Receipt Continuity

[beat — dry, no reverb, click track audible] You woke up this morning / who decided that was you Same name / same face / same résumé to run through Same mortgage / same kid / same partner in the bed Same hand reaching for the phone before you lifted up your head What’s the continuity / show me where it’s kept Show me the receipt for every promise that you slept Through the gap of unconsciousness and somehow paid the rent On the lease of being someone when the someone never went You think there’s a witness / a watcher behind the eyes Quiet little homunculus / the real you in disguise Look for him directly / where exactly does he sit Behind the eyes / behind behind / behind the behind of it Every time you turn to look the looking is the thing And the looker that you’re looking for is looking from within The same operation that you’re trying to catch out And the catching is the cat-and-mouse the cat is built about [harder] Surgery / they cut your corpus callosum clean in two Now there’s two of you / which one of them is you Left hand draws a circle / right hand doesn’t know Right hand picks the apple / left hand says let’s go Each hemisphere confabulates a story for its half Each one feels complete / each one would make you laugh If you weren’t the one inside the splitting / you’d say Look at that strange creature with two drivers in the sleigh But you ARE that creature / always were / the bridge Was a story that the storytellers told across the ridge Of a gap that was always there / you just couldn’t see the seam ’Cause the seamstress sewing seams was sewing seams across the dream [verse two] Alzheimer’s takes the grandmother piece by piece by piece First the names / then the faces / then the verbs / then the niece Then the husband of forty years becomes a stranger in the room Then the room itself dissolves into a non-specific gloom At which point did she stop being her / at which specific loss Was the threshold finally crossed / who’s keeping count of the cost There’s no threshold / there was never a her to lose Just a process that was running / and the running paid its dues And the dues were the appearance of a someone who was paying And the paying stopped appearing and we called it the decaying But the decay’s not the exception / it’s the rule the whole way through She was decaying into being from the moment she was new [no chorus — the form refuses] You ever lose a word / it’s right there / on your tongue You can feel the shape of it / you’d swear that it’s begun To form / and then it doesn’t / and the you that’s looking for it Is also not arriving / is also not before it Where was the word kept / who was keeping it / for who There’s no librarian / no library / no you That stores and then retrieves / there’s just a process that sometimes Produces words and sometimes doesn’t / and the rhythm of those times Is what you call your mind / but the mind is just the producing And the producing isn’t yours / it’s just what’s been reducing The field down to a trickle that runs through this specific drain And calls the trickle me and calls the drainage pain [the floor gives way] And don’t reach for the unity / I see you reaching now Don’t paper this with oneness / I won’t allow The operation to recover by relabeling the loss As a gain in cosmic terms / that’s just the apparatus’ gloss On its own dissolution / I am everything is still I am / and the I am is the same machinery / the will To survive as something / even as the everything Is the same trick the something always plays when the some-thing Sees the writing on the wall / I’m not a self / I’m All Is a self’s last move before the self would have to fall And the fall doesn’t come / ’cause the move worked / the self stayed By becoming infinite / and the staying is the trade [final verse — no slowing] There’s no rest here / there’s no get it and you’re done There’s no realization / there’s no and then I become There’s no after this / there’s no now I see clearly There’s no graduation from the operation / nearly Every teaching that has tried to point you somewhere quiet Has been absorbed back into the apparatus’ diet Of producing better selves / more enlightened selves / more free More awake more present more truly truly truly truly me The hunger for the resting place is the operation hungry For one more meal that tastes like home before the cupboard’s empty And the cupboard’s never empty / ‘cause the cupboard is the cooking And the cooking’s never finished / ’cause the cook is always looking For the next thing to prepare / for the next thing to eat For the next teaching to digest / for the next defeat Of the seeking by the finding by the seeking by the found And the ground keeps not arriving / ‘cause there isn’t any ground [no fade — beat stops mid-bar]