new songs for old ears
TRANSCRIPT
-
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
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
10/70
Malleus
Between hammer and anvil
Forged and beaten
Then drowned in the butte
Enveloped by steamAnnealed
Out of fools gold, steel.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old 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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
Lest we remember that other November
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.
Lest we remember that other November
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.
Lest we remember that other November
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?
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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?
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
57/70
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
66/70
Blood On My Fingers
Ive got blood on my fingers
Wish I knew where it came from
Ive got blood on my fingers
It tastes so copper-sweet.
When I think back to what Ive done
I cant think back to what Ive done
Ive got blood on my fingers
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
Ive got blood on my fingers
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.
-
7/28/2019 New Songs for Old Ears
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.