Get all 11 Pete Davis releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Hapax Legomena, False Friends EP, Commiato (a cappella), The Pottsville Conglomerate, Grace EP (demo), Emergency Response (demo), Algorithms and Anaerobics (demo), The Waterworks (demo), and 3 more.
1. |
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Dodging headlights
Never thought to look away
Toward the white lines on the sides
A door closed in the hallway
A table meant to share
With faces that no longer look familiar
Clear days you can see the whole bay from here
Days like today
Gripped the rail behind you at a loss to justify
How one can still not tire of disappointment
The pulse of each car passing by
You wondered what the waves felt like
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2. |
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Willpower you used to have
A signature fades at the edges,
Demarcates an effort you won’t get back
An epithet
Something you need to have said
But were too afraid to say
I saw you out by the water
I didn’t want to bother you
I didn’t want to follow you
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3. |
Crossed-over Contrails
01:00
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When the car pulled up
To the curb outside
Left there idling, exhaust diffusing through the air
Do you remember then
The scaredest you'd ever been?
Then what happened?
Second-floor window
Lit behind its shade
Family plot we knew no one had long inhabited
In the hallway fell
Something shattering
Swore you really saw it then
Felt like we were younger that one another thought
Offering rational reasons that neither of us bought
Left to rely on lessons that we had never been taught
Turned so cold that day
A watercolor gray
We never met, my eyes fixed on your eyes fixed on the grave
And then you turned away
Nothing left to say
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4. |
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Full, your backyard window
Reflections of your own back-lit shadow
As if some figure stood watching you all night
Though you knew better
You couldn’t help staring
Casting a light in the dark
(I’ll be late again tonight)
I couldn’t help preparing
Hard to discuss our new normal
(I can find a place to stay)
Capture a form by its traces
Ill-fitting shapes misremembered as having fused together
Lit, no one was there
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5. |
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We intended that this time would make up for the rest
Open-ended, treated every moment like a test
Whose validity was unaddressed
But I knew what it had meant
Sometimes it wasn’t about answers
I guess it was about overcoming our self-doubt
Can you hear just how you sound?
Outgrowing habits formed
Sitting closest to the door
It was six minutes to four
Did you know what this was for?
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6. |
The Pearl River Delta
01:00
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Thought the bus stopped here every day
I left the room in mostly your taste
We haven’t sensed in how many days
Words we’ve learned but just wouldn’t stay?
I’ll try now to tie down kites the sky won’t need
Clear branches of the aging trees whose
Roots never quite grew deep enough
The light at the end of the hall never turned off
Over and over, wrote over and over
Words that make it seem like it gets better
Seem like you’d forget her
Seem like you’ll regret ever fewer things now
Remember how you wished it’d sound?
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7. |
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Sat in an empty stairwell
No one there would notice (you)
Flow
Even tide
All you could think about was a witness
(unwelcome interest)
Spotlight on the surface
Toward whatever ripples beneath it
(so we go)
You shut your eyes and dreamed of hiding
Sinking in a bottle
(hollow scenes)
Not the sensation
The emptiness
It was a feeling you needed
(a feeling you missed)
Missed its mystery
You just wanted to feel small
But small you cannot be
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8. |
Late-stage Ankle Weights
01:00
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It used to still be under my control
I must have left something behind
It used to be much easier to say
I'm glad to hear you're still doing okay
You swore you did
You swore you didn't leave it
Smoldering all night
Woke to an apocalyptic sky
Felt for the front door
Consuming the forest floor
Think of all the wildlife that died
That never understood why
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9. |
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There was a setting on the table
There was a carving in a tree
There was a suitcase in the hallway
And it stays there half empty
There was a stranger in a portrait
There was a mattress on the floor
There was a call you couldn’t care about
But they won’t call you anymore
And you knew if you had left it
Then the feeling would subside
But you wondered how you got here every night
Slumped over a desk in spare bedrooms
Shadows from the same indifferent light
So wrought for old words half written and canvases still white
For you’re running out of the things that you don’t tire of
A dearth of motivation
To examine better choices than our negligence
To gain some small reprieve
Resigning to have done your best
And feeling kind of bad when you’re relieved
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10. |
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Up from the earth
Bent to the sun
We depleted
So what did you say to make
The dialogue deviate?
To take it away from what you needed?
Didn't look, didn't do
What you thought you should have done
What you've always believed you would
Didn't halt, didn't hush,
didn't stop it coming out
You never could
You couldn't watch, you couldn't run,
You couldn't bury it under you
But you knew better than to look away
And consciously
Knew this just may be all you see
What was it for?
When did you know it's over
We sow its seeds, we deplete, deplete
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11. |
New Distant Lights
01:00
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Memorizing the staircase
scared of making a sound
groaning under your weight, they'll find you out
Knuckles white on the handrail
Inescapable now
We all thought you would always be around
Let it not be known
errant sympathy
let us not lose touch,
though we'll have expected when we do
Feeling our familiar places all becoming new
Memories of a home that keeps forgetting you
Can you see them scattered in the sky?
Shone new distant lights
Closer shadows call our eyes to the floor
Never knowing what we wait for
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12. |
Legomenon
01:00
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Said all we could ever think to say
Said all we were ever gonna say
There was nothing worth repeating
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