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Analomink

by Catthumbs

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1.
Prologue 01:57
Yes, I'm talking to you There is something in that forest leaking magic all over this place. You'd have to be blind not to feel it rumbling up through the soles of your feet, Your car keys shivering in your fingers The ferns on the levee just laughin at man for thinkin he could build a machine fast enough he could use it to hide from the moon Somewhere in your guts you remember what it's like to spit out an appleseed and watch it grow into something I think I think, at least, That some piece of you was there when they tried to dam the river Saw the moonlight standin in front of the foxes den on the banks Saw the lawman try to drag 'em away, Done worse when they came out bitin and scratchin, Saw 'em run into the trees Say they made a bargain to keep the water running Went to old gods and gave 'em their voice, Their long legs and their fingers and their lips, Walked out of those woods with four paws and fur and no way to tell nobody Just teeth for bitin and claws for scratchin And a jittery yip of a howl, I see you reaching for your phone, So you don't have to look in my eyes Or smell the maple sap on the wind Don't have to remember that you were once a junglegym made of roots that knew how to spit. You dig your nails into those car keys, Take comfort in pretending you built a machine fast enough to hide from the moon The sun's setting earlier and earlier And they're listening
2.
Act I- Here 01:35
It's about water It's about stepping in with your shoes on The smell of old beginnings The taste of submergence The acknowledgement of movement Walk to the middle with your feet grounded And see your clothes billow in the current Understand that we are travelling faster than we know Accumulating and letting go in bucketloads At every moment you are greeted and abandoned by new molecules you have never met before This is natural This is the rhythm of breath And the silence of light To paint a river perfectly artists have to stare at the water for years stripping away all preconcieved notions of how their eyes work To understand the tumbling magic of green and copper and gray To recognize that we have never been able to see anything but mirrors And that the colors are bouncing to and from every surface in a fluid embrace of acceptance and rejection A flower that is orange and a flower that is blue simply love sunshine in different ways A rose by any other molecular structure Is still made of crushed dinosaur bones and stardust And we will never lose this. Keep in mind that as you walk into the river Holding your shape like a lover Laughter is the act of remembering every time you were not solid And letting your voicebox explore every form of soundwave Until you are also a song You are also a song. You are everything you have thought yourself. You are everything else.
3.
She was the first one to get my gender right Told me I was Some kinda riverskip bellylaugh or something, With maybe a bit of howl tucked away in the radioscratch bargain bin feralkitten squeak? She had eyes like World War II era stethoscopes Heard my heartbeat for every chipstutter leafcrackle sin and called me friend We were eighteen but nobody ever took her to the DMV So I bought her cigarettes with the shiniest bottlecaps I could find While she sat in the grass junkyard behind the gas station Drawing pictures of the things I saw with my eyes closed I wasn't good at walking with two legs She wasn't good at walking without singing the blues We were the clumsiest musical Silent as nobody's business We dumpstered silk flowers from the craft store Like just another coven of critters from the woods Picking everything that looked like our dizzy old animal gods off the town like wild blueberries to weave into our nest It wasn't our natural environment But like rats found the city and squirrels found the suburbs we got cozy We made our home on the island where the river parts under the 7th street bridge Our house was magic Verdant Sentient A hundred feet tall Winged and hydrated and echoing like a singing bowl Glittery as snowfall wrapped in tinfoil moonshadow With serpentine minarets That tickled the underside of the highway So whenever cars passed and rumbled our ceiling Our ceiling rumbled them back We were so proud to be the monsters under their bed We picked every piece of broken glass from the riverside And hung them from the rafters so at breakfast the traffic from the morning commute would sound like a hundred windchime bats settling in to sleep It was just like how my lungs felt that spring Every room was a ballroom with discarded cigarette floors and mini mart slushie cup trees all heavy with apple thoughts and apple jacks and apple cores and apple ghosts and apple mythologies stolen or otherwise It was a crashpad for meteorite people And we were the kings of infinite space Our bed was a shopping cart full of feathers We'd walked here over the water Or pretended to Our boots filled up and the wheels rusted shut like an eye infection on a pit bull in a Beatles song But we believed ourselves When we woke up with goose down stuck to our skin We liked to pretend We'd flown somewhere
4.
We were dumb kids Playing a game with high stakes Cradling our punk rock anomie to our hearts Like lonely together was the one thing that was honest Like sisterhood requires binds of sacrifice Like we were a pair of exploding stars Chewing cattle spurs for bubblegum So when we smiled everyone would see the metal shards shining off our teeth know we were Houses of Mirrors lost in Houses of Mirrors Tattooing ourselves raw with sentiments that always washed off There was never supposed to be salvation for us We thought our midnight strolls through the city Breathing in shadows like hungry paranormal photographers Could keep our stomachs full We felt sustainable "For you, a thousand times over," I said, As I ran for our dollar store kite that only you had any idea how to fly We didn't think about it I really believed that I would eat dirt if you asked me to, That this time, when the test arose I wouldn't make the same mistakes I had before, That I would pull the moon from it's anchoring And panting like a stray dog scratching at the door, Like a shaking Atlas I'd carry it on my back for a million miles if I had to I was positive I meant it But Girl Who Knows the Most About Clouds Dancing, That night, when that shooting star stretched across the sky before us, And you said "Don't run for that one." My heart broke. My eyes flooded my colors drained my spirit fractured but I said, "I won't." I tried to laugh away the tail of that comet, Rinse off my radio's reception by the rhythm of our footfalls But I wasn't laughing at all when I wove through the forest that very same night, When the mud of the marshes gripped and tugged at my feet And my identity got torn up by the fingernails of the branches Something supernatural, had a hold on me I wanted to turn back My street morals, My stray dog Atlas loyalty Said nothing could excuse what I was doing Nothing could excuse what I was giving up But the glow through the trees of that star, Wasn't something I could give up I don't know yet, what degree of a sin this was. You had a boyfriend, and a different love altogether bottled in your heart, I didn't want to understand why this one glitter in the cosmos, My one glitter in the cosmos, mattered to you But I told you I wouldn't. And I knew deep down that when my word broke So would our backbone So would our streetlight shadow home. There are no good words for this. There are no easy answers. I know now that no matter how many sizes my heart grew Had I tried to carry the moon to you My knees would have buckled My knees have buckled A thousand times over I'll do what I can now But the rain swept away our little shrine under the bridge The water took everything that wasn't anchored We cannot furnish these shadows anymore All we can try for now Is daylight
5.
We wrote stories In your bedroom With the power off The whole house dark And full of plants Your hands grew gardens In my hands [Chorus] We get older We get older We get lighter We get lighter We get sick We get sick But we get better We get better Love me sweet Like ocean water Love me bitter Like wild cranberries Love me crooked Like our broken bodies Love me too warm Love me just right If I'm a werewolf We can be penpals If you're a werewolf I'll still stay the night If you're a flower I'll bring you water If I'm a flower Tuck me in your hair [chorus]
6.
North, Pt. 1 03:22
Analomink I am matted with evidence of your violence and generosity When I got singed by the townfolk's tongues You anointed my skin with miracles from your branches And when your sunshine burned my eyes with the ability to see all the ghosts in the smokestacks like you do Those same firebreathers forged my glasses from pieces of their shattered streetlamps Nobody ever means to hurt each other They just get so scared of the empty spaces inside themselves That they start frantically ripping at anything that moves For some piece of something to stuff into the leaking roofs of their lonely bones I know the city stole from you. I'm here in the deluge pouring in from your injured canopy I'm here with my feet sinking into the soil My shoes are wearing open in the mud like seed pods And taking root to tell you I'm not moving until you listen to me. Just because a star landed in your arms when they fell to earth Doesn't mean they're yours Even if they have your eyes. You have so many perspectives Right now you're looking down at me as a squirrel in a treetop And up as a toad in a puddle You see through all the insects panoramic You think you know me Because you can look at yourself through my lenses But to you they're treason and to me they're mementos of compassion You have memories like that, don't you? My first tattoo is of one of your freckles It's on my foot because you taught me to untie my shoes While the boys back home were arguing between cigarette powderkeg flick And shut up don't think about it You taught me bloom When those smokestack hands learned that fearful compulsive consumption reflex symptomatic of adolescent societies And I was afraid they'd see me all naked and drunk with moonshine You hid me from their searchlights, And didn't treat me like I owed you, Just sprouted some blueberries, made me a new body, and asked me how that singing thing that people do, How does that work? We found them dizzy in a crater on the first day of summer, Nestled among the green asking the ferns and clovers their names I said hello, asked where they came from, maybe asked where I came from too, Held out my hand and That photosynthesis thing you showed me way back, Well, when we first touched I got a little tipsy from the wonder of making direct physical contact With a light source brighter than a planet Their eyelashes fluttered out a flurry of sparklerpaints And all my pores sprouted daffodils and rainbows It was kinda weird, Like, when they tucked a flower behind my ear and kissed me I could hear all the moonlight twinkles on the river going supernova They called themselves North Maybe, like the star but, it was conjecture at best They had eyes kinda like yours Like they had the ability to hear the whole universe Just by taking a moment to notice the trees respiration And when I rested my ear on their chest It was like what they tell you conch shells do How does that work? Falling in so deep the trees are all whispering lullabies And everything is green And honest And wonderful, How does that work?
7.
North, Pt. 2 02:50
The first time North wandered out past the trees Where the suburbs start pushing up out of your borders Like nerveless teeth in phantom root canals A parade of those who feel the holes in their feet from when they stopped mourning you Shuffled our dearest friend into courthouse square And stood them up on the front edge of the platform built For the statue of the soldier with a gun Looked at them like a savior Thought they were their holy sun Those folks didn't realize that just because they're golden Doesn't make them their golden boy That not every celestial body is a son J: "Step right up And see the messiah fallen from heaven Here to suffer for our sins So we don't have to" I wasn't there, When that traveler felt for the first time the last of many things the three of us had in common Involuntary martyrdom through voicelessness Mobs that don't know how to listen Systematically break things without realizing it My friends the thieves didn't know the difference between loving and stealing With violent words like "Stay with us" and "We need you" All the people I had trusted Called them perfect between coughing parenthesis over every way they wanted to change them First the grammar The fibers of their name didn't make sense If they couldn't be differentiated from the whole of everyone else They couldn't be called they anymore If they really didn't want to be called He capitalized they'd have to learn by being called he lowercase If they didn’t want to be called he lowercase The only other option was it Second was their presence The tall moonshine of their laugh The thunder of their thought Those people said they made them feel warmer so they mortared them into the bricks of their chimneys With binding glue stolen from the spines of misquoted dictionaries They were so scared and hungry for the clean air The ashes of the world they were burning Fogged up their vision so bad that people started looking like oxygen I miss them too But pulling the song from their eyes And tucking that light deep into your storm Doesn't make you a savior or a mother It just makes you another thief My oldest friend, Turn your ears away from the din of the tug of war And listen They're whispering Soul and body aren't binary And when you give yourself a second to breathe You'll remember there's a human being beneath all the glow and sprout and concrete There's a human being whispering Listen I know you're scared for them and you only want to help but People only ever hurt each other out of fear and You're becoming more and more human every time you use us as mirrors It's not yours to decide this Listen
8.
9.
I think I came here to remember something, ya know? I think I wanted to put my face in the grasses on the hillside a lot more often than I did. My advice would maybe be to not sleep in a house so often. Maybe my advice would be to build a hollow in your stomach where all the animals can live. That's something I feel okay about doing. The doctors told me that according to them, I was broken a little? That I had some girl magic but, a lot of boy magic too. They offered me pills. I didn't want pills. I wanted to carry ferns and wildflowers in my teeth to the abandoned dam in the woods and thank the stone for crumbling. I wanted to roll around in the mud and get misquito bites Kinda like tiny blood sacrifices to mother nature for making me something tricky that I could spend lots of time unfolding. I almost died of lyme disease my first summer here but, In the scale of things, I got bit guiding a lover who's soul had left their body up to the stream to drink and find themselves again. The moment it must have happened, there were seed pods on my skirt and flushed scratches on my knees, streaks of dew and bits of grass stuck to my legs, like it was all trying to heal me as quick as it hurt me, The lights on the bridge cast gold shadows on us, and I was singing their soul back into their body, singing up the stream. Bridges and balloons. The pebbles on the shore getting stuck to my hands as I knelt in prayer and kissed the river with my mouth open. Holy water ghosting over my eyelashes without glasses on. Everything happened how it did, And, I'm okay.
10.
11.
On October 8th 1799 A few well intentioned friends tugged a story out of me prematurely Until I gave birth to this town from the mouth of a bicycle entombed in concrete My legs became the levee and I bled until I didn't know how to stay still anymore My fever dreams became clouds and flooded the Walmart parking lot at night like the ashes of stars Like the ashes of my first kiss I had my eyes open when no one else did Because I was so depersonalized then It was before they laid me out on the water table for someone else's subconcious Sunday school notions of ancesteral sin I woke up in the old graveyard beneath a garland of cigarette smoke tinted with the lipstick of a fracked mountain and everybody's business The grass was wet against my cheek with river mist And I stared into the future eye level with your shoes in my footsteps I told you to run but you were as brave as I was in all the wrong ways And when I stopped bleeding into that river you opened your wrists to the sidewalk I tried to save you with my eyes closed I pressed a pocket watch to your chest Yelled into your ear in your own voice 'take this and go' But we didn't know how not to be heroes. I found myself standing vigil in the current in your absence It's the only thing I've ever been good at.
12.
Hearth 02:47
I wasn't the first person to leave It's not novel People have been doing it for decades It has set precedents None of which resemble accountability I'm sorry I carry that accountability up the Delaware on my back to you It's all I can do We're not holding the smoking guns But we were all in some ways machines and therefore in some ways weapons You told me the only way I could save us from the searchlights Was to throw our bottles into the river The shards of shattered trust Worked their way back through the past To the scratches on my knees And the chimes on the ceiling This is a story hollow as my bones There's no honor in flying alone Nobody hears their own mistakes When the smokestack with the trigger clumsy hands Pushed me from the branches And swallowed me into his labyrinth I realized that he called himself chimney Called himself safety Called himself home Burning everything for fuel under hundred year old logic That said "Darling, Build me a mirror I want to subsist off your adaptation Of what you call sunshine and I call data You are warm like the blushing sighs of the ocean at night I am warm like an overheating computer If I crash against you enough times We will make sparks" It's what they taught him in school He wanted to be like the movies He wanted to try cattle brand He wanted to try stick and poke I said "Let me go, I don't want a tattoo from you I have a hundred tattoos My tattoos name is spit My tattoos name is anchor My tattoos name is glass elevator Your name is hunger I didn't make you Just because I didn't know how to unravel your anger Doesn't make me responsible I am irresponsible I am a tattoo I am a hundred I am because a glass elevator I am rings of flowers Spinning into thread on a ferris wheel of Burning the old songs that kicked in my apron When I was contracted by birth to sew myself into your bones You lost a needle in my clothes And I was so scared to move I asked everyone I'd ever met to leave the room While I stripped every last feather from my body to find it I was alone When you tried to burn me in the hearth of you but choked on my glasses I carried you up the Delaware because All the grownups said I'd have to rescue everyone if I want to be a real boy And I'd have to be a real boy To rescue myself Don't tell me what the river is made of Don't ask me where the birds go when it's raining They come here To the bridge in my chest It's the only memory I have left They huddle together under the storm like They are not trying to spit fire They are not trying to catch lightning They are just trying to stay alive They are a hundred They are irresponsible They are a tattoo They are because a glass elevator Shatters Like a shopping cart torn open by it's own antlers And someone else's cigarette powderkeg flick I am go away I am shut the door I am done"
13.
The Spell 03:42
They, the town that is, Waited all strewn about your roommate's front porch Crucifixion on their teeth, Bellies all rainbarrows of wanting To know how to sacrifice something worth losing. Everybody all picking pennies from their shoulderblades And kissing the serrated edges of stray cat's backbones Nobody telling each other what they gave to the river that one Sunday After the bars closed down and the old railroad ghosts went swimmin in their church shoes. It wasn't my territory anymore I had a den here when I was nothing but the size of an acorn but This place doesn't look like it did then Sometimes I find a damp porch to drag some leaves under and pretend but Everybody's always stomping here Always lighting each other on fire Like it's some kind of carnival game And if they pull a thing like me shivering from the ashes All copperwire glowing frayed sizzled up fur That's just another prize to seal into a song or something I tried to leave a good letter for you Something gentle and kind to say When you come back with all the scars And raise your arms up trying to teach them How to get out of a building when the smoke rises But you don't seem much at all the type for getting out of buildings when there's smoke rising. I've been layin damp leaves over the cinders But when that smoldering coalmine decides to light up it's veins here The river's gonna ask you a broken levee of a question And you gotta know that you'll have to hold your tongue a pretty long extra mile to answer it I wanted to leave you with something gentle But all I saw was what my eyes gave me and what they burned into my feet in their sleep I used to be a champion and I used to be a tree I was a loving embrace on a porch swing And I only knew about playing chess for folks souls from the movies. I gave him something when you weren't looking Slipped a secret into his wallet to make a bargain in the shadow of a fallen king. So now I'm all four paws and skittish and the knowledge of giving up and running Going down south to build a new life outta something simpler than tumbling bricks and shopping carts But you, You found something in your pocket And you stand here breathing Taller than you used to be Stepping gentle up onto those porch steps Maybe you're gonna see something I didn't see Maybe when the river asks that question You're gonna know something
14.
Deer Friends 02:11
I was gonna phase out of here like smoke Annalomink walked with me to the overpass, Back where we used to build castles and smoke cigarettes, With her land legs all skinny and sharp hooves My deer friend, Gave me our memories in the form of a seed Told me even now the drillmen's carvings itch in her back like flea bites She said, bring it somewhere with ears And strong feet You, Metallic riddleteeth, megaphone guts, candy wrapper cattlespur blooddrive You made the same mistake every fucking one of us made But you didn't have breaks We were just walking You were a blur of headlights and crash and splintered moonlight I couldn't tell my broken glasses from your broken windshield From her broken glass body on the road like just another casualty of Pennsylvania highways You were a metal cannibal and I was something you saw as small enough to swallow Thought I was nothin' but a jittery yip of a howl With your hands around my wrists you tried to drag me into the passenger seat I was broken glasses broken windshield broken antlers broken levee broken eggshell I broke free Scratched your hands with my claws and flew to the center of town with that acorn in my beak Dug into the ground in front of the courthouse and planted it as the last action of my silent fox's feet Then climbed up onto the statue's pedestal on two legs Bare skin and scraped knees As that story started growing I was tired of whispering I screamed Y'all are waking up to this tree Busting up through your sidewalks Perforating your brickwork When you find yourself blinking in your crumbling houses high up in the branches With light flooding in across the leaves They'll be humming with secrets you didn't wanna talk about And everything will be green And honest And wonderful And I'll be out west Cuttin' my teeth I'm not sorry

about

CW: Violence, violence against trans individuals, gender dysphoria, abuse, self harm.

This fall, Jesse Morales and I got together to combine my words and his music into a surreal mythology centering around the patch of town and forest in Stroudsburg Pennsylvania surrounding the Analomink creek. This is also my way of coming out as non binary (they/them) and coming out about a hundred other traits, experiences and emotions.

Short summaries of my interpretation of the plot are included in the 'about' section of each track, but if you would find more specifics inhibitive to your imagination, I totally encourage ignoring those summaries. Whichever way you choose to engage in this thing I made, I'm honored that you're doing so and I hope the experience is meaningful to you.

credits

released December 29, 2014

Cody Burawski- Poetry and vocals
Jesse Morales- Music and vocals

Salve a cover of a song by Cud Eastbound, the origional (which is beautiful and highly recommended) can be found at cudeast.bandcamp.com/track/salve
The song in the background of Travelers in a City with No Atlas is us covering Broadripple is Burning by Margot and the Nuclear So And So's.

Also Jesse's solo music can be found at jessemorales.bandcamp.com

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Catthumbs Providence, Rhode Island

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