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Paint Leaves

by Ghost Chief

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1.
Kuiperlapse 04:34
From what I've gathered; Whether it was God or gods who ripped a rabbit out of nothingness or Nothing had seen the top hat scene and had enough of just exploring the floors, the walls and leapt up, leapt out of boredom with a blast of mass, pre-gaseous matter, space, reality with a particle frenzy swept up into superclusterous galaxies that span the expanding void, expansive asteroid pinball machine And at the start, it was scary to learn how infinitesimally small we are A haunted house, entered warily, full of black holes and stardust Orbiting orbits of orbits of orbits of orbits of orbits (ah gahd) Buffing furious at the surface of mankind's composite understanding In a selfish endeavor to find meaning in the unanswerables How this hydrosphere and atmosphere created life Somehow, created life That grew to swim, slither, leap, walk and run feather limbs and foster flight That enriched the soil; used water, sun spread the seed of grass, tree, vine On a revolving ball suspended there riding swells of heat and light Upon which years of chance and elegance led to this strange, creative kind Ones that build skyscrapers that prompt nosebleeds And breed the hate to make them fall That shoot their cohorts safely into space And then make sense of what they saw That hear the sound waves cast by symphonies And feel the shellfire blasts of war And when their future selves investigate they might have a sense of who we were through our art Between the dark ages, ice age, and solar flare Years of fiery ash filling the air All of the monsters who hunt us with razor teeth Appearing guised and in silence with laser speed Our insides liquified, victimized by disease Meteors blasting us halfway to smithereens We could slip out of existence just like a dream Instead, such giant thoughts in tiny brains prevailed Now when I just sit back and think, I can’t be not amazed; how I won a lottery which had no reason to be in the first place
2.
Hathead 02:40
To erase a face, unfold a map Create two points and plot a path to ride until your thighs and calves give in to a cyclical torture Pump I want to bike to the end of the Earth Find the edge, take out a pen, curl up and jot down Notes of tokens and reminders Form poems, crush the bones of kids in my hometown Of a smile so bright, so solar How her head burned profile scars on both of my shoulders (Shoulders smolder) Find solace in churning chains spinning sprockets, locked in pain Millennial in shrinking lanes deserves this spiritual departure Pump I want to bike to the end of the Earth Find the edge, take out a pen, curl up and jot down Notes of tokens and reminders Form poems, crush the bones of kids in my hometown Of a smile so bright, so solar How her head burned profile scars on both of my shoulders Soak in Atlantic salts as I dissect my faults to a mushy, gushing pile of lusting pulp (Shoulders smolder) Found comfort in the cars passing by Life's a blur Look both ways; left, right Don't run red lights Head first over the Subaru Hit the ground and swore that I was doomed In that intersection ready for a semi to get me The split second before death garnered no feelings or replays of everything that led me to that moment, just knots in my soft abdomen
3.
I practice dying every night Tip-toeing, juking rays of light Cast by the family, media The antique scent of modern law I danced with monkeys, drank the punch Free doughnut powder lined the lungs for cameras surveilling from above, whose tapes were empty all along Who's watching if the W-I-Z-A-R-D sees nothing through green satin can't do much to get you home; he's just a man Can't someone call the kids in Nix the warning, rip the Band-Aid off; Break the glass off the pocket watch and Turn the hands back to when I was fed these thoughts? That spoon ain't a fucking fighter jet And I'm not alone, the web gets weaker every day Chewing chips, pursed lips sips Elder choir cracking hips I'm not alone, us flies devise our getaways Kiss those feet, trust those kings Kiss those snakes, trust those fangs Science will club you in the night You'll see stars twinkle ancient light; Hit pause on shopping, movies, sports and finally question your importance in a B-L-I-Z-Z-A-R-D Falling short of warm log wood cabins as color is slowly sapped out of your hands Can't someone call the kid in Nix the warning, rip the Band-Aid off; Break the glass off the pocket watch and Turn the hands back to when I was fed these thoughts? If I could have I'd have shot it down It's pretty odd to think it's twenty-one to drink, eighteen to smoke Yet I was fed hallucinogens in cinnamon skim milk whirlpools since I was born I'd shoot arrows, go where they landed paint rings around them and call myself a marksman I used to feel shame, but that was before Hesitant of change, but not anymore Stories would vilify death, but now that I'm sure Neutral's not negative Burn my blanket of judgment Self-prescribed bliss remission fix Just tuck me in nothingness "Fate" has swallowed me whole Now I just want to be a real boy and escape from the whale I've had this reoccurring daydream since my acned, throwaway teens Where my back's towards downtown Rio, climbing up the famed Redeemer with no gear but blocks of C4, special meter glow and skateboard at the ready when I reach the top and feel the scripted wind blowing’ The fuse snap, crackle, pops; drop in down his locks Gunning headlong down the forearm, stifling the wobble of trucks Shoot off his index, catch the deck, clench it tight in my right hand Hear demolition, limbs extended, executing my flight plan And land with elbows on the dinner table, Turkey Day muted cable in the background, saying thanks to idols, when who all I really want to thank is Doug for this stuffing; because it's so tasty
4.
Vandals, Krylon packed backpacks Poking around, scoping out emotional real estate tagged in focused braggadocious font The hocus-pocus soaks a wall in slug slime, venom, all you hate Cloaked in the shade of night, serrated blades sink right between the vertebrae of someone that you'd call a friend Flattened there, gelatinous, spatula flips a patty of a reputation charred beyond recognition But that's all they are Doodles on a trapper keeper, drawn in pen Whispers down a corridor, Doppler Rumor mill hearsay conflated Burn the bridge and bomb your side Reinvent the archetype and Read some self-help; really make Mom and Dad super glad they fucked Because you’re just a kid, first time he swore, and felt the rush of the adults' attention Never to share the plastic sword that you swing mighty from treetops And slash the limbs of innocents Man, I can almost see the ligaments, purple, pinkish pigments, running underneath your skin Like rice paper wrapped skeletons, ghostly lack of melanin Yelling in your nightmares of a paper's edge Rain ramped up by the hand sanitizer ocean Off the coast of your guarded spaces Tape window panes up, unfold your blankets Make caves where your flashlight, black hearts can stay But that's all they are Italics in cyanide, poison print Ipecac underlined fragments Molotov cocktail quotations Split your face, two equal sides Hollywood until you die Master the artistry of Fake Spit out silver streams but it’s not enough So you talk Because you’re just a kid, first time he swore, and felt the rush of the adult’s attention Never to share the plastic sword that you swing mighty from treetops And flash forward, you’re 86 Few family members hear you’re sick When they’re speed-writing your brief obit Never did too much but talked a bunch of shit I'd fantasize about your guilt if I had killed myself Show you how words deal violent blows and tangible fallout Before we make you try new eyes to realign yourself Let's take that brain out of your body and maybe see if that helps
5.
Isomer 03:51
Gamestop; perhaps patent your tractor beam Solitaire, Ethernaut; each time, convinced I had this beat Fucking herpes of my ever-ebbing time But these trees run deeper than I thought The roots entangled with the years and broke through the self-perplexing crust long before it dawned on me to dig Believed "happy" could be self-taught; Teen to adult was night and day but the storm gained steam, never burned off and my skies got bleaker, harsher shades Turn me over The same shell I'd retreat to, dodging social arenas, has capsized Trying to, lying inverted, convert an introvert version of me to say cunning things, have sharp-sighted input, go network, get laid Chewing ice on a barhop, Irish goodbye and I'm home by ten Don't call unless you want to sift through Netflix's suggestions or critique Paint Leaves songs Don't call unless you want to click through every Reddit subreddit or help me make pizza (za's brah) Dreams got deleted from my skull Anchored, continental U.S. Can't dam the steady income flow Cut off the Polar seltzer, rent I should be teaching, story-telling sky-diving, saving elephants from poachers who hunt them for their tusks and see how they like teeth ripped from their heads But I thought that I could bob and weave and block its jabs, extend the fight I thought that I could wave red cloth to "Ole" screams and sidestep life And Oh, what an error an uppercut lands on the glass jaw that turns out the lights And oh, what a terror a horn pierces right through the breastplate, the crowd's faces turn white Twisters of childhood bedroom trinkets kitsch knickknacks, bricks from SIS Asbestos cylinders rip right through the Commonwealth towards the old fairgrounds Lurking in the basement Flicker from the outlet Creaking in the attic Hair Einsteins, R.L. Stines find trepid necks If I held up a flower, would you smell anything If you brushed right past me, would you feel anything If I wrote a line about you, would you hear anything If you looked right at me, would you see anything Or not Because I'm a ghost of my former self: of a hopeful kid Of my former self: of a boy named Ted
6.
Jungblood 05:07
Here, just rotting in the apartment Laying here, Bones brushing against guitar strings as if to lend a hand Her licks of sandpaper, pink, got my tongue. Been three years and no songs And I probably blew it at being a prolific, dashing, heart-slashing singer So perhaps I can salvage a pride in quality verse quantity before I die But it resides in the forefront of my mind, a swirling drain Where overwhelming sums of spitballs, judged and labeled ‘fucking lame,’ flow The O2 floods into my lungs Through the blood that my heart pumps To the brain and make my thoughts Echo down the calendar But no harmonies ring charmingly; cheap, used lackluster rhymes Fill more choruses to bore me with than clips in Milton Times Still the O2 floods into my lungs Through the blood that my heart pumps To the brain and makes my thoughts Cherry-pick vernacular This sucks It's tough when YouTube's fraught with toddlers shredding face at less than half my age, to not tomahawk this Taylor wildly To watch as kids I graduated with take 30 fixed and get engaged Dreamers must admit the outlook is a bit depressing With the grip of the patch glue goes bands we looked up to Off backs crowd-surfed blindly toward obscurity coral reefs Torch both coasts, move to LA, then water down the product Broaden the demographic until the base decides that they have had enough For better or worse, I think it's different For a never-has-been, closet musician It's hemorrhaging resources, not a small business (fuck) It's not always fun, it's more of a mission; To calamine the itch to emote 10-6:30 propped up in the office One or two ideas drip out from the carcass I'm so docile, delusional and paralyzed here in a cell of excel files But when I find the word that works, my body feels ignited The prospect that it could be heard stirs genuine excitement To think it could be all for naught is sobering and frightening But I must stare down doubt, writer's block, and do my best to fight it Not much else can encapsulate the moment quite like writing Nothing but air vibration can stir love, pain, be inspiring If one person comes out to sing and see this work recited Out of friends, out of money; ninety-nine cent bumps still get me that high
7.
Fauve 04:46
You caught me fresh escaped from malaise, the navy-bluest free fall of my life A careless, callous, healthy headspace, healed hearts reenter the small limelight My fearless gears gain traction, start to turn Sweat sits content in its glands despite the torque My fingers DDR the QWERTY board: Hey, you maybe wanna go out and get some lunch? Not an eavesdropper, stalker. Not a creeper, but... I think that our colors could blend Familiar shape, peaceful landscapes and such And I hear that you concur Your strokes look lovely on the canvas Brush bristle sounds send shivers down my spine If you feel the same, confirm "us" or I'll get out We finally sit alone in the frame, a picture destined to scald timelines Your model-like control of the face, my squint to squander my cold eyesight From deeming flags as red, the trial adjourned Finesse suppressing evidence inside the court Maneuvering through routes coated in plot hole pot hole, bumps, Spike strips, buying me clothes for the type of guys I'd like to crow hop punch Repress my pensive tension, censor my wailing gut Because I think that our colors could blend Familiar shapes, peaceful landscapes and such And I hear that you concur (And I hear you) Your strokes look lovely on the canvas Brush bristle sounds send shivers down my spine If you feel the same, confirm "us" (And I feel you squirm) Eventful weeks seep into months Of homemade dinners and your new show Covertly stuck on one night when You sip wine as we sit quiet Three feet apart, divided by cat-clawed couch Comforter and Shay’s stray sock Posture slouched as I hint to inch you closer; you won’t Half online, half-open eyelids Eat feeds. Supine, you're boundless From Cambridge bars, pop concerts, and vacations Apart from my apartment lull How could one compete with your phone? Our paint blended together and all it made was gray Given all you know; my bottled eccentricity Balding, chronic loner; are you sure you want me around? Given all you know; my future of uncertainty Old and insecure; are you sure you want me around? I've got a body straight from Pornhub Except not one seen in the shot More like the one off in the corner Who holds a boom or camera Do you want this around? Are you sure that you want me at all?
8.
Blink of an eye and we've thawed out the permafrost A Holocene-length polar bear holocaust Not fed for marinating or groomed by humans? We stopped caring Our evidence on a figurative seesaw Ann Darrow versus mating-season King Kong Still hands still botch hair-splitting; boy cried "wolf," but he's not kidding now Picked every lock that we saw by rigging it to explode The heating bill's through the roof inside a house with no doors Thanks to a selfless stegosaurus, I can eat lime-green guacamole In months where I start out the mornings scraping frost off the Ford Abstain from carbon releasing, maintain the stasis of Earth Sustain emissions increases, replace the bank safes that burst Issues of this magnitude might need productive debating About the costs and solutions and not how the Commies have faked it But then maybe all of my sources are just as fucked And think-tank echoes made tympanic membranes erupt Grant-hungry scholars in cahoots like the suits With their hair disheveled, oil-drenched pant knees If my brain thirsts a purpose and feeds on cons Runs a vote vessel, tyrant led senseless pawn Then rock my dense perception Poke small holes in these deceptions Don't back a man who thinks a snowball is food for thought Says earth is mortal thus this cancer just can't be fought Or put weight in what Orange Face thinks You know he's on the first space ship to Mars (to start anew with Ivanka) Until some grandpas in Florida slicing golf balls watch their timeshares get swallowed into the Gulf All hope of habits changing; an ambulance in a carpool lane pile up (Can’t fight the fear of the doctor, so we stop caring at all) With doubts compounding, droughts inbound, floods and forest fires Wi-Fi will fill in as our morphine drip As bitch-ass young pop stars hone their performance to sold-out heaps of bloated corpses seated fishless leagues deep
9.
Could probably grab a grave for myself Reserve a plot with the blokes the dames & damsels who croaked before me And pen the final draft of my will, set to give Pat my guitars and give my brother my car and so on. Know you’re not the only soul alone I method act and take it too far 52 Blue suit submerges I nearly drown in the surf, and often friends, tentative, perform CPR Cough up the sob story, purge Leave people fucking perturbed I'm sorry No, you're not the only one Swimming in the single ether, see the shore, my hand outreaching Just hold on, don’t float on by Just hold on, don’t float on by if you could Please wrap your arms around me squeeze til I’m no longer conscious Not every day sucks but if it’s not asking much could I trade my days of meaning if it means I could have one with feeling? Not scanning the wasteland 'cause procreation's dire Not testing the water out when I see a shark fin Not looking to rent out when I need a buyer of a heart My chance is getting down to the wire Each day less Don Juan, Gaston and more mad scientist off their rocker Success is rare; more errors than trials Keep mixing jelly with my peanut butter when I need a fluffernutter Invest in stocks of my metaphors? I suggest you short Just hold on, don’t float on by Just hold on, don’t float on by Anthropophobia is blinding You'd sit next to bonfires, outshine them, I'd doubt it Numb to the pain of trying to find it You'd hit my rubber heart like lightning, I'd doubt it So please wrap your arms around me squeeze til I’m no longer conscious Not every day sucks but if it’s not asking much could I trade my days of meaning if it means I could have one with feeling? Please wrap your arms around me, squeeze the life right from my body Not every day sucks but if it’s not asking much could I trade my days of meaning if it means I could have one with feeling?
10.
Oh 03:04
"We're close" somehow slips out as strangely hyperbolic Rings through our anecdotes in chambers, hyperbaric A hairline fracture webs and cracks into divides, splits a foundation feigning strength, one gust was all it took It was one awkward month and now you're a stranger One odd remark and now you're a stranger My guess, you'd started fresh crash testing out new worlds Boiling alive in Pheonix, struggling in New York Went out the window with our run-in at the mall The labored exchange, your body language, and brief revival after got me Convinced an alien ambushed him on a walk Took his real body up to research, test, and prod New people in his life don't give a second thought to the basic fact: you are a bot Asylum bound, I'm bound and carted off (Does this mean we're done trading our cards? You've got my Charizard) Conversing more with my adversaries Visitors real and imaginary Lost in mud swirls in drywall ceilings Like stratus clouds to eyeballs, seeing things Copilot seat in the Civic Dust-covered suit of a groomsman Comic relief at the deathbed My failing grip on a best friend Stop calling up every three months when you need a solid Drop the faux politeness bit and treat me like you always did Stop dolling up our plans to more than a lift to Boston Drop the roaring laughter skit and treat me like you always did Stop this falling off the grid and treat me like you always It was one awkward month and now you're a stranger One odd remark and now you're a stranger

credits

released March 5, 2019

Songs, lyrics, and drums/percussion composed by Ted MacDonald

Instruments written and performed by
Ted MacDonald: Vox, Guitars, Bass
Stephen Capachione: Keys, Synths

Recorded and Co-produced by Jim Keaney
Mixed and Mastered by Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden Studio

Outro to Jungblood written and performed on a hand-cranked music box by Sam Beane
Additional Composition by Dan Smith


Guest Vocal Appearances:


Kuiperlapse: [Buck Collings, John (JB) Bell]
[Mr. Fyner and the Tech Ed Room]


Hathead: [John O'Malley (Phone Call,) :Dylan Wheaton,: {Dan Smith,} <Stephen Capachione>]
[Emma Ate the Lion]
{Professor Caffeine and the Insecurities}
<Ourselves On TV>
:Anika Scribbling:


Glifberg Rune: [Jim Keaney]
[The Appreciation Post]


Nefarious Tales: [{Pat Matthews, Steve Chiavaroli,} Matt Cavanaugh]
[Bachelor Party]
{Reckless Ways}


Isomer: [Ian Oliver, Corey Tilton, Sean Coleran, Mike Woolf, Donny Dowling]
[The Workout]


Jungblood: [Greg Marquis, Brett Colangelo]
[Actor|Observer]


Fauve: [Sam Beane]
[Ghost Chief] *forever in my heart*


Languish Arts: [Dan Colasanto]
[When All We Love Is Lost]


Oh: [Brian Manning]
[Frontrunner]

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Ghost Chief Weymouth, Massachusetts

~ Members ~

Ted MacDonald
Steve Capachione
Dan Smith
Sam Beane

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