Levi The Poet - Chapter Six: Traditional Values Worldview lyrics

12 months ago today
We stood in silence fading further
And further away and refused
To say "goodbye" for fear
That the farewell might
Solidify our fate i've knocked on
Every inch of this
Wooden vessel to keep that
Fear from coming true

"Goodbye" is such a definite word
An infinite word an intimate word

Well in case you hadn't heard
There are no waterfalls at the edge of
The world that fall off into eternity

I'm bringing home scrimshaw to hang from
The walls, or the branches
Or the balcony father gave me
Two teeth from the beast


They harpooned last week
And they've been flensing the
Creatures at dock
While I've been trying to get my
Feet steady underneath these sea legs

I had a week or more to explore those
Foreign shores while the crew and the captain
Knocked at every brothel door
And I imagine I've
Got scores of siblings on this island
Considering the captain is an
Island unto himself
Give it time there are a thousand orphans
Forgiving their fathers seventy
Times seven times
And I met one of them that
Week who became a friend of
Mine he reminded me of
You don't be jealous, he
Wasn't quite as cute
And he didn't have a feathered headdress
Or the tomahawk that you've been
Using to build my shelter god knows
I'm going to need it:

Shelter

But we followed a road out to the country
That he said he'd known about for years
And claimed it was haunted boys
Always tell those tales
When they want to put their arms around you

Monster films were made for
Men on first dates

Well, I went along the
Landscape stood frigid
Frost painted and I contemplated the warm
Blanket that you would have been
In all that cold i saw
Ghosts every time I opened
My mouth to breathe in and out
And pretended it was smoke
Like the bubble-gum cigarettes
That we used to get from the corner
Store before it died with your dad
And acted like they were opiates
Before the buffalo dance

The fog was like poetry: difficult to define
But I am completely indifferent to what
It means so long as we are
Able to get lost in it

The boy and I met a mystic at the top of
The mountain the mist cut
Her straight in two
Layers over her legs to keep the cold from
Coming through, but belly up
Half a sundress
And she looked at us and said
"Get your head out of the clouds"
So with the sun shining down
I've been thinking about what she meant

She gave a speech about
Separating herself and
Related it to the whales said
"when the seamen dig their talons
In to empty them and
Burn their substance for oil
Remember they had to separate to find
Their true worth" And with the
White dividing her skeleton frame, like
A personified worldview
It was the cloudiest case for dualism
That I have ever heard
Of she told us her feet
Were evil because they'd touched the ground
Ears guilty by association
Because they'd heard the sound
With a mind, wicked, that wandered
And wondered about music, sex
Love and the men in the town below

"I don't know i don't know"

She sounds like my grandparents trying to
Distinguish between antique Negro Spirituals
Done damned to hell for a
Pagan drumbeat and unholy

I just hope that if we're a
True reflection of some magnanimous Other
I won't have to assume that
Every inherent longing will find
Me buried alive you'd think
That if God created everything good
She wouldn't stand up on
A mountain proclaiming
Inanimate objects bad and demonizing the
Rest of creation like it's the tempo's fault
That she's stuck alone on a pedestal
Cutting herself in half

I want to dance to the music
Drink wine to the melody, make
Love in our treehouse and rejoice
Over our son with laughter
Someday that's got to come from somewhere
It makes me feel alive

She was kind but I declined
To follow in her footsteps
And kissed the boy on the cheek to, you know
Stick it to the man - so to speak
We left for the great unknown
First thing this morning
And if I am going to die
At sea, then I am going to be as
Holistically human as I possibly can be
And believe that I am that way for a reason