
I see God
I see lies
It’s not fair, I know
There is sorrow where the laughter grows
Two branches of the same tree
One for you and one for me
You taught me to pray
Now I’m hoping for a quick end
My model for God
Always rubbing my nose in the stains of death
My father told me
“Son, you can’t kill time.
But time will surely kill you.”
And then he drank down
All his prayers by the gallon
Each one went unanswered
I swore that I would
Never be like you
What a tired cliché
My knuckles, ripped from
Beating myself up,
Proves the fruit didn’t fall so far from the tree
Now did it?
I can’t go on like this
I am falling apart
When I see nothing behind your eyes
I know I’m watching as the last of God dies
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8. |
Old Scratch
02:11
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Tell me what it’s like to move on
Tell me what it means to grow
Tell me that I won’t be this way forever
I always find myself at the right place
At the wrong time
Left to rot in the same spot
Crumbling while life forgets about me
So find me rooted in the soil
Deep enough to unearth my forefathers’ remains
Don’t break your back trying to
Pull me from the earth
Don’t waste your pain on me
When I reach out with my jagged limbs
They splinter and plummet to the ground
So pieces of me can be stripped and pulped
To make the paper where I write down my confessions
You’ve heard them all before
But still I carve the words into my skin
Tell me
How to leave this place
The seasons change but I remain the same
I’ve grown to stand the winter
I can live in the grey
I’m not afraid of the axe
I can withstand the ache
But if you swing it at me
Don’t be surprised when your elbows break
I wait
Because my weight
Anchors me to the ground
The worst advice that I ever got was
“You’ve got to make yourself move on”
It’s what they say when they don’t care enough
To sever the roots
To really cut through
And I’ve tried
But all I’ve got to show
Is mud on my name and on my feet below
And a string of people who’ve gotten hurt
After they’ve given up trying to pull me from the dirt
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9. |
Horoscope Nine
00:48
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When you were born
The stars didn’t even blink.
They walked on past without turning their heads
Like God stepping over a termite.
Cancer and Virgo and Pisces
Are just crude shapes made up of stars
Nowhere within reach of each other
Strung together with the fabrics
Of men who clung to superstition.
Scorpio and Gemini and Leo
Look down at you and see nothing.
Forget their shapes.
Look up and see nothing.
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10. |
Paradise Lost
01:55
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Don’t let them see you cry
Don’t let them see you weak
Don’t give them any indication
That you’re human
Because if they know you can bleed
Then they know that they can kill you
And if you’re mortal
It means they own you
Shave your head
To keep their fingers out of your hair
And swing whatever weapons you can make
From what you’ve got
They’ll claim they sculpted you from clay
To justify leaving their fingerprints on your face
But they who say they made you
In their own image are only playing God
The absent Fathers returning when the tithe is due
And when they tell you
That you’re one of the lucky ones
Make them regret they spoke
Because their words are never gospel
Your kind were the first
To make God weep
Tell me that’s not power
First to deny paradise
Tell me that’s not strength
Don’t let them take your body
Don’t let them take you
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Time and Pressure St. Louis, Missouri
Hardcore from the Gateway City.
Safe Inside Records
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