About time

"Why should I of all people believe in the words of the Buddha? Why should I follow his teachings? There is no peace, no occasional rest, no respite.  I have seen things but they are in the past so what is the point in searching for justice? We are all in constant crisis." 

These are some things I said, they are things I may have meant at the time. Now I'm not so sure. I'm not even sure if I ever said them. It may be that you said them all along, throwing your voice, closing out my thoughts with some bombastic forces that I couldn't counter. I may have been weak. You cannot hang a man for that.

I wasn't sure what was really going on. I was unsighted for a moment. It was all a bit chaotic. I could however sense the disapproval. We had crossed some kind of line, broken away, travelled through. There was a new space and place before. Perhaps there was a breach in the space/time continuum anyway. I'll probably never know. All I can recall was that her nose seemed to grow, her features became sharper and the grasp of her hand stronger. I read later in a lengthy footnote that this kind of thing was to be expected. I did feel judged however.

So those great blocks of concrete closed in around us. The daylight became a precious thing. The size and the bulk was overwhelming. It took courage just to look up, to lift our eyes from the flickering screens, to watch as the heavy air descended upon us. There were cracks in their lungs. Those others in the gloomy dark. The air was like some heavenly poison, too much, too late, too soon for any redemption. After a struggle with myself I found the door and walked out alone. I didn't look back. That would have been the right thing to do but the time was wrong. In the end it's all about time.

Trees walking

One day, quite by chance, the trees came to life. Of course the trees were already alive so when I say that they came to life I mean that they developed movements, animal attributes and what seemed to be consciousness, at a low level. Funnily enough I was the only one who was aware of it. Others couldn't see it. I tried to explain but well, you know how these things are. So as for the trees, they turned out to be reasonably peaceful, perhaps not fully aware of what people had done to them and happy to be poking about in the woods (?). How they were used as a raw material etc. might bother them if they ever find out. They were a bit like cows. I often think of how that first occurred to me. "These trees are alive now, fully alive, but really they are like big. wooden cattle with leaves and bark so there's no need to be afraid unless they learn anger". Once I'd come to this point I relaxed a bit. The trees would mostly be OK but there may be some upsets if they ever get to understand human history but that hasn't happened yet even with cows so we could be all fine albeit forestry is going to be a little more complicated now that the trees are moving around. I considered reading them the chapters from Lord of the Rings referring to the Ents but then decided that might be a bad idea as it might give them good ideas. We'll have to wait and see what happens next.

This means something

Maria said...

There were some things, Maria said,

Words and jumbles, sweat inside my head,

But that's Maria, living the lonely life with you.

Cinematic beauty, nature's crimes,

You go your way, I've gone mine,

But that's Maria, a fictional life that's taboo.

The revolution's here, out on the street,

Packaged for the masses, we're so indiscreet,

But that's Maria, older and younger and untrue.

Never make a song

There will always be some bit you've missed

Within that multi-coloured list

Some history that hissed

With hungry lips you didn't kiss

And was I in that moment there

But that moment's floating in the air

Still out of reach but in despair

The things I fixed in disrepair

There will always be that glimpse you had

Sixty seconds or a second flat

The truth rode out and that was that

Drowned in my innocent intoxicant

And I an instant you were gone

I had a feeling all along

That here was there but there was wrong

Those words would never make a song

These words will never make a song.

The Ballad of Rio Tinto

Digging up Australia and moving it to China

To build your laptop chassis and a copper sheathed vagina

Buying up the Stone Age places for a couple of billion dollars

They’ll have a little money but a homeland that’s much smaller

So fire up all your furnaces your factories and fantasies

Leave the West to wallow in our pre-apocalyptic bankruptcy

I’m glad salvation’s come to manage our dependency

We’ve replaced those economics with some good old fashioned treachery

Shareholders get rich now and the guys all get a beer

Some spanking new diseases and a glittering career

Thanks to global industrials for inventions, plans and deeds

And selling us more products that no one really needs.

spider moon

there once was an enterprising spider

who built a web from the earth to the moon

I guess that she won't be back here

anytime soon

You can never tell

when he died he was dead and gone

so we explored his house around

dead memories and screwed up stuff

screwed up stuff screwed down

rooms filled with cobwebs

and all the clocks are silent

hidden dusty dramas 

exhausted appetites' disquiet 

tattered comics from the sixties

a collection of women's shoes

christmas decorations

half empty bottles of booze

note books and diaries

Bird's Custard powder packets

amplifiers and audio devices

a quilted smoking jacket

dusty Camaro in the garage

set up on stolen bricks

greasy engines and accidents

and a box of witchcraft sticks

a bin full of cigar butts

letters to the Pope

survival gear and condensed milk

a stash of dessicated dope

they didn't find his body 

just traces of his mind

it's on Ebay now or in the dump

things you have to leave behind

spontaneous combustion

a strange way to go

abducted by aliens

or buried in the snow

plastic bag upon his head

tangerine in his mouth

his girlfriend said he loved her

but I'll always have my doubts

some people go to heaven

others explore their hell

what you leave remains a mystery

no one can never can tell

Golden Meanings

Your wife's so glad you've buggered off

The husband's happy you've quit your job

Now we can freely say what we couldn't say

In the great golden meaning of the day

Religion is a crock of shit

Nothing more you can do with it

Everybody's said what they had to say

With the great golden meaning of today

So here's your life and here's your fate

You start to live just a little too late

The dawn of something gets in the way

It's the great golden meaning of today

Roll up and buy a ticket

Some paradise awaits

Don't ask me what to make of it

I'll just increase the rates

Don't ask for explanation

Don't ask for guides or books

Stare into space and breathe in

Keep eyes closed you can't look

And take that medication

To take bad thoughts away

Your half way outside nowhere's

Golden meaning of today.

Somewhere in the flow

My father kept their wedding cake in the freezer

After the funeral he gave it to the gardener

But there was never a perfect person around

Just half a devil and half and angel in you

But we flow together, like water

Until I can't tell you from me

Let your brother down, let your sister go

Take the long way round, ever in the flow

She is like a tree, she shelters me

So I lie here, in this shade

Help each other, love everyone

Every ray of light you count and forgive

I had no faith but you knew all along

Were you afraid? Really afraid?

Let your brother down, let your sister go

Take the long way round, ever in the flow

We all lose something along the way

Gloves and scarves and memories

Things turned over and down

Drawers with forgotten contents

Journeys we no longer need to make

Hats and coats and memories

We all lose something along the way

Let your brother down, let your sister go

Take the long way round, ever in the flow

Somewhere in the flow.

My Ghost

I was shivering in your shoes

Never had so much to lose

Try to catch up but you won't come close

Standing there in some stranger's clothes

Must be the one you love the most

Sayin' "do you want to be my ghost?"

Do you, do you, do you,

Want to be my ghost?

Be my ghost.

Somewhere

So what's on TV? Nothing in particular. 

Look forward to nothing save Game of Thrones, Fargo or the slowly diminishing Modern Family clones. 

I must find some meaning, some significance beyond the archway of flashing coloured lights and slowly growing, groaning sounds.

 More wine, more Mediterranean, more oil and fish and looking out of the window or talking pish. 

More whittling and turning, more sitting in the chair and squirming. Less politics and votes and grabbing others by their rasping throats. 

I don't change opinions, not with my bad leg and the war and the things that might be affected a little more like the economy and houses and prices and choices.

 Who ever knew? Things were so connected when the government go itself selected. If you can call it that. 

Those who believe what they want to believe, who avoid any facts or attitudes to relax or review or chew things over in an informed way, well maybe some day. 

More lyrics and pies, more repairs and sincerely meant attempts and tries and filling the space behind my eyes with dodges, bodges and curmudgeonly fudging the things I'm been loving or inadvertently hurting. 

So here comes the dust and the groans and the rust, the smoke alarm reminders and the email dividers and the updates and the tweets but at least I know of a comfy seat, somewhere.

Somewhere.

Turning blue

In the spring, head in the sand

crossed the bridge, came upon a dying man

coffee cup, all washed up

here's my life, harmonica playing in Fife

In the winter, spent my days

walking coastal paths and crooked ways

choked in fog, soaked in rain

looking out for you, but turning blue

Turning blue, seeing it through

Everyone else seemed to know what to do

I spoke my mind but I was drunk and blind

so I'm still waiting for you, turning blue.

IF

If I were a girl, I'd make a point

of marrying a tall guy

and at the wedding I'd wear

stripper heels under my dress

so I could tower graciously

dangerously

above all the guests.

If I were the recipient

of a banker's big bonus

I'd take over a restaurant for the night

maybe Tony Macaroni's

there would be pasta and wine

and much excited chatter

and I'd make it clear to all my guests

that money doesn't really matter

If I had a racehorse

It would be a bit of a dark horse

I'd expect it to win races

but as it crossed the finish line

I'd be looking at the bookies faces

If I was a television presenter

there on the exclusive couch

I'd wear a T shirt under my shirt

on it would be printed

“fuck the lot of you.”

If I was the kind of person

who's in literature

who speculates

I wouldn't consider this type of writing to be

great

If I was a music teacher I'd say to my pupils

“stick to the pentatonic”

because all those natural scales

sound bloody chronic.

“If” is a film

by Lindsay Anderson

I saw it when I was fifteen

or some age between

black and white

it may have had an certificate X

I forget

“If” is a song on Atom Heart Mother

Track 3, side 2 on vinyl

I had a copy but it was destroyed

in a fire.

Telly Savalas got to number one

with another “If”

not the Pink Floyd one.

Vanilla Man

Vanilla Man. 

That's what I am.

 Not one thing or the other just as regular as a slice of Spam. 

All the issues that don't bother, minorities and majorities, 

there's only me, as ordinary as eggs and ham. 

I'm the vanilla man. 

Never had an issue, never felt that strong, 

or argued my position, tried to right the wrong. 

I'm so unaffected, so steady on my feet,

 never guilty, never lifted, I'm the man upon the street. 

Yes I have opinions, but I keep them to myself. 

Got dreams and ambitions but they won't affect my health.

 I consume the usual products, I earn a living wage,

 I read the normal papers, but not quite every page.

 I have romance and glamour, a little in my life, 

I drive within the limit, I know my way round Fife. 

I'm the vanilla man, 

no strong flavours and no strawberry jam, 

no custom options, I don't give a damn, 

If you're lookin' for average then that's what I am. 

Three score and ten not counting. 

A plain vanilla man.

Vanilla Man.

Song nobody listens to

San Franciscan Sour Dough Bread

                                          

In my heart and in my head

                                                    

Want a long life livin' don't want to end up dead

San Franciscan Sour Dough Bread

                                                      

Red wine red lights red unpronounceable delight 

                                               

No necessary evil to take me to the heights 

                

Of San Franciscan Sour Dough Bread.

Not You

That's not you

I can see why you don’t want to

Go to Marrakesh or Kathmandu

Drinking sheep milk, eating billy goat stew

That just isn’t you

That's not you

Can't quite see you at a festival

Toilet lines and all those chemicals

Surfing crowds and smoking doobie doo

That just isn't you

That's not you

With an aqualung upon your back

Over the side before a shark attack

Immersed in water, the great deep blue

That just isn't you

That's not you

It's 'cos you're one of a kind,  but you stretch your own mind

My Sci-Fi Channel, Chanel No5, a good wine

Chocolate philosophy, pearls before swine

A comfy blanket, taxi home by nine

There's lots of risky things I guess you could do

But that just isn't you

That's not you.

Prepared

Underwhelmed

I'm prepared to be underwhelmed

                                          

I'm prepared to be underwhelmed

                

When the media gets going 

When the forecast says it's snowing

I'm prepared to be underwhelmed

There's a jet plane missing in the clear blue sky

I wish I could help, I can't even try,

They voted for this, so they said at the trial

Here comes the blizzard

Then there is a fire...but

I'm prepared to be underwhelmed

I'm prepared to be underwhelmed.

WWL

Wild West Lothian (WWL)

You can get to the moon just staying on the M9

WWL

They've got a flying saucer buried in an old shale mine

WWL

Drank in a Sevco pub and escaped with my life

WWL

So for penance and patience I observe them from Fife

WWL

Livin' in sin, making a wish, getting out, talking pish,

Searching for the meaning of life and things, climb to the stars on a pink pit bing,

Walking the canals and fallin' in or playing Mussorgsky on a mandolin,

WWL

Everyone else, we get off on your chops

WWL

If you can get through the door we'll go out to the shops

WWL

I love her deeply and  dirty as the mud in the Forth

WWL

Once my sentence is served I will tell her of course

WWL

I got my psychometric tests from a guy on Gumtree

WWL

So I can stay in the jungle but never be free

WWL

Scratching cards, livin' on tick, talking pish, getting sick,

Caught on camera an American  drone  strafes a designer in store in Livingstone,

Loathing the limits on my sin, they let me out so I could find the way in it,

WWL

They let me out so I could let you all in.

A better job

you can trample down

you can burn every page

release all your anger

let loose your rage

but love will do a better job

          

love will always do a better job

you might choose to twist

the knife in your rage

let the anger spit

rattle the bars in the cage

but love will do a better job

love will always do a better job

here am I there are you

see it all what do we do?  x 2

love will always do a better job

Not enough difference

There's a problem in my consciousness

It leads me to these words

Some serious and meaningful

But most remain absurd

I reach into reality 

To salve the mood I feel

But reality steps to the side

And so becomes unreal

flawed, studious and odd

flawed, narrow mind but shoulders broad

flawed, believing everything but god

Here I go, here I go, here we go.

A cat sleeping sideways on my optical prescription

I'm chopping vegetables fighting this addiction

Short sighted writing  reading factual fiction

And the angry men on TV say

Everything has had it's day, revolution, devolution, everyone must pay

I wish I could believe but the arguments just melt away

There's not enough difference today.

My world in your eyes

Is it truly true that we will never strain or meet?

Stuck like the toffee people on some greasy street

I had to hurry those words as you stretched the goodbye

And all the time I'm conscious of all the times you tried

My world in your eyes

My world in your eyes.

2 easy poems

Poem 1:

Make more spunk

You big dumb hunk

Hear Daft Punk

Then get drunk

And get a girl

Go out on the town

Spread it around

And lay her down

That's the way of the world

That's the ways of the world

Repetitious behaviour

Forever and ever

Nothing intervenes or gets between

Drunken celebrated sex

Rock n' roll cheese

Drugs and make believe

And hee-haw else

There's nothing else between.

Poem 2:

I've got my benign nihilism

And I'll take it to the bridge

Talks of claws and manuscripts

Raiders of the fridge

The Guardian and Independent

Opinions matter most

I read but I don't understand

My friend the Holy Ghost

These jumbled words are worrisome

Illiterate and dry

Jesus says “don't masturbate”

But you're too tired to try.

Funny Face

Digital suicide

In the silence of your rhyme

We called it sweet despair

Still running out of time.

How the anchors fly

In a storm of hope

How the metaphors

Line up to climb the rope.

Caustic inheritance

From a purse of moths and rags

Sleeping in dirty sheets

All hanging at the back.

How the anchors fly

To pull away the base

Here in infinity

You pull that funny face

You pull that funny face

Just pull your funny face.

Last shot at 2012

The place of the otherwise forgotten and possibly unmemorable, the hits don't hit anymore and the posts are vague and at best occasional. The design's slipped somewhere, the original good idea has somehow stretched too far, gone to the point of exhaustion and failed to return. It's unfortunate but that happens and sentimentality isn't such a valuable or creative thing that it needs to be nurtured. Another school of thought simply says let it all come round again, puff itself up and on it goes. It goes on and on it goes. Like a Fairytale.

We'll try a little harder in 2013...promise.

Didn't see it comin'

All those living in sin and integrity

All those struggling in shame

All those people shouting outside the embassy

All the others calling my name.

I'm your hero in the piles of rubbish

I can be the god of cheese

I am the bullet stuck in the chamber

And I will bring you to your knees.

All those thinking of a better tomorrow

All those busy building up that dream

All those digging graves for their principles

All of those who don't know what I mean.

I am the prophet at loss for an answer

I'm the scum on the MPs sleaze

I'm the curse on the lips of the white witch

And I will see you on your knees.

All those who've kissed the popes and princes

All those with feet held to the fire

All those with pensions, points and penalties

All those chasing small objects of desire.

I'll be your banker, checker and teacher.

I see the flame held to the breeze

I see the swimmer walk on water.

And this will bring you on your knees.

You tend your garden, do what you please, 

You don't see it comin', and it will bring you to your knees.