Lyrics by Bryson Schmidt

The Metaphysical Tech-Support Hotline

Trader Joe’s Frosted Mini Wheats

This cereal's a distraction as much as my phone is. Has anyone ever spent time alone? It's impossible. Staring in my head at its voices and its wires, so eloquently dangling carrots to keep the real thing at large.

Doing the dishes alone with no podcast on, check my proverbial shoulder like that's inherently wrong. Our pets don't understand the lawn guy, but he's stressing them out. We can't explain to them, so what makes us think god is gonna help?

Life's a sedative; but why do we need calming down? I didn't get off the couch to just feel bad. It's a useless game without prehensile brains.

They say "How do you get so much done?" Well, how do you not? With those extra hours, can you shut your brain off? How do you snooze the silence?

God is a Scared Kid at a Middle School Science Fair

The old anglepoise lamp, holding strong at 12am. Not top of the class and this volcano idea is far from new. Paper mache galaxies surround the wastebasket. Is this DNA or just the details of Elmer's glue?

It's just bad art. Or bad code. The class might laugh, but I won't. No one's at fault; who could've known? The class might laugh, but I won't.

Stage fright the next day in the hallway, seeing better ideas-Play-Doh dialectics, toothpick phenomenology, a colored shoebox that can bypass death. If only, they had the bigger box of crayons with teal and harmony.

If you sit still you can feel the Earth collecting dust in the garage.

Snakes in the Walls

There's a beige, tree-painted wall behind my headboard. It starts shaking out of nowhere. My brother, you look concerned, and so sure. Saying, "There're snakes behind your head and through the rafters, writhing when they're upset." And I can't prove you wrong, but what an odd stance to take to heart.

Why the fuck would you start there? No, it's not God. There's no creatures in the walls. Twin theologian bed-frames could've solved anything. Since when can I not talk to you? Talk to you. Talk to you.

It's just the other side of the wall. It's just dad on the bench grinder. It's just the washing machine. I was just drumming with my feet again. You've got every little answer-how they all got in there, how they're living off cellulose, why the book of Joshua doesn't apply. But you can't work backwards. There are simpler answers.

Dog

Locking eyes with the dog in the middle of grace. He sits with an anarcho-primitivist smile on his face. Not getting pissed at the ritual must be pretty hard. Because I agree, it's not more interesting than anything in the yard.

Are you picking up what I'm not? For what it's worth, I think you're better off. Are you picking up what I'm not?

Fairfield Calvary Chapel Abortion Clinic

We all say, "Of course they go to heaven." Romans 2:12, you skip the law. Between their first breaths and bicycles, fate's in the air. If life's a flash, who's counting how we get there?

Fortified with foes on my lawn. Sweet Pastor Mark fumes across the street. Their fear versus my medical and divinities degrees. Like Christ, I am slow to speak.

It's always self sacrifice. No one forced me to be here. I'm not waking up, hurting my church cause it feels fun. I can rest well with misery, there's no millstone around my neck.

Home to Any Possibility

Kim G*tty’s got you chewing on your cheek in between shifts with the gag. Top slave on their finest dinner trays, with Machiavellian aromatics.

Get your hands off my future. Get your claws off my time. You didn't teach me how to write this.

Which of your kids are rooting for divorce? You could guess if you tried. The great martyr's shock collar rules your life and barely fits around your neck.

Get your filth off my Sundays. Get your claws off my 9pm. You didn't teach me how to write shit.

Worms

I'm a sheep on a Boeing cattle run. And for a split moment on the tarmac, the air traffic control guy wins. Standing carelessly in the sun, boarding group vitamin-d. Oh, I think that's where I'd rather be.

When it comes to life, someone's kicking your ass with half the dreams, one-third of the cash.

Felt malaise in an Austin corner store. Bought gentrified canned sardines, gave a $20, only got $2 back. But did you hear that new study? Touching microbes in the soil supposedly works better than Prozac.

When it comes to life, worms are kicking our ass, with hourly dreams, no concept of cash.

Carsick on Inisherin

I need privacy, but can't stand to be alone. Despair's looming over the both.

It's gonna hurt to no end, I know. An arm, a leg, a finger, a friend, a window. I'll trade your shield from despair in my life for a frequency that I heard one time.

I need privacy, but can't stand to be alone. Despair's looming over the both. And I'm carsick, sleep deprived, hungry for a fist fight. Subtract, subtract, subtract, subtract until something feels right.

Life's just heavy. It's elation or grief, and when it's mundane you feel the weight that it shouldn't be. Isolate the variables - no more Padraic, no more pints- if I'm still up at night, I'll know why.

Sam and Another Kid “Run Away” from Fairhope

I've got a bindle to hold both the Game Boy's and a sadness-shaped hole. Leaving my yard but I'm not sure that I'm leaving home.

There's a holographic pain. Some itinerant life flashes morse code from the blue sky, and it costs a lifetime to play.

I've been dreaming past telephone lines, planning how I'd brave the rain. Something on TV implied that's what I'm supposed to do. My friends aren't brave enough.

There's nothing to figure out.

Michelangelo, ECD

I never called it fine art. It's advertising with cherubs and forlorn saints on the stone ceiling of which I'm not interested or even vaguely aware of. It's another's religious fetish; and it's tacky as hell, but it swiftly becomes my will when the Medicis pay the bills. The Medici's pay the bills. The Medici's pay the bills.

I'm a chameleonic propagandist. I can pitch, perform and lie. Pitch, perform and lie. Quieting inner, fervent atheism for shelter, security, milk, honey and paint supplies. It's a job, it's a craft, it's design that the materials obscure, and I'm the first to be a shill when the Medicis pay the bills. The Medicis pay the bills. The Medicis pay the bills.

What's the point of a bed if you can't sleep at night? What's the point of a house if you can't live with yourself? What's the point of these things if you can't stomach to think, you didn't even have to sell your soul?

A life if but just one vote. Lest the history books immortalize and multiply a corpse's ballot upwards of a dozen, a hundred, one-thousand times. Such legacy anxiety. But what do I owe the future? I only ask because it's too late. I know deep, deep down that I am only what I create. What happens when the context dissolves with the world, and that ceiling is my mirror?

No new caveats, no framing, no translations, no stories, no reasons, no history to tell, no Condivi, no Ghirlandaio, no Caprese, no Florence, no Raphael, no Romans, no pope, no normal excuses, no passions, no skills, no Medicis, no bills, just the work.

Cleaning Basil Out of the Pool

You can swap cleaning basil out of the pool or feeling lost a potluck for squinting eyes at the beach to see you. It's a two-bedroom brain. The lives are furniture, you have to trade.

Watching ants move around a stick feels sacred; but not like that stomach ache outside Dayton, you gave me great advice and I didn't take it. It's a two-bedroom brain. Pick one scent of love, three textures of pain.

Time handles out memories like some shit on a shelf. Let me deal with clutter; I can prove it wrong. Time's tossing out memories like some junk at a yard sale, trying to get paid. Just don't force my hand, I know I have to trade.

I'm no bird of the air, I'm no lily of the field. And I'm not quite god. I don't know their lives, I don't know their songs.

[Medley from previous songs]

You Can Only Mourn Surprises

Complicated Relationship with Hope

You can only mourn surprises.

I don’t want hope; I don’t need it. It’s not worth the taste that gets left with me. Get hopes up, get haunted with three years to purge the damn thing.

Black Rose Colored Glasses

You get dressed, linoleum ground floor—like magnets to your knees. Filling up prescriptions on the clock, wondering if it’s what you need.

Black rose colored glasses staring straight into all my friends eyes. One of us was damaged on the sidewalk watching the map get burned alive. I can’t deem it unfair, there’s no standard ratio of joy-to-time. But it’s too much. I’m too tired. Too concerned for your life.

You said “Why bother decorating? I won’t be here long.” I wanted to ask which way you meant that; but in the moment, it would’ve sounded so wrong. I got stuck with chemical hand-me-downs that your brothers didn’t have. Pasadena’s still the end game, where you’ll find yours.

Exit One-Hundred and Whatever

I’ve been looking for love in details on the ground outside any Georgia rest stop. And panning for hope until I’m brought to tears or someone dares me to stay here.

The lifeline is the pipedream. Why does it feel imperative to leave?

Juice Boxes at the Finish Line

I’m never gonna fall asleep quite right. I’m a blanket on a cold, white floor—fluorescently bored. I’m up scanning Craigslist for apartments for the reasons my friends smoke weed, minus the release.

You’re hell-bent on wasting the primes of your lives just fucking hanging out in different cities. And I’m up with a theory pinned on my wall—the red string circumscribes green-lighting a vice, but not quite.

Insomnia’s not cool anymore. The lights are on, you can’t brag about being bored. Insomnia’s never been cool before. The light’s are on, everyone knows you’re torn.

Sunburnt

Twig crowns on oblivion. Like Paul, he was crazy too. It’s the same, worn Foucauldian metaphors when talking about how to talk to you.

I got sunburnt by the void. I’m sending you postcards, I’m outside. I’m wanting to show you the dark; I want it to make sense as light.

Same notes since grade school. Changing strings doesn’t change the song. They’re teaching harmonies deep in the bunker, but a new chord doesn’t make it not sound wrong.

I got sunburnt by the void. This is your postcard, come outside. How can I show you the dark? How will it make sense as light?

I can’t mourn you when I’m the one who’s changed.

Fog

It’s a prime time of night to walk five miles and beat the sarcastic Florida sunrise. I’ll float through streets, they’re like filing cabinets, but each is a life. That fact hurts, but it feels right. I bet they’ve got a dog, and strange grocery preferences, still in love through irrelevant differences. I forgot to grab a sweater or proper shoes. I’ve been out here for hours, still thinking of you.

I wonder where I’d pass out if I walked straight to Brooklyn. I wonder what the outlets in your room look like. You said that you could be somewhere while wishing it was different, I wonder if he knows that about you.

September 9th, 2020

I’ve been living the same day—the same window locks, and small talk at the corner store. And the same walk back to the apartment to keep toiling over what it feels like I’m being punished for.

Then I woke up to no prison guards. Split for the train. It turns out you can run from god and it ends up the same.

It's circadian rhythm—vitamin D pills, a knock off Eames chair, knock-off songs. And the sky’s inverted, like an alarm. I’ll bike back from on the bridge, wondering what it feels like I did wrong.

Then I woke up to no prison guards. Stumbled out in a haze. It turns out you can run from god, and it ends up the same.

I’ve got a paintbrush in ice called hormetic stress I wanna see used. “Have a small plot of new land at all times,” now I know that I need to.

Halloween

There’s a version of you in late mornings—in between breaths, when you’re not performing. It’s your accidental form, getting a taste of the sun from the blinds. On your pale skin, not the mask. Not concerned that the two aren’t alike.

It’s worth restarting if you are not you.

If I laid out my costumes from the last five Halloweens, then you’d never have to ask any questions about me.
Still, I can’t leave the house without my skin. It’s what I got when I came here, it seems dumb to get buried in.

Water Bottle Saké

The takeaway is not what you spend time with, but we live like it is. Your name getting carved in the monument doesn’t make you a part of it.

This place lacks poetry—from water bottle saké and bad dreams. Dandelions on baseball fields and room to heal.

Grandeur is made only of minutiae, but we don’t live like it is. I absorbed advice from that feeling that said, “be your own person, even if you hate them”

This place lacks humility—from passenger seat wisdom and bee stings. A backyard fence, awkward friends, more focus on our lives than where they’ll end.

Paprika

In an empty sky, you can never tell what’s in focus. I’ve got hormetic stress, a paintbrush in ice. We can always leave if you’d like to.

Have a small plot of new land at all times. A pipe dream on demand. It’s a lifeline.

It’s the taste of honeysuckle from all of your once-rational fears. Identity molting in the sun. I was wrong. Dreams and reality will trap you if you choose only one. It’s a lifeline.

You can only mourn surprises. Pause, start breathing, sit and know that you are breathing in. There’re endless lives for endless dreams, just keep one foot in each. Sisyphus is pushing a boulder downstream.

Find the air on your skin; the sound of the pavement as you walk over it. You can only mourn surprises. Safe from your hopes, distracted by life. You can only mourn surprises.