Take apart your head, chew it up and swallow it.

Now at the end of every day

lie awake at night and wait

To feel the wires of my brain

Get cut and quietly rearranged

And hear my beaten heart exclaim

"Still, I refuse to let her go.

So we escape to our mistakes

For they wait patiently for us

La Dispute - One

In the last quarter of the twentieth century much of the world sat on the edge of an increasingly expensive theater seat waiting for something momentous to occur. Christian aficionados of the Second Coming scenario were convinced that, after two thousand years, the other shoe was about to drop. And five of the era's best-known psychics predicted that Atlantis would soon reemerge from the depths. To this last, Princess Leigh-Cheri responded, "There are three lost continents: we are one: the lovers." In whatever esteem on might hold Princess Leigh-Cheri's thoughts, one must agree that the last quarter of the twentieth century was a severe period for lovers. It was a time a time when romantic relationships took on the character of ice in spring, stranding many little children on jagged and inhospitable floes. Nobody quite knew what to make of the moon anymore. Consider a certain night in August. The moon was so bloated it was about to tip over. For more than an hour, Leigh-Cheri stared into the sky. "Does the moon have a purpose?" She inquired. The same query put to the Remington SL3 elicited this response: Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself. Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and end of time, Answer me that and I will reveal to you the purpose of the moon.

La Dispute - Five

Sure, I know that you are tired of hearing about it But most repeat the same theme over and over again, It's as if they were trying to refine what seems so strange And off and important to them.

It's done by everybody Because each must work out what is before them over and over again Because that is their personal tiny miracle. Like now as like before And before I have been listening to symphony after symphony from this radio It makes me realize that certain people now long dead Were able to transgress graveyards and traps and cages and bones and limbs In tiny rented rooms I was struck by miracles

The flesh covers the bone and they put a mind in there And sometimes a soul and the women break vases against the walls And the men they drink too much And nobody ever finds the one But keep looking crawling in and out of beds. Flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh.

There is a loneliness in this world So great that you can see it in the slow movement of the hands of a clock People so tired, mutilated, either by love or no love. People just are not good to each other. We are afraid. Our educational system tells us that we can all be big winners But it hasn't told us about the gutters or the suicides. Or the terror of one person aching in one place Alone, untouched, and unspoken to.

People are not good to each other. People are not good to each other. I suppose they never will be. I don't ask them to be. But sometimes I think about it. There must be a way. Surely, there must be a way

There's no chance at all: We are all trapped by fate. Nobody ever finds the one. Nobody ever finds the one.

There's no chance at all: We are all trapped by fate. Who put this brain inside of me? It says that there's a chance. It's kept the rope from my throat Maybe it will loosen yours.

The city dumps fill. The junkyards fill. The graveyards fill.

Nothing else fills. Nothing else fills. Nothing else fills.

La Dispute - Six

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, Whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

Nothing is told us about Sisyphus in the underworld. Myths are made for the imagination. As for this myth, one sees merely the whole effort of a body straining to raise the huge stone To roll it and push it up a slope a hundred times over; One sees the face screwed up, the cheek tight against the stone, The wholly human security of two earth-clotted hands. At the very end of his long effort, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments Toward the lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself. I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step Toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, That is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights And gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, He is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, And his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: It is what he thinks of during his descent.

There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, It can also take place in joy. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, It happens that melancholy arises in man's heart: This is the rock's victory.

But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, he realizes that the only bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: "Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age And the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well."

"I conclude that all is well," says Edipus. And that remark is sacred.

It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. The rock is still rolling.

La Dispute - Nine

I recall once on the church steps, When I moved to kiss your chest, How we paid such close attention To each sweet and stuttered breath, I should’ve stopped to paint our picture, Captured honest pure affection, Just to document the difference between attraction and connection.

I can see all of my friends and I break into empty buildings, When the coast was clear, With backpacks full of beer, We’d throw our bottles from the rooftops At this city-it looked endless. Guess I still don’t see the difference between real purpose and that urgent adolescence.

And I remember in a basement sharing sweat With all these stranger boys and girls, “We’ll change the world!” We sang, “We’ll change the world!” But, Nothing seems to change and They say none of them will listen, But I still see much more power in that basement than in heartless politicians.

And if we get beaten by this winter, If we get strangled by regret, just Let our love of life and tension Gasp in sweet and stuttered breaths, and Have them lay us in a basement, Smash some bottles on the ground, and Say we couldn't tell the difference between the feeling and the sound.

It never got me anywhere, with anyone