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1. |
Old Soul Syndrome
04:23
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Old Soul Syndrome
Out of nowhere it seems like i’ve been here
Bound by the years thrown around by these fears
If children only speak what they hear
Hand over their eyes hand over their ears
Hand over fist my hands were tied
Now if you take me take me by surprise
(refrain)
take my soul
I never said its mine
And I won’t want it back until the day I die
Is there something I should’ve known about
But never bothered to find out
Because now you doubt me for my doubts
But once you stooped low enough to help me out
As what I thought was a cycle was really just a spiral
I went above and beyond my own sinking level
(refrain)
I suffered gladly through my greatest hour of need
I put myself last to see how far it’d get me
Down every road of recovery down every lane of memory
The only one who looked both ways before crossing me
Had a PhD in divinity and a knowledge of past life therapy
Saying don’t worry about me I only steal things that are free
I only steal things that are free
(refrain)
Battling symptoms of old soul syndrome
Battling symptoms of old soul syndrome
Like the farmer who tills the earth but later lies beneath
With his lady in waiting now bathing his feet
They seek salvation in a pale Galilean
As interstates and bridges crumble around them
Hung up on their cross health care denied
Found tarred and feathered they still called it suicide
(refrain)
In the future of memory we’ll see into the past
Close to some garden where they say history began
I’ll write the last words ever written
If you find the first words ever penned
Take my soul
I never said it’s mine
And I won’t need it back
Until the day I’m alive
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2. |
Wishing You Well
04:23
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Wishing You Well
Enter bone chilling cold
Too few years to feel this old
Hours fade fast into years
No clock is running slow here
Exit temperature running low
With it a heart beats faint and slow
(Refrain)
No one here is able to tell
How it is you did this to yourself
Help wishing you well
Get up if you need a different view
What have you been reduced to
Cardiac arrest at 13
Tube up your nose alive because of a machine
You’re a machine
Counting tiles on the floor
Washing until you can’t wash anymore
(Refrain)
You’re young of all the places to go
You’re on the top floor of another psyche ward nursing home
Away from home with seizures and shaking fainting spells
You’re not living proof you’re living hell
Help me help myself
They locked you away
And the hospital radio played
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3. |
Mother Earth's Abortion
04:54
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Mother Earth’s Abortion
When are you going to walk on water
When are you going to walk on air
When are you going to see you only need the same as anyone here
Or has self-sacrifice and the postmodern man
Taught you how to live in unlivable situations
(Refrain)
With a view straight from the birds eye
Under an empty sky
It wouldn’t be the first time
It shouldn’t happen now and again
Get her where you want her by leaving her where she stands
Time is using us up
Do you get the notion my friend
We’ve been bearing witness to mother earth’s abortion
I’m trying to enter your atmosphere through the eyes of mine
Where I’ve been living in darkness both day and night
Now all I can hope for is the sun in my eyes
As I wait for and pray for this fear of death to die
(refrain)
She brings you water but no solution for your needs
When the pollution in your words becomes the air you breath
Still you’ve got your strip mine and I’ve got my diamond pipe
In the land of living but in the land of the dead tonight
(refrain)
Everyone enters a race to find their place
Down here on an earth so lost in space
Everyone here seems to be going somewhere
But nobody knows what to do
When and if they get there
When and if they get theirs
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4. |
American Experiment
04:39
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American Experiment
You talk about peace having a fighting chance
While my brother’s blood line is drawn in the sand
You say all could be forgotten as easily as we forget
But you travel the world with your hands folded
In a fist
And a young man on the front line
For the old man’s bottom line
Is the same old story in a different time
He says I haven’t thought for myself for so long
Now they have to do it for me but they do it all wrong
As the time we’re living on might as well be borrowed
If leaders only go where the people follow
If you think things are better now it’s not legit
They just got you a little to use to it
(refrain)
Say who can say if that is what the forefathers meant
When they called this grand land an American experiment
You’re so young you’re so free
Can you stay that way the way you’re going
You pass off paranoia for awareness but at a cost
When you don’t know why you fight have you already lost
Dividing a wide world into safe zones
where fools on both sides stand as fools alone
(refrain)
What are you looking forward to
Are you looking at all
Where you once suffered from your crimes
Now you suffer from your laws
As kids try to find what this land is built on
They don’t say god-like guns and church bells melted into cannons
(refrain)
Not a drop causing the flood feels guilty
All the tables turned here will simply sit empty
As you try to fill a space everybody else sees
Don’t become a part of the manufactured dream
(refrain)
Sold to the highest bidder
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5. |
Second Generation Bum
04:16
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Second Generation Bum
Before you ask what I’m doing here tonight
Whatever you’re thinking you’re probably right
Before you ask who it is I’m trying to impress
Your best guess is if they exist they left
(refrain)
Sometimes it isn’t much
Every time it’s all I’ve got
I guess you’ll see me dead before you see me stop
You asked my life story
It was pretty long
So you talked half way through it
And told me what I’m doing wrong
But you’re the one who woke up on your lawn
Locked out of your own house
You can’t trust the words coming out of your own mouth
As you wander off in a trance
Try to jump the outside fence
But make friends with the cement
Cuz around your ankles are your pants
(refrain)
So many rise to meet you
I can’t sit up straight
So many rise to greet you
And I don’t know what to say
(refrain)
When the bible in their hand
Starts looking like a gun
And you ask me where it is I’m from
I’d rather be a second generation bum
Than sing as a slave on a modern plantation
Just give me one more shot man
Just give me one more chance
Melodies move like that pinball machine
Competing with the bar TV screen
I’m not sure why I fear footsteps behind me
Carrying my equipment around back alleys
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6. |
My Captain's Bed
04:26
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My Captain’s Bed
For so long I was blown around on my own
Thrown to the open road that always felt so closed
I always felt like I was never there
The world was a war of nerves
And I was too dead to care
But you caught me at the height of my fallen state
You told me not to drown but rather mount the waves
Through the highs and lows that reshaped me
To ride the tide now on many an ancient sea
(refrain)
But I find no rest captive in my captain’s bed
When the options are endless
All I say can be betrayed by a kiss
You leave me red as the wine that stains my lips
Just when I think it’s enough it doesn’t add up to much
Such is the rush from just a half full cup
As I soak up your touch like the salt of the earth
Say they were born of the stars or some cosmic burst
On the birth of each evening inviting me
to lose myself to you and find myself free
(refrain)
When I can’t speak will you move my lips for me
Or if your ship comes in will you send me out to sea
When you couldn’t speak I moved your lips for you
I followed your lead
So I can predict your every move
We’re both driven but in different directions
If you substitute attention for affection
Stare my vulnerability in the eye
You know until its strength by your side I’d lie
Free in one sense to be bound in another
As we drop everything and pull ourselves together
There’s no cause to pause and search through all natures laws
If you lay down your love as the only god
(refrain)
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7. |
Damaged Goods
04:10
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Damaged Goods
Gentlemen she says please stay seated
I don’t stay in one place too long
With raging desire but no desire to feed it
She doesn’t need anyone
Isolation is her occupation
She’d love to let his love in
But no one likes to go where others have been
With enough regret she could bury a man
(refrain)
She doesn’t take it out on anybody
She takes it out on her own body
She believes pain cures pain
If damaged goods can never be good again
She showed up on his doorstep
Like an animal beat to death
He took her in and nursed her back to health
But he can’t keep her let alone keep her well
(refrain)
Now she’s got herself a good man
She doesn’t know what to do with him
He’s not afraid of the outcome
As much as he’s afraid of her intentions
(refrain)
No satisfaction no release
Even in security she screams
Don’t let me take me away
Reasons to go
Give me reasons to stay
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8. |
Taste of Hunger
04:56
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Taste of Hunger
If you’re going to use me at least use me up
I don’t want what’s left of me when you’re done
I’m not sure where need comes from
But it never comes alone and it comes in more ways than one
I have to get myself something no one can take away from me
I want nothing more than anything to want nothing more than anything
Though I’d wish to have no wish
Born in want we all seek this find life’s grandest secret
There might be none to begin with
(Refrain)
I play because I can’t quit
But I’m not sure how much longer
I’ll fight myself because I think I always win
It just gives me the taste of hunger
I can’t demand anything where there is nothing to get
I find it kind of hard to hide something that isn’t
I used to live in your script but now my part no longer fits
I can’t explain one part of this without confusing all of it
My senses deceive me through manic panicked frantic frenzies
Emptiness puts me at ease but not when you know I have it in me
(refrain)
If I back out now I’m not sure what I’m back into
And I’m bitter when I lose If it’s cuz someone else wrote my rules
As I’m one step too far behind but we didn’t start at the same starting line
You can have it all alright just not all at the same time
As what’s been eating me alive is the thought that I could survive
Without the bread of life and all you have offer
So when are you going to fill me in
When are you going to fill me in
(refrain)
Will I belong to everything when nothing belongs to me
Or will I belong to everything if I give myself to everything
Anything I could become would be a reminder of who I was
And who wants to be just a sacrificial victim
If I don’t throw myself at your feet will you bend me low to my knees
Until I’m in over my head over my dead body over my dead body
I was
(refrain)
If it’s going to use me I hope it uses me up
I don’t want what’s left of me when it’s done
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9. |
Neurosis Put to Sound
04:22
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Neurosis Put to Sound
Do you write down everything except for what you’re thinking
Have you seen and thought things that would have left you better off blind
I can’t go anywhere where I’m not there
I’m filing a complaint Dr. see you failed to check my eyes
I can’t regain my innocence so I’m pleading ignorance
As I put the pain on trial and put reason to the rhyme
(refrain)
Around here if you sing words like a death wish
No one should ever know
How it won’t let up until you let out it won’t let you go
You won’t get rid of me not that easily
Like a true napoleon in exile makes armies of the enemy
I see you attack first to avoid being hurt
But pre-emptive rituals and instinct don’t make a victory
(refrain)
How long have I been gone
Half right equals half wrong
If the world is just one giant grave
Prepare to be buried by your adversary
(refrain)
If I could change one thing about myself
I might be somebody else
But it might be worth something someday for me to keep myself around
Neurosis put to sound
As I write down everything except for what I’m thinking
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10. |
Born Fully Grown
03:59
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Born Fully Grown
Say when you’ve had enough
I’ve taken the long way to every short cut
As I’m catching on or maybe just
Catching up
(refrain)
More and more down every road I go
I’m lead a little further from what I first called home
Between what’s done for love and what’s done for show
There’s no room to react
Feeling born fully grown
We rewind our situations and pretend we’re not affected
To learn to expect nothing is the gift of the neglected
As I say sorry so many times
Like I’m apologizing for being alive
(refrain)
We sit in circles
And contemplate our work loads
We talk in circles
About where we should go
As I walked with support
Yeah maybe in my shoes
Cuz the rock I was living under was suddenly forced to move
(Refrain)
It’s gotten to that point if there’s a point worth making
I never thought this would be the cost of living
It’s gotten to that point if there’s a point worth making
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11. |
Monkey
03:35
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Monkey
Why didn’t I come to you sooner said Eve
I only wish to know what’s going on
Am I getting here at the same time as you are Adam
Hey man where did you come from
Here we’re trapped in a maze not in a cage
Making our way down this garden path
Let us stop and play our shadows in the shade say
What are you getting out of life other that a laugh
What am I getting out of life other that a laugh
(refrain)
What have we left to show
Other than we’re never greater than what we do not know
On a path as broad as the destruction it leads to
Was this something put on us or something we slipped into
As the winds of change came they stripped us bare
We had to adapt quick cuz Eden’s gates don’t care
(refrain)
Staring out on this scene of earthly existence
I must admit a part of me is going to miss this
But you’ll go on without me just like you went on before me
God knows you’re just the world to me
We’re only human
We’re under the conditions
There are over 6 billion worlds now and they’re inside of this one
Go on beat your chest leave an impression on me
Come the night we’re all naked as a monkey
(refrain)
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12. |
When the Raven Sings
03:40
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When the Raven Sings
What else can you whisper in my aching ear
As you say no trick was played to get me here
But you dangle your golden cage
In an attempt to tempt my fate
Cuz I lust for something new to trust
At the end of the day
Most of my learning takes place
After midnight now as I go off and lose my voice
At least that’s how it sounds
(refrain)
Now that you know where you’re going
Can you see you’re getting to me
And I’ll find you in everything
Especially when the raven sings
As far as I can see I’m on my way down
Won’t you keep my head in the clouds but keep
My ear to the ground I’ve been searching for signs
I can’t hear nor see through propaganda so thick
It’s like a Hitler symphony
Where everybody stands with their mirror in hand
They only want to understand you
After you end up like them
(refrain)
I have no explanation for the ways I’ve felt
Just that when I can’t turn to anyone else
I turn on myself
Now your eyes can see what my tongue can’t tell
I can’t show you what I want
I can’t show you to yourself
(refrain)
Hush little baby don’t say a word
Mamma’s going to buy you a mocking bird
And if that mocking bird
If she can’t sing
The raven’s going to take you under it’s broken wing
Until you’re hearing melodies in air raid sirens
It’s the song of sadness that gets stuck in our heads now
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13. |
Ash
04:31
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Ash
You were too young to know
You were too young to go
Now a grave cold stone
Shows the date you were baptized
In fire and terrified
Baptized in fire
I would have taken your place
But I was half a world away
I keep reliving that day
Like thinking I don’t want to be in this especially if it crashes
In a plane over Panama my world went to ashes
I have traveled since then
Niagara Falls to the Grand Canyon
I haven’t found a thing
I haven’t found you
I stood on that canyon’s edge
And I stared straight ahead
Like I knew it was coming
And I didn’t care when it hit me
You can scream until your last breath
You can run until there is nothing of you left
But you can’t cry tears good enough for death
Would you mind if I don’t mind
You say try to leave it all behind
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Michelle Lynn Ptacek Decorah, Iowa
Here you will find Michelle's first five albums. She will soon record her history songs: The Inventors, The Explorers, and
The Interrupted. Please sign up for the newsletter on her website for notifications.
Michelle owns an online education business and loves teaching in a variety of mediums about topics relevant to curious and passionate learners.
... more
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