Mirrors (Live)

I'm surrounded by mirrors, by pieces of me,
inflected reflections, introspections, and dreams.
I'm refracted, redacted, attacked, and enacted
by fractured foe(x) actors, by factions of me.
In this box of mirrors, in this echo chamber,
I'm endangered by strangers I'm in danger of strangling.
This army to harm me disarms me, alarms me —
from afar these who are me try to bar me from changing.

I stare through the mirror, straight into your eyes
or those of some illusion that I cannot divine.
I put out my right hand, and you put out your left.
We're two symmetric opposites by one thin mirror cleft.

Yet I idolize and lionize these patronizing pantomimes.
I recognize and realize they're the many minds I hide inside.
It's homicide to smash these mimes, genocide of countless I's,
self-sacrifice of a single life, suicide of single mind.
I don't fake it for you, I give you all I am,
the naked truth, and I'm just a man.
This microphone is my stethoscope,
that thumping drum my pounding pulse,
my insides set to rhyme and time, my mind's eye personified.
I gotta rap to unpack this hapless, trackless, tactless track list
running through my mind.

Stare through the mirror, straight into my eyes
or those of some illusion that you cannot divine.
You put out your right hand, and I put out my left.
We're two symmetric opposites by one thin mirror cleft.

I'm a pedantic romantic with frantic semantics,
acrobatic syntactics and impractical actions.
I'm an ambitious Narcissus with capricious suspicions.
My tongue-twisted linguistics are cryptic psychophysics.
This astigmatism of my inner vision
imprisons in prisms my egoism inhibitions
in the shrewdest hubris prosecution,
a cubist, nudist prostitution.
On this shattered glass, I'll paint my pain,
the way Picasso's pictures are broken window panes.
Music is human; it communicates
this helpless self nothing else can convey.

I stare through the mirror, straight into your eyes
or those of some illusion, or maybe they're mine.
I put out my right hand and you put out your left.
We're two symmetric opposites by one thin mirror cleft.

Art makes innocence youthful.
Art makes dissonance musical.
Art makes sadness beautiful.
Art makes madness useful.

I'm surrounded by mirrors, by pieces of me,
inflected reflections, introspections, and dreams.
I'm refracted, redacted, attacked, and enacted
by fractured foe(x) actors, by factions of me.