Clay

A picture of a man with a rope laden head

painted on a tablet of clay,

purchased in an alley in the town of Taormina

on a cloudless Sicilian day.

We feed, we drink,

endeavour not to think.

The Isola, addled lust,

slow intimations of dust.

Not me, not me, that is not me, that is not my clay, not me…

George Johnston tilts in his abbreviated span,

a young woman makes an entreaty,

thousands of miles and days from Hydra

on a dim, forsaken night in Sydney.

To the rains exposed,

summer rains that open and close.

To a soak, to a lunger,

they keep getting younger and younger.

Not me, not me, that is not me, that is not my clay, not me…

I have always felt like a sheep beneath the pelt of an ape.

You can never get away there’s always some new affray to escape.

The next ten years will be terrible.

Not me, not me, that is not me, that is not my clay, not me…

Bee Gone

‘Be gone’, the words that sent me out into the day,

as though I were an actor in a play,

a silent green midsummer of dismay,

where I did not see a bee, an Apis failed to fly,

espy did not my eye, no bee,

no anthophile today.

I wondered were they on a holiday?

And where do they all go when they’re away?

But then I thought perhaps the queen was dead

and all the workers fled,

the royal jelly bled, O dreadful, O!

No flower would be kissed upon its head,

no strawberry or bean roused from its bed,

and all of destiny is gathered in a garden

darkened by the sun who’s sulking up behind the shed.

Be good, be bad, be here, bee gone…

‘Be gone!’, is what the Mother’s really trying to say,

‘Get out of me and kindly crawl away…

you have a very parasitic way

of taking everything and rarely paying.

The worker bee has only just one sting,

but you are like the wasp you poison everything,

and it’s only in defence she has to choose

to fatally abuse the spider in the tree,

the clumsy lover’s knee

as blissfully she comes in clover’.

When all you want to do is get it over,

and leg it up the dirty money tree,

well it isn’t any great surprise no bee

has buzzed before my eyes or that

I should surmise that we should disappear

and be gone.

Be good, be bad, be here, bee gone…

The Animals

When I was younger I heard a sound,

came to me from the dark side of town,

they were getting the cattle in,

never heard such a mournful din,

to the place where they render the beasts into muck

for frozen burgers and discount chuck,

I caught the chorus on the reel to reel,

you can still hear them singing.

But it’s a song that won’t ever be heard

on the radio, don’t be absurd,

it’s all too sad and you can’t understand a word,

it’s not remotely danceable.

We’ll get what we deserve for what we’ve done to the animals.

Oh gentlemen, ladies, your pound of flesh

and blood, take a barrel of the stuff,

from the fruit of your own loins -

‘Tidbits Of Your Kids!’ -

sweet breads from the basket of love.

All the beasts of the earth and the sky

seems we’re here just to make you die,

bake you into a murderous pie,

fry you on to a stick.

Every living thing with which the water teems,

in the cloud of our legion latrines,

in the nets of our trawling machines,

in the plastic sub-marine…

All beasts of the earth, of the vault of the sky,

drugged up, fed up, forced to multiply,

burned out, poisoned, run down, electrified,

clear out spaces to feed our faces…

and that’s why

We’ll get what we deserve for what we’ve done to the animals.

Cossack Tide

My brother in law is a miner,

my brother in law is a mixed race man.

Is he conflicted? Well you could wonder.

He makes his living deep and under the ground.

My brother in law loves my sister,

and that’s the matter, and all the matter.

There is a tide in the cares of men,

mine has gone out, and it’s not coming back in.

Now nothing is in itself curious,

that, in itself, is not curious.

I can leave most everything more or less

as it’s found.

The points in the sky make me wonder not why,

but why I’m not wondering why I’ve no wonder.

There is a tide in the cares of men,

mine has gone out, and it’s not coming back in.

Now I live in a place that sleeps in history,

and only awakens for some drowsy relations

like a drunk, sullen man,

rousing hard, with roving hand,

who has only thought of pleasure,

who is like to understand -

there is a limit,

there is a ceiling,

there is a shying away from all feeling.

There is a tide in the cares of men,

mine has gone out, and it’s not coming back in.

Comments are Closing

Another childless christmas,

don’t be sad

for the child you never had,

for the daughter or likely lad,

who would help you disappear and be glad.

(Do they) keep saying you’re not quite a woman?

(Do they) do they say you’re not fully a man?

Not til you’ve started to live for somebody,

somebody other than you understand?

Another childless christmas on the way,

hear the candlelight carollers play.

Is this the best we can do by the way?

Caterwauling the evening away.

Still the picture is loving and pleasing,

and the number it does on your reasoning

Is welcome like oblivion is

welcome this season, it’s a very strange season.

Holy hell, now the talent show singer

breaks the chains on a Yule humdinger,

By the way that he buries the band you might think

he did sing of the blight in the land.

Another childless christmas so have a cry,

tell them all you got dust in your eye,

when will you finish your ghost lullaby?

When will you learn not to sing it?

Where were you when they murdered the river?

(I was there)

Where were you when the bowl got turned over?

(I was there)

For the child that you never had

don’t be voided, don’t be sad.

Where will you be this time tomorrow,

(I’ll be gone)

when the world is a great bloody sorrow,

(All gone)

and every day is a fever, a fight,

and every Christmas is a childless Christmas?

Bloodsport and Porn

All grace, all our grace, in a dirty thimble,

in palsy halls some paintings kept,

in ricket basements a trinket or two,

maybe a leopard survives in a zoo.

No renaissance, no emerald dawn

but porn and bloodsport, bloodsport and porn.

And a song, and some play, a shiny violin

in a vault in a fuckwit’s mansion

excavated yesterday -

curse this elevated state

no amount of wealth can sate

Now soul’s a store bought empty yawn

you’ve porn and bloodsport, bloodsport and porn.

They play with their balls, they kill the animals.

This night contains ten thousand years

of screaming echoes in my ears.

Enter auditorium,

exit vomitorium.

A very tatty veil torn,

porn and bloodsport, bloodsport and porn.

The Derangement

Your true love gave you a mocking bird,

have you ever known a bird of the taxiderm to sing?

Your true love is a mocking you

and now you come to think he seems to like that kind of thing,

lately,

he likes to pull your string.

And in conversation a practised deceit,

far flung opinions whose points never meet,

beating your brow till you offer up defeat.

Strange entertainment,

The Derangement.

Bold undertaker, apocalyptic chronicler,

a sage on the page, high tower ringer,

harbinger, sooth-light.

With your vague epistolary sung into the night

is there any establishment impervious to your might?

Brave poet of the coming blight?

Two conversations are had in one verse,

one holds an argument, one holds a curse.

No-one is listening and still they go flailing,

Strange entertainment,

The Derangement.

The leader of your island is botherer of god,

he wants to lead the sinners to the trembling Land of Nod.

East of Eden by way of Monaro,

bitter fruit needs picking in the Orchard of Sorrow

by you unbelievers, by you layabouts, you leaners.

Three minutes long and a half is a song

but unless it gets played a million times it never left the page.

They want it not to matter,

they want it all to change,

they want you to get used to it

so none of this shit seems strange,

it’s how they derange…

But a mad conversation is better than none,

once we stop talking the silence has won,

silence like after the bullet leaves the gun,

Strange entertainment,

The Derangement.

The Scent of Power

When the leader of the free lunch

had the poet of the profit gospel,

with the captain of the cardboard box

and the lady of the rapine harvest,

and the son of the actual satan

with his princess of the people’s underwear,

did you wonder at the smell in the air?

I wondered at the smell in the air

Powder, sweat, decay, underneath the grassy Tom Ford

and the Washington cat spray.

The sky was blue in that DC way -

the kind of blue that Miles would never play -

a light breeze roofied both our flags for a dance,

you must’ve got all kinds of dizzy in your pants…

with the paunchy civil war dress up bullshit pageantry,

did you think ‘what the fuck is this thing standing next to me?’,

or did you fully get lost in that circus,

picturing the picture taking pride in your rumpus room?

What a spread they did lay, such a table!

So many smells to discern were you able :

Vegemite, party pies,

Coon blocks and crackers,

And the barest faint whiff of the Engadine…

Uncanny Island

Uncanny Island, flickering asylum,

strange to me, and ordinary.

Girt by the ocean, property of ghosts -

from dreams of violence,

wakening to silence.

They are born to rule you, like base desires school you.

Indian miner wants to get to China

(through a wide and open,

wide and open wound).

I don’t recognise you,

though you comport almost the same,

there’s something crook in how you

fix me with your smile,

just a little bit insane.

What’s the point of having all this hand

if you cannot wield the blade?

History is made by those who understand,

if you don’t slash and burn you fade.

Uncanny Island, Uncanny Island.

I don’t recognise the sound anymore,

though you call the same old game,

there’s something rubbish in the sound of your voice,

something rabid, something lame.

What’s the point of all this pliant earth

if one cannot make it pay?

From the valley of the Tarkine

to the basin of Galilee.

They are born to rule you, like base desires school you,

And so perverse continue down that shaft

to find your uncanny self.

Uncanny Island, Uncanny Island.

Your Useful Idiot

It’s a pleasure, a pleasure to be useful,

surprising how long it took me to see…

a pleasure to be dutiful

only the question remains…how may I be?

Whether in the realm of friendship,

where I’m good for a laugh and frequently liquid.

Or be it the forge of industry,

I am the deadline, I’m the one you want to stick with.

As long as there’s a need,

for as long as there’s a purpose I’m filling it,

as long there’s a call to heed

I’ll heed it, and be your useful idiot.

I’ve all my life been a useful idiot,

surprising just how far one can get,

suppressing desire and courting denial

and spiralling deep into rage and regret.

It’s one thing being useful

and another being an idiot.

Like whiskey and cola, coming together

it’s a wonderful whole other thing that you get.

As long as there’s a need,

for as long as there’s a purpose I’m filling it,

as long there’s a call to heed

I’ll heed it and be your useful idiot.

All lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)