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Body Of Apology

by Colporteur

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1.
Over Matter 02:19
I know what you’re thinking. I’ve seen what you’ve always been too scared to admit out loud. All you need is just one reason to give up on yourself. Don’t wake up, I’ll meet you there. In dreams, I’ve seen you graduate ahead of all your class getting your master’s degree. You keep yourself drunk just so you can blame the bottle instead. All you need is one good reason not to do it. Don’t wake up, I’ll meet you there. In dreams, I’ve seen you dancing with a girl who smiles when you lean in real close to her cheek. Awake, I know you’re wondering how much of this could be real, if only you tried.
2.
Stomach Ache 01:56
You all need to calm down. The boy’s been through hell. So let him have his fun. There’s some antacid in the medicine cabinet. Feed me your child abuse. Keep drinking those nights you want to forget. Swallowing your pride just whet my appetite. So Breaking Heart, don’t lecture me on what I can and cannot handle. There’s a bucket and a bottle of aspirin. Feed me that tab on your tongue. Keep sending the smoke to your lungs. I need something strong, so stay until the lights come on. Feed me the memories you hate. Keep drinking and maybe some day you’ll see that stumbling your way home is one way to control everything.
3.
Digits 02:53
Tongue is licking lips. Breaking Heart is stuttering to the methamphetamine in his veins. We involuntarily move toward the kitchen sink, pushing the dishes away. There’s a first time for everything. We’ve been scratching at his forearms all afternoon. “I don’t like this at all,” he says. “I was fine with alcohol, but this…” Eyes are seeing double. It’s getting harder just to breathe. Lung is working overtime. Stomach is in knots, and Teeth grind like faulty gears. Finding it too hard to stand, he falls to the floor. His hands, we’ve been checking his pulse just to make sure. Learn to count to ten. Take a breath and then start all over again. Apology, he says a prayer to the tile floor he’s helpless on. He doesn’t mean to bother God, but he doesn’t quite believe in him. “If ever I needed one of those messages in a bottle I used to throw out to sea to find someone, find anybody.”
4.
And you know, I think you started making sense for the first time when you were drunk. Like, really drunk. When you said, “It’s easy to wish you were dead.” And you meant it, like you haven’t meant anything else. And you’re right. I don’t think anyone knows what it’s like to be sad. Oh, shut up. But you had a point, and though you couldn’t know it, I was rooting for you all along. Sure, your mother sucks, and your father left you, but what the fuck do you think is owed to you? There will be a point, I hope when you’ll see the truth. That it’s so much harder to live than it is to give up. Let me explain it to you in a way that maybe you’ll understand. If you think of love as a lifeboat, then swim to shore. If you’re scared of dying alone, get a terrier. If you buy despair by the pound, keep the receipt. If you find it hard to choke down, don’t look for me.
5.
A Lone Lung 03:24
Breaking Heart, I’ve got a lot to learn. Liver said to me, “Lung, it’s simple. Our pedaling just moves us backward. We can struggle against the reins, but in the end there’s nothing that we can say that will get through to Apology. So all we can do is watch him dig himself a deeper hole.” There’s a fire, but I can’t see the flames. I’ve been choking on the smoke, though, for days. My twin spasms in pain next to me. And all I can do is watch him struggle, the other side of my coin. And all I think of are all the songs we’d sing when we still had a voice. When Apology was a boy. But now, the singing is just noise. “Pretend you’re off to—pretend you’re off to war. Make it easier to say goodbye to the life you’ll likely leave behind. But all of your brothers are here. Your twin and me and Liver. Stomach, he’s been denying everything. Though we’re taking on water, he’s still convinced we’ll never sink. Eyes see everything. Tongue and teeth are telling me that he’s been trying to die. And all we can do is fight to keep him alive. What choice do we have?”
6.
In your veins, you’ll find a letter written by your mother and her mother. Your father signed on the dotted line but couldn’t bother reading through the fine print. It reads, “Here, take this piece of me. Try to do it better than I was able to.” When you kept that box of photos in the closet with the laundry detergent, the bottle of bleach went over and soaked through all the shelves and stained—I mean completely erased—more than half the photographs your mother always meant to frame. “Sometimes you don’t think. You need to learn. You need—hey, are you listening to me?” When you cut your hand when you were five picking up a piece of broken glass you found in the basement, you watched the blood gather in your palm. Hey, are you scared of what you’d see in yourself if only you tried? You’d find yourself if only you tried. Hey, are you listening to me? I’ve been screaming to get this through to you.
7.
I can’t keep a straight face. Holding open my eyelids, watch the pupils dilate. Stop, blink away the lights. I’d find peace of mind in the darkened corners I’m too scared to reach my hand into. There’s an old desk clerk shuffling papers around in the back of my head. There’s a chest of drawers that I can never get open since the black paint dried, and they stick. I trace my own frown lines with fingers that smell like the yellow of a cigarette. In the mirror, I push a smile onto my face. There’s a couch I think I’ve grown to love more than I ever cared for my own skin. Because the days I sleep through and the nights passed out drunk, I dream of her again and again. She’s a tall black girl with beads pulled through her hair, no matter when I start dreaming, she’s already there and she smiles, her teeth the white of a letter I’d like to read. Won’t you write to me? There’s this goddamn stain down the front of my shirt I’ve been scrubbing at all night with dish soap in the bathroom sink, but it won’t come out. I just keep thinking that my mother would know—yeah, she’d know how to fix this. But she won’t. She won’t fix this. And I won’t. I can’t fix this.
8.
Eyes Saw 03:25
She wore a cotton dress. She pulled jewelry, earrings tangled in necklaces, from the box that used to belong to your grandmother when she was young. She wore her favorite heels, the ones that made her feel fucking powerful. Tall and capable. And she said so. “Tonight we’re going to meet your dad for dinner. I want you to get to know the man that you’re gonna grow up to look like. I want you to be able to recognize him if he walks by you on the street.” She took a small, black pen, then started drawing in the makeup close to her eyes. And when she started to cry, she said “Jesus fucking Christ.” We adjust enough to see a man of forty-three years old. He met you both near the door, guided you both to the bar, where it’s dark, where you’re told that this Harry. “The man I met at seventeen. We had a lot in common. He told me he liked my eyes.” The fight came after his second drink with dinner. Sometime before he left his seat, your mom told him to go to hell. He said she had no one to blame but herself. He agreed to meet the kid, not to change his life for him. She still has eyeliner smeared high on her cheek, and she speaks, “Are you listening? In a life so full of mistakes, you may be the first one I made. I told that piece of shit man that he’d be a dad, and you wanna know what he said to me? He just kept saying, ‘I’m sorry’ and so I named you Apology.”
9.
Cruel Things 02:52
“Go back inside. Gather your things—clothes and your toothbrush. Hurry, we’re leaving today. Until things calm down, I’m taking you to your Aunt Christabelle’s house. I can deal with Roger. No, you don’t need to cry, it doesn’t hurt. I’m fine. Remember what we talked about? Being strong. Can you be? Can you stop crying, please? We’ll find a payphone. Do you have any change? Here, I have some. You need to forget all the things that were said before he hit me and left. Sometimes when we’re mad we say cruel things to hurt each other and we don’t really mean it. Remember that we promised to be brave. I need you to be. I need you to be— to be strong. Being strong doesn’t mean hurting someone. Being strong means you know when you’re wrong and when you should go.”
10.
11.
Tasting the coffee creamer, French vanilla, I’m pretty sure we’re still alive. Dry like a raisin’s skin, I started to wonder if I’d ever be introduced to something sweet again. Upstairs, your eyelids didn’t open for hours. I spent that time pounding Morse code on your teeth. Please wake up. I got so nervous that I started to philosophize. You hate it when I try to seem deep, but I couldn’t help it. I was scared and convinced that this was the end. I started to think, it’s in that moment—that first long drink from a bottle filled at the kitchen sink or cupped hands at a stream after a long time of trying to find nourishment somewhere—that I’m aware of being closest to heaven. I’m pretty sure it’s all we got. So when I’m desperate for a little attention, I’ve made a habit of wagging quite a lot. Let’s hear you say don’t need at least one call home, and I’ll call you a liar. I’m near enough to catch the traces of thoughts that trickle sometimes down to me, and I’ve recognized long ago you rarely mean what you have me push past your teeth. Please try hard to make this work. Let’s drink a toast to toast. Let’s taste exactly when the sun came up today, and let’s find the reasons in the warmth of coffee pots, in all those steaming mugs, in packets torn apart, the sugar poured in cups. Let’s find the reasons to not want to try to die again.

credits

released January 15, 2014

Album written and recorded by Dan Currie, Max Klasky and Richard Martin. Special thanks to John Burgan for letting us record/make mountain rock in his beautiful garden.

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Colporteur Huntington Beach, California

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