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Your Hands Are in Your Pockets Again

from Monk on the Run EP [2011] by Todd Portnowitz

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Poem "Self-Portrait as Pianists Playing Liszt" attached to the end of the song.

lyrics

You've got to open yourself up.
What the hell are you doing so low, so closed?
Wasting time.
You're talking like a hermit again,
go hide, go cry,
see if the rest of us pay you mind.

O God get over yourself now,
say a word or two that doesn't bear on you,
wasting time.
Your hands are in your pockets again,
that's fine, go whine,
see if the rest of us stand in line.

Get up and out of bed
get out of your own head
when a body stops moving they call that dead.
I see where you're at
feeling neat as a gnat
like there hasn't been a God since the world was flat.
But the truth is, look,
life is lived on a hook
and you shake yourself free at your own risk.

[Though his legs are twenty-five
he can't be more than twelve

and already he's screaming his son's name
so dolefully. The way he moves his hands

like a romance novelist typing on a typewriter,
or sways as dazed as a dreamed-of emu:

no, this one can't be twelve. He's not a boy at all in fact
but a university girl, the sort who knows just where to
put her hairclip

and sighs the sign of a river's uneven bed.
She snaps her hand at an error, like a banknote

picked up by the wind, but it's flown. And now she flies after it, leaving all but that note behind.

Hunched on the bench is a solitary man--
he came in grumbling and he'll leave grumbling

no matter how fine a revelation he comes up with
and if he repents at all, it will be only to rest his fingers]

credits

from Monk on the Run EP [2011], track released July 28, 2011
recorded @ Sounquest Studio, Melbourne, FL

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all rights reserved

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Todd Portnowitz image

Todd Portnowitz New York, New York

From 2004 - 2009 Todd Evan Portnowitz performed as singer/songwriter in the Florida band Clock Hands Strangle, recording two LPs, Redshift/Blueshift (2007 Team Grizzly) and Distaccati (2009 Chocolate Lab). He now performs and records as a solo artist out of New York, NY ... more

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