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I Love You, This is a Robbery

by Spoonboy

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1.
2.
while moonlighting in the service the bourgeois elite, i caught lunch with a party of pseudo-environmental executives, because i heard they'd pick up the bill. and then the billionaire took a seat at the head of the table and wiped his ass with the dignity the polynesian waiter who'd only been misheard but was subject to abuse and I got caught... i got caught, i was caught in a crisis of procedure what I knewn but forgot in the comforts of leisure, on review of the charts, all the facts, and the figures: only lack of recognition will discredit credit our leaders and the conflict lies with you all the waiters of the world please spit in the soup and the billionaires might finally get what's coming. when the dishwashers of the world all mouth off to their boss then the latter that they built that they started at top might fall because it rests on you and all the shit that you go through just to stay alive a thousand miles away, another conflict i've been through about the innocence of the criminal when the victim is you and the tendency to justify a law that's flawed and i got caught. i was caught in the crisis of my company. what i knew, they did not. but i guess there's only something. there was a girl a cop and they wouldn't even talk to me i got caught. and the conflict lies with you, all the waiters of the world please spit in the soup. and punk kids please think about what you're doing. when the dish washers of the world all mouth off to their boss, well then the latter that they built if might finally fall, because you know it all rests on you, and the shit that you go through just to stay alive.
3.
California 02:12
california is on the other side of a landmass on this planet, but it's a destination, and if your tired of the notion of escape as a distant thought, that you were stuck in a rut you were born to regret all I can say is "get the fuck out," because i'm not impressed by the intimidation tactics of this expansive land of the vaguely unknown. i'm not impressed. philadelphia is a city on the middle eastern side of a landmass on this planet that i'm not too proud of, but it's a landmass that i live on, and philadelphia's smoggy skyline lies above a few good humans who are not impressed by the blood that goes into the building that doesn't belong to the architect and i'm not impressed when they turn their guns to oakland i'll be underneath the sea in the city of atlantis and i will dare them come and look for me. for when the protest song is outlawed then the dwellers of the city's alleys will not meet the fate of the sitting targets who never even thought to get so far as california. it's on the other side of a landmass on this planet, but it's a destination
4.
what you want is community. what you're looking for is roots. what you need is the answers. and you won't find them in religion, no not in religion. what you're looking for is love. did you find it in alcohol? or did you find that you get frustrated by the way it tells you 'yes' OR 'no' over and over? i'm not saying it's wrong. we all go for the easy ones. just sometime i'd like to sit down (with you) and focus on the questions. what happens when the idealistic turn bitter and judgemental, when all the people and things don't turn out just exactly how they expect? i understand that people are sensitive, but i feel like i'm dealing with kids who think they've got the answers. and i call it religion. and i've got no interest in god. not of any kind. maybe sometime you and me will get back to explaining all the things we don't have to. and i'll learn more than just your name and where you're from. and you'll drink to the fact that we're human. and i probably won't drink at all. whatever that says.
5.
"don't stick your hand in there," she said, "it'll shock you." but you want to... and you want to well, momma said, "don't go looking at the sun," but momma don't you, don't you know that's where the fun is? that's where the fun is? it's in the sights of the burning sun? (heard the windmill suck you out; i'd like to try it thermal take you up and out; i'd like to fly it to the moon) just like second hand smoke, it cuts my eyes and it burns my throat to read the words and the letters you wrote ot cuts to parts often unexposed. second hand smoke, it's like a lung full of guilty holes that breathe the words that say "go for the throat," or what it's worth just to know you could get this close (maybe if you step on my feet I'll dance free-er maybe if you tell me you then I'll tell me-er)
6.
you were the one that i thought i could trust, but when you jumped the gun i knew i had to adjust what constituted someone seeing eye to eye. you saw things too black and white for the shades of gray i chose to stand by. it's just that i get so tired of that liberal notion that our beliefs get to end need they be set into motion, and actions and words relate like that thing they say. you say "keep it down," and i say "turn the volume up to fifty" it's just that i get so tired of that same conversation the one where i back down once it involves confrontation but when your shit-talking backstabbing tactics still fly why's that the higher ground than acting on the things you claim to live by? and you were the one that i thought i could trust, but you jumped the gun when you pinned me as just... i'm not the valedictorian or the ringleader of the crime. i'm just a kid who gets in trouble sometimes so who's getting tired of that half-assed notion that our beliefs get to end need they be set into motion? and actions and words relate like that thing that they say you say, "keep it down" and i say "turn the volume up to fifty."
7.
we've got this burning fascination with non-verbal communication, trying to figure out all things that are being said, in between what's being said, we got a formal education of bad entertainment and misinformation, though by now i'd think we've figured out what's real, not like those people on the tv, no they're nothing like me, that's not reality, it's just what we're shown, but try and tell me when i'm fourteen and all the things i'd see, what i learned from the tv is what i believed. and it's all, just a fireball, burning up and up up and all around, and they see insecurity as a seed to sew to be exploited. tv told me: "lose my virginity, hop to the beat boy, you're almost sixteen, take with you always a flare for the dramatic, don't kiss boys that makes you a faggot." there will be things to be confused about. we're kids all across the country all across confused. but it's weird to think about before we figured that all out, when it went on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...
8.
on the playground you learned how to share with the kids, but you still didn’t feel you fit in. how fitting, your confusion when you turned sixteen you knew how to paint by numbers, but you knew it wasn’t rock and roll. you learned tight pants, spray-paint and eyeliner. you said glam-rock would save your soul. but you didn’t grasp that the rebellion you wanted wasn’t something you can ever be sold. and i never understood how someone could be so willing to be absorbed into what i never though could be pass as identity and i always felt bad for the kids who had to share their faces with sad teenagers across the world who'd found something to fill their loss, without ever addressing the cause. and i heard your speech patterns imitated exactly, by a girl in seattle and again in minneapolis. so i guess he must of learned that from tv. you said you’d find yourself for real but fell that far from the goal. you had to paint by numbers, but knew it wasn’t r-r-r-rock and roll.
9.
on top of a rock you sit and watch the sun come up and turn the sky different colors so you stop in awe, think of 'god,' a name you gave for what's the lack thereof across the sea by a coast there is a boy who sees ghosts and they're all his own, and though he'd have the space occupied be emptied, they are his kind and they stay. for how close you got before, the ghosts found they could stay in what was his reflection in your eyes, and now those aren't a place that can be looked to for haunted memories, and if only he can see it, eviction's complicated. on top of a rock you sit and watch the sun come up over seas that rest unlike before, though you can't be sure if it's changed, and least of all: an explanation.
10.
today i wrote a song, and i guess that it's about you, or how i never understood what dancing meant until i met you. in a winter college town you proved that we could move in ways so un-ingenuine. then: on the crowded floor, a little down, ten people over, was like standing on the violent ocean shore. i said "you know it'd be the same," and i said "boy don't be naive. even if i stuck around, but you know i'm always leaving. so today i wrote this song, but somehow i know it's not about you, as much as wanting to belong, or have something to connect to. and how impermanence came wholly into question, when you challenged my perception that to go back and forth is such a noble task. you shook the sea without so much as leaving tracks, and gave motion a whole new meaning, one i'd try to learn if i wasn't always leaving. but you know i'm always leaving.
11.
well the authorities called me up and said "you may well end up in prison." i said "i may well, but you know i'll run away before then." they said "you know we'll catch you." I said "nah, you wouldn't know where to start. you may well put in prison, but you'll won't ever touch my heart." they say that kids my age think they're invincible. well that seems foolish but i still know i'll never die, and it seems to be invincible all you gotta do is stay alive. and i can do that on my own. stay out of the conversation because your laws mean shit to me. they're just arbitrary guidelines and absolutist ideology. and it seems to me when you're the ones out killing in the street, you've got no right to tell me what to do if i want to be free. because i'm not your property. nah, i belong to me. they say my generation don't stand up for what we believe in. i think its all cause we've been told just what to do right from the start. "don't break the guidelines given believe in television." but we still know what we believe when it comes pouring out our hearts.
12.
Philadelphia 02:01
two hours north of the nation's capital, i took a break from what would be my final days in a prison of my own making to see a fiend who had said, "hey come on over," a favorite band, and an ex-lover's ex-lover. and ryan said that he liked my company, so i didn't leave that night and stuck around for his birthday. we rode out to the tops of the oil cans, to a pool in the woods and i jumped in... perpetually lost and so i made my way across the zip codes, sold tapes to the smaller distros, learned cliches of the drifter's ethos. learned addiction to new faces: the pros and cons of being place-less. and my friends seemed stuck. but i didn't know what to say, so i addressed the chorus and asked each voice individually. they all said "i'm doing this for my parents, i wish i had other choices. it's not really what i want, but i can't stand to be a disapointment." and i wanted to say how at the end of the day you're just accountable to your memories. and if you can't lament what might have been... you'll never be a disapointment. but i couldn't find the words somehow, wrote down the names of the college towns, and waved out the window as the dots on the map passed by. and ryan said that he liked my company, and though i know i never told him, well it really meant a lot to me, and i said i'd make a point to always stop on by. and i know that i don't, but i think about it every time that the greyhound glides passed philadelphia. and then the greyhound cries for philadelphia.
13.
we took our cues from the side of the road, and took the billboards as signs that cast an omniscient shadow. that by design, seemed to imply cooperation. and while trying to find the words to say, "this doesn't represent us" we poured over maps and in dawned on me that this is war. we hadn't cast the first stone. their tactics had been subtle. no one around even new they were in battle, but it was war. and no one wants to think in black and white, but a decision had been made for me, as though a matter of instinct, and made against my will: cooperation. and it had dawned on me that this is war, and we might have to chose sides.
14.

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released February 1, 2005

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Spoonboy Washington D.C., D.C.

"a poor man's belle and sebastian" - MRR

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