Lazarus Threw The Fight

Zdzislaw Beksinski

The clouds of doubt that hang about in the corners of the morning
Won’t be dispelled by the pealing bells that answer the empty calling
To be held to breast in the emptiness that awaits the mind’s meander
Down seeking lane of longitude to rest on the edge of wonder

The tongues a-forked that taste the air and speak of wisdom’s tree
Don’t scare me half as much as those who seek a piece of me
Those soft approaching smiling faces that call the ego hither
Will soon attach some motive grey and cause the deal to wither

Like fruit that grows on hallowed ground but tastes of rivers bitter
Poisoned from the inside out and left the ground to litter
And there to stunt the grass that seeks to make the sun its duty
To venture forth on tracks untread and paint the world in beauty

Vampiric needs that seek to wing the mind that finds its freedom
Not in the company of wolves to dwell nor dare to stay and feed them
With scraps of bone and blood soaked bait and hearts fragile still beating
These empty rotting heads do gather crowds of meagre souls for eating

Not content to reap the harvest here already sown for freedom
from all the pits and rocks that strew the cobbled road preceding
but drag the plough into the ditch and check the horse’s teeth
then take a look right down its throat for the benefits beneath

benefits not equally shared but tilted rather toward the reaper
hacking and hacking at the supine form of the unsuspecting sleeper
Don’t sell me no yarn for the spinning loom of overvalued self
That feeds on trust but can’t digest the rust on my bookshelf

Don’t seek the truth nor question why if you do not wish to find bones
Of creatures awful beautiful beneath the overturned stones

This bit is inspired by Tim Powers' magnificent tale of the romantics and their muses The Stress of Her Regard
Title from Sleepwalk Capsules by At The Drive-in

Nostalgia

From that decade that will forever be remembered for Wham! and U2, I often like to remind myself that there always is an alternative.

Prefab Sprout - The Golden Calf


House of Love - Christine


Triffids - Wide Open Road



Go-Betweens - Was There Anything I Could Do?


Violent Femmes - Add It Up


Magazine - Song From Under The Floorboards


and finally...

Empty Head

Despite all my rage
I’m still just a rat in a cage
~ Smashing Pumpkins

The body is a cage but the bird once freed will wither in sensory overload.
Nightly hanging with the diplomatic corpses that rise at dusk to populate these states of diminished responsibility.
Inevitably you find yourself back in that busy room, surrounded by strangers - some in whose company you spend more time than you do in the arms of your home - strangers with nothing in common other than the skills (or lack of skill) that bring you to spend your days together in pigeon holes or digging holes or selling souls.
And there your worldly-wise your snake eyes thrown against the seven, there to laugh at loud proclamations of “Hi folks, it’s me” or aphorisms badly wrapped by tangled tongue or torn memory curtain falling to litter the floor already too drunk to remember the tree that bore it or the saw that seesawed it.
You assume the stance of glassy eyed glass in hand and legs splayed to lock yourself in - filled to the brim with your inner-light, a smile at the ready, a laugh more than willing to escape from the backdoor of your mind.
Laugh like you have no idea of the regrets that lie ahead beyond the morning’s fence jumped in panicked half-remembering
Laugh your empty pealing chime like Sunday’s call unheeded by the boy on the bubble-wrap suit – a half hour before does not exist and tomorrow will never catch me here in the crevasse; here where my excesses become evident; here where the worst in me presides like the king-of-the-castle storming the ramparts, from the inside out.
And that which alcohol frees with jingle jangle keys and honesty unbound by the day’s jailers; that which litters the street with violence; blood; vomit; urine and seminal fluid; that which rips us apart with its honesty – that is who I am – that is who I do not wish to be.
And yet we return; not for the loss of time; not for the hours of senseless babble half-remembered with dread in the morning’s own return – we return for the moment when the blood takes the chemical to the brain; the moment when the jailer unlocks the door and lets the spirit soar free.

Cartographers' Crayons

"The heart is heaven
but the mind is hell"
~ Tom Waits

There in the machine; the virtual vertigo; the dizzying heights of self-inflicted revenge where ransoms are paid in comment boxes and ratings and prestige is measured in meters and magnanimous mirages of flattery, name-dropping and wafer-thin facades of syrupy self-effacement

Here in the field of electromagnetic zeros where grass grows in analogue steps and uniforms are avoided in all shape and form; where statues don’t represent any horsemen or heroes but are wrought from melted down awe that is never saluted or paraded before

There where Cartographers map the libido’s landscape while pornographers take the easy road to humanity’s dark depths; dance the chaotic Kabuki cabaret; pixel masks welded to fractal faces; the original moulds lost to market forces and rising damp inflation indicators blink blink blink

Here at the left turn un-stoned where they dance in the moment and howl at the moon; where the passing of days is marked ten out of ten, but never considered as a position of power and the flying of fists are met with clean air and the baring of teeth remain in the realm of the dog

There where hexadecimal witches brew hydrochloric spell checks in cauldrons of silicon for carbon-based nightmares and oxygen thieves; incantations to endless Aristotelian lists and family trees soaked in Sophist karma; edges fuzzy; concepts lateral and hyperlink logic - listen hard and you’ll hear the hum of the processes.

Here where they weave the intricate wall of illuminated manifolds unmarked and unmanned by the eyes of authority and its brother control; a cross-legged carnival of creative calm with tools made of thought and intricate design for the breathtaking pleasure of seeing alone

There in the logic clouds of misunderstanding; sitting bullshit in your teepee of tinsel decorated with dream-catchers a dime a dozen; soothsaying nothing but toothache and tantalising trash; your living room life is no match for the deals that go down on street corners – or at least the peripheral paranoid vision in the corner of your eye.

Here in the fold of all that is warm to the heart that you hold in the palm of your hand; in the crook of your arm where the future slumbers between demand and desire and the primal calling; before the structure that must come with the twisting of tongue and the modulation of air over voice

There in all honesty all tangled and torn; between the tip of your tongue and the ears of corn; ears made of wax and the dishes and plates that litter the floor of your teenage room; honesty moulded from the bones of old lies and the droppings of philosophers and half-remembered snatches of hate street signs

Here where the music of minds entwined; where toes on the precipice with echoes rebounding; with inner smile wide and chest for the opening; here in the moment between now and whenever, between yesterday and tomorrow – here is you heart between thumbprint and pulse.

I am a Child

Barry Windsor-Smith ~ The Book of Samothrace

Went to the cupboard but there was nobody there
Except for some bones and a tangle of hair
Came to the conclusion that no one would care
If I tripped on my words and slumped in my chair

dreamed a dark dream of that consisted of you
back in the amber of nineteen seventy-two
A green clay Golem in a dusty unmade home
Head touching rafter and eyes made of stone

Shambling the sand floor in marked out rooms
The history of one while the future loomed
In the back of my car in the back of my mind
The stitches the threads in photographic rewinds

Mementos illusions tricks of the light
Face fading as yellow chemicals ignite
In the heart of the sun in the head of the moon
Prophecies dance in the heart’s ballroom

I am the face in the mirror the touch of your hand
I am the seashore sculpture made out of sand
Whose grains are not counted but randomly blown
Across dunes of tomorrow where the future is sown

Not by the seeds of decay the half-life isotope
But by the deeds of the wilful, the children of hope
Tied to the mast as the maelstrom descends
turning the screws where the spiral begins



Title from Neil Young:
I am a child,
I'll last a while
You can't conceive
of the pleasure in my smile

Narcoleptic Daydream

You dress once again to these threads of cold rain
your trousers all stitched at the ankle
Shoes made of oil and the poor man’s toil
And a mask of filigree fibre
And the rat-a-tat-tat on your cerebral hat
shakes the nails from your iron lung free
pampered flesh far too weak to live the life of that freak
that you sometimes claim to be

You gulp down your chunks of prescription junk
That promise to take the edge off the world
Drink wine and complain at the state of the trains
While away days without treason or rhyme
and arrive at the end of the hand-me-down recipe
to find that you’ve run out of thyme

So you head for the hills on those bubblegum heels
Ears flapping in the eloquent breeze
that blows from the east and rattles your keys
While enticing your thoughts to agree
with the divine and seductive and deluded decree
that you are what your mirror reveals

But the mirror is bent by the culture of plunder
And cracked by the head of some goon
and to look and to see might cause you to stumble
Down the staircase of worries where the diligent crumble
Under the weight of the moon and the flowers that festoon
Your salubrious parlour of wonder.

Pinups #6

We could crawl, but I'd rather drive she said

Journey

I see your face next to mine in the window reflected, sometimes superimposed by the passing blur of green in sunlight dialogue dashing. The traffic there on parallel track keeps time with our hurling journey.

Tickets please.

Steam generated thought to piston arm pantograph arc on overhead line futurism forged for a past well deadbeat upshot downfall breathe in fallout windows flash by in fencepost strobe. Demon face at dead-man’s handle check the signals pass the candle om-mani-padme-hum points change all change for branchline roots and bark dog days dark death rays and noah’s ark.

The whistle wind doors slam slow decay accelerate to once again blur the landscape changing outskirt housing and red brick rising factories and warehouse grafitti grenades on the length of an arm.

This train terminates here and now.

You smile in vague lipstick and gather your bag while I gather my head and the children send the chatter rising.
Step down mind the gap in cathedral of industry echoing to join the river of anticipating legs and cultural calling.
Past turnstile a-clatter you catch my hand to bring power to personal in the sea of alien faces.

We have arrived.