Will

August 2023

Tracklist:
1. Codex (4:08)
2. Will (4:10)
3. Full Fights MMA (9:48)
4. Giovanna in Ecstasy (2:16)
5. Precision Waltz (1:54)
6. Perfect (3:38)

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About:

Written and recorded May 2022 - August 2023.
All lyrics and music by Max Wickstrom.

Lyrics:

Codex
Rising from a petri dish, the hum of second sight
Graft of stem-cell Eucharist has brought us here tonight
Spying through the stockyard fence, we peer behind the veil
Show us fifteen "experts", we'll show them sixty nails

When we were young and innocent, our evil was sublime
Spent Easter Sunday noosing newborn ducks with butcher's twine
We prodded flesh, with sharpened sticks, of stray and pet alike
We played among the carcasses, ate dead things back to life
As we renounce the food chain and the ground from which we came,
you ask me to describe you, I can't pronounce your name

I could call you Engineer, Host, or Guest, or Counsel,
but you are not like anything, anything but me

We watch two sheep across the field charge head on and collide
and in unyielding, perfect force devour each other alive
with bone exposed and tendon and socket-pulsing eyes
and protein all unfolding before my Clone and I
Newton, Kepler, eat your hearts, there is no law down here
But show me the incision and all will be revealed
My Twin, you whisper words no living ear could comprehend
The farm has caught on fire, you are my only friend

They could call you Arsonist, Wolf, or Mole, or Swallow,
but you are not like anything, anything but me

Sunset, I notice my tears, they turn cold in the dark
for skeletal machinery that keeps our ghost apart
Wading shallow water, I stand before you plain
like Carnival Prize Goldfish in Plastic Bag ordained
I ask you to describe me now, you can't pronounce my name
TWO CYBORGS BY THE STREAM
We stop to take a drink

Will
You left home young
Swore they'd never catch you
Traded your compassion for
a respectable sense of duty
You mastered the black hole of desire
When the light slips through your grasp,
you choose instead to reach for nothing

And when your dreams defy your will,
you take some more Modafinil
And when you inspect the blade you chose,
you are objective, you are composed

You proved your shame
living with the cattle
Each night, you asked of every lamb:
"My shepherd, do you still resent me?"
Their silent mystery consumed you
Strangled you by the dark magnets
of their vacuum eyes

Now in derangement, you ask once more
I cannot answer, but ever faithful, you continue

On and on, till you can
surrender all the burden
to Friday's holy anesthetic
the only time you hold the mirror
Fantasize cold retribution
to finally ease that desperation to be more than
someone who things happen to

But it's just a silly, selfish thought
A recurring dream you've already forgot

When you greet me, I can't ignore
this haunted feeling we've met before
Now at your heel, but still alone
I follow you along the road

Don't think because I'm quiet, I'm naive
You don't have to defend yourself to me
I like your grief, I like your knife, I like your temper
I won't intervene
Don't plead to me
I'm only the stenographer

Full Fights MMA

[Part 1: Full Fights MMA]

I am hound of devotion and hound to go on with this
I am hound of an impulse pursuing a consequence
This is my statement, you are my witness
This is my alibi, here's the perscription
Dearest friend, we meet once more
"Hey, haven't we met before?"

ER trips, IV drips, offerings of shoelaces,
offerings of blood in our own private waiting rooms
Doctors like priests in their booths of confession
I punish all of them by saying nothing
At night, I dream I'm sent down a hall to a courtroom deserted
I face an empty bench, a nervous laugh, then I pause
and to the wall, I testify,
my voice so weak I could hardly believe it was me there

When I call out, I am met by a silent gaze
Vacant motels on dark roads off the interstate
I scan the barren landscape for security
cameras, stare longing at CCTVs
The only living beast is great and fearsome Substation
For a moment, as it sleeps, I close my eyes and I'm perfect
as the prophet and the Sight
and solid as the curtain of reason between them

If you have nothing else to do, I'd love to spend the day with you
If all your plans have fallen through, I'd love to spend the day with you
We'll sit together, searching: "deadly snakes" and "full fights mma"
and "knockout compilation boxing all time greatest counter punches"

O prayer that hangs my every dream
O Friend, Contender, Judge, and Witness
I only mean... I like your knife, I like your temper
Don't pity me

Or I could stay home every night
"I'm sorry, but I must decline, I don't go out in the rain"

[Part 2: Contender]

In telepathy of moment, I can't distinguish my own will
so you make your point to see if, by the twisted and humiliating
sickness of civility, by rope of common decency,
if I will pardon you until politeness brings the death of me

You grab me by the neck, allowing me to demonstrate
whether I'm a sleeping wolf or just a pacifist deranged

When contender meet contender, and the rest is left unsaid,
every ruminating doubt will be exposed
When contender want contender, and they want each other dead,
every offense will be countered

I look out to the scene around us with my back to you
What I mean to say is, "Spare me," what I say is, "Pretty view"
Will drags like an anchor heaving psychotropic visions
and I'm back where I began
with everything I've held too long
corroding in my hands

[Part 3: Will Come Racing]

And if by chance we meet once more,
"Hey, haven't we met before?"
I'll say (polite but unyielding)
Still, you can be sure,
I will be there
I will come racing there to meet you if you call
I will be there
I will come racing there to meet you if you call
I look for you
Every day, I'm searching point and line and plane
In every crowd,
I spot you leaving from behind but you never show your face
I think of you
Oh, it's subliminal, sublime, the hope alone is still divine
I will be there
I will come racing there to meet you if you call
I will be there
I will come racing there to meet you if you call

Giovanna in Ecstasy
[instrumental]

Precision Waltz
You measure storm of neural fire
in region where you fixed the wires
and find there the source of disturbance:
The neoplasm that your rules,
your fine and antiseptic tools,
could not extract

If I seem to resent my fate,
remind me that I hung the blade
that gleams in the white light above you
You arrange your scalpels on
the tray in order, praying for
an accident to decimate it all

You wanted
You wanted with shotgun precision
You wanted with shotgun precision
You wanted, you wanted, you wanted,
you wanted, you wanted, you wanted

Perfect
When I rose,
my devotion
was finally consummate

All my wounds
cauterized
by the light

Now I stand, wanting nothing
I always wanted nothing

Like a debutante
paraded for the press,
the coked-out senators,
the bent and plastered gentry,
I have waited

Please touch me not,
so I might stay
the ghost you take me for,
but say the word, my keeper,
I am ready