We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Copacetic Blues

by Miracle Worker

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

  • Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album

    Shrink wrapped digipak made of recyclable materials. Artwork by Ben Hernstrom of Ambulantic Videoworks. Limited run from 2011.

    Includes unlimited streaming of Copacetic Blues via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    ships out within 7 days
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 USD or more 

     

1.
Consensus 05:04
The khimarred woman sings a five note lament through cellophane, Paleolithic stone, a labyrinth of drywall, hanging, rusted coils Mississippi mud and the blood in her throat While the ghosts in Aokighara the bones of my father the unfed mice on the sewer grate They hear her notes as one hears a memory It's like a flare, they think Not the flare itself, but the trail of magnesium all that drags after the glow the echo, a disembodied wish futile as it may seem a shattered lullaby for the kaki tree who peers through heartwood to watch the farmers' hands fetch her mango hearts, fifty children from her languid limbs their bodies tossed into guillotine baskets her leaves curl to their touch It is too much to ask of any one being. The wind whirls consensus Amidst the feeble proclamations that “Happiness is state of mind,” I incant in the basement ancient prayers of survival. Resuscitate, rejuvenate me I was just a kid, fumbling through the dark woods Witnessing the plumes of smoke from the brutes laboring in the yardhouse Saliva to straw Paper and grass to wire I've thatched a home in the brush in the thicket where I gnaw on my hands and my back's against the morning dew I hear the eulogizing orioles singing from their choral tome soothing these baptismal lashes in a canopy of pines where I wish the starlings could carry us off.
2.
Flush 06:39
Now that you have flushed me from your veins and made your confession to the chapter of faults You are unencumbered by this shipwreck fever-wailing minstrel, vitals crushed You held me up as myth, down as flesh the simulacrum floundered I crumbled as rust A lithograph of Avalokita thousand armed and hopeless cradles all of our sorrow The inspector at the factory, moving units, doesn't care if the contents of the can make us healthy, make us sick. We are banished from the convent limping through the gnostic desert We are misers snake-charming for stale bread for a house of clay and toothpicks, for clandestine titillation, every memory is sealed in concrete relegated to the darkest spaces, to the secret cove that sears us. But don't stop to scrutinize the fire the flames are looping like a shuttle and our dignity's the fodder, and our dignity's defiled When I reach out I'm devoted Not a cipher to be decoded I approached you without motive now I'm the villain that you've decloaked. We are single dots: straggling dogs. We feel the same: muzzled and shocked. We share a meek castrated bark. It's a voice, hardly enough to hum our deluded lieder; while I cover my ears and quiver, underneath the seeded clouds, that contaminate our lungs, you're the poltergeist that rattles my dresser and I'm the widow that doesn't know better than to linger by your swollen grave, than to hold you in the light again. There are 13,000 failed astronauts in every single county. They've traded Adventure pulps for company parking spots in the fire lane burying their hearts in the limestone a holy procession giving conversions They want to carry my burdens light years away. The offer's for both of us, foragers, wrecked and alone but there is no spark, curative clove, temple or touch to lift our armor.
3.
Leper Son 05:12
I was your favorite leper son. I even bandaged my wounds. Licked them sparkling clean for the benefit parades. Now I labor through the night to expunge your DNA. I want your coat of arms to rust into disgrace. I want your sadist's memoir to furl like a worm in the rain. I buried in the mire all the shame that you imparted Still shrapnel's spreading in my mind You're the crushing overseer who left his peasant in the sun body baking on the wheel my pain, your meal The bluebirds, monarchs are soaring free into the clutch of the whitest priests while the deacons cook and clean, readminister disease Behold another scapegoat raped by an apprentice of decimation the spoils of your Con-quest, the fledgling in your path I flinched when I was cornered, amidst the plaque, mercury laughs. I listened to your cryptic promise. “You'll be broken too. You'll be broke in two.” and sang the copacetic blues complicit quiet, complicit quiet You're the amalgam of an aeon another lip-smacking lackey: glazed mannequin malaise cold Saturn's thirst extinguished summer of my life but now you can recline, unburdened and drugged I spent my life watching my back, boxing lineal shadows. Now you're thunder without lightning, a broken-toothed oracle, twisting my perception. You are just a figment of your own imagination ravaging all that is beautiful. You set the terms of my imprisonment: “Here's your lifetime poisoned mind.” Bequeath the family heirloom, a bouquet of rusted steel. Now it's mine to unravel it to melt the remainder down to cross the river at twilight to leave my shell in the shallows to crawl exposed on the river bank and grow new flesh
4.
I know you already think I've jarred a few screws loose but don't strain a single synapse thinking too much of it when thinking and feeling are your unloved, quaint and dormant talents You cower from them like a giant, afraid of her own power Take your pick from the blue ribbon winners. Survey their plumage on your hubris stroll. Their feats of strength will dazzle and amuse you. It's a contest I have eluded. I'm a dull date out of witticisms I'm a minister out of stuttered rapture You'd rather bask in cascading hollowness than walk into the mines with me. I don't have a moment to spare when nooses bid for my neck when I've wasted all my love on the wrong people My mandible's on the ground I've molted beyond recognition and we're alps on each others chests not lares securing passage for smooth transmutation You stunt your own evolution, sink into familiar trenches and let the dullards sing your praises I took you to bat, expecting a change Our feet in the water, but the ocean was daunting You're a pearly presence best left untroubled, fishing for substance in a tumor that's ruptured Watch me sail off, disheveled and mute a Barbary captain, stowing rotten cargo.
5.
Sell the Air 04:45
Sell the air, sell the light, sell the water, sell the darkness. Install a fountain in a concrete park. Dedicate a tree to a tycoon philanthrope. As crippled seniors we will walk there, to admire our ruler's kindness. This is the outcome of the crusade. Everything will be explained. The Blood on the shield (lustrous). The dissidents crushed (condemned). The savages tamed (listless). The artistry maimed. You want to take my place, move inside, steal all the grace that I hide. You want to poach my heart with an elephant gun, because you're putty on a plate seeking shape. Secular celibates are hiring. Be ever-mindful of your comments. Curtail your future to their liking. Slip into amorphous doom. Tell me this is over. I can barely step outside. The headhunters roving, party's shills are coaxing me to sign the service form. Pay for higher living in utilitarian sheds. Paying for the space to wither. They sense that I'm alien, my Shostakovich suitcase, leaning up against the door. It's so easy to forget my pulse, when I'm caught in the breakneck tide. Our necks are broken, spilling our marbles. I can't rejoice in the stupor. All of the dutiful maintenance isn't enough, to stave off the leeches.
6.
There's no one in this fish bowl that speaks my language. I have no chance of escape. Lodged in the fourth circle, I didn't want to be here, with the crass, cannibal cranes. So I claw for hours against the glass. It's unmanageable the observer's breath, that leaves a fog impression against the bustling tank. And I'm frantic, every single night. Like a cursed plane, like a witch in flight. I am lucid in the cage; I wield insubstantial weight. Toss another copper flake on the water's surface. I will clamor for sustenance, or I'll let my body sink into the corner-- the plecostomus that cleanses the worthless space. Still the toxins accumulate. I am wedded to the bottom. On the surface is where I falter. Where the cruel and empty vessels rip apart my hull.
7.
I was just a gaunt, decrepit figurine on your losing team, a bloodhound in the swamp who wailed for new instructions (Teach me how to live) When I was summoned to eradicate the clues I faithfully destroyed, and feigned serenity, our palace and our hands clean You conspired with sprites and spirits in a campaign of attrition, against my brightest ambitions. The garden heaved Calsap Rhododendrum I ripped them out like weeds, their Rorschach pedals made mysterious the wretched While beneath the soil dead charlatan's bottles, were promising to heal my shattered mitochondria The doctors obscured on yellow paper, I left them drying on a sill to archive their lies. I spent my nights with the croaking frogs, who mated to proliferate And above me, the Crab Nebula so full of life that it broke, twisted pulsations slowly while my own light was too dim for Alhazen. So to burst was pointless. There's no Isis to collect my limbs to nail and glue the broken shards I tie my stalk, against a rotting trunk Never good enough for my own plot. I'm the yellow bruise from the grief ballet, the shattered wheel in the cavalcade but life flows in my veins, like St. Elmo's fire I'm the lonely mare that is caked in shit, the crippled mast that the waves have hit I don't want you to view me. I just want you to soothe me.
8.
Pyrrhuloxia 03:01
Pyrrhuloxia in oblivious flight. It doesn't know, the impending cold. Starving calico in a parking lot. Blinded by cataracts. Curls into a cinder block. Thrill-seeking rich kids on a pleasure cruise. They incinerate the old man's barn and toss the ashes. Every cemetery ravaged by hurricanes. Headstones become the home of a fang-tooth fish. I walk through the refuse alley. The area is up and coming. Limitless brands of dereliction. The meadow was a sanctuary, until they quarantined and charged admission. Retrieve my bloody head from the wicker basket where it lays. Place it upon a pike, till I'm carbon, brittle specks in the wind. Pleasant dissipation.

credits

released January 1, 2012

Recorded by Charlie Bursch of Elicit Sound Studios. Mixed and Mastered by CJ Ridings of Holy Seer Recordings. Artwork by Ben Hernstrom at Ambulantic Videoworks.

Stephen Jarrett - Composition, Vocals, Guitars, Keyboards
Gregg Weber - Drums and Percussion

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Miracle Worker Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

contact / help

Contact Miracle Worker

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

If you like Miracle Worker, you may also like: