1. |
Mud Crab
02:46
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So what am I to give to you
that you may see as I progress
I never knew quite what to do
or how to clean this fucking mess.
I knelt, I knelt beside the heather,
scrubbing at those deep footprints.
But I could not seem to make them better:
I only served their deepening.
And now the day is all but ebbing
I never turned aside to see
the clumsy form I was becoming,
the mud crab creature that is me.
But now, with distance due to water
trickling down the spinal cord,
a light psychosis serves to alter
a deep perspective, deeply flawed.
And I have seen the true resemblance
between Life and it's Beauty lost:
and the truth is that a true existence
cannot reside within one sentence
and though a clarity is tempting,
it's surely time that I forgot.
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2. |
Stone From The Tomb
03:28
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Everyone's watching the skyline these days
'cause something is coming like a hearse in the rain,
mournfully crawling on it's belly, away
from the right to the real, in these darkest of days.
Where the King is a carrion bird on the wing
and he calls on his people to forget everything.
At the logical limit between winter and spring
he will rule in his wasteland while the last missile sings.
In the hallways of conscience, a cold echo comes
from sympathy's larynx and empathy's tongue.
Where hope and communion live alone in the young
who have not felt their murder as keenly as some.
In the red robes of office, the autopsy shows
an old kind of hatred in modernity's clothes:
bred on the sorrows of a great many souls
who were given the thorns, but denied every rose.
In the chemical quadrant, in the light of the moon,
you can hear all hearts beating a thunderous tune:
that the future is rolling like the stone from the tomb
and behind it there ain't nothing left to exhume.
In the middling spaces of megaphone night
where the greedy and good dream of doctors and mice,
an opening's growing in the whites of the eyes
so it's straight to the brain with this terrible light.
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3. |
Autumn
04:54
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Grave and straight, the season strewn
with all the ornaments of age.
Black-eyed in the formula,
I sear and strain
and loose the page
and lock the leaves the scene to save
in my glum staying.
Picked at dawn, the fruit spits flesh
at merest mention of a knife.
Distended blue in bruise and beat
on every front
in every life,
pickled ye shall be in spice
and all the spills of being.
Come and crimson, pale and pert,
all flesh is made for muddying.
Tramped at heal and down to dirt
I whistle in
the glistening
of dawn with crimson pout to sing
of my glib loving.
Come one trammelled, one in tease,
the breeze and beating ends.
And I will rest in everything
where sorrows fill
the dividends
and everything that seethes will send
its excerpts to the scene...
those browned at last shall green.
Tripping on the tapered neck
of rooms or windows, as it goes,
so many signs to creak and wheeze
their iron edge
to lead the load
down crooked stair and rugged road,
while somewhere day is singing...
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4. |
Brinkman
02:42
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Brinkman
o why don't you sink, man?
You're a fucking blizzard jumping the gun
Cold metal, cold mind, you're no fun
Brinkman
just fucking think man.
You'll make no friends in mounting the gun
The chances are a million to one
Brinkman
you're a hungry little man.
Little itchy-fingered sad man.
You can thunder full time on your own
but the wonder never lasts all alone.
Brinkman
Take your finger off that trigger, man
The streets are big without a sound, man
Pull your trousers up and go, man
Life's already pretty lonely, man
Take a look into the land, man
Have a pipe and sort it out, man
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5. |
Stop Taking Orders!
03:14
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The gravy boat is gone and I'm a-sludging up the street
watching all the CCTV stare.
My shadow's wearing shackles and he cannot lift his feet.
There's a funny kind of crying in the air.
There's a dismembered vampire in the Premier's house
who instructs her how to carry his dark vengeance out.
It's a cold kind of climate, whether in the morgue or out.
The primary directive is to imitate the real
as I leak into a bar and buy a drink.
In the catastrophic clatter of the people and the steel
you cannot even hear the DJ overthink.
Well there's an art to neuroses in this post-modern world
where we must grasp at the chance to exercise some control.
Yes, it's a strange kind of logic in this venerable fishbowl.
The comment-tu t'appelles of the President-Elect
is making all the TV cameras blush.
But the ageing opposition treats him with all due respect
'cause they can see upon his face a common rust.
There's a bloody kind of sunset over Washington State
where oppressor and oppressed have been confused of late
and nothing short of nightmares will ever set it straight.
The gravy boat is gone and I'm out lying in the street
thinking of the evening gone before.
The Morning's on a promise- see he's getting to his feet
to go and knock upon Depression's door.
It's a sad state of being that we find ourselves in,
trading cash for connection in our splintering.
We got to stop taking orders til we do the ordering.
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6. |
Sleepers
04:14
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Silence on the spread cesspit.
An air bubble breaks.
Sunrise of the burst yolk sky.
No crying it makes.
And God in his sickbed shakes
a finger at the shadows on the wall.
Dementia: and the whole world wakes
a witness to mercy no more.
So what for me, a hollow child
with lips at the dry breast?
A new expression built from all
the bitterness that I have left...
and all the sleepers wake from dreams
of sirens in the night
and find their tethers loosed and torn
from everything they thought was life.
The dream, the dream of everything
took back before their eyes.
Moving like a mime the moon
in shivering night.
Under the stone-sealed tomb
lives the life.
The light makes the new born shake,
with loose neck, a nodding at the wall.
And, drowning in air, spits lakes.
A screaming for one and for all.
I've seen my life pour readily
from pores I knew not of.
A thousand faucets loosed in me
with no stop cock to turn them off
and all despair and hunger
mixed in pools upon the ground.
And were not me, but for the shapes
I printed there with stepping sound:
my face, my face in sounding shapes
I stamped upon the ground.
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7. |
Love
04:15
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Click - clack - the doom tapping teeth in my head
Loving a lump I have come
guilty gooseflesh in my bed
as, sweating,
she sleeps through my sleaze and on
knowing somewhere I sweat too
to the lust horror I hoard inside, hearing
the sisterly sway of the wind
Click - clack - the doom tapping teeth in my head
Dropped to the wall in a
wailing release and then through
it, through,
where I break and buckle and lie
the smooth lies of love.
Combing like camera each inch of light
where it manically stirs on the lurch of my mad eyes
I pummel in love with you,
bruised blue with you,
bleeding to
Click - clack - the doom tapping teeth in my head
Trawling the trench of my dignity
dressed in my debt
I pucker the bed sheets...
and come you, hot breath in your mouth,
where your sleep welcomes me.
To climb to the heave of your spiderweb sighs
those I miss to the panic of dreams
Click - clack - the doom tapping teeth in my head
Coming like caught breath in tatters
to take you with me
while there's time to tell everything
but my voice is a vacuum to ears
in the valley of dreams.
So I fold to a frown, will my heart beat back down
and I scream in my bent head
for your head to swallow
You wake and you turn to me
alive with me, looking like
love
Click - clack - the doom tapping teeth in my head
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8. |
What's It Like?
04:25
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What's it like to be dreaming on your pillow tonight?
Does the scent of the linen hit you heavy or light?
Is your body warm-breathing or shivering with ice?
What's it like?
What's it like to be lonely in your part of the world?
Are you tempted by Jesus or the fall of the sword?
Are you hopeful in sorrow or resigned to it all?
What's it like?
What's it like to be living in the dress of your skin?
Do you ache at the edges where the light trickles in?
Are you full of your heartbeat or barren within?
What's it like?
What's it like to keep beating the streets of your home?
Are your steps harmonising or resounding alone?
Are they grass-wet or rapping onto concrete and stone?
What's it like?
What's it like to be gathered in the web of the stars?
Is Orion out winking? Is the ram on the charge?
Are they dulled by the the ribbons of the motorway cars?
What's it like?
What's it like to be breathing the air round your head?
Is it clear like a fountain or blacker than lead?
Does it flow through you sweetly or rattle you red?
What's it like?
What's it like to be dancing in the mist of your mind?
Are you full of your failures or with love are you lined?
Would you trade what you know for what you think you could find?
What's it like?
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9. |
Come, Gather
07:01
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I swept off my table
the last of my meal.
I filled up my hunger
when I span round the wheel.
Now the people are singing
'the year will be dead'...
with minds of acceptance
and bodies of regret.
And now the church bells have signalled
a call to the dark
they say, This is my body
and this is my soul.
Come, gather around me.
Children, come towards me.
The endlessness calls me
and I must depart.
I picked up my footfalls
from all over the ground.
I counted the movements
and I measured the sounds.
I found I was lying
to the whole of the earth:
where I should have been smiling
I was letting it hurt.
And so I went to the wise man
but he looked just like me
He said, This is my body
and this is my soul.
Come, gather around me.
The storm, it is breaking.
The winter will take me,
but you, you will be free.
So lain in the water
the son of your God-
drank all of your whispers,
became the sum of your flood.
But he is not for thanking.
He is not to be damned.
He is just the feather-
the arrow is man.
And now all of the cloud shapes
show me what he meant.
He meant, This is my body
and this is my soul.
Come, gather around me.
You've got pictures to show me.
The bridge, it is bowing
and the cattle are lowing.
The winds keep on blowing.
Your heart is a poem.
Your life is the reason
and that is all there is.
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