Collected Lyrics
contra @ emperorx . net
Copyright Chad R. Matheny 2001-2005
This collection is dedicated to
Mr. Adam P. Witt
and his discorporated car.
Table of Contents
(Click titles to jump to desired album or lyric.)
From The Joytakers Rakes/Stars on the Ceiling, Pleasantly Kneeling
I Will Always Hear
Dont Gather round the Dinnertable .
From Tectonic Membrane/Thin Strip on an Edgeless Platform:
Exterminata Beat
Laminate Factory ...
Filenes Basement ..
Bashling .
A Hole in the Earths Spin Tone .
Florencia Tropicana ...
Constantly Constantly Radios On ..
Garbage Shaft Floor-by-Floor
I Want a Baby
From Central Hug/Friendarmy Fractaldunes:
Right to the Rails .
Shut Shut Up ..
The
Citizens of
Raytracer
Use Your Hands .
F-R-E-S-N-E-L Licsnseur ..
Sfearion ..
Ainseley .
Edgeless .
AloalocularL.A ..
From the Two Detonated JTA Buses in Aceh Province E.P.
Island Long Dirt Dealership ...
Hardwood Floor Servant
Petroleum Caliphate/Addison Aceh ...
Everyone in
Other Lyrics
Williston Gentry .
Move to
Sheila ..
From The Joytakers Rakes/Stars on the Ceiling,
Pleasantly Kneeling
Green light, green light, green light, red.
The storms across the sky.
Atlantis on my mind.
The stormy waters of the south
rock the fair ship
She plods down the Missisippi,
searching for
A tiny beam of starlight is crawling on the floor.
I can bear no more.
A faint collapsing workshop destroyed in all the wars.
I can't see your score.
You prove it like empirical data.
Harsh words in the clouds and substrata.
Evil thornbush accepting my parade.
Grecian warriors of the South,
consumed with blood and rage.
The fall of ancient
I can't hear the words.
The wisdom of the ancients exploding forth in rays.
I give you my praise.
Doors closing. Doors closing.
You're such an ugly duckling consumed by others fears.
All alone I fear.
You're such a waste of atoms consumed by all the years.
I will always hear.
Don't Gather 'round the Dinnertable
We met beneath the arch of revolution.
The soft foundation sank beneath our feet.
The bike corral led out to the arena.
The hotel lobby sheltered us from heat.
Dont gather round the dinnertable, darling.
Theres nothing that will satisfy you there.
Come meet me beneath the angel in the parkland
while I attempt to rearrange the muscles in your hair.
We got home just in time to feel the swelter.
The summer storms confused our ancient minds.
The spark gap closed between our fainting faces.
Your dark eyes opened wide and plastered mine.
Dont run away from me this time, my darling.
Ive more to offer you than mere regret.
Tear down the stonewashed castles with rebellion,
and populate the cities made of starlight in the air.
Our limbs were dangling coolly off your pool deck.
Our hands collided fifty thousand times.
Remembered fifty thousand times wed melted.
foreshadowed fifty thousand nights of crime.
Dont hold me for traditions sake, my darling.
Do not destroy your one chance at remorse.
Use love to fight corruption in your homeland.
Use love to light the pathways of our eternal divorce.
Use love.
From Tectonic Membrane/Thin
Strip on an Edgeless Platform
Exterminata Beat
A termite burrows through a particle board.
It's not the strongest, but it's all we could afford.
We'll treat it carefully and monitor close.
If we see an infestation we'll be sure to do some damage on it.
And while I'm at it, friend, I'll write you a note-
strip off some laminate and give you some hope.
I hope you survive this- you likely won't.
The crossbeams need some treatment, so we put them under pressure,
and they fall away.
Beams yield. Boards break.
The floor planks vibrate. House shakes.
You hit the pound, I'm sure you like it a lot.
You peel the paint off the walls 'cause you're afraid to rock,
collecting all the signatures you need to purify your data.
It's been awhile since I've seen you this clean, and that disturbs me.
I don't know what it means.
How far along are you in your pregnancy?
You call his name,
but it's your flexing back that's important to the colony's claim.
Hold up the shuddering frame.
Turn it off, unsupported-
clear a path with a chemical flame.
Laminate Factory
Every now and then I see the both of them
sprinting sideways across the AM.
And they slide through the kilohertz range,
and bounce themselves, and bounce themselves.
They slide up through the megahertz range.
Every now and again I see all three of them
take a turn at the turnstile to get me a free in,
and your Metrocard is turning its back.
The crystal in your palm turns a dark shade of black,
and it's time, yeah it's time. You're over 30.
It's time to go die.
It's time to go.
Every now and again I quit my job at the laminate factory,
applying wood onto wood in thin layers, sometimes as much
as five layers thick.
And then I spit out the splinters,
and clear my throat,
and go home and starve myself and choke.
Filene's Basement
I took the rain and made a shelter out of snowflakes and ground
and the mineral deposits from the middle of your bank downtown.
God knows want to punch/transact like al Qaeda did,
just like al Qaeda did.
God knows I'd like to dig you out, but the shovel's hid.
The massive shovel's hid.
It's buried under drifts and the depression of a province kid.
You get behind that wall at Birch Point, and in the boats, man.
You get behind that line at the stadium with tickets for the big band.
You get behind that line at the Maine Mall, the gutters and the grandstands.
You're gonna make that squall.
With a shutter-click the city kills the snowland.
Bashling
I wanted to falter you on the sunset.
I wanted to fall to you, white plastic swingset.
I wanted to fall to you.
An attempt at the last ledge.
I wanted to fall to you.
I wanted to climb to you on the moonrise,
At the top of a flame building, into your
blue eyes across from the reservoir,
under the white bridge.
Rumble.
The train passes.
Go lose it.
A Hole in the Earth's Spin-Tone
I want to check out. I want to see your mom's face,
want to have fun, want to rock it in the first place.
I want to check out and see what's in the dust pile.
I want to come home, want to stop being a worm for awhile.
I've got a stack, got a new pile of speakers.
Let's tear up wires.
I'll show you in the bleachers I'm- No, no, no.
I want to have fun, but I don't want to smell bad.
I want to take baths in the old school showerhead.
I want to see the show, and want to run there
with your girlfriend.
I want to hold her, and I want to hold her friend's
hand.
I want to take off, want to hit you with a microphone.
I wish I could see you on the telephone.
You can't call.
I want to take off, want to run to the old continent.
I want to dig a hole in the Earth's spin-tone.
In the jetway.
Florencia Tropicana
It takes a call to make us face where we stop and start.
And in the mall, at the J.C. Penney where your mama works,
we drove across the state, halfway
to
You bought a map,
and the FTA (sic) searched your flight all night.
A one way arrow puts you on Air
Reverse the flow of time and your plane flies backwards.
Let it crash into
standing on a desktop, screaming swear words.
Getting crushed at the night club.
You're drinking too much tea from
I see you dance to the Japanese dub
that you put in my head when we started talking.
We fight.
We're sending out sabers through the satellites all night,
through the AP wires and security networks.
Give light to your fiber-optic head.
It's a mess of cables.
It's a balled up fist,
and it's angry at the concept of technology drift.
I open .txt files at the break of day,
.psd extension blasted.
Bleary eyes and a soulless sway,
I swagger out the door.
Yeah, I'm sure Ive lost it.
Update your journal with a data disc.
I put it in your pack. I don't know where I tossed it.
I made a tape recording of the
and sent as an attachment, but Friendster lost it.
Cell phone blinks like a night light grade.
I graduated twice, but I never lost it.
I'll UPS a copy of my Xeroxed face.
I'll send it overnight no matter what it costs.
And if a transport Boeing hits an Airbus jet
from de Gaulle back to
then I'll know I've lost it.
.wav file whispers Baby, scan my heart.
They're cutting the connection.
I've already lost it.
Florencia Tropicana.
Constantly Constantly Radio's
On
There's a conspiracy,
on board Aquarian.
The water's high.
Heavy deuterium.
A crescent power grid shines like it never.
And you spit as you're hitting the harbor at night.
Ride the light rail to
Red line to Tenleytown.
Climb up antenna.
You take a look at the hills of the
take out your target scope and applications.
And you're constantly constantly radio's on.
And you're headphones are deadphones.
They're falling apart.
You're a transmitterhead with a
All the beautiful people get shot in the heartland.
Garbage Shaft Floor-by-Floor
Let's play the game that got you wasted.
Let's take a drip from the prick syringe.
Can you remember how it tasted when the drumstick smacked you?
What a forceful friend.
Now the sun's coming up on your palace.
You're breaking crystal with your mallets.
You shatter glasses and you shadowbox.
Your trifocals focus on the phallus.
There's no glory,
no sacred soul sea.
No starship,
no black keys.
No bands that remove me from competition
in the coliseum.
I'll smash your keyboards.
I'll take mine back home.
Then Jesus taps you on the shoulder:
"My father's ageless, but you're older,
and you're too feeble for my lightningbolt."
The universe starts dying.
It gets colder.
And now it's time for you to feel some pain.
Sacrifice a lung or two to fortune/fame.
Put down the auditorium with Christian name,
and call yourself a sacrificial soldier.
I can't believe that you'd bulldoze the mineshaft
You traded emotion for skills, and computerized.
Take back the seascape on jet skis and earthquakes.
Envision the nightmares you'll cause in the Birchmeres.
You'll spill spill spill spill,
garbage shaft floor-by-floor.
I Want a Baby
I cried when my dad did jail time for you.
I cried when he got released.
I cried when I saw the pandas at the zoo.
I cried at the wedding feast.
You can never have a baby in the summertime.
It's not mine.
You'll never have a baby in the summertime
if it's not mine.
No, you'll never have a baby in the summertime.
You can wrap it up in blankets.
It will scream and whine for the heat.
I want a baby.
From Central Hug/Friendarmy/Fractaldunes
Right to the Rails
Adventist Christian planetarium sanctuary.
Cut.
Tremendous friction in the cultivaritorium.
The station gets blown out.
You've got a right to the rails.
Cones, rods and retinas- I forgot your eyes.
Anacostia, Sligo Creek.
third rail transmitterized.
The red line gets freaked out, but
you've got a right to the rails.
Octagonal chambers.
Little rooms.
Little library minds.
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!GO!
GO!GO!GO! You've got a right to the rails.
Shut Shut Up
Shut up. You're not dying inside.
Shut closet, shut in.
Shot brother.
Take a bullet, son- come on in!
SHUT UP.
Feel around.
Feel around with the flashlight.
Shine it.
Wake up.
I won't let you sleep in.
You spat blood, you broke up.
Transmit sparks or I'll smother you.
No interference for a five mile radius.
No interference.
I'm a frantically frantically-
WAKE UP with a flashlight in each eye socket.
WAKE UP.
You're an ignorance belt.
You're a hinderance felt.
You're a hinterland hell and a mountain range.
The world cup is a violent prize.
It's not enough in my eyes.
Let's break it up.
Smash the trophy and the stadium cries.
They'll take the pieces to their homeland
and grind them into powder and shut up
shut up shut UP!
The Citizens of
And all 500,000 citizens of
tried to get a piece of your beautiful face,
drooling on themselves in the Methodist parking lots.
Throw your shoes in the
Make calls at the business school.
"Is there no community college in your county?"
They branded themselves with an ikon and an effigy,
and marked a fertile swath, a green ellipse,
an occidental notebook, an accidental mallergy.
You're sleeping now in the grain,
or the basement of the ECC,
spilling drugs on your pre-med clothes.
"Is there no grain alcohol available in cabinets?"
I'd go in, but I'm scared and the museum got closed.
So instead I took a bus to the mountains and the labyrinths.
Home.
A quarter million children in the downtown of
playing in their suits on the fountains and the grates,
spraying water at the girl with the flute and the mandolin.
Red skin.
Golden tone.
Sunflower state.
Raytracer
Did you ever get help?
By far and away she's more ingenious.
She's inferior.
The dense medium's mine,
the light one is hers.
She's bending rays to the interior.
Did you ever get help with the problems or exercise?
Did you ever get sad on your bed late at night,
Crying, listening to Either/Or?
Did you ever make out on the Capitol steps with an
AK-47-holding Marxist girl?
Did you ever get help with the problems?
No- you never can admit it.
That's fine.
I'm going home to fail.
Did you ever get help,
Did you ever get help,
Did you ever get help?
By far and away, you are ingenious. Youre inferior.
Did you ever get help?
By far and away, I am inventive. I'm inferior.
Use Your Hands
I never saw another building like yours.
It calls into question what's proper for the architect.
A combination of intelligent pricing and intelligent spans
that self-adjust for anyone.
Raze
Look- we all know it's appalling, but you're the only
one with plastic explosives in your pack.
"Matt, put it down man. We all know it's appalling but
you're the only one with a bomb in your hand."
Use your hands to dig through the cinderblocks,
and crush demands,
and hurt your home.
I never saw another building like yours.
It's breaking apart.
I never saw another dormitory like yours.
It's falling apart.
Use your hands.
F-R-E-S-N-E-L Licenseur
Let's hit the interstate.
With a call sign like that, girl, you'll never want to return.
Let's pull over all the silencers we find, and put them in
a locked un-American standard.
A hurtling ball across the freeway midline:
"I didn't mean to wreck your van, man.
I only want to take it to the center of the Marshall Plan."
I want to drive.
I want to pilot,
and put it down.
Let's put the state in a lockdown crisis.
I'm over wheels now.
My eyes were never gouged.
They were injured.
The DMV cries.
Where's your pile of illegal telescopics to abuse?
If Fresnel ever lived, he'd approve.
What else did he live for?
But wait- he loved, just like anyone else!
He had a heart, and a stomach, and a knee, and a blinker,
and his own soul tripod.
The turnpike's one lane in
A longitudinal wave impacts your fort.
But Fresnel, my good man, you've done much for our time.
The world's undersea links, and the internet.
And I drive.
Sfearion
Strange breed, rangefinder.
I'm comatose.
Trust, doubt, breakaway.
We were never close.
Jump around town.
It's the blinking of the eyelet
in the middle of the afternoon.
Phase burst from the screen-
a radiation dose.
I'm tired, and all tired faces get fired for how long the race is.
The race is long.
Long withou'r home.
I want to get home.
Rad, rem, rand- pinpricks on a data sea.
Ruptured nucleotide, broken ladder, drunk apostasy.
A brother got killed. An apostle got killed.
And the droners working patiently.
CRT spits a shard, strikes a blow against eternity.
I'm tired, and all tired faces get fired for how long the race is.
The race is long.
Long withou'r home.
I want to get home.
Ainseley
Ainseley-
I know I'm too old, and the youth group is wrong for me. I'm
poetically on your leash, and I'm going there to make you
want me. I'll save my soul so you can catch a peek of the
beautiful ideas and ugly dreams and the wavelengths that
I keep in tension.
Taraka's home. By that time I'm sleeping, and she gets in the
pool to make sure she's breathing. I want to check her breath
for signs of hope, and I want to mine her mind for game codes.
All those beautiful ideas and lovely quotes...I won't you hold
you close 'cause I'd cry.
Sincerely,
-aaoawejf23424tr4
Edgeless
You sleep dreamless on the watchtowerbaby,
in the heart of the train,
and it's seamless.
Your light's beamless,
and so you're hiding in the tunnel until the fire's exchanged
for a setlist.
You call them insane.
Call in, call out.
And then your eyes twitch,
and then you're outside,
and you call them insane.
In-line shockring.
You make a racket in the station until the silence explains
guideway blocking.
Shockwave docking.
It took 100,000 blinkers for the darkness to drain,
to start talking.
The factions make peace by the subway light.
And then your eyes twitch.
And then you're outside.
Call in.
Call out.
Collinear.
Call them insane.
AloalocularL.A.
AloalocularL.A.
La Brea tar pits froth and spray.
Conscription pulls you back to it.
Breathe fire. Breathe spit.
EndoelmetrialY.C.
Ascorbic acetate fling spree.
Behold- the curtain's open wide!
Stucco homes in Central Side,
inside.
JayowenstarclusterA.X.
Breathe slowly. Breathe out.
Cause car wrecks.
Your destiny's not manifest.
The best.
From the Two Detonated JTA Buses in Aceh Province E.P.
Island Long Dirt Dealership
Sand and lakes.
A dealership. Dirt superstore. The filaments.
Tell all the men they won this round.
They're on.
Until it's gone. Done. Ever-over.
Gonna find out
where they let it enter
island-long.
Until the land runs
into the ocean.
Gonna slip off.
Gonna mend our sails forever.
Everybody comes to their owning
and fail to pay their end off and pay the rent.
Everybody comes to their own.
Himself alone.
Herself alone.
Themselves alone.
Until the rain soaks
through our computers,
warped in the fabric
and erased our songs.
Until it snows and
melts into the culverts.
Gonna find out if we
get to spend this eon
together.
Hardwood Floor Servant
Everyone looks ugly on a hardwood floor after nights of sleeping without lighting.
Every womans hair gets messed and tossed when they walk in the rain without a hijab.
And thats why the Muslims fight wars for their girls.
And thats why I opened up my mouth full of sores,
and I begged for release from their jail on the beach,
and I begged not to be their only Western servant on a hardwood floor,
scraping up splinters tacked to the door.
But I am a Westerner.
Petroleum Caliphate/Addison Aceh
New wings, old mosque.
Kindly give in to a new bleaching powder, sir.
New breed, old moths.
I love. I am. Island.
Petroleum Caliphate
Daddy got a light on the car and he traveled down from his apartment
where he lives like a single man in the throes of his own throat cancer.
And that holy dome overshadowed his own.
Brother got a job down in
In my shed I keep a dozen or so vials of lead.
And in the phosphorus glow I light your bed.
The plastics I make all day long melt our arms together.
In my shed I keep a thousand or so wires and threats.
And lord, I tangle them so!
Together.
Everyone in
Everyone in
so they dont get in wrecks when the buses get clogged
and hit each others faces.
Everyone in
because they dont have a train except one downtown,
and it goes out to the docks.
Yeah, right! What docks? What goes? Ghosts!
And in my hometown they dont have disasters.
The trees all fall down, but then thats it.
My good friends grandpa lost power for four days,
and he was lonely,
but he didnt die.
Other Lyrics
Gentleman. sir:
I hate to be your cancer. I hate to hurt.
Gentleman. Sir:
I suck the devastation in a sweaty shirt.
Were on a rim.
Gentleman. maam:
They fight themselves disasters and they seldom win.
Gentleman, gatekeeper:
I found a little rape clog.
I found a tin inside the brain.
Inside the home, under the planks, I am alone and in disguise,
a strengthening pole and a harming
gasp.
Gentleman, sir:
I hate to be your cancer.
I hate to hurt.
Im working for your landmine.
Im working in the Earth.
Im on a rim.
CSX and
the Blood
Scars please save me.
Screams please scar me,
And transmit the code for your illegal acts
And pile silt and lime to make your railroad tracks
Which lead like veins to the center of your heart.
Get out, get out.
Im convinced now youre going to clog those rails.
Get out, get out.
Bust your stitch now.
Call CSX and the blood alliance.
Pick your scabs off and inhale until you cough.
And then burn your scab pile.
Let it smolder.
Let it smoke.
Let the incense of your platelets form a continent of hope.
Shake.
Watch out, watch out.
Its an earthquake.
Its going to slit your wrist and dump rubble into the
and watch your guideways
twist.
Move to
Lets take a rest and move to
and live in chromium houses, and do the
hula dance,
And kill ourselves while dancing beneath the disco ball.
A life confined, but rhyming-
high on speed I hear you call.
Your heart goes faster with each amphetamine.
Take out your blaster and use the cutting beam to separate the fat
night watchmen from
the chromium flats they guiard.
Burn down flats and library stacks with your heat ray credit card,
and mask your violent actions with perfume and a smile.
The streets of
Amidst conflagurations, youre screaming at
your Mom with frosted accusations.
And then they drop a nuclear bomb.
Breaking tiles and youve
been calling out for miles.
You search for
understanding.
Tearing up the files
while your dumb employer smiles.
He knows youre
self-demanding.
Depressions
and denials in the symptomatic trials.
Playing
accordion at the Landing.
Shudder through the
dunes, and like an arsonist in ruins youll be lucky if youre barely standing.
Dig the deepest psycho
hole.
Emerge like a
grave-robbing Seminole with tomahawk and rifle on your back,
Both hands cut off and
acid in your hemp rope sack.
Tipping over boats we
stole,
Beached
on sand and muddy shoals.
No
The locks were changed.
Our souls turned charcoal black.
Sheila
The night Sheila drove me
across the desert between Regency Mall and the office park,
it was time that she told me her plans for the night
and the way the stars shone out on the
hood.
We stopped to do
firecrackers on the dunes.
And late at night we
snuck upstairs to her room, and commenced Transmissions
from the
Satellite Heart on the
stereo and begged for our lives to start.
But they never did.
Not the way we thought.
Not the way we begged
for, the way we prayed for.
And then, at her
brothers graduation, we all gathered round for a snack by the
punchbowl, and
her teacher was in line.
And he looked down and he
stoned her and scolded her life and then smiled and asked
forgiveness for
his crime.
And Sheila read a page
from her manuscript, and sold it to a publishing house that was
there in the back
row.
And Sheila turned to me
with a tear in her eye, and money rolling off of her cheek,
and said Ive gotta go, nmy son.
I said, Youre not the
only one.
But I loved her.