Lyrics by Bryson Schmidt

Greenhouse Oubliette

Grünerløkka Arpeggiator /
Writing Your Vows in the ICU

If I reach the end of me, will you walk with me more? I’ll keep the nurse all the way out, they keep trying to wake you. I’m in a medical oubliette, joining the choir, praising the ground for life.

Nameless Darkness
(feat. Anatole Muster)

And I take it all back. Gloom is better without you in it, without reason. Take it all back, that nameless darkness helps us. For the rest of my life, that’s why: all I need is you to be alright.

I’d rather be lonely with allspice liquor in San Francisco. I think melancholia might be alright. I’d rather be crying on my front stoop in Starland, Georgia. I think blank frustration is a gift most times.

And I take it all back. Grief teaches us it's better to be someone accidentally. That nameless darkness brings safety.

Hope Addict
(feat. Jody Lester-Slade)

Faith is a harmless drug. Until it suppresses justice. Hope is a sweater, but you need to be cold. Look at my brother.

Where is your lord? Where is his temple for my revolver? Where is the warden? When does he walk past the cell?

He begot an enemy, who begot a vice, who begot a driver who made a choice.

God will hang. “Doin’ blessed.” Liar. Hope addict.

8 Trillion Lumen Gas Station

I’ve got a sleeve of rice cakes and 45 minutes to kill. Why did I make this my reward, worth tanking all our plans for fake nostalgia fr a place that I went once? I was abroad in a fucked up headspace, there’s no point stopping there for lunch.

There’s no way to know what I need, but I can’t stop trying.

I just want to wake up, for once, and know what I need; no biking across state lines when my friends are all free and wanting to do things. It’s like my confidence poured my self doubt a drink, gave it a blindfold, a few spins and a pat on the driver’s seat.

Shinji in the Chair Meme

Running out of garden stakes for my back. She looks so damn good in the springtime, how do I relax? The postman says he wants to talk to the man of the house, but he’s not there, we’re in the basement building a shrine to Ash & his friends under the stairwell.

Get in the Eva, man. Can’t you just pilot your brain? There’s no gift of a breaking point, you just feel worse forever. Get in the cockpit, Bry. You said you could steer through the pain. There’s no gift of a breaking point, you just feel worse forever.

I was face-up, under a bush, so unaware. One humid decade in, hiding from friends in the yard, the quiet peaked there. Now I’m stuck in a cathedral prison of absolutes, but no one cares. I’m too damn aquatinted with no control. I don’t like the new world.

Tennessee Dream

I have this dream where I don’t wake up. Each morning split between making you coffee and playing the drums. And I don’t know what I’m doing to stay asleep, in a loop of cackles from the other room, peaches and genmaicha tea.

If an alarm goes off, I’ll hit snooze, in that daft attempt to chase the dream you know you’re about to lose. If an alarm goes off, I’ll throw it across the room. That bunk bed in California, or the humid sheets of Florida can give me five more minutes of my Tennessee dream with you.

And I can’t recall how it all started. There’s six foot alien okra plants in the garden. And I stopped thinking about my flaws. Assure as the REM cycle sun rises, you’ll lovingly brush them off.

... That bunk bed in California, or the humid sheets of Florida, the pull out couch off the M train, or the pallet bed from Savannah days, and the buzzing behind the couch of that Jacksonville hospital room can give me five more minutes of my Tennessee Dream with you.

Room 4114

I don’t need my sleep, money or hunger. Crucify my pineal gland until you’re alright. Some nameless part of me watches me grieve. The hospital shade granting slim light on my Zizek book knows that’s it’s fiction - I can’t do anything.

I don’t need my life, my friends or time, just that deflated get-well-soon balloon to float upright. And the family’s chain-smoking hope on their break; but I’m past critiquing it, my high horse on posturing’s not gonna change shit.

The past eats at glacial speeds. You’re powerless, just staring.
The past eats much less than we need. I’m powerless, just staring.

I don’t want my head, my health or my hands. They’re screaming on speakerphone, trying to rush the past from a complaint department with a 12 year degree - slinging Tramadol and cognitive dissonance hoping to deescalate anything.

Some old guy with a limp trapped me outside, said “you’d be surprised how many things is demons,” and I wonder if it helps to believe that’s right.

You Can Find Anyone’s Address Online

Discharge doors beeping like a grocery scanner. I’ll recall this couch better than any birthday.

It smells like latex, shit, floor cleaner. “Best Rehab in Florida”

How do you run a homeless person dispenser, then go home to post your kids’ names online?

They’ll suffocate in latex, shit, floor cleaner. I know it smells bad. I know.

[redacted names] [redacted address]

Cloudwatching

I’ve been in a weird mood all day. From a dream that I can’t remember, but can still taste. Pointing at shapes in the clouds. It’s a cumulus mirage I’d really love to share, but I’m not allowed.

It gets lonely trying to explain. No one gets lonely the same way.

Raft

I’m a child-sized buoy—an impossible mission. You’re suspended in ink black water like patience appeared in the form of an apparition. The scent of your grief, the red of your eyes. The pleading for hope that you hide gets revealed in your newly carved face lines

Please, grab the raft. What if the spell wears off? Please, grab the raft. I’m watching you not drown, but I just can’t watch.

You say you’re just tired, you say that you love me. And I believe you in as much as I believe your protective instincts. Baby animals on fleece blankets, they’re too familiarized with pain. Why’s it always your strength that gets drained?

Who’s gonna tell the seafloor you were the best thing on land? If I don’t beat you there.

Another Round for P. Quinn (feat. Mase Denio)

I saw a toothpaste ad through a stained glass window. And a diet coke can shoved in a castle wall. And some Dublin douchebag insists the pub should love to hear his cover of Noah Kahan.

Stop colonizing, I’ll leave here too if that helps. The wind’s got a song and I just wanna hear. Stop colonizing, I’ll pack my shit too if that helps. Pat Quinn’s got a song and the world needs to hear.

There are songs hiding in the lichen. In the hesitations of 80 year old men. In the smell of seafood in old, coastal buildings. In the sleepless, suffering eyes of someone you’ve known since they were a child. Suddenly, I am uprooted to the dark violet chasm where reality screeches hymns at guttural octaves in a language you can feel, but not understand. Dwarfed, punished, fed, shriveled into a prayerful witness. I am no treasure hunt, I am no melody. I am sorry.

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. I 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. Our 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.

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 Medici’s 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.