1. |
Nomad
03:17
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Nomad
Estranged nomad on the water
Carrying a distant slaughter
The dreaming children’s homes erode while wandering that gravel road
We keep records of defeat locked in drawers until we don’t need them
I was one, but so divided
Waves crashing against my thighs
Did I see too clearly or was it all too big?
Reliving what I’d left behind
A stranger in my time and mind
Skipping facts to save the truth
Every step a little looser
Attacking symptoms of the problem
Guerrilla war in empty trailers
I was one, but so divided
Waves crashing against an island
Did I see too clearly or was it all too big?
Estranged nomad surveying their streets
Searching for meaning in the inner cities
The concrete takes on different shapes
But somehow always feels the same
When wandering the country-scape
You slowly stop asking their names
Attacking symptoms of the problem
Guerrilla war in empty trailers
Broken wrists and bigger dares
That reveal how the structure tears
Oh and how the structure tears
Did I see too clearly or was it all too vague…?
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2. |
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Contracts/Militia/Car Wrecks
Bad weather and the miles of driving
Where you feel like a pebble on god’s endless highway
Houses turn to valleys
Shrug us off to the sea
Or into a hotel with the foreign news flash, pet shows, tankers
Spill their blood into the oil stain on your driveway
And this whole ordeal was too close to our bare feet
With the common intonation of indifferent airbrushed messages
The faint wind through the screen door
And the mountains between people
And the bad weather almost took us off the road
Those days back in the shelter get stranger in my memory
The constant fear of such a threat that we could never see
And above the world was ringing in a brand new millennium
Oh, what a life we lead
Under the lights eternal reef
Currents of meaning that intersect
And the opposing energies
That triumphantly deny their former peace
In the dissonance between harmonies
It’s so hard to tell where these detours lead
Funnel clouds that reach down and the white knuckle driving
And the last words I heard massacred from the slur
Oh how they followed me around… they weighed on every word
Strangers’ faces turning into road maps
The dark eyes the smile lines and the absent guitar strap
And the hope that made it so beautiful and cruel
And always brought my swinging thoughts to a stop
When we talked about contracts, militia and car wrecks
And the candles that burned so slowly
While the drinks kept flowing
The casual perfection of the placement of each artery
Contradictions in new loves and the day old glory
And if the weather keeps us in at least we’ll be free from evolution
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3. |
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Eternity’s Blank Cheque
It’s been a long hard day and I’m ready to put my mind away
This month has dragged on, a child too afraid to change
True, once you compromise, from then on nothing stays the same
But it’s hard to believe that you could hold on against erosions gentle flame
Rich with grand life theories that inevitably fall short
Through desperate midnight walks in shopping malls:
Humanity at war
Eyes pried open, glued to the dust that coats the floor
The looming senselessness that sits behind each reason pushing forward
But something happens in the harmony of living rooms
And all that choose to come let themselves breath the same air as you
Without the pretense of knowing exactly what’s in store
There’s no inherent need to prove that you always meant something more
All of the love and the times we spent together
Sitting in circles or running in place
All we can hope for is more of the same
And the right information to deal with the change
You spend your time with the people who are close
Trying to get through
You fall all over them with clumsy words naked with the truth
You learn to love them, their triumphs and failures a part of you
And when you’re with them a silence can contently fill the room
But the wind it calls, and the four walls push against your chest
And you must leave them with each other and try to know they’ll do their best
Time it passes as you wander towards eternity’s blank cheque
And it changes you in ways that you never did suspect
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4. |
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5. |
Violence
02:25
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Violence
Was it your glory manifested in the violence of the trees
Or was it simply when I saw it that I already believed
Will you make me a pretty ending
Would you make it such a scene that when passerby’s see it
They emphasize their breathing
What is it all for?
The older that I get the less that I adore
Was it your glory manifested in the violence of the trees?
Or was it simply when I saw it that I already believed?
Was it your glory in the gunshot that made the world sigh with the content
Or is war the natural state of man, to which we must repent
When the truth sweeps in like a wave can we deny we are god sent?
Can nothing satisfy this blood lust?
Will nothing wash my hands?
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6. |
I was a bastard
02:42
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I was a bastard
I was a bastard and you were an epigraph
Filled with laments of tarred beauty in future’s past
Always so fragile
But never a truthful laugh
So drunk with remorse that you pushed it to the back of your mind
The listing and accumulated steps that you paced on the kitchen floor
Thinking about death
And where it was our selective memory went
I had some plans and some drugs
To make it seem like denial would be like a lucid dream
Falling and Falling into bored living rooms
The crowds reoccurring into nights that hang over
You were a painter and I was a marble floor
You were a scientist I was the man with the gun to your head
Sending prayers into beakers
I only cared about myself and how I’d translate into their fears
I left you behind, when you left me behind, when we left it to die
But the truth was I never much cared for anything
That didn’t dangle with devastation from the thinnest string
I ran with the full intent of us breaking free
Wanted the world in a neat pile beneath me
I was the angle of death and you weren’t afraid
You always held yourself with conviction
And I envied that, we dared devastation
Pulled on the wire and the whole thing came loose in our hands
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7. |
The Company
03:18
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The Company
Childish games of secret names and espionage
Hiding in plain sight with an absent agenda
You’d get so angry about nothing
So I would egg you on and make it something
A camera and a lifeline
The message behind the words we took casually made us the casualties
My sister in her shining armor taught me that my actions mattered
The company do form two lines that surround you on your way in
To create the illusion that the world will be consistent with good men
And at times it is
Humility is an art that you learn to dissect
The elitism of humanity stares out, an anomaly
He wears with grace, our talk is small, but has it’s place in the scheme of it all
There’s a peace in the hand reaching out for the gun
If you smile through it all don’t you smile until it kills her
The company do form two lines that surround you on your way in
To create the illusion that the world will be consistent with good men
And at times it is…
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8. |
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Electronic Who Religions
Held up behind a wall of numbers
We listen to the neighbours fight
Smoke billows in inconstant patterns
Blinds even the light
After the reign of blood red love
The boundless rule of just because
Dreamy struggle, logic drought
Salvation looked just like clockwork
But the metal hand knows no compassion
Imitates the current fashion
Feeds the news, like every ration can know no hope that works
You know only precision
Electronic Who Religions
We promise we won’t change
Decorate our self made cage
But feigning presence only builds a shell
A claustrophobic private hell
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9. |
Odysseus
02:06
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Odysseus
Took you outside for no reason
Our feet drifting underneath
My mind stumbling over mountains
Landing on whatever beaches
I was at war with myself then
And I wanted to mean things that could be that easy
You always read of such defeat
The same that I held close to me
And I mistook it for strength
(It was easier to see that)
Underneath a barefoot moon
I breathed in truth and lied to you
I couldn’t feel shame
But now that I see things more clearly
Shame was just one step ahead of me
You gave me your sincerest wishes
And I was stuck out with Odysseus
And you didn’t deserve it
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10. |
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City Banks
When the city banks empty out
It’s no mystery, the kings and queens
Standing there against the grain
Mathy eyes trained to look away
Paper spindles handing out a sermon
For the age of doubt
Mythic histories leave us bowing in our disbelief
We wait for the fog to lift
In the morning roads of the turning earth
And the discarded gods sit at their altars
In the shadows of the buildings that will ruin our brothers
We try our hardest to disappear behind the words we’ve created
To sedate each fear
When the City Banks empty out
It’s no mystery, the new disease
And the vaccines only feed it
Standing there against the grain
My old friends trained to look away
When the systems start to run themselves
You take a seat, put up your feet
And watch as your beautiful child lifts a pillow to your face
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11. |
The Pilgrimage
03:46
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The Pilgrimage
The day was young when we split town
And the world had been renewed
We lit up, to paint the streets a lighter shade of blue
And through the mirror they flew
Heard all about the traveling man
The complication of our times
How we try to simplify the truths
To fit inside our rhymes, but they never do
And in every gas station
Teenage boredom gave blank stares
It was all of us in our past lives
Counting the hours until we could pace ourselves to sleep
Counting wool less sheep
And I want to stay
But I don’t know for how long my feet will let me
So I just sing on
Because all I have are these songs
The image of their faces shook my fragile world again
The patterns of a million steps that led them to their beds
But the business was enough then
To keep me pacified
Because in the country you’re left with too much time
To sit and wonder why and be answered with silence
So you got a job serving plastic through the nights
To the those ones the city bested
Behind sickness they lost their fight
But you saw too much of yourself
In the white noise, in the glare
That one night you packed up all your things
And you left them waiting there
Like they had always been
Heard all about the traveling man and the archives constant glow
There seems to be ten billion things that I won’t ever know
But I still try and I don’t know why
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Mike Legere Toronto, Ontario
Mike Legere is a songwriter/producer from Nova Scotia, based out of Toronto Ontario.
Photo by Stephen Kearns
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