Another day, another plague, murder hornets on their way. Daily lies desensitize-- incessant terror normalized. All hope seems but a distant dream drifting away with each deceit. We've come to know a curse of old-- only misery will be all we'll know. Another year, a new host of fears to keep us fed as death draws near. Preoccupied as we die-- wildfires blot out the sky. Clowns at the helm overwhelm, inundate, indoctrinate, buy and sell. Told to forego all you know by those who thrive when your eyes are closed. O, what could have been-- what could have been has been and will be again. So long to linear time-- fate's not a straight line, it was all inside my mind. Murder hornets swarming borders and seas. Ever looming a new brewing disease. All the figures' names change but the game stays the same-- the waves erase the faces. How many lives lost? How many lives does one man's ego cost? Abyss yawning as the new day's dawning.
Bad Taxidermy Love can seem just like a dog’s life, short and sweet ‘til it just can’t walk right. I guess it goes for most everybody else, I just won’t put it on the shelf and hope it’ll grow and flourish and flower knowing all the while the thing’s gone sour. Some vague hope, some brave joke is prodding you on and luring you in to an illusion of an image with no reference. I feel like I’ve died a thousand times hoping with each death I’d grow more wise. So shed my skins and let’s begin again and again, and when will it end? My heavens, they turn against me. Well, I’ve got brief stints of peace between my purgatories. Well, maybe it’s not so bad. Maybe the lows I’ve had will enrich the highs I’ll have. I got a lot for my time. I know the world won’t stand still for my desires. Each vision is a revision to be revised. I thought I knew, but I never know. Well, I feel like a volcano ready to explode and cover all the old with new framework to unfold. Well, I’m breaking out of the mold. Let lava cool into new land, expanding the perimeter to understand. You only knew the first tier of the facade that fortified my fears. Well, now that it’s all laid bare there’s just no room for the gloom and despair. Just remember, just remember to forget, to forget just what this place meant, and watch all our amazement become subject to displacement and it'll all just fade and we’ll forget what this place meant.
Remnants I change my state of mind like I change the station on the radio when there’s no good shit on, on and on and on. Here we go through the rigmarole. Oh no, over and over and over again. Here we go through the rigmarole. Oh no, over and over and over and over and over and over. . . Again, I lost a friend. All extremes burn out in the end. Yes, it’s really asking too much for you to love me forever and ever when we know it’s never enough. Well, I don’t-- no, we don’t wanna settle, ‘cause we won’t ever let it test our mettle. Used to fall for that sweet old lie that someone would love me all of the time. Well, I thought our love would never die but I was in denial so I taxidermized it and put it on a shelf in a big empty room collecting the dust, the remnants of me and you dissipating in thin air and passing through the half-cracked window in our big empty room.
F.O.W.L. For the ones we love: Another fine line crossed makes three wrongs right. Take two bad days make a solid night. No, a bottle never set nobody free. What’s a liquid lover gonna do for me? Wanna make it so good, but it’ll never be. For the ones we hate: Can’t keep away, I try to move on but you want me to stay. For the ones we’ll fuck but never date: I can’t wait. If I stay too long, I’ll fade away but I just can’t seem to stay away. Can’t wait, can’t stay, won’t go, just fade. -Written and sung by Freddy
Girtha Girtha, will you have this dance with me? We’ll rock and sway into the night, your frail hands relaxed in mine, clasping, just grasping for some life. Well, we don’t need to pout and let them win ‘cause we both know that we don’t belong here to begin-- we didn’t come here on a whim. We lost control when they took us in. Well, I’m here to clear my name, and you’re here ‘cause you forgot your daughter’s name. I got pinned for a bag that wasn’t mine, and you got turned in for your entropic mind. Well, despite the odds I wouldn’t have it any other way, I’ll face those odds if it means making your day, so lead on, lead away and take me to that special place of your heyday. Girtha, will you have this dance with me? We’ll rock and sway and dream. We’ll waltz all about the room and show all these old suckers how we do. Well, we don’t need to pout and let them win ‘cause we both know that we don’t belong here to begin. We didn’t come here on a whim. Well, here we are.
Eat Shit and Die We need to unlearn everything we think we know. Self-proclaimed patriots maintain the status quo. Red-painted pigs, oblivious to the creed of their own country, what obvious hypocrisy. Yesterday’s rebels are today’s perfect pawns. The sun has long since set and there’s no sign of dawn. The world is on fire, end times are on the rise. These greedy motherfuckers need to eat shit and die. Bootlicking yellowbelly sons of bitches oppressing themselves by protecting the rich with false, worn narratives that scapegoat the poor, never once questioning how they profit from what you ignore. We need to unlearn everything we think we know. Illusory certainties shatter, ebb, and flow. Some humble humility, some much needed doubt to loosen the fixity and throw the fuckers out. Bootlicking yellow-belly sons of bitches widen the divide with their misled isms: “Protect and serve” means abuse and exploit, “Liberty for all” the grand illusion of choice. Fat in wallet yet bereft in spirit. If their god ever sang out, they would not hear it. Your god is mute ‘cause your god is hate, pray all you want for Satan awaits cackling as you pack all your precious shit in a sack on your back for your lavish trip to heaven or whatever you see fit, but really you just fucking die, and that’s it.
You Just Die, and That's It There is no happy place you go, no rejoice, only the void, deafeningly devoid of any semblance of joy, indifferent and mute darkness absolute. Don't hold your breath. Nobody needs eternity. I’m good with death. Isn’t it enough? Reality’s fraying seams dissemble and spread. Certainty’s the enemy-- the sentiment’s dead. Swept away with entropy the ideas in your head. O to believe in some grand prophecy, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Preorder Your Casket
Preorder your casket,
plan your life thoroughly.
Rewrite your revised
and perfected eulogy.
Well, here are the ills
and here are the cures:
For lethargy, there’s energy,
for apathy, there’s family,
for suffering, we endure.
Here take this, this quick fix
for your anxiety.
Trade your will for this pill.
Bow down to the monotony.
Well, we are not gods
but we can prepare for the rain,
for the wars, for the odds.
We can afford our own funeral,
our own deceit.
Let us free, let us lie.
Give us our papers, our receipt
and let us die.
Take your pick and stick with it.
Don’t you know you can’t have both?
Can’t be free and have security, oh no,
‘cause hardened hearts don’t compromise
and horse-blinded eyes don’t recognize
the space between the far extremes, oh no.
Well, we are not gods
but we can prepare for the rain,
for the wars, for the odds.
We can afford our own funeral,
our own deceit.
Let us free, let us lie.
Give us our papers, our receipt
and let us die.
End Times (Major) I want to put in a good word but the world gets more and more absurd. It gets stranger and stranger day after day, yeah. Florida man is at it again, he’s gone and married a gator in his meth den. Well, it’s alright, I don’t mind, do what ya gotta do, I guess it takes all kinds. Well, I know that sometimes nothing feels right, but even though it feels like end times I wanna be besides you. Let’s break this daily dread, let’s see what we could do instead of whine and complain about the same old things. If these are truly our last days, let’s you and me get out of this place. It’ll be alright, we’ll keep our sights high, ‘cause everything is good and bad at the same time. But let’s not generalize ‘cause that’s the reason why we got here in the first place. I know it’s hard to see straight when there’s another tragedy every day guaranteed. It’s not hard to feel detached and numb, caught up in the humdrum. No, it’s not hard to feel detached and numb, but what have we become? I know sometimes that nothing don’t ever, no, don’t ever feel alright. But even though it feels like end times, I wanna be besides you. Well, I know that sometimes nothing feels right, but even though it feels like end times I wanna be besides you.
Sludgement Day The time has come for everyone to come completely undone, split limb from limb, stripped from what’s written: This hell we’re in. Freed from the lies, from the ties that bind us and blind us and try to divide us to snuff out the rising and rising of the tide of their looming demise. Take a deep breath, forget the presets. What’s the condition of your conditioning? It’s about time we rethink what we enshrine, and what we reject, defected for our defects, ordained by obsolete precepts. Well, we don’t need that, we can see that it’s just a ploy to destroy our feedback. I don’t buy what they say ‘cause judgment day happens every single fucking day. Another city on a hill slips into the landfill where all suffer in the sludge, king, pauper, jester, and judge. Give it up, all you got, let the prophets of profit rot and watch the propped-up puppets drop as the blood of the mud clots. Choking on the ocean, drowning in air, reaping what they’ve sown: This hell they’ve prepared. Finally, the misery shifts to those who need an exorcism of egotism-- just let it die. Take a look, it’s in your book-- you’ll pay for your pride. If you believe just what you read then it’s eye for an eye, but if I’m blind then your blind then who’s to decide which way to go when no one knows their way through the dark? The words they feed us are just fodder to breed us so we each do our part to fan the flames of fear-- but we know the names for whom Sludgement Day is here. I feel a change of tide inside the minds of those for whom the farce was designed. Some stay a slave to the cave, but we embrace the light face to face. The world that raised you is fading, your teachers all gone, common sense uncommon. Unlearn the words blurred by the herd. Rising from the ruins, a murmur is heard. Sludgement Day is coming soon. The rising tide in full bloom. Never-ending impending doom. Sludgement Day will come for you.
Vultures Eating Vultures He was old and mean blood dripping from his beak— whenever I remember him I can hear him speak. He says, “Let go. Lie down. You won’t hear a sound next time I come around.” He dug his talons deep into the deceased rendering its tendons undoing his own kind’s seams. Then the whole pack dug in their masks to their brother or their mother or whoever was fixed for the feast. “Lie down. Let go.” Whenever I see him I swear I see someone I know. When I die, would you mind picking up the scraps off my spine and back? I’ll have had a body to live through and now it’s my gift to you and I’ll course through your heart a pulse that knows not time. There is no time— when your tomb is the womb and the womb is your food; you’re imbued through and through with a lust to renew with a thirst to consume the waste of the wasted and erase death from the face of the pavement. I’m just a bloody mess— take this burden off my chest: skin and veins, nerves and tissues; come undone these fibrous sinews lay to rest these incessant issues save me from such common misuse. You’ve got it right— there’ll be no decay tonight: the old are dead and the young are fed, ancestors reunite. When I die, would you mind picking up the scraps off my spineless back? I’ll have had a body to live through and now it’s my gift to you. “Let go. Lie down.” Someday we’ll meet again but I won’t know how. I remember the first time I saw you rummaging around in my yard— you were all huddled round the freshly discarded carcass of a soul just departed and flown off to who knows where— you don’t care, just as long as there’s somewhere to drag it off to and clear it out and feed those awful, greedy mouths. . . but in a dream I saw the scene in reverse: it was obscene how serene you all conversed like surgeons hovering above your patient like masked craftsmen so diligent gently piecing each rib to each knob beaks, like tweezers, ease in to do the job finishing the frame of the ship feeding her meat as if she were your chick and tucking her in with a nice, warm pelt. It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen, thought my heart would melt. You hoist the mast now that death is past and nudge your fledgling on to set sail. You watch your daughter rise as you hiss your goodbyes and cry your mo(u)rning wails as you prepare for her retreat for summer is coming and the sun is setting in the east.
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You can find lyrics for all our songs on Bandcamp.
For more of James’s writing, check out: jameskwapisz.com
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GRAMPFATHER 