PYRRHON LYRICS

1. New Parasite

The subway tunnels sigh
Damp air rushing up through oiled grates
Drawn from phlegmy pools
That fester beneath the streets

Avert your eyes and grit your teeth
This too shall pass
The gutters are packed with strangled souls
This too shall pass
The steel is melting, the mortar is crumbling
This too shall pass
My voice will fade and these pages will rot
This too shall pass

My fingers trace tile walls
And caress the crass graffitos
That fill the pits and cracks
Like eczema crusting a scar

Avert your eyes and grit your teeth
This too shall pass
The gutters are packed with strangled souls
This too shall pass
The steel is melting, the mortar is crumbling
This too shall pass
My voice will fade and these pages will rot
This too shall pass

Above, the world buzzes
Wires, fridges, flickering fixtures
Commercial jingles and radio chatter
Blaring klaxons and whispering mendicants

The city has fallen ill
Its foundations sink into muck

Avert your eyes and grit your teeth
This too shall pass
The gutters are packed with strangled souls
This too shall pass

And I crawl the streets
Gobbling its corrupted flesh
Even as it sickens me

Oh, how the angels kiss my senses
And how the fear shrouds my mind
As the beast dies all around me
I could not feel more alive

2. Glossolalian

I’ve invented new words
For the work that we’ve done together

Painful neologisms
Carved in your warm flesh
Scrawled in your torn flesh

Read deep into my nonsense
And I hope you fucking choke
On all it doesn’t say

My voice has become toxic
Weaponized vowels
Acid gibberish

Snake, you coil in my home
And among my clothes
I’ve done all that I can
To drive you away
This is the last resort
Of a cornered animal

I know it’s wrong
Like fists full of barbed wire
I know it’s wrong
Like nightstick abortions

But I must vent this poison
Before it kills me

This is not justice
But that doesn’t make a bit of difference to me
Blood will always out
And you deserve the worst

3. Idiot Circles

We find ourselves lost
In a maze of our own design
The signposts have all burned down
And we fade by the day

When the wind blows,
I shed dried-up morals
Like leaves in autumn
Or dead skin cells,
Desiccated by years of misuse,
And left to fill the guts of mites
And muffle spiders’ footfalls

Oh, that we could forget
And turn our eyes from the floodwaters
But even a liar like me
Knows that we must drown

Show me that the things that you value
Have value since you value them
We can feel meaningful
Because it means we have meaning

Let’s hoard grains of sand
And worship junk data
Let’s build a palace of static
And lose ourselves inside
Let’s march around and around and around again

All the debased logic
The spent, weathered values
And the ashes of intentions
Bear their witness against me

I can hear them every hour
I can hear them every day
Ten billion orphans
Screaming in the abyss

4. Correcting A Mistake

When the bombs fell
We were in the hospital
Receiving the good news

The test results burst into flames
In the doctor’s hands
Glass perforated your healing skin
Overpressure broke our embrace
Shrapnel amputated your smile
And I learned what silence means

When the bombs fell
All the confusion fell away
And the earth was made simple again

When I awoke
I tasted blood and cinders
Like lubricants of change
A dying orderly told me
It was quick and painless for you

As his ribs broke through his skin
It was not quick or painless for him

Is it wrong to feel relieved?
Maybe this was for the best
Someone told me there was a plan

They’re making this world a better place
One mess at a time

5. Gamma Knife

The men gave me back my papers
Because they cannot not harm me anymore
They said I could read the words
But would not understand them

“Corpses without fingerprints
Locked doors and black helicopters
Searchlights from the sky
Human traffic in cargo containers
Cities drowning in tar
Deserts crisscrossed by cyclone fences
A constant low buzzing
And somebody laughing from far away

“My walls have all grown eyes
And my steps are fettered by wires

“And then it appears
The final, grand absurdity
A great, silent heart
Sprouting vein-trees and capillary branches
Rendered obsolete
And spinning lonely through the ice”

The men took their needles and entered my mind
And they sutured up the bad thoughts
They say that it was for the best
But I know that part of me is missing now

6. The Architect Confesses (Spittlestrand Hair)

I built a man
With a clockwork heart and gravel hands
He sees no color and hears no music
I let tumors clog a throat that leads
To a Moebius stomach

Castrated and engorged
Priapism of the mind
A victim of circumstance

I built a woman
With bathroom-floor skin and spittlestrand hair
Her breasts yield up poison
And I filled her skull with sobs and tears

Her womb is ripe with future
She waits and whispers

My hands shake
Stained, calloused hands
They know my guilt and my pride
They wait with her for grandchildren

With their clockwork hearts
And gravel hands
With bathroom-floor skin
And spittlestrand hair
They curse their maker
And sharpen their knives

The best of intentions
Spawn the foulest beasts
I deserve what’s coming for me
It will be a relief

7. Flesh Isolation Chamber

Two-way mirrors and guard towers
Behind every pair of eyes

The prison is there
Whether or not you can see it
And we’re each locked down alone
With the sound of our nerves fraying
The lightbulbs are cameras, and the keyholes are cameras
Even the bricks are cameras
With cataracts in their lenses
And morons watching their screens

Which is worse:
Always being watched
Or never being seen?

An anonymous god in his cell
Begins to fear drowning in his own filth
Calling out for deaf guards,
Battering the prison walls
With bloody fists and blistered feet
With pleasure and pain
Joy and sorrow and indifference.

Which is worse:
Always being watched
Or never being seen?

Neurotransmitters shut down
And drops of serotonin blur his vision
As he despairs of finding a way out

8. A Terrible Master

I can’t ever seem to sleep
And the TVs leer as they parody me
Their chatter sucks the air from whole rooms
No matter how many I turn off

Is this really how the world sees me?
Is the screen the lens of the mind’s eye?
I can feel myself shrink as the wilderness grows
And the microchips chirp in mocking conspiracy

The dying newspapers boil over with rumors
And no one can hear the bombs bursting from here
The charlatan experts prey on our fear
And the doctors prescribe palliative insecticides
For cancers they planted themselves at your birth
And the books are bound up with third-hand hearsay

But who can be trusted to pick out the liars?
I’d do to them what they’re doing to me
I can feel myself shrink as the wilderness grows
And the microchips chirp in mocking conspiracy

‘Round here
Ninety million tons of concrete
Press down
On their tired eyes and soft frames
‘Round here
Their brains collapse before their bodies
White noise
Clogging every orifice like glue

I haven’t slept in weeks
A lifetime has passed and I don’t know a thing
And I don’t give a fuck what happens to me
All I want is to go to sleep







PYRRHON LYRICS