Tambourine Slang

In hard and arid valleys, gold teeth and chains
Turn me loose on better plains, be well
My friend we know these paths too well
Against the pull of mermaids this rope strains
In my conch I ride, and nothing matters
I want to lie on hard grounds in warm rains
And tear my torch, my clothes in tatters
Never knowing how high I fell
But pushing up against the basements of buildings
And selling all my belongings, my longings
Are thrown into the dust til you can't tell
Rain and mud from flesh and blood
I'll bet you when you look into this well
You'll find that all your bombs were duds
You'll find that all your lies were good
And carved in iron, burnt in wood
You will retire to live less guiltily
And in your garden set your children free
The coward cooks will strike up the band
A crazed and cautious jungle jamboree
And marching slowly Eastward hand in hand
Following the sound of my unholy tambourine
They'll bring land to sea, and sea to land
Nobody will remember what has been
No one will mention anything we've seen
The sea will hear, the sky will understand

Holy Cow

These days, the drums in my ears don't forgive
Pound a new rhythm, inspire a new palpitation
They rattle through my skull, and grip, shake
The movement is too low, too deep, these moments
I just wait for it to stop. My faculties forsake
Me, writhing in the shadow of the heathen exultation
I grin

My brothers have all done, died in the mud
Fallen hard and I cannot help them up
But these park bench mutations don't bother me
I have lungs full of air, feet with real souls, veins of blood
I have a beautiful poison in my brain makes me feel free
Makes me laugh at nothing, makes the room spin
I'm going to turn tail, turn into a holy cow
And come back years later to teach children how

Corrugated Men

They were heroes, unsung
these petty, leather-faced
and ugly men. Caught in
the machinery of life, maimed
and forgotten, unshaven and dumb
but moving, slowly, through the din.
And glory in success they claimed
until, their quotas filled, replaced,
their job was more than done.
Did any of them question their utility?
Not one. Their lives were a futility
and none so voiceless as the other.
I pictured foul old Frank's bones
his cigarettes, his gall stones
his rough hands, and his voice
that the death-in-cardboard racket used to smother.
These men never had a choice.

There's an ache, reaching up from
stomach, spleen to centre sternum
churning, slowly turning and
like the thrumming of an ocean liner
a thread that's drawn out, longer, finer
the lungs yearning for the gut
and winded, never sorry— but
a feeling that you can't hold in your hand

Lights pulsing in a neon alley,
Broken strings, clean shards,
and broken plank guillotine phone numbers
Walking falling standing in the quiz line
Lost travelcard excuses and bombs
and our thumbs are off

Further falls, boots and chameleons
but not the remnant of the desert
The smiles on the faces of executioners,
pimps, colonels and devils
Standing gutted falling euphoria

Inferno

Dancing through red halls
with sold and veinéd hands
gripping and pursuing oak beams
and exchanging vials of foreign sands

Lassoes and last ditch darts flung
bulls' eyes roll back wild and slow
dripping sides of veal are slung
on plinths and hooks of golden glow

The justice of a vengeful Baal
congeals in blood and glutted maw
a gauntlet run through marble halls
with rage and lust and guts and gore

Zephyr, electric blue, tarmac and rain
Synthesis of light on water, and clouds like wings
A wild abandoned fever you can't maintain
And a dream of dark and troubling things

Corneas copped out, neurons firing off
Standing before the gate of an oilslick rainbow
The colour dribbles out the end of the trough
As the timid townsfolk bar and bolt their windows

Mind saturation is my infatuation

The time has come and gone
The trains are filing out the station
And the policeman asks the tramp to please move on

Yndi Halda Prophitman Waking Dream

and nothing and nothing and nothing
falling silent after crazy pasty faithless
nothing more than meets the eye
and the wall talling falling calling you
to fall like sleep into the cupboard
bedknobs, broomstiKs
wardrobes wombs weathervanes and ravens
I was feeling kinda seesick but the band
screamed Out For MORE
and your pavement eyes and your mercury mouth
with your reverent tones in the missionary times
following your tragic grandparent's eyes as Many Rivers To Cross plays picture your tangerine skies as the turnstile kaleidoscope yellow towers over the sun Lucy hello you complete me only when we repeat replete of meat
INCREDIBLY HIGH they grow, take you away, and advance, retreat, entreat, and defeat
To insist on more of oxygen, life
To resist the plague that rasps at life
To reach a place in true poetic beauty
To not perform at the behest of fools
To only be a fool for those you love
To only love those you have and can be
To only and ever always be more
To BE Less Mute Inglorious
To be more vocal
To be more glorious
To be, that and only that
To live the spaces between the notes,
To drum
I pledge

Halloween

In rabbit warrens, burrows and dens
I have been tumbling down for days,
Blinded by the lights flashing between roots
And clutching my head as I spin into the dark.

First, a pale torch singer sang me to sleep in the dawn
We lay together, two cold creatures shivering in the womb
Then rose, made of stone, to part in haste before the day.
She left a billowing blood-red token on my bed.

I slept the sun out and, stump-legged, loped
To where my comrades wandered to and fro
We watched as the pagan masses gathered together
With the gleam of electricity sounding a pulse in their strobed eyes
My friend the shark grinned as his eyes turned black
And the saviour ran from room to room,
Tending the sick and wiping blood from his glasses.

Then, a kind of ecstasy took me as I climbed the stair
Death, in the corner, smiled and ran his fingers through his hair.

I woke at the end of the world
Stood up too fast and my head fell off
And as I wandered the dark streets home
That pale torch singer's face shone bright in my twilight mind.

Escape My Mind

Ethics is death, aesthetics life
To you who speak of moving forward
I say you run in a mouse's wheel
Until you break out, you have nothing

And Marx there is no progress
And Hegel there is no discussion
And Nietzsche: "The Uber-man is dead,"
"We have killed him"

No eternal recurrence,
No Russian Christ
No moral to this tale
Only what you can touch and feel

You philosophers, break out of your minds
Break out of your closet rooms
And run the streets wild
There's nothing left to think, only the sun on your skin
And no light in your eyes, but reflected off the parked cars
O furious! O confine me not!