Shaken ‘Leaf

The nature of beasts

Soiled hands and feet

Finger bowls and finely marbled flesh

Cannibals at the first sign of distress

Foam and froth

Wane and flicker

Conceding beneath the weight

Emerging corporeal

Sinewless shadows

Birthed from the pushing of palms

All maw and malice

Like forcing puzzle pieces

Anchors to till the soil as we walk

Counting blessings on severed fingers

Sold it all for bee stings and bean stalks

Glass slippers and swollen toes

A crapshoot with loaded dice

Roulette with a rifle

Geocentricism

Bodies to never be explored

Risen up to our ankles

Wet behind the ears

Mint green

The unmistakable smell of fear

Lingering

Thick enough to cut with a knife

The source of all things

The mother of invention

Drawing hearts in the condensation

Sad, really

Fated to fade and disappear

And they look nothing like that

Don’t know where you got that idea from, kid

Olympus Mons

Never you

Pass on through

And still
Running marathons

Weaving in and out
between the synapses like traffic cones

Ostleress of the dark kingdom

The one whom follows hell

Leaky faucets are easily overlooked,
bleeding the last of our water

What’s gone missing

Snared on a loose nail

The sore thumb gets hammered down

Pointless as the whittling of pegs

Unrelenting, cursed vision

The Star Man is burning

Screams, never ending

Breadcrumbs in the land of sparrows

Unraveling with each step

Towards the very eye of the storm

A fourteen mile ascension away from man

Divine iron from Littlest Mother

Warmed and reborn in the wake of its open mouth

To forge a blade

To cut out each and every heart of this wretched worm

Untitled Quickie

Tongue in cheek,
Birdless beak
Dip your toes, then run for the hills
Sometimes the quickest ‘coasters
are the cheapest thrills
Bluest pills
The trick is
to choose the hand that grips more tightly
Ever so slightly
Watch the sweat bead down
each of the fat man’s chins
Black toothed grins
Pray that the Cheshire Cat
never truly makes sense
Weeping rivers for a mouth
chapped shut in a frozen frown
So fell the strongest of us
The wisest
The greatest
Trident to chest
Brick by brick
Shrug it off
A service of swollen lips
Lemon juice and salted rims
Another one down
in a war
we can not possibly win

8/24/12 MARRIAGES, CHELSEA WOLFE, RUSSIAN CIRCLES (Part III)

    Oh, god…it’s been forever since I’ve been to The Triple Rock.  Well over a year, I think.  I cringe when I think of all the shows I missed last year when I was working at that fucking terrible place.  60 hour, 6 day work weeks with such scum bags, savages and juveniles.  Over a year of soul sucking bullshit and  barely any live music…but that all of that is over now.  I walked out and quit with the utmost spontaneity and have time now, have a soul to feed now.  Tonight, after waiting all summer for a decent show to go to, I made my triumphant return to one of my most favorite places in the world. 
    After failing to persuade my little brother that the bands playing tonight are very much worth seeing and to come with me, I set off without  him.  I got there around 9, 9:10.  There was one parking space left, just for me as if Vishnu were saying, “Oh, man…Eddy’s gonna be here tonight, FINALLY.  Let’s save a spot for him, he’s a really cool guy.”  I seized it, post haste.  K, parked and went inside.  Whaaaaaaat?  16 bucks?  Nice, I thought it was supposed to be $18?  Awesome.  BUT, fuck…it was packed tight.  I made my way down to the pit.  I was way back, almost at the stairs.  I strategically surveyed the land, but alas, nowhere to go.  I hunkered down and braced myself.  I’ve missed this feeling.  How to describe it…hmm…it was like waiting for a massive tsunami to break over you.  The anticipation was incredible.  Like a knife hovering, slowly getting closer to breaking the skin.  I had butterflies in my stomach and one of those nicotine leg shakes.  You know what I mean, right?  I’m sure smokers and former smokers know what I‘m referring to.  A lad behind me says something along the lines of “C’MON, I WANNA SEE SOME GODDAMN MARRIAGES.”  Christ, me too.
    After what felt like a coon’s age, whatever the age of a coon is…Marriages comes out to semi-uproarious cheers.  Friggin’ adorable Emma Rundle.  To everyone else it’s Emma Ruth Rundle, but, you know, we’re friends and everything so I don’t have to use her middle? name.  I’ve very much got a  thing for womens who play the geeter.  I likes them…I likes them a lot.  Oh, and she was doing the vocalizations for Marriages too.  On bass ’tar was Greg Burns of Red Sparowes fame and on them drums was a little taste of what was to come; Dave Turncrantz (of Russian Circles).
    Crash and ebb.  Ohhhhhhhhh, yes.  Heavenly.  It has begun!  But, sadly, it was fleeting…  They started off amazing and I loved it, but Emma has a kinda Tori Amos quality to her voice and quite frankly, I don’t care much for Tori Amos.  After a few songs, I grew tired and wanted their set to end.  Dave was amazing, Mr. Burns was…eeeexcellent (get it!?) and Emma, too, was wonderful…on guitar.  Enough of this.  What else you got for me?
    Marriages wrapped up and got their shite off the stage.  What the fuck!?  The crowd didn’t make their usual nicotine/alcohol migration.  Well…some did, but for the most part, their numbers were still unshaken.  I managed to find myself a better spot, closer, nonetheless.  Pedestrian left, stage right, middleish.  I would still have to crane my neck to see, though..  To my surprise, some guy in front of me actually turns around and asks if I could see alright.  I was dumbfounded and had to ask him to repeat himself.  “Yeah, I can see.” I replied…which was a lie, but he wasn’t the one blocking my view.  Wait a minute…a tall bloke in the pit who actually isn’t an asshole and actually cares if they are hindering a shorter fellow‘s experience?  What is this world coming to?  After this set though, I would ironically turn out to be the asshole as I would keep accidentally hitting his backpack after I would wipe the sweat off my brow or fix my glasses.  I apologized for this, but still, who the fuck wears a backpack into a bar?  What the fuck could you possibly need from there?  In.  A.  Bar?  Fuck that guy, he’s still an asshole.  It’s not like he was a photographer and that was his camera bag or anything. 
    Anyways.  Some lads dressed like they were going to a not really that close of a friend’s funeral set their equipment up and sound checked.  In this newly settled land, it turned out some French? pieces of shit were my neighbors.  Christ they were fucking dumb and SUCH douches.  While Chelsea Wolfe and her band were setting up, they were screaming something retarded about Metallica, Lou Reed and tables?  “The world is full of idiots and these are fine examples.” I thought. 
    Chelsea’s set starts.  Absolutely incredible.  Badass Asian mang on drums, some dude who looks like Brian of comedy duo briTANick on bass and electronic shite, and of course Chelsea Wolfe on the geetar and vocals.  She looked and sounded like…an unknowing widow, waiting for her husband in the rain, to come back home.  Like how I imagine a Siren must sound.  I swayed ever so slightly to her.  It was like a full body massage for the soul.  I was hopelessly entranced, the spell broken only by the aforementioned French scum fucker behind me singing at the top of his lungs along with her.  You motherfucker.  If I had more of a disregard for the law, and any taste at all for a brutal anal reaming, I would’ve gutted the baguette lad right then and there.  I mowed over the thought, engaging and disengaging the safety mechanism on my switch-blade in my right pocket that keeps the pointy part from accidentally flipping open an stabbing me in the side.  Nah, not worth it.  I also pondered the passive aggressive route.  Turning around and extending my hand to him for a shake and saying, “Hey, thanks, man.  The reason why I came here tonight is to pay to have you sing horrendously out of tune in my fucking ear.”  But, nope, I haven’t got any yarbles.  Just stood there and took it, empty sacked like some kinda…sack that happens to be empty.  Grin and bear, grin and bear.  Chelsea wraps up.  A set I enjoyed immensely, in spite of such fucktardery.  It’s time now for some Russian Circles.
    I gained some more ground and acquired myself a fairly nice viewing gap behind some relatively short folks in front.  Sweeeeeeeeet spot.  Now, to be completely honest…I wasn’t so excited to see Russian Circles.  I blame my little brother.  He’d not really heard much or any Russian Circles and had to look ‘em up to see if they were worth the time.  The verdict was that there were not.  And with that, the seed of doubt was sown in my own mind.  A seed that was scorched and salted the very moment they started playing.  Such just indescribable energy.  To watch them on YouTube or listen to their studio versions just does not do them justice.  And by the time they played the second song of their set, “Harper Lewis”, oh boy was that seed just utterly obliterated.  I couldn’t help but notice again, the fools surrounding me.  There was this one guy right in fucking front.  He’d been standing there since Chelsea Wolfe’s set and possibly long before that, absolutely stoic.  Nothing remarkable about the lad except that he didn’t move a fucking muscle.  And he was kinda tall too.  A tall, emotionless, motionless muppet who was probably blocking some poor sap’s view.  “WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN HERE?” I thought to myself.  So many people here I want to murder…and there was an even worse lad behind me this time around.  Throughout R.C.’s set, he air guitarred, and made the dumbest remarks ever uttered.  “Play CARP!” he shouted in one instance.  “Carp” he says…like the fish.  The song he was referring to is Carpe.  Now I’m not absolutely certain, but I’m fairly sure that it’s pronounced “KAR-PAY” as in “Carpe Diem“.  What a fucking twit.  Know your shit before you open your mouth or just shut up.  Morons.  And this was a different person, but earlier on, to the left of me, I heard someone say something like “Isis were the first post-rock band I’d ever heard.  I had to listen to them eight or nine times before it hit me how good they were.”  So fucking dumb.  I hate sub-genres.  Quite frankly, they get too…how do I say…divided?  Is that the right word for it?  Like, I have no idea what the fuck metal-grinding-math-prog-technical-core is.  Anyways, not to be a stickler, but Isis were not “post-rock”.  They were post-metal.  Post rock is more along the lines of Explosions in the Sky, Grails, Mogwai, GY!BE, etc.  Please, get your shit right so you don’t sound like an idiot.  I would love to go somewhere one day and think “Ahhhh…these are my people.” but that has just never happened.  Whenever I go to a show, I instantly get the feeling that 86% of the people there are clueless, 93X (the local Disney owned “hard rock” station here) listening idiots.  Anyway, to continue on about the amoeba behind me, he kept talking about how he desperately wanted to push forward, but did not know how to do so without shoving and being an ass.  Now, let me tell you something.  Where I was standing, I was literally about 3 feet from the stage.  This meant that the guy was about 5 feet from the stage.  How much closer do you want to get, stupid kid?  And why do you want to get so close?  So you can tell them to play “KARP!” ?  Fucking.  Idiot.  I waited for him to push forward.  Should he lay one cell of a limb on me, I had an elbow or two with his face’s name on it.  C’mon, sport.  Push me.
    Enough about the lemmings around me.  ‘Circles were just GODLY.  The French monkey I was talking about before…after Chelsea’s set, he asked; “How is anyone supposed to top that!?  How is someone supposed to follow that!?“ and I wondered the same thing…  They did it though.  Russian Circles just absolutely killed it.  Dave especially, was spectacular.  He’s always good,  but this time around, I felt like he brought more energy and passion?  Played with just that much more intensity.   Throughout their set, that doubt I had in my mind was just picked apart.  For some reason, I had it in my mind that R.C. was all about Dave’s drumming, that there wasn’t much to them and there were much better bands than them.  How foolish I was…  It’s like they were saying to me, “Naw, son.  We’re pretty fucking epic.”  They just proved to me how much depth they really have.  For some reason, I had the notion that  their instrumentals did not have the moving power that other post-rock bands like Explosions in the Sky or Red Sparowes have.  Like Pelican, but not as good.  NOT FUCKING SO.  I have no idea why I thought this, but I’m ecstatic to have been proven so very very wrong.

Lucy

And I will avenge

And I will avenge

All of our fallen limbs

But to what end?

Oh, I would gladly dig two graves

Give each and every eye 'til the world has gone blind

Darling, darling

Can't you see you're trespassing?

With all your vibrating vectors

You pass unhindered through each sector

Stepping on toes wherever you may go

And us?

Forever on stilts and eggshells

Forced from our homes

Forced to dwell...

Beyond your reach

In caves, under rocks

A diet of crow and cake

Egg on our face

Like scurrying millipedes

from your artificial light

But, my dear

You've greatly underestimated

The resilience of our tongues

We've grown accustomed to...

Grown a taste for...

The wounds that we lick

To piss and vinegar

and a mouthful of blood with each sip

We've become that which feeds on that which feeds on

For, ever stronger are the bones that have broken and calcified

A prison break from 'neath your ribcage

Crawling through your spray-painted city of worms

Oh, Pyrite Priestess to ferry us into the fire...

Won't you let me show you how to dance between the rain drops?

Your wrath.

Your rage.

It is WAR, we wage

With your head upon this pike

to forever proclaim

That our hearts are at long last free

To ride the Eastward winds

Wherever their true homes should lie...