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Cycles to Gehenna Lyrics

Baseheads locally approach all spark plugs,
Total disregard for a dying man's shark jump,
Post-meridiem pretty tungsten attracts any once-pale horse painted gunmetal black,
Face masking, hard-shelled ebony propeller hat,
Clubmans, gloved rakes grappling the clutch span,
Tuck go the steel toe, metal gate spreading,
For the dead-alive that rented parking space 37,
2000 out the weekly under "cycles to Gehenna" gets him floating over 20 buses,
Fireproof and festive,
Corners like a two-tired tiger so a too-tired rider can accumulate a few excited fibers to assign,
Knows no zen in the art of maintenance,
Only as the orchestrated patron saint of changing lanes baby,
Here is how a great escape goes when you can't take your dead friends names out your phone

Eyes and teeth, new moon on a scale that defies belief,
Outside what our fundamental sciences teach, every other mighty lion asleep,
Gangway - mine eyes, mine teeth

The man-ape translates glam through the visor,
Goes in water lilies,
Am-scrays Giger, and man-ray,
Crammed in a one-player campaign,
Blinker like a hallowed bonfire over Samhain,
Span where the praying hands mandate,
Bars an extension of the arms,
They're mutating instead of being farmed,
Tonight beneath a marmalade Venus,
Haunted mowers chewing every glowing yard of mud between us,
Going ford, jag, Datsun, Corvette, Lotus,
All cones you can slalom when your focused,
Via mechanical Dartmoor frankensteined poorly,
And sanctioned by a New Yank Yorkee,
Who knew that any moment he could lose it to the decoupaged suicide flooring,
And still he keep his fuel tank portly, the 30 odd year old gears thank Charlie,
The scarf thank mom's new hobby, kssssht! Copy

Eyes and teeth, new moon on a scale that defies belief,
Outside what our fundamental sciences teach, every other mighty lion asleep,
Gangway - mine eyes, mine teeth

It was less an act of hubris,
More a lonely hearts club at the helm of a magic bullet,
Away on a relentless bid for rarefied inertia,
Rattletrap forks married to the patchy terra firma Ursa Minor getting warmer,
I crowbar into the pecking order,
The dreck between the whores and Betty Ford-ers,
Hug a double yellow spine,
Knobby rubber like a rat on a rope,
Those little fuckers run on passion alone,
This is the product of a D.I.Y. inadequate home,
Grabbing a cabin in the-fuck-outta-dodge,
Actin' a savage in the shadows of Rome,
Amassed against insufferable odds,
Fashioning gallows out of plastic and bone,
I got the motordrome walls of death splintering under me,
All-city galvanized bikes white knuckling,
Bright light, tunnel kings tuck in the devil,
Ps - i wrote this on a self-destructing memo...
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4 Meanings

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Cover art for Cycles to Gehenna lyrics by Aesop Rock

With rhymes that flow off the tongue like: "Tuck go the steel toe, metal gate spreading, For the dead-alive that rented parking space 37"

Or

"Going Ford, Jag, Datsun, Corvette, Lotus, All cones you can slalom when your (Zorlac)? focused"

And that whole last verse is amazing, specifically

"Hug a double yellow spine, Knobby rubber like a rat on a rope Those little fuckers run on passion alone This is the product of a D.I.Y. inadequate home, Grabbing a cabin in the-fuck-outta-dodge, Actin a savage in the shadows of Rome, Amassed against insufferable odds Fashioning gallows out of plastic and bone."

The imagery involved in that part of the rhyme is flawless. Really brain melting stuff.

<3 Aes

Cover art for Cycles to Gehenna lyrics by Aesop Rock

I think he's talking about someone out for a ride on their motorcycle who get killed in an accident, there's probably more to it than that but when looking at the lyrics with that perspective in mind they suddenly started to make a lot more sense

My Interpretation
Cover art for Cycles to Gehenna lyrics by Aesop Rock

I feel like this song is Aesop's Reaction to the book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

"Knows no zen in the art of maintenance"

This lyric seems to relate to how the narrator of the book cant find balance between the logical "classical" and romantic ways of looking at life.

and

"Ps - i wrote this on a self-destructing memo..."

Seems to relate to how a balance of these two ways of looking at life is the best but is humanly impossible.

Cover art for Cycles to Gehenna lyrics by Aesop Rock

"Total disregard for a dying man's shark jump" "Face masking, hard-shelled ebony propeller hat" "Fireproof and festive" Lines like this are talking about this kind of stuff: http://s3-external-1.amazonaws.com/wootdesigncontestentries/shan24/1971_-_World_Record_Motorcycle_Jump-b89sai-d.jpg

The song is about either a death or crash in a motordrome motorcycle/car derby thing, or just about a person who competes in it because he is a nihilist from his environment ("This is the product of a D.I.Y. inadequate home") so he doesn't care about the danger.

"Ps - i wrote this on a self-destructing memo..." I think this is saying he will die too. Same stuff happens or is gonna happen to him.