lotte kestner b-sides album

stranger

i can watch you now
like someone who has not touched you,
i can wonder at what color
to call your eyes,
now that the taste of your mouth
has slipped from my remembering
or has melted and changed on its own.
and you could laugh at me
because i spend such moments
imagining what it's like to be part of you
or what we would whisper about.
or would you squint gently
at the curiosity of my new eyes
- to which the shape of your neck
is a new line to trace -
and with the scar of your expression
nudge the past gently across the table
toward me,
some truth that allows your beauty
to scald like the beauty of a stranger
even as it is true
that i have worn your clothes,
and i have seen your shoulders bare.

a.w.

stumble

the room is speaking your name to me,
so i may not lie, pretending that
i think of your face when it is before me, only,
and i cannot recreate your voice in my mind.
the room will tell me things
that you will never tell me,
for i am no striking light for you
that fills your eyes and leaves a stain
that you can sense wherever you move,
like how i sense you.
i do not mind being foolish
and so vulnerable - i cannot
imagine your love, but then cannot
imagine not seeking it,
the smooth color of your lips
are a summons.

i make sure that you know where i am...
i will leave fragments of my wishes
about your room, and inside your pockets,
that one day you may mistakenly
stumble upon my love for you,
that one day you may mistakenly
stumble upon your love for me.

a.w.

thousands

you will never be as beautiful
to anyone as you are to me now -
and i tell myself that for that
you should love me,
for in my eyes is half of where you live.

i know how my heart can paint
new colors in a pair of eyes and
new flavors upon your lip and
find your body - just as it always has been -
so gold and smooth and a perfect fit for mine.
i ache too hard and love too hard
but there is nothing so becoming to you
as the way i see you.
and all i can ask is that,
if you will not kiss me,
then please do not smile, for it makes your eyes
too bright, and do not move your face too close,
for it makes my chest tight and weak,
and do not laugh when i explain your beauty
in thousands of words
as if i were a poet pretending.

a.w.

are you alone

are you still alone?
my heart will turn pale whatever you say,
i who lug the burden of love to bed with me.
do you wake from your sweet dreams
with your lips heavy with kisses
and no one to lay them upon,
do you sometimes feel beautiful
and have no one to tell you
you are right,
that your skin is soft and your eyes
are the color the world ought to be.
and when your dreams are colder
and you wake with a soft moan,
is there no one to rearrange the sheets
and rest their mouth upon your forehead
and whisper your name.
this punishment - that i lie with the darkness,
that i lie with it as though it were you,
wondering if you know that you need not be alone
and that i have thought of you
as the fragments of night scrape
slowly past.
are you still alone?
i know from my love how easy it is to love you
why wouldn't others find you as beautiful
and gently remove from your night
the memory of loneliness, with their fingertips.
...only if they love you like i do,
that their lips upon your mouth
seek your breath to live off of,
that when they are woken from dreams
by an unfamiliar noise, a creak, a clock
they savor that moment like no other,
to memorize your sleeping face,
that when they leave you they begin to ache.
oh i would sooner see you in those
stranger's arms
than for your body to go untouched
and your breath cold

but i cannot doubt, it will never be
that they will love like me.

a.w.

Sadistik - two Identity Theory interviews

Seattle's best rapper, interviewed while watching American Psycho.


This is the film interview

This is the music interview