1. |
Warning Signs
02:37
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2. |
Rock Paper Scissors
04:42
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I've been trying to keep awake
I think I need a little darkness
Cussing out the strangers in my bed
Shaking the blood back to my dead wrists
Swear I've been living up to standards
Caught up in the devious scandal of common logic
Unlike all them glorious ghosts
who sleep so soundly in red letter pages
So come on, come on, get back to awareness
Beating the sides of my head with my fists
Reading, reading the lines in the traffic
While the flat stink of dog food is making, is making me sick
Filled up my brain with cyclical shames
and quiet them down on a river of velvet
I've gotten good at just speaking to names
and forgetting the love
That I used to put into it
Serving my sentences up on a platter
Clinging to stimulants hidden in the leaves
Singing a lot of dumb songs for deaf zephyrs
Rock paper scissors with an amputee
Come on, come on get back to the coppice
Everything I said I hate, I now miss
Stuck in the flow, you never wanted this
Well I'll be the rose that grows in the horse shit
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3. |
Hooks & Rope
06:15
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There is no substance to control
But yet I'm scared of getting older
The days are strange and short and warm
The evenings clinch is weak and splintered
Now we're back to looking for a home
Just like our lovely distant mother
Cause she fell in and out of love
We sat with strangers as we lost her
God grant me
The serenity
To accept the things
I can not change
Little sister your heart is gold
And your thirsty little roots are exposed
Be good, be brave, be bold
I hope you're nothing at all like I was
Now my dreams they come and go
Think I've figured how to gauge them
I swallow whiskey until I get slow
And wake to hear the neighbors screaming
As the blue jays greet the dawn with fearful praise
The bitter calm of coma peels away
Gog grant me the serenity
To accept the things I can not change
And the courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
Little brother hold the torch
Your mind's much bigger then you are
And in your blackness find repose
It aint the devil licking at your toes
There is the past with its white bones
I keep forgetting to remember
That it's retained with hooks and rope
That it is the frail framework of forever
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4. |
Homes
05:10
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Maybe someday I could've been
A doctor or a scientist
And make a lot of money for my children and my family
For to spend on getting lonely as I age
But I abide by biding time
And letting all my apprehension slowly rot
make up eulogies for everything we want
So I will look down at my hands
Upon the wheel every now and then
Illuminated by repeating highway lights
And I'll remember who I am
And see in shining contrast where I stand
Between the hangman and the halo
for a while
So I sat alone beside my love
and waited for the ball to drop
As seven strangers called upon the ghosts of their regrets
And in a huff they tossed them up
and fire bit the frostbit fog
but yours, you dropped
you swore it was an omen
We'd forget, we'll forgive
So maybe someday I'll settle down
Give up pacing in the dark and locking doors
Say farewell, I aint a child anymore
And we could build a little place
upon a plot in Eden
and even if we never make it to the end of the parade
I'm sure we'll still be happy that we came
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5. |
Blue Collar
04:13
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I plan to break my back until however long I can
Until my body and my bones begin to fail
And I will go along inhaling moth wing dust and dirt
Until my lungs refuse to shrink and to expand
I'm not sure how I'd take it
if the warehouse walls just faded
And they told me to go out and sing my songs
And I had time for dreaming, and for catching up on sleeping
and for being who I'd meant to all along
It is a lopsided balance
It is disease that's entrenched the better parts of me
It is a fragile allowance
That pays out to keep me relatively clean
The fit of this blue collar is like a noose made up of dollars
And I dangle like a scarecrow in the wind
But like my father's father
I was made to work and tolerate the choking
And the outcome of my sins
So if you're asking the questions
You'd better speak up cause no one's listening
And if you're selling an image
You'd better get used to never being seen
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6. |
The Bus Song
02:35
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Jackrabbit running at the midnight moon
Bullfrog screaming from the cattail dew
Nothing in the world I would rather do
More than skipping flat rocks in this silver pool
I'm so happy when I'm with you
I think you're the gal that I always knew
Would come around and reel me up from the deep dark blue
Showed me love, showed me truth, showed me kindness, too
Glassy-eyed looking out a window pane
With a spider web fracture in the pouring rain
Inside a school bus with a chimney and a green tin frame
I think we moved into a painting with a cheesy name
And I've gotten lucky with some things before
Like the mouse who finds a bed beneath our canvas floor
Like the boy growing up who never sees the war
I am lucky as a devil, I don't know what for
There's a compass on the skin
On the top of your right foot
You get your equilibrium
From the song that your dad sung
I think the optimist within
Is alive and he's faithful
That when the thunderclouds roll in
There's a golden sun just waiting
To chime in
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7. |
This Is A Community
06:02
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In the evenings I get home and pour out the vodka
Pour out the sheep's blood
Go out to the front porch and sit on a chair
That grows from the ground
Bark back at the white dog chained
up to the mailbox, up to the mailbox
My strings stay silent but my thought dreams are loud
The strength isn't in me, my boots are still on
Loose at the laces
I never get tired at all cause I never rest
I never rest
I've lost all my old friends to blue bottle flies
and blue summer months
Eating holes in my head, holes in my head
And the chemical raindrops all sneak by the aeroplanes
Born in the jet waves
And fall to the dirt to feed all of the weeds
All of the weeds
And if we get lucky the wind never blows
From the west where the oil glows
Lit by little gold bulbs, the refinery knows its place
Inside our community
I didn't know that the airplanes had headlights
Till I moved here
To lose control is just like
Trading up your roots for a stupid mistake
And once they're unearthed and you see them
Bleeding tiny droplets of the goodness you earned
Everything stops and the clock's hands hold still
To wait for the seeds that you dropped before you gave up
Oh won't you come visit us in the glorious land of the eighteen-wheeler
I've got a lot of love to give but it hides
Underneath my patience
We can walk to the liquor store where the customers
all use shopping carts
Stay us till cicadas drone and the sun yells "I'm home"
That fucker hates us
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Anthony Ruptak Denver, Colorado
Anthony Ruptak is a Colorado-based musician who writes and performs his original work with a simple mission: to explore the effects of the human condition. His music ranges from vulnerable acoustic performances to raucous and maximalist multi-instrumental experiences, with his intricate lyrics always at the forefront. Ruptak has been performing in Denver for over 15 years. ... more
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