The Fool, the album, by Warpaint
Set Your Arms Down – Arabella traveled every inch of the world collecting every gun she could find, she could take, from the limbs of havoc. She hopped grassy knolls and wandered the deserts and climbed in through back windows across the Earth. She hoarded every firearm, every piece, every bullet and trigger and chamber. A stockpile of steel glistening in the throbbing sunlight. Arabella knew now, unquestionably, that every gun in the world was right here, right in front of her. I’m closer to peace than I’ve ever been. She didn’t feel that much happier. Arabella lit a match, breathing thoughtfully, and flicked it into the pile. The powder lit, sparks in the air, pistols and shotguns and revolvers firing in a Kalian sprawl across the noiseless flatlands. Arabella fell in a dusty heap, insides creeping out from open wounds.
Warpaint – In the parklands across the road from the elementary school, children waited in line with their parents to paint their faces, to smear the skin of their cheeks, wearing youthful costumes and smiling with abandon. Those who waited waited impatiently, those who had finished ran to the playground and pretended to shoot the other children wearing cowboy hats and flannel shirts with imaginary arrows.
Undertow
Bees – bzzzzz. limbs prodding through the flowers. picking at the pollen. taunting the drones. the queen is calling! bzzzzz. don’t touch my stinger.
Shadows – Jennifer was an invisible girl – except when she did anything illegal, like steal food because she was starving. She had one pair of clothes and never did laundry. She was nine, an orphan – she was never heard, never knew her parents, didn’t know where she came from, and wanted to be loved by the people who couldn’t see her. She couldn’t sleep in the warm houses because they belonged to others – people would see her and tell her to scram.
“You’re ugly and a disgrace!” they shouted.
Jennifer slept in the trash of dumpsters – in crumpled newspapers and food and plastic bags and things torn to bits – like a warm nest that smelled of the people she wished would love her.
At night she heard cats.
During the day she walked and avoided the heavy people, picking up dropped coins and looking into shop windows.
“I do wish someday to be real.”
(buy Manifesto, written by somebody – not me)
Composure – This song bleeds into your ears like melted clay, waiting to mould something from the misshapen thoughts in your skull. It trickles out, drips from the earlobes, pinpricks of muddled ideas brushing against your toenails. It drum drum drums – “how can I keep my composure?” – and I don’t know and you don’t know.
Baby
Majesty – “Do you know your fate?” whistled the parrot to the hounds panting by the gate. Their lopsided grins, unintentional, plastered across their dazed expressions.
Lissie’s Heart Murmur – Lissie felt the murmur some time in the morning too late to go back to sleep and too early to get ready for work. It wasn’t the kind of murmur that doctors furrow their brows over, no, it was more like a ba-bump bump whoosh, like her heart was frightened, fell out of bed, slipped out of its nightgown and into the arms of loneliness; cold, hoping for warmth.
(illustration by Chris Kuzma)
