1. |
General Sherman
04:18
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Held collective hope that after all it won’t come true
By the time we get to you
You’ll be tired of what we do
(still there for
Hour by hour)
I waited up
Why can’t we send
My ghost instead
All we used to wish to be
Forms that covered the sky black
The nimbostratus and downpour
Lately it seems like sometimes I forget to breathe
And I don’t mean poetically
As if I can’t keep my own speed
It’s like at least subconsciously
I take in air and then release
But don’t repeat
Like I had gotten all I need
Just under halfway there
Pause just for a second
The rain keeps getting in
Can’t see our back window
Go on
Fall asleep
Cold, your forehead
Against the glass
I don’t bother anymore
With things I used to do
Honest, I won’t bother you
The instance (the relay)
Its position in space
Up ahead the streets were dead
The lantern lit a glow from above your bed
And we both noticed if you stare for long enough
The patterns start to seem like they’re no longer there
Hoped you wouldn’t mind
The only number I could try
When there was only silence on the other side,
What did it sound like?
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2. |
Idle Promise
05:12
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Pulse soared in free form
An effort to try more
Careful on calm shores
A still hand, a stale core
I walked inside, turned the key clockwise
I didn’t want you to get caught in this
So sent digressions instead
I guess it’s just the way
Everyone else was made
I hoped this time I’d stay
We can’t just build new roads
Across these empty plots of land that we don’t own
We’ll just have to rely
A little longer on our current failing infrastructure
Oceans look no deeper
Unless their buoyancy’s tested
You said it’s time to get up
The light already shown
It’s getting harder to make
Whatever I could just postpone
Til tomorrow
There was an answer I just don’t
Remember now
You used to wake up at night
You sat next to the door
You used to wonder how we could relive
All the dreams explored
The night before
You used to slow at the corners
We used to want to grow
Now we’re better off, right?
Once in a while I find myself floating
If you just stay still you won’t notice
The current pulling
Drift an undulant form
Further than seagulls will go
Left the phone beside the bed
I left the key on the desk
Whatever else I may have left
I can come and take the rest
Slow the current goes
Don’t wait up til I get home
Tow and tethered flow
I’ll be right outside the door
Don’t forget your classes start
Don’t forget to study hard
Hope you do your best, I do
Sorry I can’t be there
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3. |
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Instead of walking backwards
Instead of lying there ‘til all the blood left our heads
Instead of warming to regret
One night so far
I slept on the floor of the van
A letterhead
How close were the friends you’d never see again
How close had it all been happening
We drove beyond the pavement
We never made it to the top
Walked to see the Perseides
Only so many years with such an optimal
Zenithal hourly rate
But still the clearings
Southwest of Portland
The northeast sky
Was completely obscured by
Bright city lights
We couldn’t see anything
How can we by our own glow be polluted?
Two days so far
We met sitting in the back yard
Remembering names we haven’t heard in so long
Places we used to think we belonged
What’s it like
To have seen us again?
To be back at your old address again
Had it stayed when you had moved away?
Late the next night
We saw them cross the sky their last time
And still the bed wasn’t made to lie within it
I wasn’t home the time you came to visit
And still feel there’s something missing
Efforts to be more distant
There were no questions that you had to ask me
There were no complications as it was
We started sharing less and less
Adhesive releases if we pull gradually
Fostered unspoken disparity
Under a light it came gradually apart
Giving back half what we’re given
Opened the door to hear the street
End where the other starts
Hoping that we ever get back
Even half what we’re giving
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4. |
Master of the Atom
06:40
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I wrote as fast as I could, almost illegible
All interrupted thoughts and vague embellishments
I didn’t want to show how much I didn’t know
My nervous hand started sweating through the pages
And slid across everything written in lines above
And all the words I wrote started running together
(and all the ink began bleeding together)
Woke in cold sweat, power’s out again
(and I was scared they’d hear my heart beating then)
I can’t see past my mirror
So, every once in a while, it would happen again
There was a lesson we never had learned
That it was even more difficult keeping it in
I guess we had a habit of forming another extreme
Efforts that felt more sensed than seen
When you finally saw what it read,
Despite what I said, it’s not how I meant it
My car wouldn’t start
The glass had frozen
The past week, every day had been ten below
I guess I felt it coming
I knew that someday,
It’d never start again
(it would die here)
I guess it’d be best if we just found
A way to let ourselves disconnect from
Everything we’ve come to depend on
(I’m writing you for the last time)
Still it was better to be
Left a metaphor, a broken analogy
Deadline got the best of me
Stop. Ceiling shot collecting above
Door could not quite shut
All I witnessed was
The reflection of your hair
You were flying out that day
Just past first light
We didn’t know what to say
And you were gone
An echo hushed beneath
Though breaks the dawn,
The nocturne followed me
And my inverted sleep
Still lasted for a week
Accumulated there
Several inches deep
Returning from reprieve
The place we used to be
Anticipating everyone you see
Will ask you the same thing
Morning came
It crested over the skyline
(although we know better, I’ll wait at home)
The next stop was mine
Still I lied
(I'll wait, I'll wait, I know, I know)
The train kept grinding along its flanges
Carried us along underground
Fewer fewer further down leaving
Silent slid the doors sealed again
Couldn’t stop the morning air entering
I know, I will lie on
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5. |
Scourge of a Despot
05:08
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Thrown in paths elliptical
Lasted just an hour
Called us all to witness
We hoped for total blackened sky
Awakened street lights (in the afternoon)
Though ideal they aligned we
(we’d forget)
Stood outside the path of totality
(what’s still left)
When it comes again
Where will we be then?
Maybe it wasn’t what we’d thought
There in the dark, there were no shapes to all the stars
To tell them apart
We thought then
What if it means nothing
You saw the moonlight split among its woven turns
And how the light was thus disturbed
You swallowed your words
Hoping for another way out
But never could work up the nerve
‘Cause fulfillment has a learning curve
And I kept to the wall, got off on the wrong floor
(I was hoping this time I’d stay for more)
When I left out the rest, you knew there was more
The present tense now seldom affords
(relevant) discourse like
We used to feel things we had never felt
Used to keep secrets we’d never tell
Used to have someone to keep the secrets from
I guess we used them well
Waited ‘til the night before
Waited through the winter
Wait ‘til years pass faster than before
(I opened the door
I stood in silence before entering
We’re working up to our reflections of the surface)
And its spinning makes no difference
(And its ending meant acceptance)
We can’t feel angles obliquitous
(Was to be our last attempt)
We’ll be upright, though at a distance
Anywhere on the surface
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Invalids New Jersey
Invalids started as the bedroom project of Pete Davis (with remote internet-based collaboration with other musicians). As of March 2015, it has grown to a proper four-piece band with the addition of Joe Scala, Raymond Bonanno, and Blair Benzel.
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