Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review

Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review

By Matt WatersMusic
Download on the App Store

Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review episodes

  • Would It Be A Love Song?
    Lyrics by Matt Waters and Zara Adam-Waters
    I never think of you
    Except when I hear “greed is good,”
    It takes me back
    To what I misunderstood
    The way you looked every night
    Like you could never fail
    You always hated the ending
    When the villain went to jail
    I couldn’t help stalling in love
    Despite your disarming charm
    I almost sold my dreams
    To be the one on your arm
    Would it be a love song
    If we found a way through
    Would it have been so wrong?
    To have forgiven you
    Would it be a love song
    If there hadn’t been an ending
    If instead of breaking
    We spent the rest of our lives bending
    Oh, oh, oh, time is time
    Oh, oh, oh, one hour goes by
    Oh, oh, oh, not like one of us died
    Oh, oh, oh, they say its part of life
    The way days accumulate
    With only a top and bottom
    My heart ices over
    As each summer gets hotter
    But smoke got in your lies
    And the market collapsed
    You got bitter, quiet
    Your worst habits relapsed
    I couldn’t crawl the line
    I couldn’t be your bohemian doll
    It feels like we once shared a name
    I can no longer recall
    Would it be a love song
    If we found a way through
    Would it have been so wrong?
    To have forgiven you
    Would it be a love song
    If there hadn’t been an ending
    If instead of breaking
    We spent the rest of our lives bending
    4 min
  • I Know Better
    I Know Better
    Ice cold morning
    A hole in my shoe
    I have to make some money
    To afford fast food
    It is raining razor blades
    But I’m in a good mood
    Everyone gets lucky sometimes
    I’m about due
    People bleed in different places
    diamond-shaped cuts in their faces
    Gashes on their elbows and knees
    Turn to ice-sealed scabs at 11 degrees
    I know better
    To be undermined by bad weather
    You shouldn’t be swayed
    By the well-meaning brigade
    Who want reality quarantined
    In their living room
    I don’t like parties
    I do like you
    Blistering summer evening
    The concrete undulates
    I’m strolling the neighborhood
    Off the 3 AM train
    The moon is an empty plate
    My mind and body are plagued
    By the realization of wherever I go
    My malady refracts in new array
    Everyone has the right advice
    I’m unemployed, they’re Jesus Christ
    Preaching a sermon of responsibility to me
    Because I’m on an indefinite vacation after my bachelor’s degree
    I know better
    To be undermined by bad weather
    You shouldn’t be swayed
    By the well-meaning brigade
    Who want reality quarantined
    In their living room
    I don’t like parties
    I do like you
    Coda:
    Well you don’t judge me
    You have this habit of just listening
    The same way cardinals perch
    On branches and absorb another day
    Beginning and ending
    They are programmed to fly, die, eat
    And perhaps barely understand what they are
    It was a long, lonely summer
    The first time I played my guitar
    And it was a dark, cold winter
    Only a little while after that
    I disappeared through a number of indistinct doors
    With an NY upon my hat
    4 min
  • Island of Broken Boys
    Island of Broken Boys
    This piece of plastic
    Is fantastic
    Accompanies me
    Through the sullen snow
    Our future recedes
    It was once orgiastic
    Now I practice
    Forgetting what I know
    The chief of police
    Held a press conference
    I watched it through the
    Window of a bar
    Where a faceless man
    Stirred a gin and tonic
    Watched a commercial
    With a pretty, singing star
    Jammed a cold hand
    in my overcoat
    And I continued
    onward
    The masses seem disillusioned
    With hope
    Now they’re starting
    To talk a bit tougher
    Chorus:
    And if you could fix
    This brokenness
    There’d be no reason to love you
    So my salvation
    Is a fabrication
    I refuse to invest in
    And if I could soothe
    Your Jazz Age blues
    You’d have no reason to need me
    So your depression
    Is actually an obsession
    With the theory of original sin
    …………………..
    My screen feeds
    Endless imagery
    A repository for the
    Past
    It provides no epiphany
    But keeps me company
    Like a looping late-night
    News broadcast
    I’m notified
    To my surprise
    That my phone thinks
    I’m lost
    It recommends
    A taxi ride
    And calculates
    The cost
    Wondered near the
    Seaport sea
    And my boots
    Crunch upon the frost
    Your text message
    Reminds me
    Solidarity
    Is love unlost
    Chorus
    On an island
    Of broken toys
    Where the brutalism is
    Authentic
    You showed mercy
    To one lucky boy
    So the sewer mulch
    May be romantic
    In the time of
    The broken mirror
    Where the meaning
    Of morality is questioned
    In each other’s mind
    We find a glimmer
    Of the love that
    Must be protected
    Modern idealogues
    In a screen
    Who won’t feel the violence
    They advocate
    I take these walks
    Away from me
    Before returning home to you
    To create
    7 min
  • These Psychic Fields
    These Psychic Fields
    From the hotel window
    The city is a kaleidoscope
    Of blurred light
    In the bedroom mirror
    You voice your positive affirmation
    Once, and then twice
    The nightstand offers
    A torn pack of baseball cards
    And an empty bottle of Sapporo
    You watch another Twilight Zone
    Incredulous at the idea
    There’s two hours until tomorrow
    These psychic fields
    That connect you & me
    It has to be real
    Our gap in notoriety
    You feel like you are no one
    Not even worth the
    Strings I strum
    In the lounge there is a locker
    Left abandoned
    Tagged with graffiti
    Everyday you see a skull exploding
    While dining on your
    And memory
    There was a moment of momentum
    And then all the good luck
    Abruptly stopped
    They considered you for the picture
    Which was tinted and angled
    And you were unfortunately cropped
    Chorus
    You think about my life
    How you’d love to live in music
    And sleep on a tour bus
    You have one of mine
    Stuck in your head
    Specifically the chorus
    You daydream of wearing
    A leather jacket loaded
    With money and swagger
    When ponder living
    Someone else’s life
    The details never seem to matter
    Chorus
    Two men staring at the same city
    Only, from different
    Windows
    I am burden by the excess
    Of hope I carry
    While you nurse your thimble
    We both got drunk
    Couldn’t dream, even with
    A warm body in our bed
    Neither of us could touch
    The sudden snowfall upon
    All the living and the dead
    Chorus
    So, both of us wandered
    Out of our hotels
    Which were directly across the street
    It turns out Madison Avenue
    Is a perfect place for
    Strangers to meet
    We made eye contact, commented
    Mutually on the flurries, you joked about
    The shabby slippers on my feet
    Though you probably regretted never mentioning the album
    You once made
    Your humor before fate,
    Allowed me later to stop resisting sleep
    And fade
    Chorus
    Coda:
    What’s the worth of two men?
    One having more than the other
    Could we have been friends?
    Discussed both having a mother
    We separate ourselves, defined through
    Cause, career, and achievement
    We stare up at shadowy walls
    In the evening
    Having never really believed
    In any of it
    1. Chorus
    12 min
  • Paradox World
    Paradox World
    Sometimes at night
    I fall into soft shadows
    Because the way of the stray
    Is to shelter from harm
    Then the bread-truck is unloading
    While the birds are calling
    From perches above the boulevard
    It’s like an algorithm remembering your favorite song
    I’m ambivalent about sunlight
    Like when these gridlocked cars
    On narrow blocks sweat like battalions
    Led by someone terribly wrong
    And we’re in a paradox world
    Someone love me into submission
    A paradox world
    Someone guide my hand in composing
    This transmission
    A paradox world
    There’s always tomorrow until tomorrow
    Paradox World
    Time takes life, it doesn’t borrow
    Now the flakes fall at twilight
    With the streetlights turned on
    It looks like static in my vision
    Camouflages the crosswalk
    No one asks if I’m lonely
    They only stare like I don’t belong
    They might find I have old music inside
    If they ever wanted to talk
    Is it the scythe or the hood?
    Which they find so off-putting
    Sometimes they run, others just turn white
    As their outlines in chalk
    It’s a paradox world
    I have centuries of notes
    It’s a paradox world
    Full of promises and high hopes
    4 min
  • Twilight of the Gods
    Twilight of the Gods
    It wasn’t about hope
    They just couldn’t take a joke
    But they let you run your mouth
    Because it gave them more rope
    You said they’d remember your name
    For all the honor in literary fame
    But you wound up crying outside your mother’s
    In the rain
    Twenty-five years to retire
    An indefinite date to expire
    Almost got fired over a pothole
    Dad never taught you how to change a tire
    Twilight of the gods
    Overcome by the odds
    Blasting out the bad thoughts
    With the music in our cars
    Twilight of the gods
    Fate shuffled all our cards
    Is the mud deep enough
    To plant a basketball hoop in the yard?
    And what of your friend’s silver dreams?
    All the pool parties, beers, rehearsed scenes
    You’ve got to be slapped by real life
    To comprehend what fantasy means
    You always had a soft spot for Angela
    Even when she yelled at ya
    The flower in her hair
    Was a yellow chrysanthemum
    And her soulmate Blaine’s persistent tinnitus
    Combined with his chronic right shoulder bursitis
    Compromised the showcase after those
    Fringe suits had hyped it
    Twilight of the gods
    Overcome by the odds
    Blasting out the bad thoughts
    With the music in our cars
    Twilight of the gods
    Fate shuffled all our cards
    Is the mud deep enough
    To plant a basketball hoop in the yard?
    To whom do you owe the pleasure?
    Of carrying on
    You don’t even need
    To fill out a form
    You just keep waking up
    Even when you’ve had enough
    To take your swing, shoot your shot
    5 min
  • At The National Show
    At The National Show
    A cloudless summer day
    Got off the wrong stop on the train
    Before the low-hanging night
    Was engulfed by rain
    I was walking through the park
    And the show decided to start
    Heard the man singing about soul
    And I moved nearer to take part
    Had ventured out solo
    Instead of staying home
    A few of my recent dates
    Were like talking to a stone
    I swear I felt you there
    And in my memory I see your hair
    Hanging off the back of a black raincoat
    You always say you’d never wear
    Isn’t it funny?
    How we almost met before we met
    That was a world ago
    At The National show
    I was so goddamn tired of being alone
    Aimless empire nights
    Patrolling shadows beneath the lights
    Staring into some tinted window
    Set at an unreachable height
    I emailed gibberish to my professors
    Because I was nobody’s successor
    I just couldn’t bridge that distance between
    Anonymous and successful
    It was like I could disappear
    Without having any there to get back here
    There was only rock and roll baseball
    To treat my lancing fear
    Chorus
    Strolling with soggy shoes
    Following the mid-set monsoon
    I was thinking about The Land of Oz
    And destined for my quiet bedroom
    It was only four more months
    Until I’d feel your touch
    Previously my love life had been like
    An album release where nobody comes
    It was first the sound of your voice
    Inviting me into a choice
    The tone was like smoky cinnamon
    Incinerating every other noise
    I’d torn up a lottery ticket
    Over someone’s rude opinion
    I’d rather the dignity of a nobody
    Instead of being a paid minion
    Chorus
    5 min

About Show Do Tell: A Reading Series & Art Review

From the publisher's feed

Matt Waters is a singer-songwriter from New York City. His songs range from character studies of the contemporary American to intimate explorations of love. A writer of fiction, he attempts to meld…