10. Parquet Courts // Sunbathing Animal (2014)

Lifted from the pavement,

My face becomes coated in a thick brightness:

A Texan light,

jangly, distorted and bright 

like late 70s Television

throwing up all manner

of rapid fire sine waves

perfectly in balance

with the already-scorched

steady crunch slow burners.

Rael says there is a gold light

that came before,

but which we have not yet seen.

And paced, energy in peaks and troughs, 

not as a whirring blur,

four figures 

art-punk philosopher-poets

always passing through the dry desert dust,

spun up like a mini-tornado,

sunglass-clad, hands buried in jean pockets,

always packing bags,

always coming back around

always leaving soon.

A peyote cat

basking in the orange sun,

in a patch that hits the floor,

rolling down a hill,

as if it’s the only one in on the joke,

while the patch of sun singes

its outstretched arms and legs

for the sake of laying

in the same familiar place.

It rolls around with a swagger,

cocksure and seasoned,

not nervous like it used to be.

The poets pass by,

toward a house

at once both shack and mansion

that looks as if it has lived more lives

than I ever have.

The four figures lay down a path

that flows seamlessly

from one destination to the next,

controlled and diverse,

having already led the way

on a golden lit path

of delightful chaos and shock.

Most freedom is deceiving,

if such a thing exists—

Rael says the poets are angrier and wearier

than when they were basked in gold ,

but nothing makes my heart so wild

as seeing a thrilling disassembly.

The path grows

under their watch,

directed for the shack-mansion—

it hits the front step

and keeps going,

cracking open the door

and caving in the supports.

The house collapses on itself,

a new path threaded 

right through its centre.

The poets excuse themselves

to Rael and me

as they slip on out

from the damage

and the creation,

already laying a new path

to expose new hells

in which to fry.

9. Car Seat Headrest // Teens of Denial (2016)

I rub my dusty eyes,

which are clad with some charcoal coloured paint 

or make-up, or, I don’t know, maybe charcoal. 

When I pry open my eyelids

a slouching man 

in a dishevelled volto mask 

faces me— 

Rael, I ask,

but there’s no answer from the masked figure.

Behind the mask a mystery,

as their dainty form otherwise reveals

a young man:

greasy dark hair strewn across the skull

pasty white skin shrouding the skeleton.

From one hand a guitar with broken strings

dangles by his side, a medicine cabinet 

on a pull chain dangling from the other.

The masked man begins swinging the chain

despite his naked frame.

Nearby panes of glass (I could not see before)

shatter upon impact

(like a sledgehammer through a glass ceiling),

all of them glow with a red reflection 

of the man’s mask just before impact,

pulsing and humming and throbbing

faster and deeper

until the ground is coated in shards.

He opens up his arms

like a stoned eagle spreading its wings

on the morning after, in a time

when there is no longer joy in daybreak.

His guitar swings faster and zips through the air

leaving a louder trail of sound behind:

he crashes through several more mirrors

and I slowly retreat, wary the same damage 

may befall me or the glass catch hold of my skin.

As the destructive Doppler shift draws nearer, 

Rael finally appears beside me,

focusing on the wild figure before us.

From the bottom of the figure’s mask

droplets desperately cling

then roll off and let go,

committing themselves

to the floor of broken glass.

The figure’s arms slow down

and the circles of destruction come to a halt,

through the porcelain face he speaks:

if only I could sustain my anger

growing it stronger and stronger,

sharpened to a point

where I can shed my skin,

shake off the weight of my sins

and make it to heaven.

Like a hatchling wading out into the river

for the first time, I swim through the mounds of glass

and hold the figure in my arms,

their body falling apart,

at such tender and confusing age 

—a too familiar sea in which I was also battered

and drowned on many nights—

one which offers no guidance

on how to steer the ship.

8. Sufjan Stevens // Carrie & Lowell (2015)

Wearing a black shroud,

my eyes covered and my surroundings

completed muted from me,

Rael leads me through

some soft void.

I feel us coming to a stop, but wonder

if it can be trusted.

Rael lifts the shroud

and all my senses return to life

at the beck and call

of all manner of stimuli:

my eyes can finally witness,

in bursts of blink,

an ocean-drenched sky

spoiled, or complemented,

by one stray white cloud.

Birds of a feather and meadowlarks

are the receipt of my ears:

they chat to each other in

the languages of heaven.

Whatever weariness or loneliness

the world had dredged up in me

either hides or withers away—

a familial love letter,

one I should’ve written

recorded, published, and pushed 

by now and long ago

to the matriarch of my being,

executes the prayer of love,

exiles the nonsense of disillusion,

and the illusions of death’s end.

The cloud moves from its fixture

in its sky,

it reaches down 

and pulls me up to its level,

a tone of bliss swelling into being

penetrates my faculties

as I climb on board.

Behind me, Rael climbs on,

as the cloud raises itself

back to the sky,

leaving not even a shadow

on the ground from where we 

lifted off.

7. Angel Olsen // Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014)

Conjured by the sea

on a near starless eve,

I am sat and surrounded by the glow

of eleven pillar candles

buried in the sand

their white fires

flicker in the gentle breeze

swinging in off the water.

The moon blasts a beam 

of reflected light

that courses the water’s

ebb and flow in sine wave patterns

clamouring for my shore.

The tide’s tightening grip,

licking at the sand

higher and higher

threatens the waxy illumination

accompanying me.

With the rising waters

baying for the candlelight

I see a distant fire

on the far end of the beach

slowly moving toward me.

Mist from the breaking waves 

coats my toes,

and though the sea foam

roams closer

I am fixed to my spot

beside the candles:

my legs deepen themselves

into the sand 

with any sign of struggle;

the beach threatens to consume me

if the water doesn’t get there first.

The water finally hits my skin,

its cold beckons me into a 

bare skin of my heart

fierce and light and young

pounded by wave after wave,

peeled back and left raw

left fresh

for the moonlight to pour

in through my opened windows

and interrogate from me truths

I’d long forgotten, hated,

ignored, or never known,

and sucked out like a poison right before me:

only now I start knowing

there is nothing with the light.

I scream and sing

the stars out of our universe

just to be heard and removed—

Rael finds me yet again,

and pulls me out of the ocean’s embrace,

he being the light bearer on the horizon.

The ocean laps around our ankles

as I rise to my feet

and it recognises our resistance

so it turns colder,

drawing out bumps

on my skin.

Rael leads me to the end of the beach

from where he came,

through the water

that rushes back and forth

around our feet.

We trudge through

splashing the ocean in defiance

with every step

until Rael reveals

a small rowboat:

our escape from the forever rising tide.

As Rael and I row

away from the shore 

toward a distant mountain,

a silhouette in the night, 

I look back, and for the first time can see

the travails of the good and the bad

—and everything in between—

pressed into a ball, a posit of time and space,

all in one compact place,

where I touch it and it touches me,

and blindness perverts me

no longer.

6. Grizzly Bear // Shields (2012)

In a sand-clustered wind,

Rael and I are knocked to the ground

by the compilation of millions of grains

hitting us like steel baton.

To me, on my knees,

crawling and grasping soft earth,

Rael says I have fallen before

and will again:

Amazonian jungle dances

in the broad daylight before me,

while the Ute mountain

pierces the atmos

to point out the sun

endlessly swirling in my eye.

Rael helps me to my feet

but I can only succumb to the darkness

at our feet, again:

if I could only break free

of this sleep — where is Rael

taking me — the dreams

polluting my mind; visions of grandeur

swelling the balloon that is my pumping heart.

But I can’t help myself,

so Rael vocalises a signal for help,

be it a bird call or bat echolocation

I do not know,

but I hear a whisper back from the mountain,

delivered through the swishing jungle:

“stand up, just once.”

The whisper, 

a perfect output

of the complexity of nature

and its beauty,

crafted over a decade of practice

drawing lines from muddy fore-bearings 

in early years

and tracing them

to the heels of boundless ambition.

It compels me to climb to my knees

to try yet again.

As I place one foot 

in the sandy earth,

it’s darkened

and by night

a desert is in my face:

the sand-wind returns to mould itself

into a Panzer division.

If only I could lie as still

as that great hill, 

but I can’t help myself:

I hark back to my knees,

I hark back to the earth,

I hark back to torment,

and I want to hide it all away

taking back all of the things 

I used to say

and I'll give all of my time

because I'm foolish 

and never know how to resign.

But that mountain

—standing stronger than it ever has—

beckons down on me

through the distorted dirt swirling around us,

beckons me to rise to my feet,

to take it all in stride.

It burns like heaven’s candle,

stretched out far and wide:

a light that scorches the sand,

so bright so long—

gone at last,

the sun invites us,

now in our eyes

to carry on.

Yet again, Rael and I

are the only ones.

Gratefully haunted

by its textured folksiness, its fluid pulsing,

I have the distant mountain to thank 

for seeing off the sands behind me:

so long, I’m never coming back.

5. Car Seat Headrest // Twin Fantasy (2018)

Four or more walls

close in on me, 

alone,

and the floral wallpaper

keeps going around the room,

spinning around the room;

when I close my eyes,

I could swear I’ve gone blind:

there was no better escape

from my capture in this space.

A fist bursts through a wall

clutching at debris

and tearing it away

from the outside

— Rael,

he reaches for me with his free hand,

and my escape from the domestic

prison of youth, penetrating psyches,

bombarding the bridges 

between

young desire and adult heartbreak.

Rael dusts me off

as I collapse through the wall,

my tired attire, torn and frayed

in several places, attached

by the wall

in a last stand

of defiance.

We begin to run

putting the walls behind us

aware our bodies

could fall apart

at any second.

But what was once alive, 2011,

has been injected with adrenaline,

has been rescued with the jaws of life,

polished with a new look, new veneer,

has been shocked back into being,

2018.

A charcoal vapor

rises from the ground

and blankets the sky above,

taking the shape

of ghosts: regrets

and bad decisions of a time long gone;

the great ball of fire

coated by the colour grey

turns a deepened red.

I haven’t looked at the sun

for so long,

I’d forgotten how much

it hurt to.

Rael and I trudge along

the steaming dirt and dust,

our heels sinking deeper every step.

The hairs on my neck are given raise,

ghosts become skeletons— 

transubstantiation

dredging up 

people from dreams

who were trying to end us.

The ancients could see it coming;

you could see that they tried to warn us

in all the tales that they told us when

we were children. 

Our tracks sinking deeper into the earth

like fallen branches succumbing to quicksand,

the ashen soil takes on its own life-force

hardening and caking around our feet.

Rael calls on me to rail against the ground

as it claws up our ankles

while not unlike the walls before 

reanimated walking bone meal

closes around us.

Straining

against the climbing clay

I burst free with my boot,

turning the earth into dry clumps.

Skeletons upon me, I sink my boot into their shins,

sending them skulking back to the earth:

Rael puts his fists to use again,

beating off the foes around him

with ravenous punches

hitting the dusty ribcages of their targets

like homing missiles launched from a drone.

I break free with my other foot

and with our freed limbs

we send the ghosts running:

the smoke starts to dissipate

and the sun beams again,

lighting a path forward,

washing over the graves

of all the ghosts that dared

to manifest.

3. Julia Holter // Have You In My Wilderness (2015)

A shimmering sea

beckons to me

and I now spot

figures that pass so quickly in the sky’s tear:

one resides in the single cloud above,

hand outstretched to show another wilderness 

to Rael and me— 

a mythological plane

where two bodies born as flesh apart

conjoin at the space 

where soul and time dance timidly:

silhouettes circle one another

until they

fall

into the chasm.

Rael holds me back from danger—

his arm a ticket gate, barring entry,

and all the people run for the horizon

just to circle the chasm

and 

fall in.

The chasm widens the more it consumes,

and it catches us before Rael can whisk us away to safety.

We fall, among all the rabble

who dance without dejection in the midst of plummet.

The landing is broken by soft sand:

a beach laden with shattered seashells

and deadwood that divides 

the earth and shore.

Rael and the outstretched figure

are the only ones left to surround me—

comforted by lush strings

that protrude from the figure’s hands,

I rise from the earth,

and we meet eye to eye

soul to soul:

Lightning cascades right 

into my sea

illuminating worlds past and present

and all the love I am yet to see

with the warmth and strength of a sun

that comes up slower than I can remember.

“This is a true heart,”

the figure tells me.

The sun shines on all as she

drops anchor in my waters,

manic to my shore,

upon which the tide rises

and birds can sing their song.

2. Parquet Courts // Light Up Gold (2012/13)

Rael presses on in front of me,

pauses, then steps

to the side—

a beam of light cascades

and knocks me to the ground

like a one-two punch blow

hitting right on the point of the jaw.

A monolith—the source—

refracts beams coursing through, in and around,

my eyes tell me as they adjust.

A patchwork of rabid colours

beckons me into approaching,

lighting up realms of gold

of which I could never have imagined.

I peer, squint,

and the roaring brightness 

reveals the duality of itself:

drawn from a rattlesnake red state,

across to the borough of Breukelen,

from King’s County 

to Ridgewood, Queens,

sands stretch my mind’s synapses 

and razors blitz the air

like shrapnel through a heart

that cannot stop beating,

cannot stop weeping,

cannot bear breaking.

Rael shields his eyes from the streams of light,

but does not break from facing them:

“That shadows fold in on themselves

and rebirth as renewed bursts

of ringing grit and fury filtered

through fits of jauntiness

forebodes we are nearing the peak,

the end.”

I realise

the lightbeam pouring

in through my ears:

I feel it somehow navigating my systems

and course through my bloodstreams,

and the moment I think

I’ve come to learn its patterns

it changes directions

darting from one passage to the next.

It is now

that I am first changed

and shaped into a mind

that will come to taste and explore

the limitlessness of words and music

as they dance around one another

like a newlywed couple with their first,

coming to feel the beat of one another

constantly, and forevermore.

The four art punk philosopher poets—

stoned by falling rocks in youth

and starving for bones seldom thrown

but instead self grown—

look more ragged and more loose 

than when I spied them in the desert.

They ride the lighting

and mire in the earthquakeness

of everything they achieve

over a mere half hour

(as masters of their craft)

and will come to achieve

in a future with tears a plenty,

but owned by them.

The four figures

take the first steps

into their fertile and wide expanse,

bound only by imagination

and the amplification of their instruments, 

raucous, upon a peak in Paradiso.