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Crude Language

by blood like wine.

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1.
Delicia 00:55
If she presses her mouth to your ear, lips open nebulas, and lets her tongue slither, INTO your ear, past membrane, past tiny banging bones, past nautilus guard, to lick the edges of your brain, gently at first, then harder, encircling the whole damn thing with her amazing muscle, then squeezing, pythonic, until what matters collapses lung-like in splattered waste, you would believe then when she tells you, mouth pressed against your ear, "I am the real synonym of the word for the place where dead men come to kill anything left alive inside them."
2.
Shall we rise from the mountain the way I Know you probably rise every morning Certain only of that certain stiffness Before the relief of the release of the flesh Crude I know it’s crude Words fail us Shall we trip around these bushes, one monkey, one weasel Neither quite sure who pursues who Are these berries meant to be eaten raw as they come Or saved for some sort of jam at some later date? Crude I know it’s crude Words fail us If I held out my hand, what would be the implication? Would you slap it, suck it, twist or break it? Hold it against your unwashed face Lips searching out my weak knuckles? Crude I know it’s crude Words fail us With such a crude language My only recourse then is to assume You mean nothing and to understand That you think I mean something other than nothing I mean...
3.
To be completely honest To be completely blunt You I have dug my fingers into, rise Like smoke and stone me hard Your ash is in my eyes What we break down Becomes what burns our lungs up You who I have ground with Gears made of my bones Will learn to fear the fire My heart has known as home What we break down becomes What burns our lungs up To be completely honest To be completely blunt An unengulfed set of walls Do not fall to flame To be completely honest To be completely blunt I have already rolled you up
4.
There is something that is A precursor to hope And it is more vital than Either that or faith I am still trying to Figure out where love fits in I know this thing Stubborn ass In spite of all obvious Demarcations otherwise Will rise inside the cave of my throat And is the reason I still sing
5.
There is a shell over my heart There is a shell under my skin There is a shell covering My heart and I don’t feel a thing Well, what have you got to say for yourself? I asked you to stay - you went anyway And not only did you leave me with empty hands You had to take my love as well
6.
She woke up, it was a dogwood morning She ran down the back of the ridge Saw him standing there by the creekbed Looking like an angel Daddy always said, "Stay away from them lowlanders They don’t know what it’s like in these hills." But daddy went down into a coal mine And never came back around Oh my mama, can you hear? The hills and the hollers call for you The hills and the hollers call for you Where your heart used to wander Where your feet used to roam Oh, the hills and the hollers are callin' ya home Few years later, few more mouths to feed She’s in love and she’s in deep But when he came back from Vietnam The deeper the bottle, the better But babies get older, get bigger, get bitter And now they ask her why she stays There isn’t an answer, only a sigh A vacant look into the past My mama, can you hear? The hills and the hollers call for you The hills and the hollers call for you Where your heart used to wander Where your feet used to roam Oh, the hills and the hollers are callin' ya home She showed me the graveyard, showed me the old house Last spring when I went to see her And I saw a light I’d never seen before While we wound our way through memories She said, "Baby, baby Look at me And when ya run without your shoes on, Never forget where you came from." Can you hear The hills and the hollers call for you The hills and the hollers call for you Where your heart used to wander Where your feet used to roam Oh, the hills and the hollers are callin' ya home
7.
Where there exists a query of intent, assumption of curiosity must be made: Let doubt, and any of its kin, parade all grievances here and now, turbulent disillusion having been overplayed by an overthinking brain. I have prayed in my own way, own tongue, to be content with scarcity. This promise of a trade - this promise of plenty - has my ribs splayed from spine: broken eagle bliss. What I meant is that you have me, just me, arrayed in just my skin, which is my hide, a shade of grey too light for chalk upon cement to show a contrast. This is no tirade: I love the way your face rests, love displayed on bones my kiss will clothe as raiment.
8.
But what else is soft, draping folds, while what shapes them is mostly always light, because the face lets it through and we see the shape of the beyonder shore: heaven, and as windows we shatter and break, softly because my specific shade speaks of nightly promises of nights and of days days days days and nights of us infantile and fertile as field because plow me as ye will I come lightly not-tripping down aisle I come I come to you.
9.
Mine is the voice that martyrs A weight too crippling to carry Sacrificed for the sin of being ordinary A hammer on the business end of a killing blow The widow like the barren willow weeps And his orphaned bastards sing their sorrows Such sorrow we have known In our skin, in our bones Strike the match and let it all go Such sorrow we have known Begging the sky for any trace of faith It deems fit to put in me Fear of god or respect for madame guillotine A newfound admiration for those Who died peacefully in their sleep Or else disappeared without a trace Such sorrow we have known In our skin, in our bones Strike the match, and let it all go Such sorrow we have known I pray the ground opens and swallows us whole Oh, to be forced to fall twice into woe And in such a vicious manner A mass grave for chariots that swung too low Horses’ skeletons still tethered to their heavenly anchors As above, so below Such sorrow we have known In our skin, in our bones Strike the match, and let it all blow Oh, no Watch it blow away Oh, no Watch it blow Strike the match and let it all go Such sorrow we have known [Tyto] If she, being sage, intuits a loop through which the eye is seen as seer, forgive her only in the instance that she asks for asking or, if sight demands more mercury than silver, grant her mercy when she speaks in raventongue with wild in six eyes snowy.
10.
I. Voices. No one listened, no one listens. Can we still hear them when trachealis muscle rots, leaving only cartilage ring and partial rings (if left intact and not incinerated or obliviated by COD) through which only imaginary air would blow ghostly? Are they echoes that exist as imprints in the atmosphere? I hear that matter, energy is only ever transferred, but if it was never recognized as mattering before will the void recognize it after all? Would any of us recognize, remember, something that we did not know, never noticed, never acknowledged as needing to be seen or known? Are the faint brushes of noise we can't place, in spite of our strained ears, echoes of ourselves from time future, from whence our breathlessness begs anyone to prickle hair on neck, in ears, in this time, present, as no other time exists? II. In the desert where we rode for days and days and all our life turned into dust with every step and scurry of whatever creature, whatever falling rock, we waited, and our sides grew numb with the waiting, and our eyes began to boil. And as they down our dirty cheeks began to drip, we opened our mouths wide and swallowed the regurgitated gift from our mother. And in this time, that's neither a beginning or a middle or an end, the paths that cross become the oaths we choose and choose again or the ones we dismiss and lose. And in this time, that's neither light or dusk or dark, should paths cross in a muddle or tangle perhaps unraveling the red yarn will lead us to the footsteps we made but had forgotten in our wanderings. We climb as marsupial children into the pouch of tenderness wherever we may find it- we do not know any other way although we may not know we knew it. And though we fry under this lamp we nestle deeper into the womb feeding our voice through umbilical waves as though it matters. III. Avoid interrogation. Avoid extrapolation. Avoid asphyxiation. IV. And if you made a mark carved into a beech, yew, or ash, soft wood white and waiting to take the tip of the blade of genius, then perhaps the path you chose, though it leads to a bluff (and heights make you dizzy) will still carry you into the grave knowing you were known by one. Does cartilage rot? Or does it rust? The throat knows, the voices know, and I must try to listen for an answer.
11.
Not Today 04:18
Grey heron Grey lake On a grey day On a grey road O happy day O happy day And all shall be well And all manner of things shall be well And all shall be well And all manner of thing shall be well In the meadow And all shall be well And all manner of thing shall be well In the forest And all shall be well And all manner of thing shall be well In the water And all shall be well And all manner of thing shall be well In each other In each other And all shall be well And all manner of thing shall be well

about

recorded in midtown Memphis, April-May 2019

credits

released May 10, 2019

Mari Deweese - vocals, guitar
Mike Roach - washboard, spoken word (tracks 1 and 10), bass guitar (track 5)

all songs and poetry written by Deweese except track 9, written by Roach/Deweese

Dedicated to the loving memory of friend, mentor, and role model Omar Higgins, 1981-2019. We will never stop missing you. Thank you for everything.

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blood like wine. Memphis, Tennessee

Strong Style Memphis folk. Haunting, gorgeous, raw, unique - just like this city. Esoteric to the point of being unpleasant.

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