Suzzannah
This Springtime
Abaraxis Foyer
Words to the Wise
Forever, Forever
The Steel Drum
Hey Jim
Lift Off
Don't Refuse Me My Darling
Unconscious Repeat
Click Click Click Can Can
Lying on the Floor
When These Sands are Beds Again
Song of Your Dreams
This Springtime
Abaraxis Foyer
Words to the Wise
Forever, Forever
The Steel Drum
Hey Jim
Lift Off
Don't Refuse Me My Darling
Unconscious Repeat
Click Click Click Can Can
Lying on the Floor
When These Sands are Beds Again
Song of Your Dreams
TC plays rythm guitar and sings on all tracks
All songs by TC
ARTWORK BY TC, Grégoire Maus and Scott Felluss.
Photos by Liz Calderwood
LYRICS
︎This Springtime
This Springtime that will smolder into June,
Curled around this downtown afternoon,
And the flowers are bending from over-burdened wombs,
And the girls are caught with the wind in their skirts,
Made moist by the water that turns dust into dirt,
But plucked too soon by the boy on the corner,
And sucked before bloom by the bee or the sparrow,
While fingers were still little and while hips were still narrow,
Too late to know what to do with my whispers,
Fertalized in winter and undone by the thumb,
So they're only drying petals on the lawn,
Left to the mercy of the sun.
This Springtime that will smolder into June,
Curled around this downtown afternoon,
As rations get smaller then bodies get thinner,
And ribcages render the outlines of hunger,
And the radio voices are pregnant together,
The organized noises in the harmonized order,
And the hand-shake agreements are sealing six figures,
Decisions and ties are contrived to be severed,
And the bricks that will be walls wait for mortar unarranged,
And the alliances recalled lift every draw bridge by its chain,
And everything unlevened boils until there's nothing left to gain.
This Springtime that will smolder into June,
Curled around this downtown afternoon,
He screamed until I heard him, he had a mark of heaven,
And both of us were certain of what brought all of us together,
For a week he was my teacher, for a week I filled his bottle,
I carved him a sacred whistle for the fingers of apostles,
And he said there was no choice and he left me his bible,
And he said I was the voice but I shuttered in my title,
But after reading most of Mathew I smiled and then I laughed,
I held my glance a second longer when I held a blade of grass,
And since words were only breaths, all I did was nod,
We were cast onto one corner both looking at and praying to one G-d.
This Springtime that will smolder into June,
Curled around this downtown afernoon,
Through boundaries established through understated movement,
Comes east side development and city-wide improvement,
A self-induced catharsis, a uniform desire,
For the scaffold of an artist on an unsupported pillar,
Suspended above grounds and hovering in phase,
Like when the table-cloth is pulled from the undisturbed vase,
But the sheep's blood on the brownstone is coloring and numbering the days.
︎Words to the Wise
It was not for his smiling nor for causes unkind,
That he held on to the picture of a girl on the side,
His was always a life in decline,
We stayed up until the dawn all the time,
And he'd ask me to tell him everything that he'd done wrong,
And I knew he'd have a picture of a girl all along,
So I told him there's been nothing which can't be undone,
But my mind was always ahead of my tongue,
And I watched him fold the sheets of a bed that he'd die on,
And I watched as his breath went from little to none,
And I knew he'd be thinking that she was the one,
That she was the one that he thought that he loved.
I was looking around by the end of the week,
I was thinking about drifting away in my sleep,
I'd been sitting for days with my hands underneath,
The weight of my body supported by his seat,
No longer listening to anything that I see,
Like watching a battle from a balcony,
And there was him always shaking over possibility,
Forming and re-forming an advance upon retreat,
And pawing for reflections of a weak identity,
As if there was something that we were supposed to see,
As if there is something that we are supposed to be,
To protect us from all that we surrendered.
So Mr. Modern had a brain freeze in his room,
When what he thought and what he knew for the first time were in tune,
When I showed him that a crescent was just the sun behind the moon,
When I showed him black and white was like behind a bride and groom,
And he asked me to tell him everything that he'd done wrong,
So I showed him a pencil that was worn down to the bone,
He'd been pressing and pressing for what never could be done,
He has pages of equations that all added up to one,
I put zeros on my right and I am growing to the sun,
I put zeros on my left and I am shrinking close to none,
But I like to spread my fingers like there's nothing to be won,
And laugh, let us laugh at what's begun.
But he cried and he cried for all things he'd sent away,
And I knew he only let them go so he could lament their decay,
But I didn't feel like lamenting that day,
Ashes upon ashes were collecting in his tray,
Clashing and clashing as black will do with gray,
And I knew that both of our bodies were made of the same clay,
And I remembered being told about the laws of gravity,
As if masses upon masses were of one consistency,
And I saw that he was talking but I heard him distantly,
I saw feeding heads of deers rise when they heard artillery,
But I didn't want to be a cordinant in that field,
So I left before he finished and said "smile and they will yield".
Next to the sculpture of a young Oedipus,
In all of the exhibit it was only us,
That the critics and the children both couldn't help to touch,
And I thought that it was maybe on account of our looks,
But he said that it was all on account of our guts,
For all four of our eyes would be gone soon enough,
And marble cracks and semen erupts and golden turns into ashen locks,
And though now you are free of pocket watches and clocks,
And though now you are free from remembering your thoughts,
Though now you can be here and know that you're not,
All that you now know you will soon find you forget.
︎Hey, Jim
Hey, Jim is the G gonna mean something awful?
On the track they are begining to be moving always blindly at me,
But I am swerving, I am choking and am only so green.
And he's in a way that is a serious way,
And no matter what we gather on the green of the grave,
There will be something always that we wanted or we needed to say.
And inside her house of Mercury, she does and rubs, addreses me,
In blessings, second guessing me before I awake,
For holding onto habbits that are difficult and painful to break.
But her plaster mask is flapping in a serious wind,
And she holds on for reasons that are precious within,
And living in the minutes she relinquishes, begets and begins.
And without a propper business suit you're on your own kid,
'Cause no one's gonna bother over things that you did,
No matter how intelligent or ellegant or right you might be.
Do you believe in horror, is your night light still lit?
Have you seen or have you dreamed of how the other ones lived?
Hey, Jim is the G gonna mean something awful to me?
Hey, Jim is the G gonna mean something awful?
On the tracks they are begining to be moving always blindly at me,
But I am swerving, I am choking and am only so green.
Hey, Jim is the G gonna mean something awful?
On the tracks they are begining to be moving always blindly at me,
But I am swerving, I am choking and am only so green.
Now look at the builder and look at the teller,
Cowering in numbers under towering walls,
They're desperate not to breath in but believe in any reason at all.
And she's never been to Brooklyn but she's read about it,
She suffers the delusions of the educated,
There's not a spot of her logic that she doesn't betray.
The women are the clue to what is actually happening,
The wishers of confusion are happily laughing,
In the aftermath the cackling irrational is having its way.
And this will be the year of the challenges met,
If that was the year when the plaster was set,
Denying all excuses and untying all the nooses in me.
It is all a question of the side-glance stare,
Now I am the survivor of the wildest nightmare,
Waiting through the grinding and the grating of the breaks of the G.
Hey, Jim is the G gonna mean something awful?
On the tracks they are beginning to be moving always blindly at me,
But I am swerving, I am choking and am only so green...
︎Don't Refuse Me, My Darling
She kissed on me a kiss the way a kiss should be,
And she kissed on me the sweetest kiss in history,
I gave her a book and I read aloud from it's pages,
And she whispered me this soliloquy in stages.
Don't refuse me, my darling,
Don't leave me, my love,
Don't refuse me, my darling,
Don't leave me, my love.
We walked on the pavement that the sun lit into crimson,
And she told me she was going to the midwest for a reason,
I said "reasons are for cowards was excuses are for killers,
And this tide that is high is drowning all the sailors."
(chorus)
And so she whispered me a farewell where a kiss should be,
After she kissed on me the saddest kiss in history,
She is going where the snow is on the landscapes of the farms,
And no longer am I stronger, I have but reasons for my arms.
(chorus)
︎Unconscious Repeat
Think of the man who prays before he eats,
And I'll think of the steps to a dance on the floor at the ball,
Blessed in beauty by unconscious repeat,
Self-ordained in rythm like a cowbell call,
I saw the summer approaching through the holes in the collonaide,
I saw the sun light turn my shaddow into shade.
Think of the grass that predicts the rain as it's combed by the wind,
I don't want to feel a kiss that predicts her departure again,
She falls like rain that traces the tops of your skin,
As she followed her lips from the curve in my wrist to my hand,
And I touched her back where she didn't know she was,
And she arched in the sun for no reason but because.
Think of all that is broken and all that is yet to break,
All of the revolutions it is needed for all of the turns it will take,
every intercourse has stood and so soon will stand at stake,
So I completed her lips with a kiss with my hands to her face,
And the mountain is in the same place as the deer,
And her beauty lies nowhere else but here.
So I found the corner where the dancing was annulled,
Where my steps were determined by nothing but my heart's beat,
Every man-made engine that burns for wheels that roll,
In the thinning of air breaks down from its own heat,
I am unravelled at every fold,
Like the wind that was once a tornado.
︎Click Click Click Can Can
She came from dafodile land to peek and pretend,
She came to get her fill of kisses, Camels, and Kens,
Like coal in the cold and a cabin in the road,
And a stove on the hand of the black-knuckle brand mermaid weekend,
Swing low your chariot, your rifle is pointed at the sun,
Pick up the lighter and carry it to the open arms of everyone.
Mine is the less divine sign of the time it seems,
He's on the cusp of on the line of on the mean,
Now peek and pretend at the mermaid fiend,
The slow descent of the molotov cocktail queen,
Money every lying to buy, lying in the brine denying,
Decidedly wired tonight in the stymied mind frame.
But there aint no sense in washing thee,
There aint no sense is watching thee,
There aint no time spend not trapped inside this mode,
And there aint no master key or lock to crack this code.
Send your face's twisted grimace blemish to the devils in the sky,
Sell your body's wilting crystal palace to the gear or to the guy,
Your ugly junk love is shooting the sun,
And is burning the bun of the tune that the song bird sung,
And the over-cooked lamb, the super-charged man,
The drained butane and the click click click can can.
And when your mothers call,
The sky becomes coal,
Then the earth will open up,
And will swallow you whole.
︎Lying On The Floor
I am lying on the floor,
I'm a lion or a lizard of the Lord,
But I am smiling all the way,
I only came to say goodbye, to say goodbye.
Raise your head up my dear,
It's only bitter in the winter of the year,
And I am leaving all the way,
I did not come to watch you cry, to watch you cry.
The bed is better than the floor,
The pen is mightier and lighter than the sword,
And though the light in here is gray,
And I'm smiling all the way, all the way.
Before the bugle sounds,
You will shine like a flower in the ground,
Before the bugles ring,
Before the crying of the raindrops of the spring.
The sentimental gentemen,
They play marraccas and the tablas in the band,
There's talk of movies and the east,
And something whispers that the future is deceased.
I'm a lymie hon,
I'm a proselytizing, righteous kind of son-of-a-gun,
Place your loins before your grail,
And take vacations from the feelings that you fail.
I am lying on the floor,
I am trying not to be here anymore,
But I am smiling all the way,
I only came to say goodbye, to say goodbye.
︎When These Sands Are Beds Again
When again these sands are beds,
When these sands are beds again,
Once then found by hands and legs,
Once then formed by heads and limbs,
By then will things condemned begin,
To find revenge in flames and wind,
To make amends by violence,
The judgements of defenseless men.
She has said that she believes,
In kinds of modern prophecy,
But all she wants is to fall asleep,
On a bed of sand on a distant beach,
She has said that she has seen,
A vision in a restless dream,
She has said (and I agree),
That this is not the place to be.
Say goodbye to me my friend,
I leave you as the evening ends,
Say goodbye to me my love,
I leave you as the morning comes,
If this is not a plague my dear,
I will return within a year,
And if in time I don't appear,
I'll be the wind inside your hair.
When again these sands are beds,
When these sands are beds again,
Once then found by hands and legs,
Once then formed by heads and and limbs,
The sea will sooth the wounds of them,
Who's salt will be their medecine,
And fruit will drop from trees that bend,
When these sands are beds again.