Feelin' Good

3 Songs from: Joel Martin From Toledo

Feelin’ Good

baby it’s subtle machinery, not shiny and chrome
it looks like the greenery you’d find round your home
It’s a burgeoning market for those of high taste
who pretend national parks were never lived in by natives

it’s impeccably refined, with a real sense of style
you’re only measured at all times so your time is worthwhile
by Eckleburg eyes, and a cheshire smile
Why would you ever grow tired of being beguiled?

by these cosmic signs of amazement and splendor
by our drawing of science equations on windows
with letters and digits draped downward like shingles
we’ll math our way prodigiously out of this sinkhole
now let’s clap and raise a glass for green factory Kris Kringle
Eco Uncle Pennybags, and his brother Mr. Pringles

yes, I talked to a man named Pangloss P. Pinker
a known-through-the-land not-as-bad-as-you-think-er
he said the rising tide is sure to lift us all to the ether
but he failed to note that most our boats were made to be sinkers

so I’m building my capital gathering my steam 
with my ersatz animals and their ersatz dreams 
with the silicon sky white as Lazarus’ sheets
I wanna be a big name when I break into the anthrocene 
you gotta act inhumane to make it in the anthrocene 

but I didn’t care then, and I don’t care now, 
and I won’t care when if and when you all drown
sometimes I think I do, and it makes me feel good,
I love you but not as much as I love feeling good!

come get the gel plates sewn into your chest,
come hang the bell weights and see your member stretch
or shun them hysterically, and never undress
set your eyes to the spiritual and curse your own flesh

maybe the path of the puritan afraid of wet dreams
and that of the epicureans and hedon libertines
both lead back into delirium, in the desert sans streams,
thirsty for meaning beyond one’s own means… 
yet within one’s own being

oh god who’s that Cushite man sprawled on the shoulder
by that chipped baseball bat and the blood pooled all over
I’d help him myself, but I lack the training
and the cops in this town hang out with the sadducees

“hello dispatch, i saw a man by the road,
bleeding out fast from what looked like blunt blows”
“well thank you for calling, citizen, but it’s covered,
we already dealt with that smug motherfucker” 

we might be fools, might be slobs, but at least we’re an honest
pack of stray dogs reingesting our vomit…

you see, we didn’t care then… we don’t care now... 
we won’t care when all the blood and water runs out,
we’re like you... we say that we do, cuz it makes us feel good...
and we believe it but not as much as we believe in feeling good.

I used to think a system, with gears that glisten would save us if it could just be reached
to quote the aphoristic, backstop-mystic, “the future ain’t what it used to be”

I heard a faint voice breaking through the white noise,
coming down from the heavens and up from the soil
it said, “to the destroyer, yet to be destroyed
even to the annoyer yet to be annoyed

hearken my speech if you don’t wanna die,
quit pulling out teeth and poking out eyes
quit treating the earth with such carelessness
or you’ll - ah fuck it you already know all of this

I ain’t trying to sound bitter, or trying to lose hope
or be a cynical withered wizened misanthrope
but there’s a cliff round the corner that you fast approach
just want to harness you in while you still have some rope

I know this sermon’s a chore, but i’m just preaching facts,
you’re an army of Lizzie Bordens, each wielding an axe,
and giving Earth Mother millions of whacks
while you banish each brother and sister lorax
and your heroes launch sports cars into space out their ass

yes you use up the oil you use up the trees
you use up the sky and you use up the seas
but what about you friend and your family,
you’ll be used up soon too if you’re not already
I hope this gets through, love Cassandra, Peace”

And all the people sang, 
“We didn’t care then
and we don’t care now and we won’t care when it’s all burned down
for years, we said we did, it made us feel good, 
we believed it but not as much as we believed in feeling good
feelin’ good!
feelin’ good!”​

Octavia

With the dawn coyotes now, Don Quixotes howl
They’re taking theirs back
Deluded, backtracking toward bliss, bold anachronisms
On a holy-war-path

So tear everything down
Burn the shacks to the ground, scatter the ash
The sun will be coming up soon
Flaming marigold bloom, we’ve got to move fast

Baby they’re coming for us and they're not our friends
Incredulous, dressed in sapient skins
And it’s hazy hurtling through the dust, back to where it began
We’re trapped in the rust of an age at its end

And if I don’t make it out, let it be because I couldn’t save us both
I’ll gladly return to the clay
If the teeth inside this mouth come down on us faster than we thought they’d close
We’ll die as poison in their veins
And if they cut us down like old growth forest where we stand, it’s how we’ll go
Our roots will strengthen what remains

Wrap your cold bones in these flags, most use they’ve ever had
Count the constellations
The rhythms of Constantine’s hums and technocratic doldrums
Sync like parts in a hymn

If you’re listening, Lu Xun, it’s no illusion
It’s the song that you wept
Organs with keys made of teeth moan proudly our creeds
The tables are set

Baby they’re gunning for us, they’ve got bags for our heads
Caesar’s being revived on an ICU bed
Octavia, don’t weep for your son, weep what’s been ushered in
Sewn in the stitch as an empire begins

Pantheons and pentagons and crushing bones, ground into oxygen
Burning crosses on our breath
We breathe it in, indulge the sin, drink bloody gin, and then we lick our lips
Beating the collective chest
It’s falling, it’s falling, it’s falling, nothing here can be kept

He’s trying to make it but slow go the minutes
He oscitates and the sleep rushes in him
Eyes are heavy, he feels his veins tingle
His body jerks and he’s back in the sinkhole
Almost got out of the swastika freak-show

Back at Progress Farm, the scientists haggle
The garden withers while the children play scrabble
Is there a word that describes what we’re building toward?
Oh shit! the atom split on the triple word score
Growing meaninglessness in a petri dish spore

"I’m sorry now if this comes across crass,"
Said the ant to the man with the magnifying glass
"All the power to be, is within myself
I should be able to make it without your help
But I’m so damn tired, and I know that’s my fault
All the same, praise the lord that I’m living at all!"

Behind the wheel of a fiberglass Pequod
On the freeway in a jam looking for his white god
Smothered him in a flag, hid the cries with a chainsaw
Every war from the top is decreed by the same god

Baby they’re coming for us and they’re not our friends

The lion with ropes freshly cut, gives thanks to the mouse
Then says, "get the fuck out of my house"

Baby they won’t let us leave, we’ve been here all night
Gaping, trapped at the scene of a cult suicide
Let’s break free and run for the hills, be mountain ascetics
And we’ll watch the paint peel from the age as it ends
We’ll watch the flames spill over played violins
We’ll watch the landfill of an empire descend

Cascades

The sun escapes the cascades and cascades down your face
And it’s clear there’s something wrong
Arrived by train yesterday, whole life in a suitcase
And you feel you just don’t belong
Does anyone belong for long?

Said, "See this snowfall’s slow dissolving into nothing at all
As it dries up in my hand?
Each moment we don’t spend thinking about being in the moment
Is already long since past
And if you try there’s just no way to be where you’re at"

It’s a lost cause to watch the clock, 'cause to be found I must be lost
If I’m to know where I am
And where we’re at is where the moment’s just passed

The question’s surely open ended
Somewhere inside we hang suspended
Between suns rising and descending
Missed the moment, caught a memory
Revolving door of destinations
Delusion believes in stasis
Moon dances in constant stages
I shouldn’t define what always changes

Mountain tourist trap, they walk past, music playing in back
Polymer shamans
The nonchalance might come off like New Age sycophants
But I don’t have the funds...
To ease your conscience, like these mystic capitalists
Are you present? Are you remembering this?

With forest mime-men, played nine-pins, decades gone in an instant
An amnesiac trance
On the lake docks, stay all night, talk, till we’ve all but forgot
To remember the slim chance
That time takes some time off
Don’t be mad, don’t be mad, and don't stop

The times are surely far from honest
Bootstraps ego, but stay modest
Form your rhymes into a sonnet
Free yourself and chant our mantras
Like billionaire philanthropists
We thank cancer for killing one less kid
And we thank clocks for each minute
I found a path, but I’m losing it again
Again, again, again, again

I’ve a bleeding hole in my dry soul, a leeward rain shadow
Hood covering my eyes
Daily condition, a sickness, it’s iatrogenic
We're the slow mass suicide, self-prescribed
Sacrificial rites

Seconds blur on, flip book drawn, a phi phenomenon
Always time in between
You mentioned you felt fenced in, dying rhododendron
Domesticated tree, but I want to set you free
Grow on the mountainside with me
Images of Persian rugs, phantasmagoria
From all those carpet daydreams
Does anything still dream? Do you know what I mean?
I’m not sure I do

I’ve been climbing high mountains trying to get home
(Swimming in the Jenever
The strangest dream to me occurred
That we lost track of where we were
And woke to find the forest burned)
I've been climbing high mountains trying to get home
(The sun escapes the cascades, how’d it get so damn late?
Or, rather, early; where were we? It’s much the same)

---

Joel Martin from Toledo

(that is the tiny town of Toledo, Washington) is an indie rock artist with parallel roots lying in literature and old folk music, but which are manifested in a vibrant exploration of Pacific Northwestern rock and Americana arrangements, often with sprawling lyrics full of religious, ecological, and cultural metaphors. 

Raised in the home of a banjo-picking, Constantine-scorning Baptist preacher father, and a piano-playing, garden veggie-canning, homeschool teacher mother through whom he is a registered tribal member of The Cherokee Nation, Joel’s music is heavily influenced by his spiritual faith, especially in Christian ideas of social justice, anti-imperialism, and decolonization. An important part of his message while singing about these themes is the inclusion of oneself as part of the problem and solution always.  

Website: https://joelmartinfromtoledo.bandcamp.com/