Under the knife

Looking at you and your artificial self.

You will go under the knife.

Your brow is a tortured lie, your lips a mess,

You will go under the knife.

I try to study another photograph to make some sense,

There only is, the sense of self defence,

No reliable point of reference,

As you go under,

Inevitably under,

Fighting back but you're under the knife.

...half biscuit

There are questions in the corner of my mind that lurk

Like how do the road gritters ever get to work?

Answer me that and you could win a lifetime of a cruise

But hold the phone, here’s Judy Tzuke to take us to the news.

So Tanita Tikaram remains obsessed with tragic Judee Sill

Said “Jesus was a cross-maker who’s making crosses still”

And Linda Ronstadt covered it and so did young Beth Orton

There may be better versions but most of them are now forgotten.

On a moon-lit night when nothing’s right I think of Warren Zevon

The werewolf riff we can’t forgive and a caravan in Devon

The Hollies didn’t make it right nor Dexy’s Midnight Runners

But I used to have a Telecaster not unlike Joe Strummers’.

Life

A life in Brief:

My parents were

Esoteric fabulously rich working class from the extreme North East of the UK via the Soviet Union with a Swedish bloodline.

The house I grew up in

Small with woodchip on the wall, you know the rest.

When I was a child I wanted to be

Marilyn Monroe

If I could change one thing about myself

I would have preferred to have larger feet as they would have given me a stable platform and kept me rooted and grounded during lifetime times of trials and exasperation.

You wouldn’t know it but I’m very good at

Masturbation

You wouldn’t know but I’m no good at

Planning and organising elaborate Prussian style award ceremony banquets and sober deer shooting weekends. Then doing the washing up.

At night I dream of

The blackness at the end of time or fluffy clouds, ponies and golden harps.

What I see when I look in the mirror

Most times I see a mirror.

I wish I’d never worn

Out my knee cartilage

My favourite item of clothing

My Christmas Hari Krishna begging robes

I drive

A custom Tuk-tuk around the windswept streets of Glasgow handing out warm soup to the homeless.

My house is

Not my home.

A book that changed me

“Grease and all that greasy stuff didn‘t help my complexion much “ by Olivia Newton-John.

My greatest regret

Born too late to participate fully in the Renaissance and the French Revolution.

The last time I cried

I stubbed my toe on the bed leg at 3AM in the dark.

My five-year plan

To be President of either the USA or the UAR.

What’s the point?

All religion is a noble but pointless and absurd pursuit pursued by the unenlightened, encouraged by the idiotic.

My life in five words

”Once there was a way…”

Concrete

So here I am in that awkward place between inspiration, concrete temples and perspiration. Focus is diluted and well unfocused, ideas are there but a little too far out of reach, energy is low and a nagging irritating voice says to me in an unpleasant accent, “what’s the point?” I hate that voice and I work hard in a brain cell crunching, twisting way to ignore it, I avoid any answer or direct dialogue. Even this small piece of typing seems like a risk. Does describing an atrocity, a work of horror and cruelty or a terminal disease bring you closer to it or does it create a buffer? Do you risk becoming overcome, becalmed or set adrift? I’m opting for the cathartic effect, a cleansing move and a geography defying revisit. Something better than the other options and inactions. So this dull pain, like a thick headache or ongoing hangover, not a writers block or a dry spell but just a lack of the drive, one that avoids and argues to postpone the act of closing, the act of closure, the finish and the final step back to look, to take in, the final finished piece.

Mirror Lake

So we headed for a winter honeymoon,

But the desk clerk said “the snow is comin’ soon”,

“You’d better take a four wheel drive, help you make it through the night”,

But I don’t know

Drove from Winnipeg up to Mirror Lake

Just to see how long the journey'd take,

Never did apply the brakes,

But I don’t know

Been bathing in the hottest springs

Jumpin’ cracks and different things

Try to mend those broken wings

But I don’t know

And every time I hear that lonesome train,

I think about the people, the shoguns and the rain,

Caught your eye a while ago, seems we take things pretty slow,

But I don’t know

A cowgirl waitress told me “live it well”

And always end the set on “what the hell!”

I should’ve let her kiss and tell,

But I don’t know

So I’m in the arms of someone that I love

Fate called round and we gave it a shove

Learned a lesson, learned it late, three big pancakes on my plate

But I don’t know

So now I know.

Soul

Growing into your soul

Weird that you don't sense me

Recompense me

Try to apprehend me

As I'm growing into your soul

After all these years still

Growing into your soul.

Stacks

Stacks and sticks

Thrill me to bits

But pain will never hurt me

Scottish seas

And chilly breeze

A hundred miles from Dundee

Golden slate

A garden state

I couldn't really careless

Waves that break

And earth that quakes

A hundred miles in Caithness.

Waterfall adoption thingy

All over (some parts of) the world orphan waterfalls are looking for, waiting for, hoping for your generous adoption donation. If you like waterfalls, rocks, the sound of rushing water (a bit like God's voice) then this is the scheme for you. If your dream, or that of a loved one has been to be immortalised in tasteful clear, non-brackish water then this is what you have been waiting for. Pick a waterfall from our exclusive catalogue, donate, donate, donate and we'll see to it that your name or inspiring motto is written in one of three special places on your very own waterfall, choose from:

On the falling water.

On the swirling, splashy bits.

In the deep pool.

Your once in a lifetime choice, it's all permanent H20 to us, so don't delay.

Stay wet.

Duck Down

Take care

I’m not a millionaire

Look straight ahead

It’s a velocipede

Know what?

I’m not an astronaut

Take that

You’ll have heart attack

Don’t strain

We cannot make it rain

Hey fox!

Inflatable buttocks

Bling Bling

You like some shiny things

Keep clear

I’ve got a pint of beer

Duck down

Is fluffy.

Random number

Penelope Cruz

Is an actress and dark eyed Latin beauty

She may be under scrutiny

Or not but

She features in films

In feature films

Not non-feature films

Nor non failure films

Or railway films

But films that succeed

Successfully featured

Featuring her

And her featured co-stars

They feature this creature

This lovely creature

For fashion and feature

And occasional screws

Screwed by Tom Cruise

Then had a wee snooze

Did Penelope Cruz

Then got wed in a garden

To Javier Bardem

In a Galliano dress

She is a success

And Spanish apparently.

Some figures were released just in time.

Ships like these

In ships like these, the young men went to war

Saw the things they should not have

Whispered the unspeakable

Watched good friends die

As mistakes were made

Stayed brave and bucked the odds

Swallowed thick oil and salt water

Bobbed in the cold, cruel sea

Cried in bunks and shook with fear

The young men went to war

And came home brittle, hollow, hurt or lost

Voices silenced

Peering through the mysterious glass

To see reason

Ill conceived plans tossed aside, ruined

Sunk

In ships like these.

The spiral path

I am climbing and so are you. We remain fixed however, stuck on the climb, the long ascent while we wait on oxygen and energy, halfway upstairs.

We share the same problem, the desire to progress, to create and leave a mark while we wrestle with a lack of drive and energy and the daily grind of working and earning.

Our lives are a mess of contradictions and imbalance. We struggle for a time and then seem to glide, we look for progress and see feet stuck in mud. Strangely, all around us the undeserving appear to us to flourish. Succeed.

Our own terms are not on our own terms. They are fixed by others, dark, nameless and hooded. From somewhere ahead they mock - at least that's what we think. Most of the time we are unsure.

But the fact remains that I am climbing and so are you, by degrees and steps, we explore this spiral path.

Which way is up?

Smoke Fairies

Smoke Fairies

That blend with light

And rise and fall

Wisps and circles

The early touch

In nose and mouth and hair

To take the edge

Away and here

Or over there

So beware

The fairy

And the smoke.

Pineapple heads

A cargo ship full to the gunwales with pineapples docked in Scotland earlier in the week. We, the most restless of natives marvelled at the strange and exotic sight as the fruity cargo was unloaded. We lined the dockside and cheered as the brave stevedores moved the boxes from their container cruise line home to the back of a grey and yellow Bedford lorry that grunted with customary disapproval at the effort. It was, for a moment as if some tropical carnival scene had erupted out of a street party and spread itself across the suddenly sunny Grangemouth dock.

At one point the leader of the shore party pulled out a huge Commando knife and in an almost symbolic set of moves raised it towards the heavens it’s shining tip glinting in the sunlight and then suddenly plunged it into the corner of a box and cut a great gash along the side. The cardboard collapsed and a dozen large pineapples poured out , were caught by the dockers and then flung into the cheering crowd like errant footballs. Hands were raised and heads bobbed as the juice grenades flew over the heads of the people. There was a scramble, more whoops of joy and then the retrieved pineapples were held aloft and carried away into the streets in a triumphant wave with the passion and enthusiasm of some kind of sporting victory or shared tribal rite.

Once the lorry was loaded and the container cleared the atmosphere began to calm, the truck drove away to distribute the fruit in the wider world and the fortunate locals who had witnessed the event began to disperse. However as a calm descended here and there small groups formed around the prized pineapples, those gathered from the fatally stabbed box and they stood and marvelled at their shared prizes. In their eyes and in in their minds questions formed, how do we open them? How do we eat them? What will they be like? What is their texture? Will there ever be any more? Is it all over for us? It was a summer the taste of which we thought we would never forget.

A week later I regret to say the pineapple remains were rotting under broken autos and all but forgotten - it was the day that the first ship carrying boxes of Trojan American Super-lube condoms arrived since the end of the Great Pan-European Wars of 2016/17. We, the most restless of natives marvelled at the strange and exotic sight...

Mask

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

Sell us your soul

By placing an order via this Web site on the twenty first day of any month of the year 2010 Anno Domini, you agree to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul. Should We wish to exercise this option, you agree to surrender your immortal soul, and any claim you may have on it, within 5 (five) working days of receiving written notification from impossiblesongs.com or one of its duly authorized minions.

Phillip Pullman says...

On spirituality and the rest...

"Nowadays, I’m as sure as I can be that there is nothing there. I think that matter is quite extraordinary and wonderful and mysterious enough, without adding something called spirit to it; in fact, any talk about the spiritual makes me feel a little uneasy. When I hear such utterances as ‘I’m spiritual but not religious’, or ‘So-and-so is a deeply spiritual person’, or even phrases of a thoroughly respectable Platonic kind such as ‘The eternal reality of a supreme goodness’, I pull back almost physically. I feel not so much puzzlement as vertigo, as if I’m leaning out over a void. There is just nothing there.

Consequently, the immense and complicated structures of Christian theology seem to me like the epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy – preposterously elaborated methods of explaining away a mistake. When it was realised that the planets went around the sun, not the Earth, the glorious simplicity of the idea blew away the epicycles like so many cobwebs: everything worked perfectly without them.

And as soon as you realise that God doesn’t exist, the same sort of thing happens to all those doctrines such as atonement, the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, original sin, the Trinity, justification by faith, redemption and so on. Cobwebs, dusty bits of rag, frail scraps of faded cloth: they hide nothing, they decorate nothing and now they mean nothing."

It's a new year somewhere

I was unaware that the Thai New Year celebrations occurred in April and that, irrespective of nationality and other allegiances, many of the locals would vigorously indulge in marking the event by drinking heavily. On the evening in question I was becoming reacquainted with White Russians and was in fact supping on one when the clock struck 12 midnight. The party was by this point spilling into some strange uncontrolled place and the only person in the room with either Asian ancestry or Thai Nationality was already comatose and horizontal. The line to be taken with the official celebrations therefore seemed to me to be beyond pursuit. It was a New Year of some sort, I imagined many good Thai people (mostly in Thailand) raising their glasses to whatever new number it now was but I myself remained puzzled, after all we were in a cramped and overpriced pub in Broughton Street, Edinburgh.

Scarfe says it

Tiny Ears

Tiny ears listen to hidden worlds.
Tiny ears hear tiny words.
Spoken in the silence.
The silence of the arc.
The arc across the heavens.
Above the tiny worlds.
I hear some tiny words.
Somewhere.

Some vehicle

Last night I had me a dream but tonight sadly, we must pay tribute
to some one already dead. Who is here, who is anywhere? You don’t know how sweet you are
And at the moment and I should’ve been there.

Once I had it all, yes, see the North East Force 7, visibility generally poor and all to the point.

He was never a manager and nobody but nobody takes you seriously when you are 23

Despite what you said before you’ve got to let me know. We bring the women and the cars out apparently, a lovely ten minutes.

Her lips are warm while yours are cold.

They don’t have to give him a three year contract anymore.

“Well I am asking you.. Classic. Choke your heart and you fall apart, this western feeling strains and remains. Look back, how far have you come in this foreign place But you wont come down and settle. I can explain. I know what “Please please me” was all about, For experience and that’s it, what else would it have been?”

Traveling in some vehicle.

Unremarkable Car Parks

One of Fife's unremarkable car parks.

Where are you now, unremarkable car parks? Acres of grey space but no space to park, crammed and cramped with miscellaneous vehicles all there for good reasons, visits, shopping, going for a wee walk etc. Some unkind drivers double park, over the lines, across exits and carelessly on the edge of a row, sneaking in to be with the others. Trying to solve the emotional problems of their lonely car by getting up close and personal with a body of strangers. Then the diadled badges or are they disabled or are they at it or unable to read. Some cars are new and snooty, some old and battered, others ill maintained and taken for granted, turn the key and go and never check the oil or clear out the accumulated litter in the boot. The social work office have the worst records in terms of car care but I never said such a thing. Optimistically looking for spaces, hoping, waiting for the moment. Hoping nobody comes in the other way quickly and steals that vital place, oh the injustice of it all and the inner quiet rage. Ticket swoppers and hander overers, failing to read the small print on the ticket next to the stupid advert, some where it says "not transferable" but how would they ever know? If you want to travel you have to park, the parking is remarkable, the car parks are not.

Cool Thing

This is a cool thing. Red and orange and green rainbow snake, angular in the dark. Walks the line. Mighty fine. Great square shoulders and optional pads, she was very popular with the lads. In those days, those old days, bad days. When we were the friend's of snakes and their impressionistic representations in whatever form they took before they were regarded as evil. So I was told.

I was drawn to this but I did not draw it.
I copied this but I remained original.
I found it in a strange place but I had been there before.
It seemed quite ridiculous but made perfect sense.
I avoided the confrontation by meeting it head on.
I was hungry but fed up.
I was thirsty but found it hard to swallow.
In the end I had to send it back but I won't return it till tomorrow.

Johnny Depp

What is it about Johnny Depp that makes him the success he is?
Idiosyncratic films and commercial junk.
Living out some Bohemian dream, in a dream scape.
In France.
Another movie comes along.
You can't quite believe.
You can't quite believe, it's all too good to be true.
You believe, I know you do.
But I see through you.
And all the boys are jealous 'cos all the girl's think he's hot.
Which he probably is, whether I like it or not.

Rat Race

The problem with the Rat Race is that even if you do well and win it, at the end and in the end you are still a Rat.

Jennifer Taylor

She was standing outside the Coop. She asked me for 97p for her bus fare. I said that I had no change. In the shop I bought bread and soup and dithered a bit, I thought a couple were following me. My laptop is on the front seat of the car. There was a queue at the till because a young man was cashing in his lottery tickets and scratch cards. The assistant apologised for the wait, I said that it was fine. I walked back outside and the girl was still there. She looked at the ground as I handed her a pound coin. "Now I can get my bus" she said, "thanks". I thought of Karma, Heaven and Hell as I drove away nursing some unnamed guilt. None of the feelings made sense. Few things ever do. This is a short, short story.

Jenny Taylor

You don’t know where I’m going
You don’t know where I’ve been
You don’t know what I’m laughing about
You don’t know what I mean.

Tie me up, tie me up, tie me up, tie me down.

Dance, dither, turn, tumble,
Melt and merge, something precious,
In the mix, how we revolve,
Return , converge.

I don’t know where your going
I can’t tell what you’ve seen
I’m just glad you can laugh at it all
Don’t have to know what it means.

Tie me up, tie me up, tie me up, tie me down.

It's my thing

Family business. Barclay’s billions will result in bumper bonuses for all.

Listerine Smart Rinse cleans where brushes miss.

There’s no better way to start your adventure than with the multi award winning Singapore Airlines.

T Mobile are challenging the established rules.

Now we need you to go to 4 Music.com

Cover your nakedness and worship our Lord.

“To failure dear brother!”

Post Production Supervisor.

She’s got all that except she has a cheating husband.

The cost of living is going up fast.

The reason they think you are crazy is because you are collecting little shirt buttons.

The official has lost his job but must now face court action.

A well know local businessman and boxing promoter.

Selfridges say they’ve sold out.

Unfortunately you’ve got to have Posh’s cash to get Posh’s look.

They are real women. You can tell.

Why don’t you just say sorry?

Today Donald Trump has submitted his master plan to Aberdeen Council, including details of their houses.

There have been a few interesting editions to it….wonderful steam collection.

It got nasty and they was singing bad songs. It riles you up.

Is that what you really want, me and you cooped up in that rabbit hutch?

The nice thing about autumn is people.

He’s seen attitudes change since then, but it’s not his fault.

People were moved by the story of the boat people but now we’ve lost sight.

Asylum has become a dirty word.

It’s only a fifteen minute hop to Guernsey.

Up to £6000 contribution towards 3 Series models, at Eastern BMW.

Everyday in the Scottish Daily Mail.

A group of assassins carrying fake British ID are at the centre of an international investigation.

Where the tin was removed. Saved by a whisker.

Television evidence is not the answer to referees problems.

She’ll wear black and stand alone on stage.

I picked up a pillow and smothered him until he was dead.

Just like most British people do.

I thought, “how am I going to get myself on there? I’m a jewellery expert with a bit of a difference.”

Do us a favour and put some vodka in that orange.

We are very close to that stage and it’s all very exciting.

Cheryl can’t sing to save her life but she is brave to perform.

He’s become a massive hit on the internet.

Shovel, drift, shovel, drift back over. Can I get a one-way ticket to New Orleans?

A weather warning is in force across the Grampians and Highlands of Scotland.

The chairs were a bit rickety and now it’s raining over Coventry Cathedral.

It’s always been known as granny’s sewing table. There was chemistry between us. Never.

Staff at the bank’s investment arm will get an average of £191000 each.

Checking into assorted hotels.

Where did these come from? They belonged to my mother. They are just charming.

Mitamultiair. Get to the next level. Alfa Romeo.

Paratroopers with pink machine guns and camouflage. It’s my thing.

Surreal Handbag

I'm lost and unaware
your handbag
where is it
and what does it look like?
black grey or brown
crammed and stretched
with what at the bottom
only one person knows
worries and accounts
for many things in
various amounts.

your handbag

Degrees of success

The less you say the more likely you are to be heard.

Interesting

Things that are interesting:

1) Interesting things.
2) Things that stimulate the latent interest nerves.
3) Things you can look at or into.
4) Things you can listen to or sounds you can create.
5) Puzzling things*.
6) New things that perhaps you’ve not noticed before.**
7) Surprising things***
8) People can at times be interesting and so demand a degree of observation.
9) Stories - in whatever form of media they are told.
10) Interest (general).

* Puzzling things are characterised by their normally very puzzling nature.
** Can also be puzzling.
*** Not dissimilar to puzzling things.