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Overview
This is the debut collection of poetry by singer/songwriter Ryan Adams, acclaimed for albums including Cardinology, Cold Roses, and Prisoner. His work in this volume rings with emotional authenticity—and provides perhaps an even deeper insight into the man than is revealed through the songs that have resonated with fans the world over.
“Ryan Adams writes with equal parts precision and recklessness; the blood he draws from the text is easily as unnerving as its unapologetic tenderness. He is proof that poetry will find its writer.” —Mary-Louise Parker
“Infinity Blues is Ryan Adams at his personal, unforgettable best. Strong and beautiful and funny and pure. Like all his work, it’s soul poetry of the highest order.” —Cameron Crowe
“This is much better than reading a friend’s journal. It’s more like watching somebody you love in the bathtub talking to himself. You’re like, wow, he’s even good at taking a bath. After reading Infinity Blues (which I think is a great title), I give Ryan Adams the best compliment I ever got—and the only reason for reading anyone’s poetry. Ryan, I really like your mind.” —Eileen Myles
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781936070312 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Akashic Books |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 290 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Firestorms Day One
Hot Georgia Damn,
i thought;
almost out loud over a blasting television —
mantle-mounted and crooked slightly;
a butterfly is laughing wired-born without wings; color-wired wired-shaky; riddled with desires and all that nothing to become —
in a row of blondes lined up neck in neck on a beaten couch all of them soft as ice cream from a summer county fair their faces interrupted not a touch until wherever the last once sat and the desk interrupted the avenue breeze grown calmed down from so far up the street seeping into the window crack all scooby-doo and shit like a funky mist but that was my heart going TICK TICK TICK because while they sat and my friend drolled over each and every lap and leg i saw a video by that metal band RATT where the guitar player crashes through the ceiling to solo on a proper dinner in an upper-class flat and i said,
"the only thing more punk would be if he stopped and asked,
'is that a de Kooning, you know, a real one and not a print?'"
like Harry Caray commenting on the Cubs and i heard the most incredible laugh —
then i saw a firestorm of slow curls and eyes the kind that send men packing looking my way —
and i was now like moons moons crashing into each other — between my teeth where there was supposed to be breath and the dust it just cracked into a hopeless swarm of bad ideas secret languages and future amulettes my god i thought,
Hot Georgia Damn;
and this is where we begin.
Home Safe — Heartsickness
home safe just get home safe heartsickness, my body said,
my body said stuff, it talked shit like a sewer rat eater born in an orchid patch glittering STOP signals two two of me watched one down two across
"lonelines s"
only five letters, and too long two words reach across the page of time and turn it into the reach of time destroying this page
when the fixes are new losses apologize then get lost kind of talk
i'd tell you i was so wrong but how could i if i stand in this fire over and over like a bird begging for new beginnings to cast more pain unto itself and shield the colors of sky in a sad mythology of southern export-style lies riddled with stains of honey and poison.
Babycakes
So,
while you were busy playing cards I stole the snakes from the suitcase Did you win?
I bet you did Either way you made your money back Considering, you know it's just cash you would have spent on me and drinks and mice poison or mice you know, more mice to feed the snakes so maybe poison isn't right and I meant more snacks tossed over the pull-blanket always in place foot-side and glowing blue from movie burns Now Listen Up,
Babycakes ...
Before the sun begins to rise and that game goes stale walk away act natural use your lipstick for blush if you hit the head and, you know go all pale and fidget-fingered Before you crawl through the floor carpet loud red and all out the golden door into the parking lot of our room in that hotel and find me gone ...
I took the car yes But if you act fast you can catch the bus to anywhere but us minus me and the snakes and the magic in the dust good luck babycakes,
may you always win for thick claws and soft skin dry tears out the window with my face on the sky and what is now left of the wind the wind of gone.
Annihilator I have nothing left to lose and dream loosely before bed after I take a handful of prescribed medications for sleep and over-the-counter vitamins I think
"let me just die" but so quietly inside with my quiet voice and then tell that voice to hush it is what is left of the ghost I packed and moved out of my body on May 7th with the help of a somebody ( )
Annihilator
I have nothing left to lose the love of my life Blah Blah Blah I think when I write that or Hollywood I could go there because it kills everyone equally for the empty coast it fills faces pails and like sailboats on fire in a mouth that will not smile and a schedule that cracks water filling up a boat nobody even looks at the plastic pales water inside, water outside endless "whatevers"
but who wants to die like that
A newscaster loses it on live t.v.
starts screaming "fuck" over and over again head in hands
"we are all going to die alone"
her wedding ring glistening in the middle of a report on adopting kittens and the closing of a kill shelter in one of the boroughs then she says, "trust me"
and walks off the set into consequence red trees and faces melted safe grandmother safe like the lines of her face safe back to that the honeymoon is over and I want to set this place on fire something is wrong with me annihilator.
To Flame
to flame i am so moth to sing i am so lost to lose i am so win so where do we begin?
no time for stories evictions on birthdays uptown/downtown like a job for the sickness inside i have left to rob myself from any good work actually i am not sleeping again K.O.ed evening declines and another break-up despite the echo of "please, not now"
this is the finale the wind-up the blow-off the pay-up what the shoemaker threw at his wife fat basket case of nerves hair falling out alpha-omega-terminate the crack of doom the close last dollar shoved into a sock the shutdown the knockout of an infection that lessens the pain as you drift in a hospital bed into extinction no new beginnings to flame i am so moth to sing i am so lost so lost to flame
Time Ain't Nobody's Friend
Without the dress she is so empty she sees only empty showers with no soap and no hot water in a hotel room her saints immediately become whatever available t.v. personalities available or maybe street people visible through the disgusting curtains either way time is nobody's friend you get ten kisses, the kind in the air if the air were your cheek and your face were a balloon a bag of air fuck if i care, seriously the idiot will stop us from saying any of this all that shit on the street that junk, headboards and bedroom stuff cars blazing past it on the street time is nobody's friend i am sick in the head all i wish is to see you in the morning again and this this would all be a bad dream in a series Stephen King would be proud of but last things first first rattle out of the box it's time to open presents i got a rattlesnake with ratios and equivalents headlines to break ice ice-breaker goes for his coat and opens fire and my chest explodes in blood and guts plus thimbles next you can't sow back the seeds inside me of bad trees growing bad things to throw away against your own personality full-on spring, smelling like a rat all broken into lies and things to throw out without thinking like a vanishing point — reappearing again and again time ain't nobody's friend.
For My Father, the Drunk
When I shave I save the mustache for last it reminds me of my dad and I wish I had a dagger I would put it in my chest this is the place he would not feel it best for my heart it is his as he held me back when my mother's hand broke the glass through the door to grab my shirt and try and kill me some more when I moan about things I cannot change and all that money that I could have saved but spent killing her pain THAT is my mother's wish I tuck myself into bed but I will never rest she turned me into a shark maybe from the poison and roaches that crawled over my brother's face in housing unfit for children where someone got raped raped and beaten black and so blue no love even now at 33 will ever get through with the words as a shield and a metal vest this is the place where I feel best paranoid and hopeless I take my pills for days I take my pills for days I was a nightmare dreams could never save poor girls who tried become saints in a book I bind with my veins one sunday this will pass but not go away screaming my way out from the ass-end of bars I was back then nothing but scars but for my father,
the drunk,
who married a stripper when I was five I hope you close your eyes peacefully and die
I shot the lights out too
i shot the lights out on a million girls when i should have stayed balancing things i could not save born coward, taught slave to be a fool nourished on fears and afraid no if and or all these things no arms will ever be big enough to hold me afraid of beds and sex and what it might mean people they are the strangest things BUT i am sort of saying thank you right now saying,
ok, i surrender these things i give in mouth watering — thirsty but not swallowing curves with incentive and never coming through all because of me and my ways there are a million-plus-sixteen guys out there better than me, kid and all of them for you i am lying alone in a castle of bones under a blanket time to go close the door and leave because i have only the one shot left and i shot the lights out already and this last one it is not for me and not for you but for a silence and none of god's business
Million-Year Fuck-Face Convention
How old you have become how old how frail how made of things you used to hate and wished you didn't feel
turns on the water stands in front of mirror the day (or what's left of it)
impatiently waiting outside the door
one more swallow of beach-water something to remind me of mother drowning me or my brother in dirty bathwater like that I am holding my breath in a sigh of a sweet long goodbye black-and-white movie style
burning all the leaves in the yard in piles in a thanksgiving card signed in paper-cut blood and it smells like cheap roses and says,
"I thought you might like to see a picture of a home"
and not signed because it was written by a hag who pushed me out in a hospital people drive a county away to when they are missing a leg gin-drunk and xanaxed to a couch in a hole cheap rose perfume spitting in my face, on my soul fuck you red to green red to green I run so fast I run so fast I run so fast I run so fast I run so hard you won I am unfit to love your revenge on your ex-husband my dad is complete I resign in defeat stop stabbing me and stop staring I will not be signing anything at the million-year fuck-face convention
SOS Searchlights
it's too late to beg she is not coming back again and she was everything everything i ever saw, too perfect for words i prepare a knife and barricade the door but she will not miss me when i am gone and she is not coming back again so what for it is more painful to sit here in silence and suffer the searchlights are off the search has been called i am drifting now into dark things nibbling at my toes while the ocean rolls my bones like dice on a wall of jokes
i wish i could say, "meet me at home"
it used to be mine or ours how strong is a love?
not that strong i tell my insides as they churn for food or something awful and loud oh god no sleeping dogs lie if it breaks like a violin bowed to death numbers to protect the innocent you change the names so i will change my address and leave the rest the same and how time does pass when you slowly go insane from pissing up your rope in your head pretending you are still lying on her stomach listening to her laugh as the radio goes BLRGHHH both windows shut and the door to the bedroom closed in a touch i dream we race each other home progress documented by cell phone but i don't live there anymore your heart hours hover over me as the glacier collapses into the sea home — safe but now you are the medication i repeat my medication repeats and my mind retreats but it's over and my money goes to old fucking men in chairs uptown married for twenty years who lie to me and say,
"one day you will laugh"
and I sit and smile back like I am supposed to and plan another death i drift into a night and just wade like food not even dark things under me would eat for the curses inside and god with his timing and rods of lightning tuned to my hopeless desires it's too late
Night of Bones
Once there was a boy lonely as a night of bones. Bones in a box. Box in the ground. Once there was a world so full of light and so full of darkness, it seemed impossible to know what was what, and in the shade of the light he rested. This was his way. His flow.
Flow was and is everything.
Night shattered the glass. He wasn't sure if his hand just seized or the muscles froze because he had made them and did not know, but the glass, it shattered across the floor till it was smaller than a handful of earrings. These evenings had begun and did not seem to stop. They had crept up on him like a progression of bad dreams, like a series of drones. And it was important to keep people around now that he was so alone.
The calmest and scariest place was in the bath, covered in suds, listening to his radio. In his thoughts the past would dwell like hanging ghosts. Plants talked. Unicorns existed in the history museum. Ancient texts were all hidden truths of the world unexposed. He was sick. Like a blue dog. Like an ice trunk on a private yacht.
Blue Wars
Part I.
the cars up on the lake I'm only joking there is no lake only a street and on this street we live alone I have a room I keep a picture by my bed of the war I need to talk and not with my mouth I need to feel and not with my felt I need some security fuck my youth is over the ending is coming all the stars are burning out not growing but idiots with guitars are strumming I am one of them and I am awful out of tune since yesterday as if it was the 1800s and as much as I would like to be in love I am not punk is dead and my best friend says,
"oh well, let's fuck"
and I just, you know, puke — throw up what's more important —
first kiss or last?
you have to know these things nowadays because it will not end well —
and that is how we are taught latch-key mall rat from the '80s or not I wrote a melody once in an elevator at 6 a.m. for booze and prospects i got scars and civil war artifacts and clues bar napkins stuffed into my pockets scratched into them like they were arms and I was a cutter with terrible blues from blue wars there is part two.
Oblivion
You know what they say,
If the show fits ...
Well it fit you, it had to have You bought the whole store
Playing games with the boys in the bar Telling your version of the story Saying it loud enough that anyone listening can hear the new edition you revised to attract them
Lies Lies Lies with X's on the eyes You're a company in trouble miserable and downsized Lies Lies Lies busy-bodied slacker who's a slacker attracter Starcrossed,
and only lucky with the lazy ones.
You know what they do,
get drunk on information then they actually get drunk and tell anyone who'll listen
You're getting good at this Good work, keep up the practice One day you'll be above them all and I'll be fine, I got a cactus
Lies Lies Lies Put X's on their eyes Your company's in trouble You're miserable since you were downsized Lies Lies Lies Shoving boys into the bags that you emptied out your shopping in You're starcrossed and lucky with all the lazy ones What's another name for slacker, it's a bum idiot starfuckers Sign your name in the space above don't call her she'll call you You can audition for her love.
Just remember she's only lucky with the lazy ones Go mess up your hair lose the tie and stand right here you're on.
What Is the Password for Summer Again?
Birthday Gemini stares back at the glasses through bright candle glow stares through the plate a pill went down probably it says it all says, "for now, this night is too late"
with no waterfall no father-and-son type dialogue stupid like a flock of rackety glisteners champagned and smiling like geese some asshole talks about poetry and you know,
she sleeps with him so gross not even cheap just fucking gross, and wasted on the sheets who am i to be the one to tell him who or what when i am just a thought in a flying spitball not even a contender on a flight of nobility barely an example of either gender inside soft like pound cake and sweet tea a world of vessels with me a dam that would never let a single fucking boat come in without firing on it before a warning sound or shot i am a war
— she sits and stares and watches sits and stares and wastes her time like I am not looking red hair like bloody morning cars begin and interrupts the happening and if it was true, ever, anything inside then the weight of love should crush us both like summer bugs but separated forever without the password for summer just outside for my bones ache for you like i was not here yet and a season to forget i am only a word slut
Snow Lady, I Wished You
sweet dreams,
snow lady cinderella shoes and tap tap tap on the walls
my eyeballs fall out I cry during funny parts of ghostbusters
now I am old
it's so funny you would even laugh sociopath
and I guess I don't belong to you than I do the South anymore dodo bird wasted moment crashed car traffic accident real heartbreaker
it was nice to meet you i think
sweet dreams for every day that finishes you in bright light and honestly may you sleep so sound and live eternal in my heart as an amulette made of something stronger than hope
snow lady
Gay As Fuck
write a line cross it out nothing i say is ever good enough anyway my stomach is turning bloody gray full of rust riddled with cliché
and gay as fuck
dirt in my room vacuumed to death until the curtains get sucked until night's only left night is only left for me to piss off riddled with envy and gay as fuck dreaming impossible girls who spit and cuss on car windshields pulling out guns and firing at famous cemetery headstones in gingham dresses and with busted lips the leaves go red orange and brown a tree gets chainsawed tree falls down falls on the fence of the house that I bought for us my life is a comedy i am a hack and this is just nothing and gay as fuck sarcastically with a Southern accent in the back of mind Auden's complete works held up to God as light of course still,
gay as fuck as if to say so what.
Excerpted from "Infinity Blues"
by .
Copyright © 2009 Ryan Adams.
Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Foreword,
CHAPTER 1: BAD IDEAS,
CHAPTER 2: LOWER-CLASS MYTHOLOGY,
CHAPTER 3: INFINITY BLUES,
CHAPTER 4: CHAPTER 11,
CHAPTER 5: TOMORROW HAPPENS,