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1. |
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I can pretend that it’s possible
To know each of my needs
To be sure of their exact extent
But the body speaks in tongues
Caught up in my own cross-drifts
Blown wildly off course
I can pretend that it’s possible
But the body speaks in tongues
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2. |
Sail Away
04:18
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In a different room
Having lifted myself from the mess that I’ve made
What do I do?
I lay myself down as my memory fades
And try to remember what I have done
But what is the point when that one elusive moment has forever gone?
Misery swells into me
Perhaps I can eventually
Sail away on waves of it
Or fail again in spite of it
In a different room
You pinch at mirrors or test your neck
Then what do you do?
You lay yourself down in your cold, damp bed
And reinforce your broken heart
Until you reach the point where you accept that there are waters you will never chart
Misery swells into you
But you know what you must do
Sail against the waves of it
Or fail to find the worth in it
Please sail with me
One single thud
Won’t disturb me up into life
But I believe that I would
Remove the cause of this general strife
If I didn’t flinch at the words that I speak
If I truly believed that my one consistent failure does not make me weak
Misery swells into me
Perhaps I can eventually
Sail away on waves of it
Or fail again in spite of it
Misery swells into you
But you know what you must do
Sail against the waves of it
Or fail to find the worth in it
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3. |
Knee Deep
03:59
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Here they come, one by one
Wading through the shallows
Each one with a tired smile
Planted there by his fellows
You were ahead of them at one time
You were instead of them to my mind
But you’ve fallen in to the endless line
That winds its way, occupied
Knee deep
Around the hill then back again
In for the kill then slack again
The silver pool turns black again
As you illustrate your lack again
Knee deep
You were ahead of them at one time
You were instead of them to my mind
Knee deep
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4. |
Torn Wheat Leaked
04:33
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Every time I see
Bread baked upon my knee
I recoil at the lie
But any time there’ll be
A body next to me
It will wake and I will smile
Making do, I skirt
Pools awash with dirt
Innocent in despair
Then I’m behind you
And I’m on top of you
I am everywhere
The next train will leave
An hour before they'll see
But I no longer care
Because I see my wheat
Caked, since torn and leaked
Crowning your muddied hair
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5. |
Occasional Table
03:16
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Time loomed up like an erection
Just as those bright bulbs glowed open
On what basis was I chosen?
How can I now be beholden?
Occasion makes me your table
I’ll bear the weight if I’m able
We try to make time more supple
I grip at your legs; mine buckle
Can we still counter disaster?
Can our question be our answer?
Plumbing the depths of the rupture
Life in confusion hereafter
You crush the facts of your own life
And smile over them as they die
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6. |
The Devil
03:48
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On your way home you were falling off kerbs into rubbish bags. In an alley, a sign was flapping at the rain with a man in a Bonaparte hat. A false alibi was created, based upon an old, exposed template, with one eye open in an affectation of wisdom. It’s hard to tell from a small sample. For example, it’s impossible to tell how or if things will tie up with previous or later events.
Take a seat or have a piss
Then I’ll tell you what the issue is
Take a look at what you missed
Who could want more than this?
Your cough echoed up the back stairs like a gunshot while the soft oven of your brain described it. A big pie full of leeches. Great big hat full of weeds. A dirty great row of bags, all full of possessions. You cut a rat up to find out how it works. Neeps and tatties. You left your phone downstairs. It hasn’t worked so far, but there’s still enough time.
Take a seat or have a piss
Then I’ll tell you who the devil is
Eaten up by artifice
There really is no more than this
Tin-pots rattle as the man-trap whacks you over the shoulder. Forget it. Cancer is bad today and an onion was used to spot greed. It’s like shouting into a Johnny. As dreams prove, identity and characteristics are not connected. For example, gap-eyed monsters in a holiday stable. Don’t try to account for it if it never actually happened.
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7. |
The Petty Task
04:16
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Our lives are locomotive
To the liberation traitors
The petty task of ‘greatness’
Estranged from the urban
Education has risen
And transformed our impressions
The dominant teach heroism
To imply a greater sphere
The universal is replaced
With a greater assembly
And culture sinks into
The talent of the city
The modern proletariat
Make poor art
They want democratic accomplishment
But time has passed them by
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8. |
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Forgotten episodes penetrate sleep
For a long time after the fact
And dreams will stalk the subsequent day
For even longer than that
The situations of your dreams
Will probably be forgotten
But the characters that your brain describes
Will creep into all that will happen
And recovery is not permitted
You’ll list things in an important order
When your observations appear
To be erroneously meditative
To be shrinking and unclear
There is a sequence to be found
But it doesn’t mean anything
It lies in wait for membership
For the substance that you could bring
But recovery is not permitted
It doesn’t even form a language
You’ll stumble across it soon
A sharp pain in your ankle
And you think you’ll be over it soon
But recovery is not permitted
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9. |
Blimey, it's Bedtime
01:47
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He comes humped up in slow chugs
With no regard for your last question
Stuffed all up with sad, snotty chunks
That’s no way to fill you in on any position
Bundles himself off to the loo
Then bundles back to the bed
That he’s warmed forthwith and while he blub
No, he don’t know what’s been said
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10. |
Ramar House
04:03
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Converted ground floor flat
Northern voice seems to be
Coming out of a guitar
Did this become known later?
Tall toilet room
Remnants of a German mathematician
Stuck to the wall
Don’t open the curtains
I might go to the petrol station later
Blue carrier bag
Of broken glass and leaked red wine
Why didn’t you go back and get some more?
Play it slower
It smashed on the floor in the phone box
Try putting the flanger on the amp
His pod is burning up
Don’t go to the door
The coffee slops on the table
You’ll damage your throat
But that was later
Ramar House
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11. |
Suitable Simon
04:40
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He was lying asleep on the riverbank
When they took away his clothes
So he was compelled to walk home naked
Along the open road
That was when they set their dogs on him
And though he tried to run
They left him face-down in the hedge
Blistering in the sun
When he came to in the evening
Some lout was trying to bugger him
He deftly threw the lout aside
And with hands alone he smothered him
He resumed his walk along the road
But did not get very far
As in the dark of that summer night
He was mown down by a car
There is no moral to this story
And nor should you think that there should be
And, furthermore, de Sade was wrong
Just as he intended to be
Sometimes bad defeats the good
But more often defeats the indifferent
And the fact is that this innocent man
Was not even existent
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12. |
Events
07:48
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Why do you listen so intently at that door?
Do you hope to hear a sound from beyond it
That will indicate to you
That there is a chance
That blame could be apportioned to
Someone other than yourself?
Listen to me for a moment
I intend to make you understand
That the fault is yours entirely
But also that
This is not the whole story
Events, yes, there’s more, events
Will conspire against you
No matter what you do
Some would say
That there is no point in trying to control
Or even to contribute to them
But I do not agree
Everything has an effect
We can alter the conspiracy
Repeatedly and relentlessly
Changing events at every moment
Still, they remain a mess
I hope that this address
Has been of some benefit
To you
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13. |
Sunshine
02:53
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Help him live twice
In sunshine
In stranding cloud
When fetters went
Cars were rolling
Roads were well-designed
And circular
In sunshine
A natural conclusion
To a natural decision
Taken on appearance only
All was well and good
Taken on appearance
All is well and good
An open passage
In sunshine
Left or learned or thrown behind
In sunshine
Footsteps slow
In sunshine
Cars are rolling
In sunshine
Trial without error
In sunshine
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14. |
Larvicide
05:03
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A boy found playing with fire
Was by his father rejected
So into the woods one day
With his sibling he was ejected
Whilst walking along with his sister
He gave in to his bestial needs
He drank of stagnant water
Consuming ordure and disease
He kept her in the woods
Which awakened the interest of men
They removed her to their house
And happily he joined with them
But a girl took the sister away
Leaving the men bereft
And so it was quickly arranged
That the girl should be put to death
They threw stones at her body
They threw stones at her head
And they left her corpse in the woods
And the boy took his sister to bed
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15. |
The Beast
05:17
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All of the young women
Have retired for the day
Their fathers have been posted
Somewhere very far away
The young men in the garden
Are on permanent display
And the winter days are growing ever shorter
Fifteen worried mothers
Are queuing at a door
They all heard the rumours
And would like to hear some more
About the Beast seen shuffling
Across the forest floor
And the interest he expresses in their daughters
Oh, Doctor, Doctor
I cannot see my eyes
Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor
I do not know my mind
And until I thought about it
I was doing fine
The drunken village doctor
Is stumbling in the street
With his hands inside his trousers
He says “I’d like to meet
The gentleman suggesting
That I stay off my feet”
As he plunges head-first into the gutter
The priest is peeping eagerly
Between the painted slats
Of the fence around the playground
Saying, “One day all these brats
Will more mourn the loss
Of religion and retail; that’s a fact”
As he notes down the obscenities they utter
Oh, Doctor, Doctor
I cannot see my eyes
Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor
I do not know my mind
And until I thought about it
I was doing fine
The grocer fills his shelves
To mirror fashionable memes
The butcher draws conclusions
Based on geometric themes
The baker deconstructs
The premise of his custard creams
And the author tips his hat to television
The programmer is playing
With his new-found cup-and-ball
The architect is action-painting
Onto fallen walls
The analyst is crawling
From the rubble of it all
Whilst the draughtsman dribbles onto his new crayon
Oh, Doctor, Doctor
I cannot see my eyes
Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor
I do not know my mind
And until I thought about it
I was doing fine
The engineer was wondering
What he had left to make
Until deciding that design
Should be for its own sake
And that all technology
Should now be built to break
As he steps over the letters in the hallway
The toast of Tin Pan Alley
Has sadly been reduced
To taking on commissions
For TV game show tunes
And to working up a jingle
For a tropical fruit juice
And his pseudonym’s been compromised by blackmail
Oh, Doctor, Doctor
I cannot see my eyes
Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor
I do not know my mind
And until I thought about it
I was doing fine
Sitting on the mountaintop
The Beast is in despair
His shoes don't fit his cloven feet
He’s losing all his hair
And there’s no-one left that thinks
That they could even get a fair price
For the soul that they’ve neglected
The Beast shouts from the mountain
“The problem with you folk
Is that you think that pleasure
Has become some kind of joke”
And puffing on his Marlboro
He starts to cough and choke
“There was a time when evil was respected!”
Oh, Doctor, Doctor
I cannot see my eyes
Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor
I do not know my mind
And until I thought about it
I was doing fine
“Once holding hands in supermarkets
Suited all you people
Now you congregate in packs
And throw your faeces at the steeple
Of the lonely local church
That stands decrepit and enfeebled
As you cavort around the prophylactic graveyard
The spirit of free enterprise
Has eaten up the past
The eagle of the fatherland
Now sits upon the mast
Of the ship of idiots sailing
At the shadow of the past
That leers from the horizon like a retard”
Oh, Doctor, Doctor
I cannot see my eyes
Oh, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor
I do not know my mind
And until I thought about it
I was doing fine
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16. |
Stations
04:37
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The hotel sign is smashed
And your trousers are covered in ash
As you watch the settling of water
And the scabs on your hands
Are not part of your higher plan
And you wish that this stage would be over
Oh no
Leave it all alone
Nothing is gained through rumination
But consider the gaps
That this life always lacks
How can we ever find our station?
Our true station
Our one true station
The knots in the wood
Resemble eyes more than they should
As you wonder again at your health
And you consider again
Whether making your claim
Should be done via honesty or by stealth
Oh no
Leave it all alone
Nothing is gained through rumination
But consider the gaps
That this life always lacks
How can we ever find our station?
Our stationary station
Our one true station
The gains that are lost
The depth of the cost
Can never be properly evaluated
The height from which you fell
The sweetness of the smell
Will never again be recreated
Oh no
Leave it all alone
Nothing is gained through rumination
But consider the gaps
That this life always lacks
How can we ever find our station?
Our stationary station
Our complimentary station
Our one true station
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17. |
The Mill (live)
05:03
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Pinched in at the middle
Her small frame smiled out
But lost in suspicion
I failed to grasp it
Her word was an umbrella
It had me on its point
Her stroke was euthanasia
It swept me up in its charity
My helpers came
I didn't recognise them
They gathered about me
I shrugged them all off
Your sides are splitting
As you fall to the floor
I summarise my hatreds
And leave
I cloud over
And feel with the edges of my hands
The beige kernel
The man-made husk
Chafing all around me
It funnels me out
And sorely I’m let
Reeling
As I spit through the mists
I know that you fall away
You’re watching me punish
My body for its own issue
I want you to look
At my back as I walk
I want you to know
The crook of my knees
I don’t want to turn
I don’t want to face you
Because I know if I turn
Then I will turn on you
And this was a haven
And this was a lie
The hangings were yellow
And small in my life
And I don’t like to think this
And I don’t want to say
And I’ll wrap it in something
And I’ll send it away
And it will be received
By a poor, distant fool
Who will wrap it all up
With weak, weak lies
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18. |
While You Sleep (demo)
08:19
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It’s too late
To be careful now
You aped me
As I ran to you
I couldn't hear you
When you looked at me
And now you stand behind me
When I speak to you
You were childish
All day long
And at night you grow
Before my eyes
You are older now
You dress yourself for bed
You drown me in your sheets
You choke my wicked mind
You ferment me alive
To preserve me from
The specious child
That wants to do us harm
I could never allow
The trust that you breathe
To be betrayed
While you sleep
I lean away from damp air
Into the folds you provide
Your breath spills onto your pillow
It drugs me
What I’m thinking now
How could I not mean it?
So I will say it aloud
While it’s still true
I won’t do it again
How could I?
The way that you sleep
How could I?
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19. |
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Your happy fruits bore seeds of sorrow
And planted with regret
An orchard waiting on the morrow
More fruit to beget
A year I spent in tending
That sour little crop
And though my back was bending
It sweetened not a drop
Passing through the avenues
Of the dearly-new deceased
A draught brewed in sickness
I led you thence come springtime
The way was coarse and crooked
The salty fruit you found sublime
And knew your heart be wicked
I see you waiting at the threshold
Your movement is but slight
Making summons with your blindfold
Blot the cry of light
Passing through the avenues
Of the dearly-new deceased
A draught brewed in sickness
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20. |
Mistakes (live)
03:58
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Walk away in front of me
Don’t look at where you’ve been
You don’t have the time
And there’s no point in wasting mine
I don’t want to see you now
I don’t need to now
I don’t want you to be here
I don’t need you near
Lie down away from me
Lie down and stay there
No rain is coming through
No rain would need to
There’s nothing wrong with you
There’s nothing wrong with what I do
But things don’t meet, they grate
And we ourselves are by mistake
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21. |
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The soft tissue around the anus yields paper-cuts
In time with sags and heaves in the next cubicle
Must this feed my dreams?
Faeces-boy at the wedding, the injurer of Frankfurt
To lie alone in the mornings
Nailed to the bottom of the pit of opportunity
Makes me sad and sore
To sit, bedecked, makes me hurry more
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22. |
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Oracle, let the chicken live
If he may leave his short career
If he will not interfere
Oracle, let the chicken live
If this world is a patient place
If he will owe you not for this grace
Oracle, let the chicken live
Oracle, let the chicken live
If his weight will not be too much
If his pain will not be seen as such
Oracle, let the chicken live
If this world will not resent
If there is nothing he must represent
Oracle, let the chicken live
Oracle, let the chicken live
If this world is worth more than he
If to kill him leaves him to me
Oracle, let the chicken live
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23. |
Untold (radio session)
03:35
|
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Sprawled out to the front
Your naked body
I inject it
With unmade decisions
Eleven years on
What went on?
Birthplace, bonny, abroad
A lying troubadour
It’s an emotional revolution
I’m closer to his origin
All of this is changing back
What went on?
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24. |
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I can pretend that it’s possible
To know each of my needs
To be sure of their exact extent
But the body speaks in tongues
Caught up in my own cross-drifts
Blown wildly off course
I can pretend that it’s possible
But the body speaks in tongues
|
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25. |
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On my way to die
I laughed on the only breast
Alight with no continence
Nothing grown or known
How cool the breeze that licked my arms!
How quick my step!
Trees that lived in autumn winds
Wilting through my mind
My limbs were hanging wilfully
Unfastened from that page
Curled into and yet away
From the animal breath
On my way to die
I laughed on the only breast
Never was there message
Only was there fact
A different kind of diagram
Sealed with exclusion
Now support my need
Living uncontained
My form, it leaks all kinds of things
I scent every lack
To pride and to origin
I once again repair
To leaves and to earth
In some traditional sense
Never was there message
Only was there fact
But no, remember
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26. |
Don't Boil (version one)
04:04
|
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Grip at an object with your eye
Try to bring it into your mind
Then fail to act
Maintaining your absence from the world
Choose your lessons from life
Simmer but don’t boil
Observe a procession of documented hardship
Then don’t look
Watch a hand placed on a load
Watch the load swell to constraint
Make a scruffy handbook
Then watch a sheet lie empty as it should
Grip at an object with your eye
Try to bring it into your mind
Then fail to act
Maintaining your absence from the world
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27. |
Kill Your Friends (demo)
06:27
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Don’t listen to me
It will happen all over again
Don’t listen to me
It will happen all over again
Like a little breeze
Like a pleasant disease
Don’t listen to me
The world’s gone angry
Don’t listen to me
It’s that bad taste again
That old, familiar smell
That little glimpse of Hell
The only thing for you to do
Is to kill your friends
Kill your friends
Kill your friends, kill your friends
Kill your friends
Don’t listen to me
I will only let you down
Don’t listen to me
I will only let you down
Like a small statuette
Of Marie Antoinette
The only thing left for you to do
Is to kill your friends
Kill your friends
Kill your friends, kill your friends
Kill your friends
Kill all of your friends
Kill all of your friends
Kill all of your friends
Kill your friends, kill your friends
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28. |
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The human body always caves in on itself
When I think about it, it’s like 1979
How far away from that behaviour am I?
In air there is nothing, you’re in it, across from me
Walls are men hiding
And doors are men coming
And chairs are men waiting
And men are things nothing
A deeply felt well rankled by indifference
Not turned from but left in suppliant waste
Fear of loss of momentum informs everything
And stages melt, one into another
Walls are men hiding
And doors are men coming
And chairs are men waiting
And men are things nothing
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29. |
||||
The trees are a crust on his vision now
The road, a distant harm below him now
Replica whitewash stands in sheets
Everything accounted for
Having hoped for Algerian loneliness
Nothing is now left
His shoulders yearn for skirting board
As his skin shrinks from carpet
Cubism lingers in the walls
As testicles bang in jeans
He hates red brick chimneys wearing clay hats
And all other practical error
His head full of stacked furniture
An indoor mountaineer
He sits up dead in the fuelled air
Legs hope to hit energy
Cubism lingers in the walls
As testicles bang in jeans
He hates red brick chimneys wearing clay hats
And all other practical error
|
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30. |
||||
I was born
In a leper colony
Fumbled out under the hill
But benches were the birthplace
Of all that carried me
And they need persuasion still
Gone with dumb escape
Reaping curious flesh
I touch what once was mine
Sheer and shining sheen
Of drips – how frozen!
Constrict for the last time
What has been
Denied to me this night?
Probably my own energy
Because I have tried
So many times to fight
My senses will not obey me
Consciousness is wrong
And sleep my enemy
Both tempt me to release
If you have teeth then you
Had better show them now
And end my disbelief
Puff-puff go the bricks and mortar
Fumes, they lure me
With every fresh collapse
Get it done, get it done!
Hinder, hinder, hinder!
Twisted, tangled, perhaps
|
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31. |
Go Grow (single version)
07:11
|
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Once, I caught an eel as it fed
On smaller creatures rising up from silty, brown-grey mud
Its sharp, spasmodic movements had caught my eye
I watched it as it twisted in my bare, young hand
I considered whether it belonged in water or on land
I returned it to the river; it swam away
But you know what it looks like
You know what it smells like
You know what it feels like
Go grow
My cups of plenty always were abrim
With gifts that I would never give to her or to him
I was always ready to resent or to retire
Now medicated gum clots the streets
And disregarded fun sticks to the soles of my feet
And some of the buildings around me are on fire
But you know what it looks like
You know what it smells like
You know what it feels like
Go grow
|
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32. |
||||
A morsel of fresh earth upon the lips of the dead
Which stimulates and yet eludes my fear
Is placed with care and comfort as I occupy this bed
And everything around is far and near
I’m earnest in disease
I celebrate my needs
You’re seeking to assist
In things that will be noticed
Mistakes are made that life is what I should be reaching for
Such thoughts dissolve into the earth
But earth and dirt and soil and soil alike may share rapport
And illness and its stillness give me birth
I’m earnest in disease
I celebrate my needs
You’re seeking to make clear
The things that bring me fear
As pleasant as the blood which springs from unattended wounds
Your words revive my needs as I unfold
My body out upon the slab with such a graceful swoon
To still my beating heart, to make it bold
I’m earnest in disease
I celebrate my needs
You’re seeking to assist
In things that will be noticed
The earth, I feel it surge and swell itself without these walls
And find my body lying in the garden
And further still, into the earth, but back there in the hall
You move and movements always are forgotten
I’m earnest in disease
I celebrate my needs
You’re seeking to make clear
The things that bring me fear
|
Naevus London, UK
Lloyd James: voice, guitar. Ben McLees: bass. Hunter Barr: drums. Sam Astley: guitar.
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