new songs for old ears

7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears

1/70

Another Day (Blue Sky)

Dissolve

Misheard

Trapped By Desire

Futility Angels

Wake Up PillsMaypole

Malleus

Hidden Heroes

Kingdom of the Fallen God

Leviathan

In Light

Misheard Passages

Blood Eye

Simple-Kind

Caryatid Columns

Mind-RaperBlue

Parchment

Rest

Sing A Song Of Sixpence

The Wind Blew Cold

November

The Dream Between The Stars

As Far From Heaven

Sacrifice

Exposing Vanity

Sad Eyed Lady

Mnemo-Lung

Under Side

Revenants Stir

Jewels Glisten

The Boxer

In The Dawn Time

Collisions

Is This Eden?

Lest We Remember

Death CounterReturn To Sender

The Night The Lights Came On

Comic

Sniper Rifle

No Sale

Uisge

Dream Thieves

My Pub

The Writing On The Wall

Thermopylae

Dinner With GhostsSome Tell Me


2/70

Instinct After All

Who Would A Laureate Be?

Factory Memories

Just Another Ordinary Day

Tyrant

MachineTenretny

Where Dreams Go

Blues From A Son

Downed

TV Burns

Lovely Misery

Blood On My Fingers

We Go Together

Art School Riot

Cat

Middle Class Chains


3/70

Another Day (Blue Sky)

Vapour trails write across the blue sky;

Two jets up there, somewhere, invisible to the eye.

You crane your neck to see the white lines.

Birds sing in the hubbub of desire, and territorial claims.You scent the life-green grass, still damp from the recent rains;

Somewhere, behind some house, you hear the children play.

A thump, a bump and joy turns to a kiss-and-make-better cry;

It is another day.


4/70

Dissolve

Around my neck the halter. Kill me, kill me.

No slave, no slave. Death is the freedom grave.

Only a game. Life. Poison me. Ill me.

Keep clicking the cursor but you cant save.Dont say goodbye. Suspicion, not suspense.

The knife jumps from the sink straight to my wrists.

Vision dissolves into red mist. No sense.

Flay my soul away. See the knife has kissed.

And I am writing new runes in life blood.

Life is fractured into a tesseract.

The route of non-resistance leads to mud;

Only the loneliest days let me act.


5/70

Misheard

Shaken and stirred by the lies I have heard

By the lingering guilt thats borne on a word

I dont want to believe

What I cannot conceiveBut the truth is I know that I havent misheard.


6/70

Trapped By Desire

Waiting like a reptile,

Kicking like a horse,

The trap is sprung ker-plunk!

And it is you, of course,Whos trapped by the plastic bars:

A silicon prison

Where all the warders obfusc

Call it a benison

And you will pay to play

Giving it all away.

The cell walls are neon flesh

Pop up like a toaster

Credit card guilty statements

The invisible hosterAlibis, little grey lies

Consume remnant wisdom

And your goggle-eyes

Are drawn to the pixel playground.


7/70

Futility Angels

The futility angels, still dancing

Although the etui is long gone

Yearn for the return of the prodigal god

An empty throne awaiting him.

Feathers falling; wings plucked bare in despair

Do they know theyre fictions?

Existing only in misproved tomes;

And in adult childrens prayers.


8/70

Wake Up Pills

Take your Smarties, my little boy

Although someones smashed all your toys

You must be well, and never ill

Ive sugared all these bitter pillsTheres one for you, and one for thee

And one to kill your fantasies;

Theres marzipan, and other rhymes

Make you happy all of the time

Whatever you decide to do

Dont you ever swallow the blue

Or else you will wake up.


9/70

Maypole

Round and round the maypole

Full ragged did we run.

Round and round, round again,

Beneath the Mayday sun.We ran until we dropped

Down to the hard, hard ground,

And then, the music stopped,

There hardly was a sound.

We picked our bodies up

And then we danced again

Of fever did we sup,

We drained the draughts of men.

And then, the day was done,

We danced ourselves away,

But come next Maydays sunWell dance the dance of May.


10/70

Malleus

Between hammer and anvil

Forged and beaten

Then drowned in the butte

Enveloped by steamAnnealed

Out of fools gold, steel.


11/70

Hidden Heroes

Where are all the good men hid?

In the cake tin, beneath the lid.

Pop the lid, and let them out;

And watch these heroes scream and shoutThen, when youve let them play

Pack them back for another day.


12/70

Kingdom Of The Fallen God.

The kingdom of the fallen god

The passages of the forgotten son

The sunset over the broken idols

The sky is blood, the sky is blood.

Rain over the mountains, lachrymose wind

Unkind rumours of the whispering talk

The seasons of a thousand fears

The survivors of the golden years.

New gilt on the graven faces

Monarchs of these new races

Kings of ignorance and failure

Staring into the dying western embers.

Legacies of dead heroes weigh heavy

Burdened by myth the shoulders break

Poisoned by belief, never knowing

What has not been, nor will ever be.


13/70

Leviathan

So wakes Leviathan, the Deep;

A thousand new-drowned souls to keep,

Forever in the blue they sleep,

No more to cry; no more, I weep.So shakes the Earth, this blue-green clod;

Is this not proof there is no God?

No divine lies to ease the lost,

No words enough to pay the cost.

And all our eyes turn to the east,

To seek some truth in those deceased;

But all I see is only death,

For in the end thats all thats left.


14/70

In Light

In light

He falls

The morning son

The Morninglord

Into the dark

Into the void

His wings aflame

His soul afire

He fell

Consumed by doubt

Destroyed by faith

Embittered by love that was answered not.


15/70

Misheard Passages

He plays the celestine; dark travels in the misheard passages;

Varied variance of the dead soul song

Twin souls separated by desire and a hundred years,

Reunited by a score to a never-made film.Blank expressions from the zombie audience

Ticking boxes on their participant scripts.

The curtain falls like thunder but nobody cares;

The cinema has no verity anymore.


16/70

Blood Eye

In the red sky theres the blood eye

Gaze burning down

The setting sun, day almost done,

The sun gods frown.The rage of days, the final rays,

The dying light;

Into the dusk, Apollos husk,

Encroaching night.

The red will fade; the glow degrade

Darkness descends;

The eye has gone; and all is done;

Everything ends.


17/70

Simple-Kind

Simple-kind;

Unbowed archings peerless and fearless unwind;

The brevity-kiss of instant time

And your fifteen seconds of fame;Another player in the game

Another loser entombed in the same.

The words uncurl into syllables

And meaningless un-nouns mere sounds

That chitter and chatter away beyond the banks of hearing.

Deconstruction of the self

Ego super ego id insanity bequests nirvana

Melt away like summer ice

Begone, gone, gone


18/70

Caryatid Columns

The silent caryatid columns

Stand sentry in the roofless hall

Their faces gaze to the centre

While you stare at the cold stone wallThe marble blindness of their eyes

Still seems to pick your soul apart

And you are saying all your lies

Well rehearsed within your heart

But they dont hear, their ears are stone

And they dont care for all your words

Youre but a man of flesh and bone

While theyre but toilets for the birds.


19/70

Mind-Raper

The mind-raper in the cassock

Is kneeling on his hassock

Telling little god lies

And dreaming of boys.Enlisting toys for his schools

More lies to spread

To the brain dead

And other fools.


20/70

Blue

Blue,

Like the colour

(You like the colour)

Is how you feel(You like how it feels)

The solace of depression

Weighing your shoulders down.

Blue,

Like the unseen sky

(Dont look up)

Clouds curtain it

No wind to push them away

Even the sky frowns.


21/70

Parchment

Virgin parchment tattooed

By the inestimably rude

Predications and dedications

Of the stateless nations,Of the eternally abused

The mongrels and the songstrels,

The outside and the defiant

Eclipsing other sons

Their ministrations,

Recorded in brief notations,

Blogs unread by the living dead

Who get their news and views

From all the Page Twos.

And the ink is not yet dry

Before their exhortations dieOn the lips of the crips

With the betting slips

Who chance their souls with the lotto

Get blotto but cant decide

When faced with a voting slip.


22/70

Rest

And now, when all is said, when all is done,

Weve put away our toys, and had our fun,

And laid us down to sleep upon our beds,

To rest tired souls, and even tireder heads;To sleep forever; never more to wake;

No dawns to see rise red; no fasts to break;

Well rest until all thats left is barest bone,

And rest some more, as bone is turned to stone.


23/70

Sing A Song Of Sixpence

Sing a song of sixpence

A pocket full of lies

All the broken rivers

Have burst inside your eyes

Make a wish for sixpence

A coin falls down the well

Buy off the Goddess Fate

Whos made each day a hell.

A silver glint in darkness

A song which no one hears

You sang a song of sixpence

It only reached your ears.


24/70

The Wind Blew Cold

The wind blew cold, across the fold, across the heath and moor;

A winter chill began to thrill my ageing bones;

It numbed my skin, a medicine to salve this bitter whore

Whose soul Ive sold a thousand-fold; just weeds and stonesWere round me now; a broken how, a monument to death.

A shiver ran as I began to think of things

Like tombs of kings and golden rings, now lost. And soon my breath

Began to frost; I sat on mossed old rocks, the wings

Of one old crow above me, though I cared not for his flight;

I laid me down upon hills crown and waited for the night.


25/70

November

Where have they gone?

All those days

My spring time

Slipping from memoryLike hourglass sands

Grabbing at grains

As they fall through my hands

But all that I have left

Is the coming rime

The grey days of November.


26/70

The Dream Between The Stars

Asleep, the great dark gulf around your ship,

You dream of lives and words to some day see;

A thousand years, you dream upon your trip;

The silent waves of time, eternity,A thousand souls all dream upon this ark;

A thousand other dreams of cats; of seas;

Of children yet to be; a house; a park;

And all the other things which dreamers please.

The stars so far away, mere points of light,

Gaze down upon this hope for mankinds fate

This lonely voyager through this longest night

Towards a hoped for, dreamed for, landing date,

No sleeper knowing the dream is over,

And that the system has long gone nova.


27/70

As Far From Heaven

As far from heaven, as heaven is wide,

Is where I delved, into the fell demesne;

Down into the depths of the lightless days

Where the madmans bones hunger for new fleshAnd where the sightless mendicant predicts

An ending to all of ones grief and pains;

But no one listens; for no one believes;

Doubt bred in the cauldrons of deep despair,

And only the liars are remembered.

Down where the dead men go to sleep a while

Before clawing back up towards the light.


28/70

Sacrifice

An old church

Older grounds

Christian hymns

Pagan soundsPray to God

And others

Praise the Lord

Earth Mothers

False faith fades

Blood on blades

Sacrifice

Sacrifice.


29/70

Exposing Vanity

Beautys but a sheen on flesh

it doesnt mean a thing

Time scrapes the patina away

Exposing truth.

Chemical creams trowelled on

They dont do a thing

Except spread wealth away

Exposing vanity.


30/70

Sad Eyed Lady

Sad eyed lady of the Dylan

Forever spinning old thirty-threes

Stuck in a groove

Waiting for the truthBut shed get down her knees

And pretend five more years of youth

To be a sad eyed lady of the Dylan

And hear that gravel voice

Whisper in her ear

Those words that have never been sung before

All the records from first to last

On the shelf in her fresh boudoir

Chords change, a voice ages

Never to be regained, no madeleineBut this chatelaine still dreams of futures past

The ghost of fain desire

Still haunts the scene

Rainy days but shes the only woman

Dreaming of an Egyptian ring

Wishing not that she was happy

But a sad eyed lady of the Dylan.


31/70

Mnemo-Lung

Across the fields inside my mind

Id walk, and chat with Jung;

The buttercups would bear me up

If I was feeling old.Id close my eyes, and then Id find

That nothing could go wrong

My Eden is a holy cup

A draught against the cold.

All mankinds there, if but I choose

The living and the dead

And I can talk to any one

A chit chat with Karl Marx

Theyre my puppets, they cant refuse

These ghosts inside my head.

What great debates, what pointless fun!Within these dreamt up parks.

If solitude is what I want

And peace my one desire

Then I will roam on verdant sward

Or swim in deep cool pools.

For all my hurts a new dtente,

Battles done no more fire

Ive killed all foes with mental sword

And rid me of my fools.


32/70

Under Side

The other side of the under side of the lets pretend

The coin flip toss thats always lost in the acid, bitter end

And you cant stand or understand even less comprehend

Why she has left, left you bereft, why it had to endSunshine breaks through the Venetian blinds

A most unkind awakening

And he staggered with the dagger from the sticking place

The whiteness of his ghost features host to poison in his face

His wife of greedy fire and base desire is lost to space

Beyond the eyes, buried by lies, beyond all words of grace

Sunshine breaks through the Venetian blinds

As he stairs at the new flowerbed.


33/70

Revenants Stir

The rumpy-pumpled sheets

Still betray the night before exploits;

The exhausted corpses

Unwoken by sunlightVampired by lust.

Slowly the revenants stir

To stumble over forgotten names

And take new oaths against wine

Detaching vestments from light fittings

And red blushes from faces.


34/70

Jewels Glisten

Jewels glisten in the light, as night

Descends beyond the horizon of our desires

And those embered fires glow weak, grow strong

As it all goes wrongFor those who seek to be among the throng

Amber light from the torches on the walls

Cascades like poison to the floor

And I hear the mordant calls

Of those who I thought long dead and buried in my head

A skeleton in my closet and under my bed

And the only colour I can see is torch-red

Laughing like a whore I fall apart

Nothing but a white coat baiting tart

Nothing but Jean Paul Sartre

And Derrida haunts the dance floor in the disco herePronouncing a Ghost Dance fear

I steer away from this madness

Another day I will hear what he has said

But the voices in my head

Cry out for retribution

No solution to this conundrum

Only one more mystery of allusion.


35/70

The Boxer

This is the hapless boxers lot;

A nose which bursts in blood and snot,

A broken jaw, two swollen ears,

And eyes that burn with bloody tears;A cut above, a forehead scar,

A jagged tooth, for that Jack Tar.

Those are the prizes; the final purse

A victory tour by long black hearse.


36/70

In The Dawn Time

In the dawn time, between the fire and the sky;

In the deep earth, buried by the soft clay;

Began there life; began there all we say.

Between the rocks; between the water lie.Dream a dream of life dreaming of living;

Dream an oh so little dream of me

Of walkabout on the plains by the sea

Of growing into the past, forever giving.


37/70

Collisions

Collisions in a torus

At near the speed of light;

One particle into another

Birthing moreIn search of God

Or Misters Higgs and Bose.


38/70

Is This Eden?

Is this Eden, these broken trees?

This green turned grey, these poisoned seas?

This air made foul, this loam we soil?

These mounds of ash, a gift of toil.

Is this Eden, this world I see?

Where man has had his victory

And cast aside the green of life

And taken murder for his wife?

Was that Eden, that fading place?

No more the home of this doomed race

For we have killed our only earth

And have for food but bitter dearth.


39/70

Lest We Remember

Lest we remember that other November

We wear red poppies to help us forget

So we can pretend to be human and humane

While still sending off young men to die

In wars that we know we can never win.


We fall silent for two minutes of peace

Instead of shouting out our rightful rage

At the injustice of bombing the hapless

We dont talk about blown apart foreigners.


A red sea of paper flowers bloom on teevee screens

In each lapel a bloodspot to assuage our guilt

As newsreaders intone with false solemnityOn the casualties of our past leaders hubris.


And the innocent sacrificed for pointless war

We announce that we must never forget

Without understanding what we should recall

The decisions repeated in every war since.

Memory without understanding is nothing

The dead reduced to names in a book

And I will not be a red poppy slave

For I know what happened a century hence How could I not, when its still going on?


40/70

Death Counter

The craven peerage of black feathers crowned

The carrion lord becalmed by morsels red

A-pecking at the eyes of the dead

He is psychopomp and necro-hound

Ill omen of the nearly heroes

Forgotten and blind. charnel toys

Nothing more than yesterdays boys

Now all they are is noughts and zeroes.

Nobody counts the dead these living days.


41/70

Return To Sender

Lover letters returned to sender;

Posted through a letterbox rattled by the wind

He thought it was her knock; nobody there

Looking out, up and down the streetAs a nomad crisp packet tumbleweeds

And a police car lurks outside a home

You know the kind, the armoured door and panes

And you are still waiting for love

For that swack moment to occur

But all your letters are returned.


42/70

The Night The Lights Came On

The twentieth, November, Forty-Four

In this proud nation, still fighting the war;

In Piccadilly, and in Leicester Square

Through all of Londons many thoroughfaresA switch is thrown, and lights come on

No more do people fear the German bombs

No more doodlebugs, and no more blackouts,

No more defeats, and no more fears and doubts,

This is the night the night the lights come on;

For hopes one light thats ever, always, shone

Forget old troubles, ones we have forsworn;

This days the day that my mother was born.


43/70

Comic

I hear the echoes

Of stale laughter captured in

The repeated show.

Empty seats still reeking of

Old tobacco smoke.

A smile is forced upon us

After all, weve paid.

Soon the posters will be torn down

And new names plastered up.

On and on the old man goes.

I dont get his jokes.


44/70

Sniper Rifle

I wish I had a sniper rifle

I wish I had a gun

I know its but a little trifle

This dream Ive just begun.

Id sit up high

And watch them die

Crosshairs on a skull

Id blow them all away

Each time Id hit the bull.


45/70

No Sale

The uxorious salesman shit-grins his way

Into your house;

Trying to double-glaze his words with svelte untruths

On the necessity of purchasing his wares.

You stare.

He continues with his patois,

The unending verbal diarrhoea

Clatter of adjectives and lies

But never once does he look into your eyes.

You sigh.

And for all your negatory responses

You have no mercantile impulses He ignores the fact that you wont part

With your hard-earned cash for his flashy trash.

No sale.


46/70

Uisge

That deathly elixir which runs of life

From optic to glass

From throat to soul

From kidneys to porcelain

Both enervates and elevates.

The fallen apotheosis of the sometime seer

With the prosaic resolutions to myriad Gordian knots

The back-of-the-throat fire

That burns away those fractured banes

That haunt our daily rues.

Come cup, come glass

Never empty of that peated nectar

That smoky taste I would forever drown.


47/70

Dream Thieves

The dream thieves

In their capes with no sleeves

Their masks with no faces

Footfalls no traces

Invade like disease.

They walk in your mind

And steal what they find

Leaving only the grey

Erasing the fey

Stilling the breeze.

With scalpels they slice

Excising the nice

And staining with scars

The landscape of starsWith uttermost ease.

They chain you to earth

With shackles of birth

And weigh down your soul

That once flew the hole

To flutter like bees.

And then when you wake

Their thirsts have been slaked

But you have no dreams

To inspire your schemesYoure drained to the lees.


48/70

My Pub

A thousand beer plaques on the walls

Oh, how Ive longed to see these halls,

To be within this church to ale

And taste all kinds, from dark to pale,

To sup a porter, then a stout,

To try each type the bar girls tout;

And when I die Ill come back here,

And haunt this heaven full of beer.


49/70

The Writing on the Wall

Scrubbing away at the unfortunate truths

Of the condemned rebellion of doubly damned youths

The contracted cleaner of a contracting state

Erases graffiti, the language of hate

Demotic curses against the elites

Spray cans not pens; walls not sheets

Prosecutions will follow for anyone caught

Send them to prison, of mercy theres naught

Them and us and rich and poor, two widening paths

You know itll get worse just do the maths

A nation of sheep plays follow-the-wolves

To death in the fold, and all it involves

But what of those lies on green benches each day?

The evil enacted that wont go away

No cleaners for that, a partisan press

Pretence of reportage, while mired in the messAnd those liars lead on, in their ivory halls

Condemned forever, by writing on walls.


50/70

Thermopylae

Hot springs at the gates of Hades;

Seven thousand stand against the horde

King Leonidas and the Spartans

Will not give way until they fall.

Gorgo, in Sparta, awaits his return,

His wife will see him on his shield.

A king of the House Agiad

Would never yield.

Xerxes and his million men

Offer life without honour

Defeat without fighting

They offer nothing at all.

Battle is joined

Spartan and Thespian fight side by side

The sky darkens with

The shafts of a million arrows

The Greeks fight in the shade.

For two days the Persians fail

For two days the Spartans hold strong

An army of Persian corpses

Turn the springs red.

Only betrayal defeats the Spartans

Only betrayal slays Leonidas

To the last man they fight

As they have fought for two days now

And two days will be long enough.


51/70

Dinner With Ghosts

Sitting down with ghosts

Empty places at the table

Absent guests, forgotten hosts

And those who unable

Or unwilling to attend.

Candles flicker in the cold

Hollow echoes of better days

Boards creak, wood old

Six for dinner, no one shows.

Flame reflected in the steel

A tiny, burning, candle sheen

The front door knock that never comes

Rap twice for yes, once for no

In this sance of your life.

The windows rattle in no breeze

But all your worries have surceased

Mirrors unfrosted by your breath.

Candles burn down, sputter out

The sweet scent slowly fades

And you dont move from your throne.


52/70

Some Tell Me

Some tell me

That I need the love of a good woman

But Id rather have one whos bad.

They dont know

That I know what it is to be human

And that is what makes me sad.

I can see

That which turns wise men blind

And I know truth cant be defined.

I am free

Of the lies that so many find

So many lies believed, and truth denied.

I dont care

That I am unhappy

As it is better to be truthful than glad.


53/70

Instinct After All

Industrial taboos in use all over the come-over-and-sit-yerself-down;

All body parts already auctioned to the highest bidder;

Separated on the screen from eyes these lies

Have penetrated where other lies refuse to go

Down into the soul and other holes:

Down into the void weve dug and all we want to do is keep on digging.

Endlessly voiding.

Endlessly frigging.

Got to keep active so we dont have time to think

Pacify ourselves with drugs and drink

Neuter with television and religious division.

Dont look in the mirror lest we see what weve become;

Dont look to the future lest we see what we have done;

Remain in the past with imagined glories;But the real histories are always more gory.

A school time story.

Just Jackanory.

And still the flesh is pressed and still it is displayed

Get your money on the thing for which weve paid

These things which we have sold

And all former restrictions become offers

All sins become desires to fill the coffers

And this instinct to procreate is only instinct after all.


54/70

Who Would A Laureate Be?

A ten year sentence, what offence has been

Committed here? What criminal, what rogue,

Who would a laureate be?

To be condemned to invent false brogue

To delineate regal fripperies, the

Commemoration of state and church;

Give him, her, a barrel of sack;

For the troubles of rhymed research;

For the few thousand few artisans

Who will take the lines to heart

Are but dreaming of that position

Of that gilded misery to start,

And the acclamation which rarely comes,

However due; we are so forgetful, now,

Of Shelleys legislators and rebels,

The words unread while they still ploughThe loneliest of furrows. Yet still a thousand bards

Dream of joining Davenant and Tate

Shadwell, Southey and other names

Now forgotten by this illiterate state;

As though fame bestows worth on verse.

Ten years of durance writing ditties

For the dearest, aging Queenie;

Before freedom for more deserving lines:

Who would a laureate be?


55/70

Factory Memories

The factory closed for the summer holidays

Workers getting tanned in the Benidorm sun

When they came back

The factory had closed

And their jobs had gone.

Autumn descends into Winter

And frost lies on the grass outside

Near where the cars used to park.

Vandals have stoned the windows.

The roof has gone.

Skeletal, stark, the corpse endures

To remind the betrayed of broken promises

And better times.

Someone says the Chinese will take it over.But nobody believes those platitudes.

All theyve got is the Jobcentreplus

And memories.


56/70

Just Another Ordinary Day

Wake up yawning, parents bawling,

Just the daily bad name-calling,

A ruder klaxon, this alarm,

It has not got one note of charm;

Then you know the plates are flying

Because yer mam has stopped her crying

And you hear the sounds of smashing

Plates are flying, plates are crashing

Dad is ducking in the kitchen.

Get up, go down to the bitchin

Then youre accused, youve got no job

They glare at you like youre a yob

And theres no point in speaking out

Cause all they do is scream and shout

So you scoff your tasteless brekkieWhile parents argue about the leckie

And all the bills they cannot pay

More arriving every day.

The hamsters just had babies,

And you think the dogs got rabies

Cos postie bit his somewhere south

And now both are frothing at the mouth

And your sisters become a Christian

But you are not really listening

Because all she does is genuflect and pray.And its just another ordinary day.

Escape outside and its still raining

But whats the point in your complaining?

No one ever hears what youve got to say

But you swear at the clouds, anyway.

You wander round to see your beau

This scag you know, a girl called Jo

All you wants some tender lovin

Without having buns in ovens

So your girlfriends on the pillBut you think it makes her ill

As she shouts when she sees you

And then she beats you black and blue

Accusing you of faithless actions

(God, shes gonna put you in traction)

Jos got a death grip on your scrotum

(She never bothers to hold your totem)

You pleader and plead, youre a pleader

Always been a tricky bleeder

She relents, the grip is loosened

So you escape, before its noosened

You go down to this club you know


57/70


58/70

Tyrant

The tyrant behind the desk smiles like death

Like a crocodile staring at his prey

Willing victim that I am I smile back

Wishing that I had a machine gun today

I dream of a trigger slowly caressed

My lovers finger squeezing out hot lead

In my minds eye he jerks like a puppet

Red fountains, he falls and I know hes dead

And people scream and I dont really care

Only a dream but how I wish Id dare.


59/70

Machine

The machine god waits in the darkened halls;

Silently, within those porcelain walls,

He anticipates the prey not yet won,

The soul to be weighed, and perhaps undone,

Unravelled like some twisted skein of string,

All to be judged must come before the king.

The cases said, accused they stand, a dock

Of iron round their souls; the grand baroque

Inquisitor has sat, and judged the dead.

The prey of this most bitter figurehead,

The wheat which waits to feel the reapers scythe,

Twisting in the wind, but it cant writhe

Its freedom from the sharp cut of the blade;

It is but grass before the reapers shade.

All are guilty; the crimes of life many;Of sweet mercy there is never any.

There is only the eternal machine,

The unproduction line, our souls unclean,

The perfect system makes us martyrs all,

Uncaring as our shredded spirits fall,

Into the abyss, no hope for all is Loss

Once more, dear friends, the machine god ATOS.


60/70

Tenretny

Astral bodies, fallen stars

Helping them take off their bras

YouTube mongrels, internet whores

And do what thou wilt shall

Be the whole of the law

Pixel Crowley, electric gods

All the lost boys odds and sods

And see what thou wilt

Shall be the whole of the law.


61/70

Where Dreams Go

Where do dreams go, when they leave our minds?

Where do they go to die?

From what old tomb could we exhume our dreams?

I dont know, said I.

Perhaps they flee to a much better place

Where we dont waste them.

Leaving them locked away like dying roses

Petals dropping like snow.

Figments of a future weve turned away from

Doors locked, keys thrown away.

They have gone like the days of our youthOur hands are empty.

Where do dreams go, when they leave our minds?

I will see them, when I die.


62/70

Blues From A Son

Out of Mississippi, out of Hazlehurst;

This May-child is Memphis-bound,

Nineteen eleven, gifted to Earth,

Julias son with the God-given sound.

Son of Noah, son of Dodds,

Now the childs in Robinsonville,

And Spencers the name hes got,

Living with Ma and Dusty Willis.

Jews harp, and then harmonica,

Running with his good pal Windum,

He goes back to his old monicker,

And they called him Robert Johnson.

A guitar falls into the young mans hands,The strings plucked by the delicate fingers,

Of this small-boned music man,

Women drawn to this young singer.

Charlie Patton, and Willie Brown,

Help out Robert with his blues,

But young Robert well, he gets it down

He gets the whole thing through and through.

Did he walk to the crossroads one night

And offer his soul for the devil to use?

As long as he became the best in the worldDid old Nick become that young mans muse?

Up jumped the devil but Robert stepped down

And hellhounds never caught his tail

His gift was greater than Up or Below

The human part that never can fail.

And though he died young hes forever alive

Immortal on disc, eternally young,

Out of the speakers his voice will keep coming

While we all grow weak those tunes will stay strong.


63/70

Downed

Drowned

Downed

In gin.

Everything is swallowed in the Ginnunga Gap

The world serpent devours all

And Odins ravens fall.

One eye

Unblinded

Unbound

Ragnarok fills me

The end of all that there is.

Soon I will be in Valhalla

The Valkyries will come for me

And I will find solaceAs I down mead

Among heroes all.


64/70

TV Burns

My eyes are burning with the visions I see

The daily death toll thats shown on TV

I close my eyes but the visions remain

Etched on my retinas in full colour pain

My ears still hear the toll of the dead

The numbers keep growing, keep haunting my head

And helpless my eyes flicker open again

A foreign wasteland, but the meaning is plain

And I cant do anything to end the pain.


65/70

Lovely Misery

I am the jester on the plastic-covered cards;

Laughing at your disparate poetic retards,

The sing-song rejection of your bardic inflection;

Just another failed writer washed up on the shore;

The confection of your affection is betrayed

For money and a quick shag behind the bus shelters.

And is this life? Is this what you want to be?

An alcoholic interlude between each misery?

My life subsumes into mystery

My sex lifes ancient history

And nobody loves me for who I am

Nor for whom I might one day be

So I recede, into my lovely misery.


66/70

Blood On My Fingers

Ive got blood on my fingers

Wish I knew where it came from


It tastes so copper-sweet.

When I think back to what Ive done

I cant think back to what Ive done


And I cant think back to what Ive done.

Im gonna wash away the evidence

The waters cold and it numbs

I wash away the evidence

Wish I knew where it came from.

Theres no blood on my fingersBut still I let the water run

Wish that I could numb my mind

That I could think back to what Ive done.

There is no permanence, only death

Nothing last and nothing lingers

We are mayflies above a stream


I see it still, though it is gone

I cant wash away what I have done

Ive got blood on my fingersAnd my crime cant be undone.


67/70

We Go Together

You are Shakespeare to my Marlowe

Im Clark Gable to your Harlow

Youre the peaches for my creamIm the coal, and youre the steam.

We go together like all those things;

We go together like all those things.

Youre the chalk, write on my board,

Were both notes, together a chord.

You are the sunshine of my dawn

You are my Queen, I am a Pawn.

I am a glass, you are Champagne

You fill my life and make me sane.

We go together like all those things

We go together.


68/70

Art School Riot

Theyve broken crayons on the floor

Theyve spilt vermilion by the door

Its glass now crystal trod-down dust

Its hinges rent, revealing rust

And somewhere someone thinks to scream

To shatter wide the teaching dream

The tutors dead stabbed by a brush

And now more screams break through the hush

And sirens, too, can now be heard

Come to arrest this scene absurd

But murder done cannot reverse

So send instead for some black hearse

Or shrinks to pick apart the mind

Of he who framed this art unkind

A riot and a murder cruel

On Monday morning in the school.


69/70

Cat

I smell a mouse

somewhere behind the skirting boards

I wait

Patient

Claws out

And listen to the birds outside

theyll get theirs soon enough

I know hes put the cat food down

beef-flavoured Whiskas

But the desire to hunt

is hotwired in my blood

A microcosm of scentsexplode in my nose

My ears prick up

But its only birds on the TV

not real the real deal

I will kill this mouse

Leave his guts

scattered around the house

Because thats what I do.

I am a cat.


70/70

Middle Class Chains

Breaking the chains on your middle class brains

You have nothing to lose but your pension

But thats something which you dont mention

Worry about the car, tax and the drainsThe NHS and the buses and the trains

But you dont ever voice your righteous dissension

No! Its long past time for intervention

Its tome to saw against the grains

Rebel, rebel, and kick against the pricks

Against the cuts and against the allied fools

Against their laws and all their unwritten rules

Against the Lib Dem cunts and Tory dicks

Against all of their clever-clever tricks

And not be subject to their enslaving tools

Those laws drummed in at uniform schoolsTear down their cosy mildewed politics

Rebel, rebel, and snap those mental chains

Free each rebel thought of your middle-class brains.

new songs for old ears

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