Get all 8 Kamikaze Prom Night releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Time Heals (Almost) Everything, Kamikaze Prom Night, Comfy Girlfriend Sounds, Self-Portrait, 2019, Self-Portrait, 2018, Lullaby, sumer demo #999, and Red-Plastic Serenades.
1. |
Eyes Ever Skyward
05:16
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Sweet silver moon,
I was born to gaze at you.
All the way up there,
are you lonely too?
Sweet silver moon,
I’m reaching you soon.
Somehow
I’ll get
to you.
Oh, holy pearl,
I know somewhere in the world
there’s your human incarnation waiting for me to find her.
Our eyes would meet,
our hands would touch,
I’d spin you round,
we’d kick stardust about
like this...
To the blackest
depths of space,
every corner becomes lightened by your face.
My eyes widen
as we dance,
I have realized there’s an angel in my arms.
No, “angel” is not the word,
no words will work.
Your name would.
But I still don’t know it.
Oh, my insides are fluttering,
what if she’s the one
to replace the one I miss-
-mistook for the one?
I’m tapping my feet,
checking the clock,
on a
blind date,
couple hours ‘til prom...
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2. |
She Appears in Lilac
02:33
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Small cherubs blow
their seashell horns.
A holy roar
your herald.
Your auburn glow,
your floral voice,
they call me on.
The sight of petals trails your step.
I don’t believe we’ve ever met.
Won’t you grant me your velvet hand?
I’d die to know a fraction of your warmth.
The lights above dance serpentine.
Your aura a golden ring.
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3. |
Glimmering Glow
03:34
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Light glimmers from the cutlery,
from the women’s necks, and the women’s wrists.
The glimmer glows from the floral flux and the crystal clink.
It glimmers most from my yearning eyes as my date sits down and she looks at me.
I wonder why she holds her cigarette like she’s in a movie scene,
Grayscale Hollywood, the Golden Age.
I bet she pictures cameras on her all day everyday.
And why would any camera be aimed at any other?
Everything’s in black-and-white but she’s in Technicolor.
Oh my, oh God, too late does it occur
that I’ve been staring for too long
and I haven’t said a word.
Turns out talking to her is like unwittingly biting into one of those decorative plastic fruits.
(Break, eager teeth.)
I also learn her hair is dyed: she was never a redhead, just a mortal brunette like me.
And I begin to question my own authenticity,
and to wonder why I forced myself to leave the house.
But tonight, I will feign a smile and a laugh,
for my self-worth rides on how good a time she has.
And if I get drunk,
would that brighten things?
Or will I end up
on the floor again,
to wake up half-dead, cursing myself
and the things I probably said?
Or did?
I guess I’m willing to take the risk.
We try the wine,
I turn to see her.
I find it sweet,
she finds it bitter.
She has this face,
it says outright:
I’m a mere black blotch
in her lilac light.
I ask her for a dance, she says she’d rather not.
She lets ash fall from her hand onto the tablecloth.
She seems to be unheeding when faced with fragile things.
She’d probably catch a butterfly and strip it of its wings.
I look around the ballroom and past nights spring up.
Weddings I went to with Valerie plague my memory:
back when she was my girl, back when I was loved.
My shirt is too tight and my bowtie is killing me,
what can I do but choke up?
And like Valerie,
she’s grown bored of me
and fond of a man
on a nearby seat.
And I take another swig.
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4. |
Tequila Mockingbird
02:53
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Do you really expect for me to ask you for a dance
when you’ve got fire in your hands?
You’ve got fire in your hands.
I would like nothing more than to get closer but I can’t
cause you’ve got fire in your hands.
You’re scary, I cannot speak,
but wine will do it for me.
Should it say more than it should,
please don’t put the blame on me.
Editing sober what I wrote while drunk
makes me want to cut off my tongue.
Drunk, I forget it’s not good
to bring up literature.
You’ve only read one whole book
and you hate Holden Caulfield, well I guess you’ll hate me too.
Come Sunday, there will be sand in my mouth,
and a strong urge for writing but nothing about.
I think I can take two more Sundays but then
I’m taking the Hemingway out.
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5. |
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Oh, life is unbearable for me.
I’m waiting for lightning to
come down from the sky and destroy me since you
have
left, taking
my heart as a trophy.
Now I will forever be
an empty shell at your feet.
Why would I want my arms if not to hold you?
Why would I want my eyes but to behold you?
I’d surrender my whole life
to be by your side.
I see
no point.
This ball is boring,
I can’t endure it dry.
I’ll find
no joy
upon the dancefloor,
can’t take your hands in mine.
Why would I want my arms if not to hold you?
Why would I want my eyes but to behold you?
I’d surrender my whole life
to be by your side.
Why would I want my heart if not to love you?
What good’s the moon for but to be above you?
Should I see you one more time,
I might fucking die.
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6. |
Melancholera
03:38
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Something’s wrong,
seems my common sense is gone.
You’ve been on my mind
for too long.
I want you.
How I want you.
But I heard
he wants you too.
So, I stayed up all night
writing verses all about your eyes,
likening them to the stars in the sky
and cliché shit like that.
Oh my God,
I am writhing at the thought
of stronger arms
carrying you off.
So, I stayed up all night
writing verses all about your eyes,
likening them to the stars in the sky
and cliché shit like that.
To endure
the sight of you,
I must make you want me too.
To make up
for lack of looks,
I must croon.
So, I stayed up all night
writing verses all about your eyes,
likening them to the stars in the sky
and cliché shit like that.
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7. |
Howl
02:52
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Early and unannounced,
defeated, I step out.
There’s something I must write about.
I thought I’d find you in-
-side with the rest of them
but I’m sick of rummaging around.
It’s just impossible,
I feel like finding you
is literally reaching the moon.
Still I howl for you.
So, I’ll write about it,
like I always do.
I know nothing else.
I
don't
know
what
to...
...do you
live on the moon?
Where else could I find you?
Still I howl up at you.
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8. |
Penthouse Phantom
07:27
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Down the hall from the entrance to the ballroom, there’s an elevator.
I get in and press for the top floor.
I want to be as far above from everyone
and as close to the moon as possible.
I step out and find myself in another ballroom,
this one completely empty
except for myself.
The carpeted floor blots out the sound of the music below.
The towering drapes keep the moonlight from pouring in through the giant windows.
It seems like this room hasn’t been used in a long time.
I walk to the center.
I picture nights of summers past:
the ballroom crowded,
days of old,
the aura rose and gold.
Music and light,
clashing perfumes,
the taste of wine,
the warmth of June.
Laughter and kisses emanate from every mouth,
but I’m just a distant observer:
invisible, inaudible,
a ghost from a different time
who does not belong.
I see a pretty redhead,
her eyes shine like the moon.
She speaks but out comes my own voice.
I notice that her face is Valerie’s,
and my mother’s,
and an amalgamation of every woman I’ve ever loved,
of every redhead I’ve idealized,
everyone whose soul my eyes have dyed.
She’s not real,
never was, never will.
I come out of my stupor:
the ballroom is empty again,
the lights are dim again,
the sound of my breathing is all I can hear again.
I pull the drapes, look out the window:
the city lights are twinkling below.
The city is like her:
messy, convoluted, unappealing by day,
but tantalizingly beautiful when she becomes bejeweled at night.
Those city lights look so warm.
I feel like everyone in the world is down there except for me.
I wish to be there too, though it was I who chose to come up here.
Now I turn my gaze upward,
and I remember that the moon doesn’t actually shine,
it only bounces sunlight
off its dark, dead face.
The windows
shatter into
smithereens,
casting
shards of glass
nowhere as
piercing as the
cold air
that torrents in.
I fall on
my knees.
Oh, put your warm hands on me. I’m freezing.
Won’t you put your warm hands on me? I’m freezing.
Oh, put your warm hands on me. I’m freezing.
Anybody put your hands on me. I’m freezing.
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9. |
Shell of a Lunar Shore
03:55
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Sweet river boy,
when are you coming to pick me up?
I’ve been waiting for so long.
Sweet river boy,
did I imagine you long ago?
Are you a desperate hope?
Still I wait
in my immense,
empty world.
My glacial,
grayscale world.
Does no one
even know
I exist?
River boy,
come to me.
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10. |
Ballroom Perpetual
06:14
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We are born and soon ailed by pain that
we know not yet the name of.
Loudly we cry out.
Then we soothe qualms,
grow calm,
in our mothers’ arms.
Thus, we come to know love.
Years go by, slowly, we grow up,
and we’re ailed by a pain much greater now
but crying’s not allowed.
And so, once more we long to be
somebody’s baby.
You’ll be immune
within her womb,
but me, I’m writing love songs
to the moon...
Wish I knew
there’s no such thing as you,
human form of the moon,
you’re just a hope I drew.
You’re a ghost
possessing pretty hosts
until you overflow,
letting the human show.
So I resume
looking for you
in everyone I’m allured to,
in everyone I bump into,
until I learn they’re just people.
I realize
I’ve deified
a fabrication in my mind,
but I forget under moonlight.
...and as we waltz around in my intangible ballroom, I get all pensive,
and I realize I romanticize not only you but myself too.
There’s this point I must reach to be who I want to,
and it requires an inhuman jump.
I can’t love myself,
that’s why I need you to do it for me.
I know,
let’s play house:
you’ll be my mother;
I’ll be my father;
baby me is crying,
let’s put him to sleep.
We spin around some more and I look into your heavenly eyes,
your impossible, moonlight-colored eyes.
It’s hard to believe my miseries and flaws are what brought me to dream them up. So maybe,
no, definitely,
all those imperfect people I’ve met, and am yet to meet,
they have their own moons, product of that imperfection,
and now I’m eagerly curious to go visit their ballrooms.
I stand on the windowsill.
This time,
the sound of everyone below is as beautiful as the silence of the moon above
but I no longer need to choose between them.
It seems as if the moon was nothing but a bud all along,
and has bloomed before my very eyes...
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