Etymology

by Oyster Boy

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released 20 January 2011
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All words & music written / performed / recorded / produced by Oyster Boy / Zach L P © 2011 Edna St. Vincent Millay Day Parade Music

Album art by Alice E. Hall.

** The name 'Landscape of Skin and Single Rooms' is stolen from a poem & book of the same title by Richard Pearse.

Thanks: AEH † SP † IL † ABL † TAKM † T(V)C † F † AB † RWP † MMP

Rest in Peace M.M.P.


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Track Name: The Ocean Full Of Bowling Balls
Oh, my bedroom is a mess. The piles on my desk get bigger every time I try to rearrange my head. I take what is not mine, I keep living this lie, I muse on all the missing things and years of lost time. I was once a great genius, a noted conversationalist, a staple at your galas and your galleries, and I was once a bird at sea, a piece of driftwood on the beach, an island twelve feet around––I watched the waves roll over me. I don’t understand myself.

If nobody knew my name, I never would have to claim all of these lost things. I will stop checking my phone. I will pretend that no one’s home––I’ll have this room all to me.
Track Name: Renewal On Bowery
It’s an endless struggle, but I think that I’ve been in it too long. Every step is trouble, thoughts are muddled, but nothing is wrong. There’s a mess in my bed. I didn’t make it, but now it’s mine. If you want to help me clean it, I don’t need it, no thanks, that’s fine. Oh, the bitterness again. No, you just can’t ever win.

Now it’s not so dirty––the Third Avenue El train’s gone. All the kids are happy hailing taxis in a desolate throng. It’s a healthy feeling, but you’re never gonna feel at home. Should have moved to California when you could have, should have sold your soul. Oh, that sermon on your skin. Oh, the ubiquity of sin.

Now I want to vanish but I’ll manage if I just get home. In my thoughts I’m waiting at a door freezing to the bone. Blessed are the simple, always hungry, living in a crowd. Damned are the ones always looking for a new way out. Desolate and empty is the sea separating you from me.
Track Name: Jay Red Infinity 1997
In the backseat sprawled out on Sunday afternoon with some old favorite album; the car stereo booms. We always skip past “Within You Without You.” That there that's my dad in the old baseball cap. He explains Wednesday morning, why she won’t come back. Deposits his checks and we head home at last.

Fondest memories are made on slow moving Sundays when your father drives and hums, “Woke up again today, oh boy...”

Eleven years old in his room in the dark, with his knees to his chest and tears streaked down his arms, the whole place torn apart, clothed with thrown baseball cards... When he can’t shake the violence that’s trapped in his glands, he says “When I grow up and come to be a man, then I will crush them with these two hands.

I don’t believe in you. I only believe in violence."
Track Name: We Will Be Destroyed
The Preacher Maxwell sat by his window before he went to bed. He heard the sound of car horn howl, and it made his body sad. His heart believed that no one’s lost who cannot be turned back. He heard the sound of a fight in the street, and it made his body sad.

I’ve seen the things you’re capable of, and I’ve tried to let them slide: the family of terrible lies that you’ve spun, your circus of amoral crimes. But if you’ve got it coming then you’ve got it coming––don’t come crying to me at the end. I am put at ease by a heathen on his knees. I’ll forgive you, but we’ll be even.

It's out of my hands now.

I can see all your loss when your jaw moves to talk, and I know you’ve been fucked from the way that you walk, and I’ll struggle to stand high and hold it all back, but I don’t need it anymore. The dirtiest of shits get to live out their lives while the loyal true friends have to give up their eyes. They smell their way to Dover and abruptly they know that only the good die alone. I’ll get no princely title on the day of my death, no choir of angels to sing me to my rest, and no chance in Heaven if I take my revenge, but God knows it feels better than sex. So if it’s a fight that you want then I’ll give you a fight. If you’ve got shit to talk, say it into the mic. You’ll wish you were dead and you’ll wish me dead too––motherfucker, I’m talking to you.
Track Name: My Ugly
I saw your girl again––you left her at the six train. She walked twenty-two blocks while you were up on Broadway. Not a kiss goodbye, not an offer to pay so she could take the train. But you’re feeling okay––now you’re at the opera, mingling with socialites, making dirty small talk. You talk yourself off––oh my, you’re so quick! You can’t see past the end of your dick.

You think this party is for losers because nobody knows you, so you drag your girl out, tell her that her night’s through. You know you’re the coolest. Everybody loves you, everyone respects you. Gurls with half their heads full are lining up to sex you. Everybody wants you, but I know you’re a waste.

And every time I see you it’s the same old game. The world is not a lecture hall; we didn’t all get born to hear you talk. My method’s gonna knock you down off your self-important peak. You know I’m very sore displeased with your heathen ease. Besides, your ugly is the store-bought kind––you can find it anywhere. You’ve never meant anything to anyone, and you expect us all to care. But my ugly is the hideous kind––it’s the truth you cannot face: you do not deserve her; all you do’s abuse her. She knows you’re an asshole; I know you’re a loser. You are a waste.
Track Name: Fitzcarraldo
We’re too deep in it now. Over the mountain we go. If it’s worth the opera house, I know God will float us. But can I really believe that these people on the streets with their dirty fingers will be saved and will not suffer?

So here’s to a lifetime of waking up and breaking down. And yours was a lifetime whose troubles they feared to point out. Out of the desert, onto the beaches––you are the shepherd, but I am still sheepish. I know the sermon, I fear no evil. For better or worse, I am one of your people.

Are you listening, Son of Man? I have seen what world I can. Do you know for sure He’s coming back for your brothers? All the voices of your clan, they are silent as they stand looking on your body. Are we damned? Are we others?

But here I am in a room still bogged down with histories of an angry God who will not speak to me. Here is where Max walked when he could not see. I can see him on the mattress, blind but full of majesty; a belly full of sleeping pills and No. 7 whiskey. We might carry this burden forever.
Track Name: The Preacher
In former lives, they had you navigate the ocean. Your rebel’s line moved west and settled in Michigan. And in your youth, you knew a boy who played with pellet guns, shooting morning doves and laughing as they fell among the tall grass of the Earth. And when you grew, you left your home and lost your vision. Your fingertips spread out above the congregation. They’d tell you, Max, we want to meet your wife and children, but all your sons would sleep beneath the Chrysler Building, and your woman lay in verse.

Where have you been, Lord Randal, my son?
Oh, where have you been, my handsome young man?
I was out in the city, mother, making my name.
I saw what I saw and I won’t be the same.

Where did the voices of my dear friends go?
Oh, where is that dusty old bible I owned?
I was gone for a time and now nothing is left.
I could sleep in my bed but I won’t get my rest.

Well I went to a movie last night all alone.
I knocked on their doors, but I guess they weren’t home.
I fell asleep halfway through, turning away
from an ending that I couldn’t see if I strained.

I walked through the fields and I saw myself dead––
a black dog in one ear, a man in my bed.
Get your typewriter, mother, and when I come down,
I will spell out my sermon if you transcribe the sounds.

And here is the room where it will come to pass
when the fate I have measured is out of my hands.
But I painted my evidence all down the halls
with the black streaks where my fingers moved on the walls.

It has been twenty years since I saw the sun rise.
It has been twenty still since I saw a man smile.
I heard dry throats that whistled on top of the crowd––
I am tired of talking and I want to lie down.

And here in the middle path, my wandering has yielded no ground. I am tired of hunting and I want to lie down.

Where is that whiskey? This headache won’t pass.
Where is that whiskey? I’ll just have a glass.
But I drank all my whiskey and put on your gown.
I’m tired of dancing and I want to lie down.

I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son.
I fear you are poisoned, you sorry young man.
Oh yes, I am poisoned, mother, make my bed now.
Yeah, I’m sick at the heart and I want to lie down.
Track Name: Landscape Of Skin And Single Rooms
I was across the ocean, somewhere far away from you, and all had rotted on my island. In my bed and at night, I sought him whom my soul loved. I sought him, but I could not find him.

I keep a Bible in my bed, here on the pillow by my head. It’s how I know how to keep the devil from sleeping on my feet. Now for the bottle’s thoughtless grace––the number seven on its face. Can you call it a sin if it helps me reach my peace? Close your eyes and go to sleep.

I dream of a blind man crushing keys all night in his room alone! We were our father’s sons but I sold my eternal soul. I haven’t done a thing for you. I don’t deserve your gentle grace. I have done nothing to deserve your embrace.

Well is it fair how it turned out? Do you deserve what I have now? The easy life where the spoon is carried up to your mouth? I’ve done some things that would shame you, all for the tits and whiskey, too. But at the end of the night, you are soaring through my blood. They ask, “Are you having fun?”

No, I’m not having a good time. I don’t want to be part of your high life. It’s true––everything here is worthless. I am waiting for my king, for a world more perfect.
Track Name: Low Generation
Oh, how I hate these mornings, how my skin feels tough and worn, how my ears still ring with the sounds of last night’s soft skin getting torn. Hey, who kicked the door in? Who’s that pissing on the lawn? Where did I leave my car keys? Could someone please shut off that same old song? And when my night is over, sometime close to eight a.m., all I want to do is drive home and shower off and get back into bed. I wonder what Tom is doing. I wonder if Sartaj is home. I kind of want to go to the diner, but maybe they just want to be left alone.

I saw the best minds of my generation choke on birthday cake and sleep all day. If there’s a struggle, I’m missing it even though I’m wide awake. Have I made a mistake? Is it too late?

And now you’re out of high school and into college. You could have been a genius if only someone had believed it. And now a life of pictures and standing water. We might have wanted something bigger, but I can’t seem to put my finger on what it is. But I know it isn’t this.

If our lives were over the river, then this city is purgatory. I shouldn’t be this worried about what’s gonna happen to me. Brother Max, are you sleeping? Are those pain-killers stuck to your tongue? Did you know when your eyes closed that nothing would happen to us?

We are all sons of someone, but we can’t remember all the roots of our etymology. Now I look in the mirror, and I see your eyes staring, but your graces are all wasted in me. All my boys in the diner are waiting for something, but the feeling is that we’ve had enough. I resign to be silent and think about nothing, because nothing’s gonna happen to us. I will stand on the sidewalk and think about nothing, because that’s what’s gonna become of us.
Track Name: Sad Jazz
Dear David in Wichita, if things look bad, I know they are––it’s all right. We were already haunted. And if this world should be a spinning car, heading for the railing bars, just say there was nothing you wanted.

You’ve got to love what you have while you have it, and when it’s gone, you got to forget all about it. When the myth of death turned out to be true, I was in a lecture––where were you? Everything I learned fell out of my head.

Forty-two years he lived in the city. Forty-two poems was the number I heard. After his brother, he was constantly writing. Berkeley looks down on the hearse. The first verse began just like the last verse:
Track Name: Attrition
I fought hard to keep up, but only went cold. I fell out and I felt a thousand years old. My eyeballs are bloodshot––it’s worse than I guessed. The drunk have got nothing. The sober have less.

The drudge of attrition, the slog keeps me dumb. The girls smell of jasmine. The meds make me numb. You look in the mirror––your jaw has grown long, and all you can hear is this excuse for a song.
Track Name: Minute By Minute
Every night there’s a new kind of dream, visions bold and revolting that make me sweat in my sleep. Last night you were naked before me, laid out on a platform, a sacrifice for all to see. Every night there’s some new sin, some new smell crawling over my skin. This disease has no cure I know. I am waiting to be broken at your knees.

But it’s all right. There was nothing I wanted.

On afternoons the world is simple and supple; the whole of my being could form a small puddle. I want to be a dog in grass before the rain, moving minute by minute in the pleasure God made. Some nights I wish I could be a child, but I could not stand all the confusion and first tries. No one knows of a place I can hide, and the creek in the backyard has just run dry.

But it’s all right. There was nothing I wanted. So it’s all right.
Track Name: King Of Concert Band Faces The Inevitable
Mr. Blue and White! How do you shake your bones all night, Mr. Blue and White? Will you teach me? Yes, I’m talking to you, Mr. Blue and White! How can you flash your bits in broad daylight, Mr. Blue and White? Will you teach me? Yes, I’m talking to––

You were the true boy-king, the potentate, but there are some things you can’t recreate. Oh, change is inevitable. You know change is inevitable. Your college news, your white boat shoes, your guitar blues, all your condoms used. You speak so well, you dress well too, and the girls in their madness can’t refuse.

“I will do wonderful things to you, beautiful, pitiful things to you. I want to mean the whole world to you. Girl, I just want to get close to you.”

If we could return to the peace of Palm Desert that summer before we were sixteen years old, out in the sunshine without any color––! Got born in the wrong place and now I just want to go home.

I am lost and home is nowhere. The guidebook glossed over all these scenes, but moving’s safer than staying somewhere. I just need a view of something green. Can I come over and sleep on your couch? I’ll make you breakfast in the morning. ‘Cause it’s too far to walk to my house, and I just need some different air to breathe.
Track Name: Your Angst
He wanted to play at “mad genius;” I've got him beat at that, too. I know he’ll never concede this, but he knows that it’s true. He’s always had his family and money and food. So he gets depressed. He’s not the only one it happens to. Besides, he really had it coming.

He still thinks he’s a genius––don’t make me laugh. I do a thousand times more with half the talent he has. And I could go on forever, but then where would I be? If I point my finger, am I really just down on my knees, begging, “Fight me, fight me, please?”

And everybody asks “Is he okay?” Yeah, he’s “okay.” Apparently it doesn’t take much to be “okay” these days. I lost my temper, but it’s okay––at least it’s over now. But when they run their mouths, sometimes you gotta call them out.
Track Name: War Sometimes
Now as the hero comes home, the deed done, vomiting, covered in shit, bile, and blood, they’ll cheer and throw streamers but have no remorse. No matter their debt, he is still their cheap whore. And if you show it, love will tear you apart. You’ll never recount what you saw in the dark. And God forbid you ever make a mistake, they will make sure that it follows you to your grave.

They are the crowd that will boo you off stage. They are the ones who will bitch and complain. No matter what you give them, they will just scoff. They’re always still hungry; it’s never enough. They are the ones who crush pumpkins and laugh, spit in their palms and go out to shake hands. But if nothing will give Brother Bill his great thrill, I will nail him to a beam at the top of the hill!

It’s war sometimes for everyone else, for everyone else it’s war sometimes. Is it worth it?



[Swedish]: God, you who are somewhere, who must be somewhere, have mercy on us. / I could have purged your worries about eternity, but now it’s too late. But feel, to the very end, the triumph of being alive. / Quiet, quiet. / Yes, but under protest! / It is finished.
Track Name: Videotaping The Ocean
I came to the city with a suitcase in my hand and the only street map that I could understand. I thought I could fend for myself; I thought I was a man. I knew a girl in the neighborhood somewhere with non-prescription glasses and had bleached-blonde hair. I thought I might take her for a spin; I didn’t have a plan from there. But if there were a bell I could ring for every time I’m wrong, it would ring, it would ring, it would ring. Ring that bell, you heathen, over the sea. Yeah, ring that bell, you heathen, for me.

So of course all the plentiful plans I had laid were quickly undone in embarrassing ways. She wasn’t going to save me; she could barely inhabit her space. I wrestled with the ghosts of the Bowery, shook my fists at angels on the Coney Island Beach. I waited for an answer. Was there nothing here for me? And now I’m in the water down at Sunset Beach. The seagulls make a choir on the sinking debris, and when the ship goes under, I will still have the memory. If there’s a bell in that lighthouse to ring for every single time that I’ve realized I don’t know a thing, ring that bell, you heathen, over the sea. Yeah, ring that bell, you heathen, for me.

I was a sinner and I was a loser––I just wanted to get laid. But you were an idol and you taught me baseball––you gave me a pastime game. I’m sorry if this song might hiss adoration into your chastised ears. It’s just I’ve been videotaping the ocean alone for so many years.

You are my brilliance and you are my conscience, you are my great White Whale. You are the drunk nights, the gentle reminders that everything I do will fail. And you are an ocean and you are a beach house, the sunset over Cape May. You are the mantra that helps me remember this whole world might be okay, someday.
Track Name: Avalon
At the cathedral door they will ask for my sins, so I’ll get out my pen and I will make them a list: I screamed before speaking, I never held back, but when shit hit the fan, I forgot how to act. My parents insisted “Don’t ever start shit,” but I started my share. And for now, I admit, I have locked myself in without God, without man, but if there’s a God listening, He’ll hold to––He’ll hold to my hand.

I bought these new clothes so that I’d look the part, and I forgot whole people to get my dick hard. I’ve lied and defaced, stolen and begged for more. I’ve sinned until slime was gushing out of my pores. I’m tired and useless, I don’t say what I mean, and I cling much too hard to my spite and my spleen, but if my crowd defects, and if all hope is lost, I will howl it to no one. It’s my turn––it’s my turn to talk.

I don't know my place, but I know I’m a lump of the clay. And I must be labeled so that they'll know me on Easter Day, standing just outside the blaze that will crown the golden gate at the top of the Chrysler Building, on the beach at Cape May. But on Earth it is almost Monday.

Wake up, Max, it’s no time to be sleeping. Wake up, Max, there’s much work to be done. Wake up, Max, I can’t do it without you. So help me God–– Wake up, Max, it’s no time to be sleeping! Wake up, Max, there’s much work to be done! Wake up, Max, I can’t do it–– You were the righteous one.