The Obscene Gravity Of Silence
by Paulie Lipman
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Digital Album
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Bill Hicks
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Thomas Of Pomona
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Scream Glory
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about
This album represents the last 3 years worth of poetry I have written. It also showcases my other discipline, which is music. All the poems have music and/or a sound scape behind them. It is meant to be its own experience separate from my live performance.
This album was made possible by the donations of sooo many generous people through KickStarter.com Thank you all for believing in me.
This album was made possible by the donations of sooo many generous people through KickStarter.com Thank you all for believing in me.
credits
released 15 March 2011
All words and music by Paulie Lipman
Vocals recorded by D MacKinnon
Album artwork by Mar
All words and music by Paulie Lipman
Vocals recorded by D MacKinnon
Album artwork by Mar
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all rights reserved
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Paulie Lipman has been a part of 8 Denver National Slam Teams(including '04's second place and '06's national champions).
... more
His work has appeared in The Legendary, Borderline, and the Write Bloody anthology: The Good Things About America.
In addition to Spoken Word, Pauile is also a musician/composer and is available for hire for commercial/video game/soundtrack work.
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discography
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May 2012 -
Dec 2011 -
Dec 2011 -
Mar 2011 -
Jan 2011 -
Sep 2011
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For all other inquiries, click here.
Redeem download codes here.
- Track Name: A Quiet Meditation On Art
-
Poets and punk rockers
age worse than gov't cheese and Thunderbird
And I'm both
So, fuck it
sour grapes and shitty macaroni it is.
Some friend's tell me they wish they had my job
or at least the hours
and I
give praise to the Great Sky Conductor for
every day I've never had to origami myself into a cube
but the clock I punch jabs back
below the belt
This occupation consists of
constantly putting your heart and balls in front
of the world's swinging knuckles
But I can't quit it because
there's not much else you can do when
your inner child is a spitting brat
and your power animal is
Joan Jett
My resume might as well read:
Jack Off of All trades
Master of jack shit
I can think of a lot of worse things to be
like World War referee
or fluffer
but glory glory
this kind of living is killing me
Hallelujah
These days, my sex drive
takes the corners like a spastic Datsun
Which is perfect 'cause
I got game like Pong.
Worse yet, Colecovision
outdated, dusty, and with a shit load
of useless buttons
All my get up and go must of
done jetted and stuck me with the check.
Maybe,
if I shook the devil horns out my mouth,
took out all the fuck you's put just one back in
wrapped up in dumb down
I could touch what my mother might call success
Maybe, just maybe
if I stopped shouting to, from, for, and at
all the fringe's reflections of me, I could be happy
I've seen friends hit it so big,
it has splattered my clothes like John F Kennedy's brains,
back and to the left out, pity party army of one
again
But I'm not bitter
You can ask any of my guts dead butterflies,
but all their brittle little skeletons will tell you is:
At least we died for a reason
I love my job, aching balls and all of it
If I didn't, I would've gone
full trip twiggy up a clock tower
after the millionth missed meal ago
I may have less than some, 3 hots, a cot, and the
alarm clock's static reassurance that this day
will have no more or less challenges than the next
but
I got a lot more than a lot, like the music
screaming that it will not stay my creaking jaw's secret
for one
second
longer
and shares itself full throttle, damn the honesty
or the hour
When a cigarette is all that's keeping me going
and 5 twine rope thrown over a crossbeam is
the only thing that could hold my head up,
I just gotta giggle, step down off the chair
and remember
I
am Hope's biggest bitch - Track Name: Gray Is Too Dull A Color For My Anatomy
-
GRAY IS TOO DULL A COLOR FOR MY ANATOMY
I am not made of limbs
just
a loose arrangement of musicians
They have no discipline
so my bones are all intuition and elbows
knees
knocking an awkward rhythm
and a face
that only my mother could call classical
The only note they can agree on
comes from my spine
When bowed slowly in the key of remorse
its tiny vibrations are barely enough
to keep my head up
but
when struck with purpose
it resonates up through my eyes
in a tone that is anything but minor
This is the same chord that
echoes through the
empty opera house of our insides
plucks our tongues and choirs our teeth
to powder
We
are gap mouthed whistle kids
keening off time and outta key
to form the most disjointed smiling chorus
this side of rapture
singing out every dissonant ghos
until all that is left
is the most cracked note ever uttered
that we pray at least one person
thinks is beautiful - Track Name: Alex Chilton(I'm Afraid There Will Be No Parade For Us)
-
You died
2 days this side of Caesar
and the first thought anyone had
was how the Replacements sang
not of you
but a childish interpretation
of your idea
I'd like to think that your last thought
held the same circuitry that
lit your neurons in the shape of your band’s name
BIG STAR
convinced that it was an echo of fate
and not a talisman shaken at the specter
of obscurity
Does it burn you, even now
that most of these people
despite every eulogy, tribute, and cover
still don’t even know your name?
That your headstone
casts its shadow so much further
than any of the shattered 12 watt sparks
you bothered to leave behind?
Most of us, as artists
will never be Orion
but forgotten constellations, sought out
only by a few who know what they are looking for
Brilliant victims
of a callous astronomy
No millions of children
will ever sing emperor unto us
No arenas
The empty seats screaming Brutus into our backs
hunching shoulders into humble influence
Unwilling muses
forced into the modesty
of inspiration
We, have a choice
Either we see the way fame has
gnawed away the sinew of
every Caesar before us
leaving only bones to be crushed underfoot,
and run
or we
welcome the feast
all too eager to charge 10 times Judas' price to Christ
to eat of our body, refusing
to be ripped screaming from the spotlight
scared that the halo it gives us
will be the only one
we will ever wear
I fear
that I might be asking this all too late
like a regretful son,
begging forgiveness of his father's casket
but before you sleep
Alex, answer me this:
As your circuits flipped tilt
would you have traded your last 30 years
to finally overthrow Orion and scrawl your legacy
into the ink of night
or
are you happy
with the tiny corner of sky granted all of us
simply for surviving?
I’ve never been suited for royalty
My head hangs heavy enough without a crown
My needs are simple
food, clothing, shelter, and the breath it takes
to keep their threads spinning, simply
from my throats spun stories
As long as I got mind, heart, a gut, and a mouth
I will keeping shouting them out
and if even a fraction of these people
can recite them back after my passing
that
will be my legacy
and if I shuffle off this coil with
less than
dust lining my pockets and
my name stopped just short of celestial
I will still
call myself
a success - Track Name: Isn't Anybody Going To Listen To My Story?
-
John Lennon
I am sorry
You told us to imagine and now
all we do is day dream
Not of a better or united world
but one of separate countries, heavens, and religions.
The only time we come together now is
wrapped in the safety of internet’s distance.
I am sorry
We never listened,
twisted your lyrics into a hollow karaoke
The only words we can recite with any conviction now
is your eulogy
You laid out the difference between need and want
Love is all and war is over and we ain’t done a god damn thing
to bring about any of them
Mind Games
that’s the only one we ever got right
Karma
moves a lot slower than you thought
Jai Guru Dev Om
“I give thanks to heavenly teacher”
Heaven is the cruelest burden to
lay on anyone’s shoulders
We were so quick
to tack the cross to your back
Christ you know it ain’t easy
We are followers
selfish and scared
We couldn’t hear you over our screaming
and tearing at your robes
We couldn’t care less for your
marriage and children
We needed a father
I’m sorry we
are so small
Forgiveness
is only begged of gods with
hands clasped and heads bowed
Apologies
are what people ask of each other
looking them straight in the eye
I’m sorry that even in death
we couldn’t just let you be
a man
We were too jealous of
the balance you’d found between
fame, art, and family
If you refused to be our messiah
we could just as easily make you
a martyr
Our envy
cracked the sky seven times over Manhattan
leaving 2 sons fatherless, a wife a widow
and the rest of us with nothing
Our karma cannot come quick enough
Mercy is the only thing left
to plead for
You gave us so much
but your songs are only half finished
if all we ever do is listen
Until we all understand and sing back with
even half the love you put into them
only then will we be forgiven
We can finally be more than an audience
We can be human
and decent
It’s the very least we can do
I apologize that this
is all I have to give back to you
heavenly teacher
I know I can call you that now
because even though you hoped
that there was only sky above us
I pray that if there is a Heaven
you are there now
Jai Guru Dev Om - Track Name: Clara(Mohammad, WIFE of Elijiah Mohammad)
-
My husband’s first mistress
was neither woman or man, but
Allah
and for that
I am grateful
I
introduced them
In a dusty Detroit basement
I presented my husband to
our only god
and when their eyes met
I felt myself shift
from the warm center of his heart
to an icy field whose only residents
are the wives of prophets
and their children
I became a widow of prophecy
and a mother
to all
Allah saw fit to bless us with a brood of 8
and a fold into the thousands
While men spread The Teachings,
my holy charge
was to educate our children
Humility
Discipline
Knowledge
Purity
Determination
Morality
In the final days
even those who walked this earth
slouched in sin, will be stood upright
and made ready
for Judgment
I am faithful
but not even the holy mathematics
can explain why I only have 8 children
but my husband
has twice that many and
3 mothers between them
O Great Benevolence
I have taken so many steps toward you
so please
allow me this moment of blasphemy:
How is this divine?
How is this
honorable?
I would beg you
to forsake me
and watch over these women
show them that their children
are not merely the bastards of history
that you are their father
that you
still love them
I
had it easy
I only lost a husband
They
lost their belief
As we lay here
and wait for Judgement
I can only think of all our children
Emmanuel
Nathaniel
Ethel
Lottie
Herbert
Junior
Wallace
Akbar
and the thousands brought to us
a garden grown flush in the service
of Allah
and we
divorced from earthly emotion
and laws of possession
betrothed only to God
and for that
I am grateful - Track Name: Lynetta(Jones, MOTHER of Jim Jones)
-
I molded with my fumbling art, a young child’s soft and yielding heart
–Lynetta Jones
I never had much use
for the bible
I never saw God in there
just a dog eared relic that my husband
clung to by the dead light
of our radio
I
witnessed the Lord and his works nowhere
but in our boy
God gave us the clay
but I
carved his heart
No one ever bothered
to notice the soft, kind sculpture in his chest
just pointed to the dark corners, blackened
by kiln fire
You try to tell me
that Jesus was free of soot
after his 3 days in the pit and I
will laugh and envy you
your ignorance
Jim
may have groveled in the sins of this life
but, like Solomon
his great deeds far outweigh
his trespasses
my son gathered unto him
the animals, children, criminal, and infirmed
and led us, eyes open
into Paradise
Scripture
is sifted from the ash
of martyrs
The only things we left behind
were our bodies, this unforgiving world
and
a fist sized piece of clay
Inscribed on its husk,
our final testament
and from its black, kiln fired cracks
Eden
has bloomed - Track Name: Squeaky(Fromme, DAUGHTER)
-
When I was 13
my father shut his mouth so hard
his last word to me
was the hissing breeze through the
delicate bayonets of his teeth
After that he would only part his lips
to grin flint at me
like a spiked redwood tree
Its only relief was my mother all willow wispy
limbs nowhere as strong but forgiving enough to
let the light through.
The few neighbors I’ve met
call me Ms. Fromme
Nobody calls me Squeaky anymore
except for the reporters
I like it here
There are more trees than people
I’ve stood in the long, cold shadows of 3 redwoods
but only one let me be
his daughter
His family
more loving than the one I shared a name with
and there is far more blood between us
He
was soil and sky
brush fired me back to nothing
and then truly
raised me
shaped us into the sirens
for His Divine Armageddon
We would fell Jericho
again
I have lived
almost 2 of Christ’s lifetimes
and wish
I had his sense of purpose
The last redwood
was as indifferent as the first
All I wanted was to tell him
that he and the rest of his kind
were tipped on the brink of extinction
If I had learned anything
it was that laying blood at their feet
would not even stir the leaves of these
ancient leviathans
but the menace of death
will bleed their rings
into surrender
So
I stood at the very roots of him
and gave him the barest glimpse
of the axe
I am 60 years old
My only husband, the forest
I am a weathered sapling, grown crooked
in the shadow of 2 fathers long left to mulch
and the third, a preserved oddity
for the tourists
My mother’s weakened branches
long withered and returned to dirt
I am not a murderer
I’ve only ever loved one
I am a parolee
I am a ward of the state
I am now no one’s daughter
but yours - Track Name: 60 Seconds To John Lennon
-
Charles Manson
would envy my distance to you
Five feet and one minute
between you and divine alchemy
wine to blood
lead into scythe
Bigger than Jesus?
Your fame is equal,
gospel as misunderstood
though your martyrdom,
is better publicized
I had
only one question
but what came out
was all exclamations:
Lord!
Give!
Us!
This!
Day!
All I wanted to know is
where the ducks go in Winter
I know now
I’m already there
I’m just waiting for you
to join me - Track Name: Unfortunate Son (a persona piece)
-
There’d be no use in skinning ya
‘cuz I wouldn’t have your hide
for my boots
Your prissy eyebrows
seem to beg the same old fucking questions
How?
Why?
So,
I’ll take 2 minutes to explain myself
but then, you’d better run ,because my .38
ain’t as fussy as a knife
There ain’t no one reason for the way I am
Mommy never beat me, Daddy
didn’t soothe me to sleep with The Turner Diaries
never had no burning cross for a night light
That’s something that none of those
tin shit psychiatrists can rap their precious Ph.D.’s around
They always mistake me for one of
Hitler’s bitter little bastards, ‘cept
my folks are American, god damn it
I am born of an honesty that
we as a country have abandoned
Don’t Tread On Me
clenched between our teeth, knowing
that atrocity is acceptable, if paradise is the reward
I am inside every one of you , ‘cept I have the balls
to walk it and talk it in daylight
My hate is not a precise Charles Whitman hollow point, but
as widespread as founding father buckshot
I am a rattler, coiled in the heart of the American Dream
But my birth certificate
is as false as the president’s
Those 2 names at the bottom
are no more my parents than
the stars and stripes are yours
My family
is the truest of trinities
I am the dirty hate fuck of
Bedford Forrest , Byron De La Beckwith,
and the holiest of holies
I am made in my fathers’ image
Righteous, wrathful, and avenging
the Old Testament made into skin
Jesus?
Jesus done fucked it up with all that love talk
Why you think it is Daddy put him up on that spit?
I am the child that God got right
and need no army or apostles to carry out
his judgment
Y’all aint nothing but monkeys
with thumbs, unworthy of God’s green earth
and he has deemed you all
damned
but unlike the last Armageddon go around
He will hold the floods until
I have made crosses of every telephone pole
and nooses of every power line and
all the billions of sinners are hangin’ high
Then the seas will rise, righteous
and finally wash this earth clean
I
will not mind the quiet
It’s the only reward
that I have ever asked of Him - Track Name: Bill Hicks
-
Humorist MarkTwain said that
there is no humor in Heaven
Comedian Bill Hicks replied that Hell
will always have the best musicians
The only difference
between a comedian and a humorist
is that a comedian is more
damaged
Bill,
they
called you angry
You
were always in good company
Even Jesus
embraced rage's jagged blossom
as he evicted every thief squatting
in his father's house
Anger
is a gift
The cracked glass spark
that bursts in the chest of every great leader
doomed to the enlightenment that we
as humans, are capable of so much
more
but we run from every opportunity
to realize it
Love
is the fact that they never stop trying
to tell us
Laughterand Happiness
are two jilted lovers
at best
Bill
It's been 16 years
since Cancer's soft ravage
devoured your voice
Your mantle has grown dust
and your every heir apparent
knows only bitter,
cynical indifference mistaken for
righteous Anger
Love
for gullibility
I
counted myself among them
but there was no heart
to our hands
only dull, blustering thunder
inarticulate
and
too clumsy for incision
It tookyour sharp fingers
to slice through my sternum
and choke throttle my heart
back into lightning again
destructive
but illuminating
damaged
and hopeful
They call me
angry
I
am in good company - Track Name: Thomas Of Pomona
-
Sorry, Big Guy but due to your rigid criteria
and lengthy application process, sometimes
we just have to make our own saints
We slapdash them in stained glass paint
mixed with our daily frustration,
wind and whimsy
Horace
protector of blown tires
Philomena, champion of
cracked back, side walk mothers
Chester
the patron of broken harmonicas
Zevo
custodian of sad melody
Others
are stamped in ink blood
wrapped in the merchandise necessary
for modern day martyrs
Che of Rosario
Martin of Atlanta
Ian of Manchester
and
John of Liverpool
But mine still walks
singing golden whiskey razors
cloaked in thrift torn shroud, swaggering
unrepentantly
spider woven windshields
carnivals
blown out Chevy’s
drunken pianos
box car jumping and
late night heart break
These
are all his province
St. Thomas of Pomona
His anointment is black coal and greasepaint
His altar, a Bally tent
No one speaks side show anymore
We are too timid to
walk the back alleys of our own deformities
Our hearts
have ceased to story
imaginations gone hard ‘round the edges
leaving us nothing but cold analysis, banishing
all of the shadows
Our sin
is all evil and no lesson when
dragged back to the guilty light of noon
We congregation, are ready to leave the
rough hewn repentance of this boxcar confessional
and be reborn, bathed
in the night flare of Alabama 3 am
High priest
of Pork Pie Hat
We
have come to sit in the flicker of
your trackside tire fire
Cast your crooked light into the
black boogie dark and
report back to us
Regale us with song
and watch over us in this,
our time of conformity
Protect us
the true freaks, on the wrong side
of the geek’s cage
Amen - Track Name: Scream Glory
-
I have a statue’s sense of grace
late afternoon light paints me heroic
If forced to move, my stoicism
is reduced to a stilted two step of
cobwebs and marble dust
I hope
you like random dance parties
The art on the walls
is all still life and could use a little more…push
These floorboards deserve different echoes
less ballroom and bayonet
and more joyously fist thrown
bossa nova
Leave me on the mantle
I’ll watch from here
If your feet need
more lift than my clucking tongue
and drill bit teeth can whistle
I’ve still got records, wax straining
against the dust of their crates
Don’t let all the Joy Division scare you
That’s only one side of it
Take solace in the Stax 45’s
Stevie Wonder, Bare Naked Ladies,
Sesame Street, and all the musicals
Spin them across your fingernails
let the vibrations bypass your tongue
and scream Glory
I won’t stop you
Half the time,
I want to tie up the wind chimes outside my window
and strangle their beautiful, random song
just
so I can sleep
The other half of the clock
is caught up between tip toes
and pounding out anti-mute rhythms
on my chest with all its
sunken fingerprints
If I happen to check out early
you’ll at least
have a short list of suspects
This is not a place you want to vacation
yet these walls
could use some more bend and bow
your 3 pm shadow, cast
into thousands of dancers
a thud rumble and damn the neighbors
Throw the curtains into a surprised smile
of early afternoon, sing and spin the room taut
into a single bass note, tremoring
seismic and delicate, until
I fall off the mantle and shatter
immaculate
Please
Leave me smashed and wonderful
don’t bend your exquisite knees
and disappear me into structure
Leave me to the waltz of the open window
and in this one movement, momentarily
achieve grace - Track Name: This Is Where We Used To Live
-
I dug out my old leather jacket
Its gleaming grin of epaulets and buckles
smiled to me from behind too few reminders
of battles, waged righteous and infantile
I tore through the pockets
searching for scraps of
all the late nights, screaming my
uninformed philosophies into the moon face
of God and the Ghetto Bird
but found only rawhide, lint,
and an address:
West of Refinement
Up the block from Anxious
Forever past 2 in the morning
and always 1 month shy
of 25
My eyes couldn’t recall the direction
but these worn feet
and 34 years of slumped shoulders
knew the way back to this place strictly
from muscle memory
This
is where I found him
A simple studio, white walls bare
to better reflect himself
A futon bed post, notched into splinters
from every one night stand, propped up by pride and
eyes too free of experience, but
he doesn’t look surprised to see me
That’s my jacket, old man
You look kinda stupid in it
I don’t where you found it
and I don’t have much, but
I’ll trade you
What do you want for it?
All right
First
I’ll take that middle finger out your tongue
It ain’t nothing but a limp digit if fear
is the only reason it ever flies
and while you’re at it,
pull that curled lip back over your canines
they’re nowhere near long enough
to bite with yet
Next
I want that anthem in your throat
and every notebook you shout it into
It reads like a ransom demand,
all faded edges and stolen letters
wringing the ink from headlines to
fill your vulgar pen and pockets
You can keep
the Neverland in your irises
the dilated Lost Boys of aborted brain cells
the whole Morrison/Nietzche/Fellini
mystical death trip
I know where that leads
I’ve seen that road tread free of gravel
by every shock haired, steel booted,
leather clad, jack booted jerkwad this side
of fuck all and back
Death is boring
until you’ve lived some
Gimme the lust in your guts
the cauldron in your chest
the bellow of your lungs
I
finally know how to use them
They’re going to waste while you
sit here and bullshit the universe
the way we always did
I didn’t come here to trade
I came to lay this time and place
to casket
I am leaving you buried between these walls
bereft of blood boil and balls
stripped shivering
Armor is meant to protect the living
not adorn the dead
And this jacket
Well this motherfucker
is coming with me
