1. |
No One Better
03:46
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NO ONE BETTER
You’re not my color, not quite my size,
but I’m not like your other guys,
and I can’t recognize what you must see
about this thing you think is me.
I’m just spending time with you
‘cause I’ve got no one better to do.
In your circle, everyone is driven
by roles in the scenario they’re livin’ –
a cosmos with the order of its spheres,
orbits that you’ve all maintained for years,
and I’m the interloper on your crew,
‘cause I’ve got no one better to do
When there’s no further you can take it
and it’s a drag to waste more time to fake it,
you’ll know when to disappear,
and it will be like you were never here.
Let’s go out, you can have some fun –
I’ll stay mute; you talk to everyone;
I’ll look on as you let guys make passes,
the guys you like are total asses
they look at me like I’m one, too,
‘cause I’ve got no one better to do
When you realize that I’d seen through
all that I’d sat back and watched you do
and let you get away with,
you’ll go look for someone else to play with.
I may look as though I fill a role;
you don’t know I let you fill a hole.
Ridicule me as your private chump –
you are just my lonley landfill dump
where lovely foliage once grew
when I had someone better to do.
© 2015 Steve Fitch
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2. |
One of the New Breed
03:47
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ONE OF THE NEW BREED
If he knew who I’ve been,
he’d pull that git-ar off the wall
and add my autograph as though I were a legend,
and add me to his list of famous clients,
and, embellishing reality,
refer to me as his friend.
He’s one of the New Breed,
who don’t care what we need,
unless it makes them feel hip –
map and directions for their ego-trip;
excuse to get loose after hours,
when they need to come down from their towers.
Frat boy, rich kid, yuppie shit,
or up-and-comin’, movin’-and-skakin’
rock-and-fuckin’-rollin’ dentist –
he would not have graduated
from the Old School, and definitely
would not have apprenticed.
He’s one of the New Breed,
who don’t care what we need,
unless it makes them feel hip –
map and directions for their ego-trip;
excuse to change the color of their collars.
He sent me a bill for $14.
© 2015 Steve Fitch
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3. |
Parasitic Doll
03:44
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4. |
The Others
03:11
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THE OTHERS
attraction forms
between two poles
but there are norms
and there are roles
that will redact
what's let displayed
by eye contact
and gestures made
and even from
oneself obscured
to not emit
some telling word
which would say
if not for others
there in the way
we would be lovers
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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5. |
OK
03:36
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OK
Actresses of Hollywood don't please me –
all they really do is celebritease me,
and they all look the same –
they may as well share a name.
I'm indifferent as they come and go away,
but Olga Kurylenko's OK.
If I you insist, I'll pick one whom I'd most like-to,
as though it were in the realm of what I might do
if barriers all disappeared,
though to me those women are weird,
and in some weirdly uniform way,
but Olga Kurylenko's OK.
Maybe I've lost the abilty to worship
from the fact and the act of enduring hardship;
maybe I'm also afraid
of people so highly-paid
for doing so little that it's nothing, but hey,
Olga Kurylenko's OK.
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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6. |
Conquest
03:45
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CONQUEST
there are pantomimes that signal
sincerity, trustworthiness
and lack of guile
defying controvertibility
by both best and worst
the softest and the hardest
and so, in seeming
as truthful as the truth, provide
carte blanche to confidence
you won’t notice, you won’t feel it
you won’t recall a thing
thus is how one manages
to elude the consequence
of one’s own misdeed
pre-empting or neutralizing
doubt or intuition
of a shady motive
even after something has
been done and doesn’t
seem to be quite-right
you won’t notice, you won’t feel it
you won’t recall a thing
people get away with murder
all the time, while they leave
their victims living
by such figurative degrees
with room for doubt to stand
but no air for it to breathe
i wasn’t lying when i’d told you
that i like you
one’s taste is not one’s conscience
you won’t notice, you won’t feel it
you won’t recall a thing
© 2015 Steve Fitch
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7. |
The Porno Vortex
03:59
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THE PORNO VORTEX
For the past year or so, she’s modeled,
being cooed-at, stroked and coddled
by stylists and photographers;
no longer bothered with relating
to the guy she had been dating
with this new self-image of hers.
She may even feel that she owns sex,
but she’s entering the porno vortex.
The site her mom’s not supposed to know
has pictures and an arty video
of each model naked at her place.
Only Americans consider lewd
a pretty girl who’s posing nude,
and fashion has a changing face.
Two links away are examples of what’s next
as she’s being sucked into the porno vortex.
She was made for this career; no doubt as to her purity of intent.
Being nice to look at is one half of the accomplishment.
The world is one big girlie show –
images, everywhere you go,
of feminine anatomy.
Everyone of us is hooked
on this, as women being looked-
at is a major industry:
stimulus bypassing cerebral cortex.
Everyone is caught in the porno vortex.
Across town, some guy is lurking
online, with one hand jerking-
off to pictures of the girl of mention.
They had shared a brief attraction
but it died from his inaction
toward their mutual intention.
He’s so distanced, he never connects
with women in life outside the porno vortex.
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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8. |
It Aint Here
03:20
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9. |
Anyone but Me
03:55
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10. |
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What do you think we are to you,
and what it is that you perceive we do?
Had music been here before you came near it?
How might it have sounded before your ears could hear it?
What had made this place appealing
was our freedom of expression and of feeling,
a total lack of acumen and guile,
and disregard for any need for self-defining style.
We'd once obeyed an inner voice,
but now are constrained to a range of choice
of mendicant, vassal or charity case.
Someone wants to take care of me
and make the public more aware of me,
but the way that they know how to sell me
is by my doing everything the way they tell me,
as though I'm some lost or helpless child,
when musicians here had formerly run wild
and did as we would in our own habitat;
now they display us, captive, in a simulation of that.
We'd once made our native noise;
they've replaced our weapons with the toys
of mendicant, vassal and charity case.
Here is the most dangerous of musician –
to whom it won't occur to ask permission,
and says what he can't be stopped from saying,
broadcasting from his mind, where the music's playing.
What would you do if you could get him –
try to kill his noise, or would you just let him?
Knowing him won't benefit you, so ignore him;
he'll do likewise – you know you can't do shit for him.
He's a man, not one of the boys;
makes hardship into something he enjoys,
not mendicant, vassal, nor charity case.
© 2105 Steve Fitch / My Music by Me Music (BMI)
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11. |
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RESTITUTION
Woke up this morning from a dream with her in it:
reminded of how she’d loved me for a minute.
She was so cuddly and salacious and cute;
left me bearing a big load that she never let me shoot.
Today I made a resolution
to finally end my destitution.
The longer the time, the narrower the scope.
Only hopeless people deprive me of hope.
I dare to maintain one ultimate goal:
to make it over the rim of this big slippery bowl.
Today I made a resolution
to finally end my destitution
without resorting to prostitution:
I’m talkin’bout restitution.
No witnesses get called to help bring justice at trial.
Everything will be okay if you act nice and smile,
one step ahead of what you get away with,
like a bunch of old kids whom I don’t wanna play with.
I’ve watched you living while I was only trying.
You’ve only looked me up when you were crying.
So let me hear you wail and watch you cry: –
I’d rather watch you suffer than to see you die.
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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12. |
Bottom of the Year
03:36
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BOTTOM OF THE YEAR
the mind is numb
but thoughts always come
the well is dry
but there’s rain in sky
can’t get along
with people who are wrong
nowhere to go
and no one left to know
it was, to be painfully candid
unjust, the pain you were handed
in the hell where you’d landed
and ever since have been stranded
it’s been this way
but doesn’t have to stay
where it’s been led
nor to hardship wed
so start from here
at the bottom of the year
and never mind
the half you’ve left behind
© 2015 Steve Fitch
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13. |
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COMPARE–COMPETE–CONTEND
So I don't want all o' that?
You expect me to swallow that?
How 'bout some, for the fun of it?
It's better than having none if it.
Compare – compete – contend:
What message are you trying to send?
Disagree just 'cause you doubt it,
despite that I know all about it,
as though you hold the lease
on experience and expertise.
Compare – compete – contend:
When you attack, I must defend.
Why is it that you hate me
when you should congratulate me?
God forbid you'd give a compliment
to a friend for his accomplishment.
And yet again – your taunting
with the privilege or prize you're vauting;
then, in the successive breath,
envying my success to death.
Compare – compete – contend:
Is this how ya treat a friend?
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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14. |
Her Friends
03:45
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HER FRIENDS
Her friends
didn’t want her to do anything good.
Now she’s
doing things they’d never thought she would –
things that no one would ever be able to conceive here –
things she only could do after she were to leave here.
Were she
here with me, she’d know what I’m talkin’bout
when I try
to explain how people are starving me out
of acknowledgement, encouragment, and even praise;
how I can subsist on one compliment for days.
One will
not want to return, once the change has begun –
accomplishment
is a crime for which time, here, must be done.
This is my only way to say “hi” to her with a wink
that says more than anybody who stays here would think.
© 2015 Steve Fitch
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15. |
35 years
04:44
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35 YEARS
He suddenly had disappeared
and you all whispered as to where,
but as far as he was concerned,
he was just no longer there.
Another week, another chronicle
of disappearance.
A sudden event became
a perpetual occurrence.
Another day, and I'm still here -
may as well be another year.
Came full circle and got nowhere;
it's as though I am still there.
35 years of freedom
to what?
from what?
of what?
for what?
Years wash by, and occasionally
it occurs to me think about you.
If I'm just your gossip and rumors,
I'm better off without you.
There are stranger things that I've
come not to miss,
such as having to ask someone
for permission to piss.
Another day, and I'm still here -
may as well be another year.
Came full circle and got nowhere;
it's as though I am still there.
35 years of freedom
to what?
from what?
of what?
for what?
Vortices of sympathies try to
pull me down and back to Then.
If you wouldn't mind, I'd really prefer
not to do the Time Warp again.
I talk to kids born in a
different millennium
and ignore the shades of history –
there are too many o'em.
Another day, and I'm still here -
may as well be another year.
Came full circle and got nowhere;
it's as though I am still there.
35 years of freedom
to what?
from what?
of what?
for what?
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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16. |
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17. |
Tell Me How to Feel
04:33
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ELL ME HOW TO FEEL
This is your production now;
I relinquish my command.
Step in, step all over it;
tell my stand-in where to stand.
Seize the awkward moment
and grind it down to dust;
excuse yourself, in lofty terms,
for your lust for lust.
At this moment, I’ve no time
for anything unreal.
You dare to try to con me,
then tell me how to feel.
Each day, I inject myself
with more-diluted hope.
He killed himself on purpose
with syringes full of dope.
The pains I take for granted
made him not want to live;
he gets people's sympathies
whereas I'm “sensitive.”
I’m always about to capsize;
he seemed on an even keel.
Would that he’d've left a note
that’d tell me how to feel.
Sometimes the insidious
intents of our close friends
contribute to the poisoning
that brings about our ends:
just as people search through
their past actions to prevent it,
they maybe could have caused it,
but not known they’d meant it.
Even the best friendships
involve some dirty deal.
Ultimately, there’s just me
to tell me how to feel.
© 2014 Steve Fitch
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