Radiation rose

In Bank of Scotland blue, in radiation red

In General Motors blue , in radiation gold

In Levi Straus blue, in radiation glow

In Barclays Bank blue, in radiation rose.

Somewhere

We were left to look for our own forms of wisdom, to find it where we could, to seek it out, to nurture it and so make it clear and believable. We had the dream that we would be understood and that, ultimately understanding would prevail and we would prosper as we passed through. As a young man I took that road, not realising where it would ultimately lead nor did I appreciate the ardour of the journey or the full depth of the disappointment that I would feel as I neared it’s end. To travel so far for so long but never arriving was not something I was prepared for. I had comforted myself with the knowledge that friends walked with me, we were a troop, a cabal, a team searching but one by one they strayed or fell away until I too finally was lost and all but consumed. The road’s end now beckons, neither a cliff edge nor a dark cave, not a blinding light or a peaceful refuge, floating on some serene ocean many miles deep. No, there will be none of that, that is not my fate for I see now I never had a destination nor a direction, I followed and illusion and is into an illusion that I have travelled. There is no way back. Somewhere in the distance I hear a cat’s meow.

(Some scholars, such as Michael V. Fox, have suggested that Ecclesiastes is influenced by philosophies like Stoicism and Epicureanism. “The boldest, most radical notion in the book is...the belief that the individual can and should proceed toward truth by means of his own powers of perception and reasoning; and that he can in this way discover truths previously unknown…This is the approach of philosophy, and its appearance Ecclesiastes probably reflects a Jewish awareness of this type of thinking among foreign intellectuals…He does not look to revelation or tradition for guidance. He believes that he can discover what is good to do in life by acquiring wisdom and using it to examine and contemplate the world. This is the stance of Greek philosophy…Koheleth’s focus on individual experience, in particular the perception of pleasure, bears a significant resemblance to Hellenistic popular philosophy, whose central purpose was to find the way to individual happiness by the use of the powers of reason. The Epicureans sought happiness through pleasure and freedom from fear. The Stoics thought to find it in the shedding of desires and passions…In 1:4-7 Koheleth mentions that the four elements compromise the totality of the physical word – a notion common to Greek philosophers especially Stoics…These general similarities…support the hypothesis that the author was aware of some concerns and attitudes of philosophical thinking current in the Hellenistic age.")

Sphere

This sphere believes we’re doing well

This sphere considers there’s no hell

This sphere knows life in every cell

This sphere believes we’re doing well

Jewels

Sleeping in tiny jewels

Across the place where the universe was

A hand was reaching, fingers crosses

We watched with awe but felt no fear

For love’s sweet shelter is always near

Always near, always near,

Some where close around about here

In the corner where wisdom rules

Sleeping in those tiny jewels

Sleeping in those tiny jewels

Under the red sun in a rusty sky

We point to crosses and cross over bye and bye

We stretch the boundary you and I

It’s not enough to say you tried.

It’s not enough to say you died

Nothing is ever enough.

So the longest story goes

We walked across the oldest stones

Steady as thunder and sand blast

Where ever the five winds blew us

We held our breath to address the past

In the corner where wisdom rules

Sleeping in those tiny jewels

Sleeping in those tiny jewels

Bathsheba

Bathsheba had a lover

She loved him eye to eye

She fed him bread and hogs head pie

And they danced on through the night

Bathsheba made a promise

Before the moon and sun

With trickled blood she praised the Lord

But the damage had been done

Bathsheba stole the answer

She took it to her heart

There’s slim and thin who don’t get in

The church is torn apart

Bathsheba had a lover

The lover slept all night

She called the Lord but he ignored

"Why does he stay so quiet?"

"Why does he stay so quiet?"

"Why does the Lord stay quiet?"

She called the Lord but he ignored

"Why does he stay so quiet?"

Bathsheba’s gone to Heaven

Or so the good book said

Bathsheba’s name is still alive

But the lover is long dead

The lover is long dead

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.