Dali

Salvidor Dali

Sneakin' down the alley

Heading for the ballet

In the Auditorium

Hieronymus Bosch

Under the cosh

Never at a loss

In the Planetarium:

There are many artists out there, most are not quite parasites

Many deserve their human rights

More so than others might allow, for art is such a sacred cow,

To the educated, emancipated masses,

Who want it done away with,

Daily Mail style, while all the while just

Moan about the licence fee

So we give it away, for free.

Paul McCartney's Lamborghini

On the street or on the TV

On the beach in her bikini

Like a woman likes the meaning

All the boys are heavy breathing.

In the pages, on the screen

Everywhere you've ever been

Tyre marks black across the road

All the places that you want to go.

Wire wheels and shiny machinery

Paul McCartney's Lamborghini.

Couch v Sofa

"Great, that stuck up bitch won't ever notice a twenty missing from her handbag, nor that mascara either."

"This is fecking useless, a horrible tinny sound that won't impress Simon or the other judges."

"Ok, I'm fed up with you SKY, so maybe I can't recall my PIN number, you lot must have it on file somewhere, I'm payin' £40 a month for this."

Not a couch but a sofa, a return to the settee: Doe eyed and supremely satisfied with their lot in life they sprawl barefoot in carefree ecstasy never worried about the interest free bow-wave that crashes before them. Sofa women enjoy the warmth and comfort of having nothing to worry about or be responsible for as they relax into sofa induced trances in their perfect staged lounges across the world of advertisements. There are no spills, crumbs or pet hairs here in the sofa dimension. Couches are king, places to dream dreams, stroke cheap guitars, rummage in a neighbours handbag while she makes the coffee, talk to the sofa help line on the phone – it's all like a perfect world stuck in 1955 (which we all know happened to be the perfect year) and nothing needs be paid for until after the divorce is finalised.

Terrorist's blues

whatever's done is done

lost to change, out stare the sun

embrace the blindness yet to come

safe in some knowledge, ripped and torn

that those in power couldn't care less

for the truth, honesty or openness

so you just hurt and take another hit

with no way of expressing it

the poor, the foolish and the brave

watch the concrete poured on every grave

recall the faces but the names are gone

step into shadows everyone

clear as blood, too thin to run

whatever's done's already done

whatever's done is done

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.