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Watching my feet move along the street where you were living, I can’t seem to shake the thought I’ll always waste the time you give me, and, if you can’t even linger here then really what’s the use?
Smoking in the car you sing along while I just listen. Everybody that I know is at home, pretending I’ve gone missing, and this ‘suffer harder’ summer’s changed the color of my bruise.
How you used to think, cup both hands around your drink.
Even long nights tend to hang around for days.
All the old attempts at breaking every bad habit.
Some memories blur and some we gave away. It’s hard to say.
Waking up alone or not alone, knowing the difference.
Taste the bitterness in this air; think nothing about the distance.
I’m the only person you know who doesn’t realize what you mean.
Given half the time to make my mind up and get started I imagine I’d make the same mistakes, end up in this apartment, take the same window sill seat, the same city still listening.
How this used to end: leave and never see me again.
Maybe stress dreams, maybe drinks or maybe not.
Practicing goodbyes, take your exit just one more time.
Some memories we keep and some things we forgot.
I’m not what you see when you’re looking through me, I’m invisible already.
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2. |
pushing on a pull door
02:55
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The chipped pieces of my teeth catch in my throat, my hands bloody the concrete like you would know or feel the feelings that I do; as if it isn’t me but you making decisions in my mind, choosing each word that I speak, moving my mouth. The eastern air that I breathe through western doubt creeping beneath the black in my lungs, as if you aren’t nearly done, and just taking your time.
So this is how everything I think I control falls to pieces. Cut my fingers trying to hold.
And even now the always leaving I deserve infects my breath, the time I’ve left, my every word.
Am I my own waste of time? Irreparable by design? A spinning of the wheel, a guess at something real? Left alone when it’s over, easier when sober, tired when I’m gone, played or playing along? Useful when you need to need someone who needs you? Use me when you need to need you feel you need to. Need to feel unique too, need someone to need you. Use me when you need to need to feel you need to.
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3. |
little purple lights
03:02
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I’m some quiet ghost, haunt a long hallway at most. You’re politely hosting me inside this home. And, being too nervous to scare, I’m not sure what I’m doing here, pacing back and forth while you think you’re alone.
You’re a sudden rain, inconvenient in your way, driving everyone indoors until you pass.
But I’ve simply too much to do. I make my way out into you and I follow as you fall into my path.
I’m an unpleasant dream, my scenes so convincing that I leave you unsure of anything.
We’re a book you never read, on loan from some forgotten friend, the kind you lend and never plan on getting back.
And in our pages left unflipped we hide uncomfortable secrets, a line of thought for when you can’t keep yours on track.
Or we’re a waiting game, feelings you have but can’t explain, words that refuse to come to mind in times of need and, staying here unsaid, find hiding places in your head; reveal ourselves when you can’t get to sleep.
You’re the plot that I’m missing until you convince me that I cannot be sure of anything.
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4. |
capacity song
02:09
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Tired in the way this week felt like one hundred days. This weakness lives inside my arms. This tired drives by me in cars, pushes me out into the curb until these gear changes don’t work; until the eagerness in me becomes some dirty, bitter thing.
There is no better time to tell whether you’re doing half as well as you might have thought that you could be.
There is no pressing need for sleep.
There is no room inside my arms for any patient-waiting, tiny, broken parts.
There is no eastbound interstate dream.
I’m in the stillness all alone.
All my best friends live in this phone. All my broken bone energy doesn’t amount to anything.
There’s no amount that I could say that would still matter, anyway.
Some days you don’t listen to me.
Sometimes I don’t say what I mean.
We push and pull, loosen the seams.
It’s an impatient honesty, performative anxiety.
There is no room inside myself for all these fallen old dirt light leaf pleas for help.
There is no reason to believe in me.
There is no eastbound interstate dream.
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5. |
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I told him I won’t write you anymore.
I hope I left you, like you left me, torn apart staring helplessly at the door.
In five short months my capricorn son he will be born and this problematically constructed image of me you need so much will be no more.
This prison you insist in keeping up on, housing your self-consciousness, will be destroyed.
Proud announcement: it’s a boy.
Your momentum stalls in Wichita Falls, you write it down.
You’ve learned that Texas reeks of Jesus, meet a man you can’t believe or be around.
Well, I’ve been there too, as I tell you some later day.
But I mention nothing of the mister, mysteries, deceiving whispers, or the way this future I create is realer than anything you communicate.
I’ve found my joy.
Proud announcement: it’s a boy.
Your unhealthy obsession, your fantasy and your invention, your emotion only impression (a cataclysmic self-deception) won’t keep you warm when you’re alone. This fiction you employ has nothing to do with me, my reality, my choice.
Proud announcement.
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6. |
cavities
02:35
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Count my cavities in a gas station bathroom mirror.
California hurts a little more each time I’m here.
I can’t think of one good reason you wouldn’t just leave, or a single worse place you could be.
I drove all the old roads one more time last I came home, but now I don’t find it healthy being nostalgic here, alone.
I hope you picture me out finding somewhere to belong if it helps you feel relief when I am gone.
I’m aware it’s not the same to say, in all the ways I have, ‘the army in my heart’s a drag.’
Because the fight in me is not harder than you trying to be yourself, and, I am not helping.
Count each crack in the skin on my hands; need them all.
Trace my escape in maps on truck stop bathroom walls while I’m imagining you on a porch, under the moon, knowing I’ll be so far away so soon.
No longer whispering, and not in the slightest concerned about who’s listening, you list the reasons we deserve to end up where we are: opposite sides of miles of cars, so inappropriately timed, and far apart.
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lucas britton Los Angeles, California
music for sharing and/or dancing
email me:
lucasilso@yahoo.com
lucas britton recommends:
when i grow up
by tuesday, 1996
the honest work of a good pal i knew once
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songs for suburban teenagers vol. 2
by Pens, Pencils, and Writing Utensils
outstanding and inspiring music for running away from your enemies
go to album
Forget About It
by Horse Movies
the reason my discography jumps from 2015 to 2018 and also probably the coolest thing i'll ever think i did
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Australian multi-instrumentalist Nick Griffith tempers luxuriant yacht-pop arrangements with lo-fi touches across the sunny "7am."
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Jules in Trouble / Zip Ribbons, SPLIT 7"
by Jules in Trouble / Zip Ribbons
featured on Bandcamp Radio Sep 8, 2015
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Smoky and drifting synthpop songs populate “Window Seat,” with dreamy melodies floating in a sea of keys.
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