Lyrics:
(Otis Mensah) Verse 1:
Scared of the walls
merciless is Murphy’s law
mercy me and gaping sore
from the core my fears pour
feel torn in every dream I fall
from the sky a lord was born
to a pile of poultry on the floor
falsely accused, my love contorts like
Baldwin If Beale Street Could Talk
I don’t feel secure, I feel Shakur
every childhood portrait winks at me like
they knew before what I never saw
wet myself, the toss & turn
home is you or someone there
that’s why I don’t ever leave the north
The stairwell plays minor scale
my pride impaled and dreams for sale
leave me stale or see me sail
watch me sink or see me hailed

My shadow’s disingenuous
he dances without me and finishes sentences
has dinner without me and picks at blemishes
I try defend him
he kicks at my emptiness
now I'm a degenerate
face sallow with sorrow and sombreness
time borrowed, a novice that sold himself short
bleeding out in the corridor, ominous
drag crayons on mirrors now
dare I dirty his name
brave is the novelist
I sleep with the bayonet because
sly is the orifice
Time is the coroner
live at the concert hall
every head is just turning and churning my stomach
a worm in the bucket, I’m nothingness
gobble the bullet
spit word out the gullet
of godliness

(Hemlock Ernst) Verse 2
Permanence perishes
When urgency’s arrogance becomes avarice
Life in the carapace
Lurking gloom cavernous
Phantom limb’s habits aren’t mine
but inhabit my spine intercepting my calls to the ghost

Who goes there most motionless at dusk
Who knows their most intimate approach
Impassioned

Oceans upon oceans upon oceans of passion, I’m pondering
Does the needle feel the skins prick, I’m wandering
I’m posturing
I’m floundering

Fostering fetishists whose love of language still leaves them shaking
Whose lips mend bricks to build foundations
For lost outpatients
In sound proof basements

What troubles know me engross me
Uproot and Untooth me, leave me a two bit loosie in a blue sea
— that few see
But it’s truth see

A woman’s body is not a carriage
A mans body is not a forge
Am I the coroner or the morgue
A quarrel of birds, or a diver for pearls
Lost in a world with a cancer of morals
Un-abiding of yours
They’re not abiding with yours

But the answer is pure
There’s a pestilence that aggregates in our tired forms
Taking the shapes of engravings, encasings in iron doors
Our Shadows drag through iron ore
Our Forefathers, the architects of our dying shores
Fearing their collapsing gains but not mine or yours
But the lion sang a sallow song
Through the narrow noose of the lariat
In the dawn of eyes rose a chariot
For our rotten souls
How Iscariot

(Otis Mensah) Verse 3:
Trying to hide my sins in church hall
live your life and just join the circle
anointed by toil and turmoil
hands shake in the soil and surplus
I shake in the turf war
wear the weight of the world more
still riding the harrow
stress mixed with the marrow
feeling absurd in this circus
just thought I deserved more
If Marvin was murdered by blood
and Curtis danced with light and then got crushed
if Otis fell out the sky up from up above
then what does that make for the making of us
still sunk by the death of the young
left with the crumbs
after all that is done
I’m still the old klutz
labelled as dust
never cradled as such
but the fable’s a must
who knows what will become of us
once the dreidel is spun
and I lay awake
360 days plus.

I lay awake
holding my heavy eyes.
oh my heavy eyes