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slow burn

by old gray

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1.
pulpit 01:15
I have been waking up with blood in my mouth most days. Choking on the metallic taste that coats my tongue. Can't remember if I promised today would be the last, if so I lied. That infinitesimal moment of my true thoughts will fade. Overcome by my need for you. I am a lie. I am a sickness. I am decaying. I feel the life pouring from my veins, as I so feverishly try to shock life back into them, The way you so effortlessly did. Maybe I should just end this here. I wish that the promise of learning from their example would die on my lips, So that my words bear weight again. My sanity won't let me count how many I've lost. Content only counting hours. Carefully planning, facing no aspect of life. As beautiful as this hole is, I need to climb out. ----- The first time i contemplated death, I was 13. took a knife from my kitchen counter, I did not know hot to perceive this. After eight, nine years of dealing with these thoughts I couldn’t comprehend why i was feeling this way. For the longest time i contemplated death as the only escape and the only way to make myself rid of the feelings i have felt. I’ve lost to many friends to feel that way anymore, to know that my life is not a continuation of theirs. So i sit at home, and i waste away and i grow tired of the things i love.
2.
communion 01:03
Where are you? In a time where I needed you most, I selfishly prayed for a ghost or sign that your spirit’s alive to give me hope.
3.
blunt trauma 00:52
There was traffic in Austin when you gave yourself up to the crushing release of a car. Long live the devil and all hail the saints chewing up stars with their names. Angel, i feel your pain I understand why you’d want to take it all away. I still think about the body, by the gas station where you lied. A bloodstained body of what once was, just another meal for the flies.
4.
Painting broad strokes of black brings blood down my head. I can’t handle anymore phone calls telling me another friend is dead. I miss your laugh and I miss your smile. It’d be nice to hear from you every once in a while but you’re gone. I will never be able to ask how you’ve been or where you or or how could i lose another friend? I tried to destroy me too. Hell only knows what i’ve been through. So i left my regrets at the foot of my bed and I promised when i’m older, I wouldn’t forget how to cut myself open just to rinse myself clean again. Your death hangs over my every move. Everything is a constant reminder of you. So you haunt me, so that I can haunt you too. I can haunt you too if you want me too.
5.
razor blade 00:29
Brendon put down the knife, I love you too much to let you take your life and I won’t let you try again. I won’t let daisies grow through your head. I won’t let daisies grow through your skin. If this is the last thing i write, I swear that i’ll think of you every night. I won’t let you bleed. I won’t let you bleed. I won’t let you bleed. Put down the knife.
6.
i 01:13
7.
there's a girl, a tall girl, with eyes like honeycomb & jasmine. sometimes she blows cigarette smoke in your face in the break room, and you call that love. not because it is, but because you want it to be, because you're so goddamned lonely, so goddamned unable to handle the ocean roar in your ears when you're alone. you tell yourself that the ash in your lungs is a kiss goodnight, and you write poems about the smoke tendrils whispering off her lips, how beautiful they are, like the aching arms of god you want them to be. one night, you're tired, so very tired, your eyes as heavy as water. you forget where you are, in the break room at a walmart at 2:30 in the morning. you leave your notebook unattended on the table, left out for anyone in the world to see, and one of your coworkers picks it up. he reads the poems you wrote about the girl with honeycomb & jasmine in her eyes. you panic when you realize what just happened, because the boy who just picked up your notebook, he's a cruel boy, with eyes like shotguns & razorwire. he buys you razorblades on your birthday so you can do the job right the next time, you fucking freak, and you can't believe that you aren't one, can't believe you deserve to be anything. some days you don't even try to hide the angry marks on your arm, like your skin is a test where you got every question wrong. one night, there's a box-cutter with a brand new blade, a stack of cardboard boxes begging to feel its tooth. you dig in but something's wrong, the fiber's too gnarled and you can't seem to cut clean. you push, hard as you can, feel the stiff tangle of glue give way, and there's blood on the floor, the blade half an inch in your wrist, but you don`t feel it. the shift manager’s in your ear, angry because he has to take you to the hospital. there's a janitor who'll forever hold it against you for staining his clean, clean floor, and there's everyone you work with & their hostile eyes glaring, knowing this was coming all along. there's that cacophony, all those ghosts reminding you of your destiny for failure. and there's another blade, and there's a bottle of pills, a fifth of vodka, a hospital visit, two weeks of inpatient while your whole family prays for you to get better. there's a doctor with blank eyes who never looks at you. he’s always scribbling things on his clipboard. everything you say, he documents. even when you're not talking to him. you don't smoke, but you still go out for smoke breaks with everyone else on the ward because there's nothing else to do but stare at the walls, and wait for the next group session to start, so you hang out in the courtyard, not smoking cigarettes but still befriending those who do. and there's a man, maybe ten years older than you, with eyes like roughcut pine & sunset. he notices you don't smoke so he tries to stay downwind from you so he doesn’t exhale in your face. he tells you it's okay bud, we'll get through this and be better when we leave this place than we was when we got here. he's telling you the truth, and you believe him. one day the doctor who doesn't look at you comes to your room and tells you that your insurance isn't paying for any more days, so you're all better now, and you leave. your mom picks you up in the lobby. her eyes are the most worried kindness you've ever seen. and you go home. and you fight off the ghosts, which is easier now than it was before, because now you have a better set of tools today. and your life goes on like it was meant to, like you were always supposed to survive the fight. you stop writing poems about smoke tendrils trailing off the lips you once wanted to kiss, or about how your loneliness is so unbearable, because now you write poems about how to stay alive. you write poems about the places you feel at home rather than the places you wish you could be. one day, you catch a glimpse of someone in the mirror, and there you are, eyes like stubbornness & struggle, like the brick buildings in abandoned factory towns that refuse to completely fall. you look at all the scars, the history etched into your arms like a road map of where you used to be vs. the endless possibilities of where you are and where you can go now. and the smoke tendrils, once midnight black & swirling above your head, break away, leaving nothing in your view except the sky. and it is so perfect, and so clear.
8.
ii 01:24
9.
10.
I still remember the hotel room where I sat. Fleeing the hand that gripped you. I gave you words, they were inadequate. Couldn't admit that I abandoned you. My fear grew, ever stronger. My delusion cast about me, a blanket to my conscious mind. And my paradise lies in blankets and smoke. Remember when we were all smiles, blind to reality. I sat with eyes closed for awhile. As if days don't turn to months. Except, I forgot it ends like this. Blue veins, cracked upon a pale surface. Did you smile one last time, as you closed your eyes? Because, I don't want to close my eyes anymore. I want to be whole again, how the fuck do I get there? I've lost what it means to be a person. Haven't been reading enough to know the right words, so I keep mine to myself. Just thought I'd take this chance. Say I'm sorry. So one more cigarette, one more breath in between, one more drink, one more hit. Hopefully take the breath out of me. Counting seconds to minutes as you slip away. You were going to be someone. We all I knew I, was supposed to be the one. Found on a cold tile floor. The vibrance of your being seemed so foreign, as you lay there. I still keep the card scott gave in my pocket so I never leave your side again. Each day, find myself asking what would have been if I was there? Again. I should never have been there in the first place.
11.

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released December 9, 2016

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Old Gray New Hampshire

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