Tracklisting:
1. Torpor and Spleen
2. Long Pigs
3. Old Love
4. Apple Of My Eye
5. Painter By Numbers
6. Unflappable Man
7. The Drive
8. Turn On You
9. Glimjack Muttering
10. Barfly Prometheus
11. They Hate Us
12. The Love Zoo
13. South Of Heaven
14. Harsh Critic
15. Mengele In Brazil
Read the 'Glimjack' Bio
Released: October 29, 2010
Torpor and Spleen
Born two halves of a mournful whole, like a love that sprung from a murder,
Heaving, howling, pale and green,
One is Torpor and one is Spleen.
And at the base of the broken boll
a remnant of the father,
In the goo underneath your shoe,
Blueprint for disorder, drawn in
chalk and water.
Violence is king and love is pauper
in the mix of spleen and moral torpor,
and the words will only make you sad.
When the shaggy satan bird, perched upon the haunches of the human herd,
makes a sound,
Will you face the sound, will you turn around,
Or will you turn to water?
Well that river never ends, with many blind eyes and bends,
and you may note that it trends toward Oblivion,
with opposing banks that seem to meet in between,
One is Torpor and one is Spleen.
Long Pigs
How long is any favourite summer?
How long will any heart string hum any song?
How long ago did you leave me?
When did you decide that I was gone?
O I'm so lonely, I'm so lonely I could cry,
Tears so grateful to tip over the edge and spill from my ever thankful weeping eyes.
It's a pleasing, pretty pining,
They've got their myth and I got mine, and
I still walk the other way
From the long pigs on the dirty mile.
They come and congregate in a blind alley,
They herd and aggregate till they're finally fine,
and in style assembly,
making a scene like the Gray St. line.
Every ironic youth holds their own embarrassing truth inside,
And every aching elder, still searching for a cool shelter,
Must've paused and felt a savaged pride.
All you who walked upon a razor's edge, look down it was nothing but a garden hedge,
Your imagination ran away.
So hungry for repeating a feeling,
You never learned how to capture a feeling,
your imagination flew away.
Forever will you stay the long pigs on the dirty mile,
See what comes of hailing style.
Old Love
I don't know where it is, where the old love goes, probably to England.
Or a return to itself, to imagination, vainly, to be born again.
Our numbers will increase but will new love cease to grow old?
No.
In a dream I was having old love came to me
In a measure of a song.
Then a bird, then a roo, then a shaft of light by eucalypt just passing through.
Our numbers will increase but will new love cease to grow old?
It's unpleasant to the touch but it wants you so much
To include it in the passage of intoxicated play,
To be young, so to glory in the best part of the story,
Before it sinks to allegory and the trope of decay.
I don't know what to do with my old love, I can't leave it home alone.
And I don't know what to do with your old love, any more than you do.
Our numbers will increase but will new love cease to grow old?
Old love comes in and the company recedes
Because everybody reads what its company leads to -
A tightness in the chest, the un-pickable lock,
Reverse of metamorphoses, return to a rock,
Till somebody has to say, in the spirit of fair play,
"Old love you cannot stay, just go away"
Till somebody has to say, in the spirit of the day,
"Old love you cannot stay", and it rolls away.
Apple of my Eye
Even under occupation, idle.
Trussed like a lily leg in a Roman sandal.
Even in the throe of invasion I hear the Siren call, your majesty too much for a country boy to handle.
A million sets of eyes fixed upon the prize,
All I ever knew was not to blink when I heard the lies.
No matter who owns you you're ever the apple of my eye.
Did I dream there was cricket at the Punchbowl the night we all got locked in at The Bat and Ball,
The Irish laying into each other after shots of the Fernet Branca?
The fountain at the top of the street ran the colours of the visiting fleet,
In the morning sunshine we dreamt of retreat, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week?
O and how you show it, I could never outgrow it,
Stranger in a stranger's heaven, having the ball and throwing it, no matter who owns you you're always the apple of my eye.
Ask the red headed girl at the bar, ask the pickled poet drowned in his jar, o you don't to travel too far to get to the wonderful place where you are.
Let me never leave it, let me never forget, nothing holds a candle,
Your majesty too much for a country boy to handle...
O and how you show it, I could never outgrow it,
Stranger in a stranger's heaven, having the ball and throwing it, no matter who owns you you're always the apple of my eye.
A million sets of eyes fixed upon the prize,
All I ever knew was not to blink when I heard the lies.
No matter who owns you you're ever the apple of my eye.
Painter By Numbers
O what a mess you're getting me in,
You should stop having so many children,
You breed like a white wedding christian
Who never heard the word that greed was a sin.
And when you talk it's the operator,
If you listen it's the interrogator,
Nothing adds up but you read like a calculator,
You have a gift for blunders,
Painter by numbers.
The future for you and me is bleak
as long as you keep on keeping on with
painting by numbers, I know it's chic,
But by no means the finer technique.
So many shared thoughts and ideas, so many feelings and fears,
Welling up till your cheeks are wet with tears,
While the Leviathan slumbers,
Painter by numbers.
O what a mess you're getting me in,
You should stop having so many children,
You mate like a martyred muslim
Already on to his 99th virgin.
So many shared masterpieces, but they all share the very same features,
Him begot her begot he begot she,
Are you as stunned as me?
So many shared thoughts and ideas, so many feelings and fears,
Welling up till your cheeks are wet with tears,
While the Leviathan lumbers on,
Painter by numbers.
Unflappable Man
Hell doesn't break loose,
it's not a river that breaches its banks,
a disease that decimates the ranks,
For these kinds of things we may one day give thanks...
But it's something I can't easily understand,
how I'm laughing, the unflappable man.
It isn't all those promises you vow to keep then don't,
it isn't that the world will end but the likelihood that it won't.
O alarm, o wonderful alarm,
Wake me up from remembering...
O I know the drill,
I know the bit to the brain and the old bitter pill,
that moves on the pain and muffles the sound of the kill,
Almond of Mercy...
But it's something I can't easily understand,
how I'm laughing, the unflappable man.
You employ your brightest sparks
to build a city out of light,
And toil while the city sleeps
To put all the wrongs to right...
O subliminal purposes,
beneath the shimmering surfaces,
All agents of forgetfulness
rally to me now -
The Drive
For how long have you believed that you belong?
For a tourist, life is just a tour.
In all of nature, nothing stranger,
Or more natural than the force that drives the hand.
The Drive.
Trophy wife, trophy wife of magnate's only son,
Do you have a view on the murder of the fourth estate?
On civilisation, on the illusion?
The lovely dead mans painting hanging in the magnate's boardroom?
On The Drive
Kiln skulls rising on hot air over writhing beeches where a blue skinned boy soldier makes machine gun love to a barely breasted body met in the copse, while yonder the ocean swells to the spring bells and lo we have breached the badlands border and drive on some coastal el Dorado and the bells are the meek kwarks of urine bleached gulls which circle upside down around a tarnished inverse city, some corroded underworld place whose gate is a plagued up Luna Park face.
Home is a dreamt of thing. We continue to drive...
All alone, I see past the pendulum,
All alone, I conceive the drive,
Then I ask you, "Are you afraid of what I might do?"
But the day I listen to you I cease to be alive, I cease to have The Drive
Turn on You
I'm the dog you tutor for war,
In the pit, bite or bit, there's only one law,
But soon, soon, there'll be two
When I turn on you
I'm the force that through the red wire (ref Dylan Thomas on this line)
Fires light across your eyes
Till you are edified,
But one silent afternoon
I will turn on you.
I'm the soldier who, in his dead hours,
Took the flesh of a horse to make
'Only Joy' then faint in the flowers
To dream of this :
A woman's kiss and of the April showers
Of home, home, never due,
But soon, soon, though as dead as the moon,
I will turn on you,
I will turn on you.
Glimjack Muttering
Maybe I divine you a passage from the darkness to your dreaming home,
And when you cross my palm with a little bit of coin you give a little dog a little bone,
O but could you hardly blame for leading you astray a little while,
When you never stop asking for service with a smile?
If my cup's a little empty, why aren't you filling it up?
Now sleep is a slow undertaker who bides in the bed with Time,
And if the body in the middle is a wellspring, how tense is the coil in mine?
And the anvil, red anvil, pillow for my hammering head,
Slippery and slick with the bulls I've bled.
If the dream is half empty
Why aren't you filling it up?
I am the little flame atop of the candle,
I am the little that I let you see,
And by leading you through these streets at night I made you depend on me.
So where now the smiling faces?
How now the shimmering cup?
It looks a little empty,
Why aren't you filling it up?
Barfly Prometheus
When the wind fell out of my sails where did it go?
A hot wind made of my sails a parchment and don't you know,
I wrote this down in spit, in my own invisible ink.
You breathe your hot wind upon it that you might know what I think.
(When I wake up, when I wake up)
Every morning a new sun rise.
The bead of sweat on my eyelid is a tocsin tear,
It heralds the thing that I did that finds me here.
(When I wake up, when I wake up)
Every morning a new sun rise.
Born again to drink the tides,
Born again to tender my sides,
Cruel beak and flaming eye,
The mid-shelf mirror don't ever lie.
From the base of the gullet to the gristle tip of the thigh,
Food for the birds, swollen and scored by the friendly fires.
I gave you light, warmth in your shelter,
Such a pretty prize.
Now do as you will, I feel ill, go and burn the skies.
(When I wake up, when I wake up)
Every morning a new sun rise.
They Hate Us
For all of our middling works all our 'caritas'.
(They hate us)
Fallen on deaf ears all our words to the wise,
(They hate us)
Though wooden, imperious, they seem to guide us,
More good than ill the light on the hill.
They hate us like the heart hates the heroin,
They hate us like the harbinger sun,
They hate us more than the American, than they ever hated him,
And that's saying something.
Maybe it's apple envy for getting the worm?
(They hate us)
But spurn the little snake and see the worm turn.
(They hate us)
Got a hook, got a line, might make you smile or cry.
Might send you up, might send you down.
They hate us like the heart hates the heroin,
They hate us like the popular song,
They hate us more than the sinner hates the sin
When it puts him in a spin, then completes him.
I know hatred, I hate us too.
(It's true)
Every race, every color in this dying island zoo.
(Sad but true)
Every year a little bit less like
Getting to know you.
Nothing new beneath this sun, nothing new.
I hate us like the heart hates the heroin,
I hate us like the harbinger sun,
I hate us more than the farmer hates the field for the disappointing yield,
Being fallow.
They hate us like the heart hates the heroin,
They hate us like the popular song,
They hate us more than the singer hates to sing
Of the very thing that loves him.
The Love Zoo
No question love's dominion,
A bandied word to the power of ten,
But what of love's new livery?
Is nothing ever what it seems to be?
The vanishing tiger, the mad ant, the vicious shrew,
The venomous spider, the happy go lucky curlew,
And the bike riding bear congregate to see what's to do...
In the Love Zoo.
In the Love Zoo nothing goes to script,
So many empty chambers remind of tomb or crypt,
In the Love Zoo no longer any clue to bear out any evidence
We came in two by two by two...
In the Love Zoo.
See within the bamboo stands, some gentle tame orang utans,
You do what Philip Larkin says he did
And break them like meringues.
You have an immunity, you have every new disease.
The Zoo is a battery, you enter on hands and knees.
You bellow for satisfaction and still say please...
In the Love Zoo the hardest thing to find, among all the seething animals, one other of your kind.
In the Love Zoo the perils of the cage, the fever of enclosure, the hurt and heat, and hurt and rage...
In the Love Zoo.
South of Heaven
The road to the silver lake has been closed,
No walking, no horseback, dirt track,
Leave if you know a place you can go that isn't infernal.
A wave will lap, a zephyr will blow, everlasting truths
That some of us know
Who made our beds in the south of heaven that night.
A strange and sinister gardener who'd think
To encourage an element to make like rose
And bloom till it shows all it can be.
But this bright flower has a whole other power
To hold one in thrall while we all of us cower,
Who made our beds in the south of heaven that night.
The road to the silver lake has been closed,
No walking, no horseback.
The road to your house leads to my house,
I dreamed it, saw it,
Stark as a snake, leading up to the lake and into the town.
A wave did lap and a zephyr it blew,
Everlasting truths that some of us knew
Who lay in our beds in the south of heaven that night.
The road to the silver lake has been closed,
No walking, no horseback, dirt track, leave.
Harsh Critic
You hold the glass up to the sunlight,
I hold you in my heart,
You look for ways now to finish me,
I don't remember ever starting.
I need you out of my way, but I don't have the strength to move you.
Just to get up on the shoulder,
Just to ogle on the valley below,
Just to stand for a little while and listen to the singing of the high wind blowing,
Is a miracle, an act of my will,
It isn't palpable the heart beats still,
But you're so empty nothing's ever gonna fill you,
I need your help I need you out of my way, but I don't have the strength to move you.
All the humming drones in the hive,
All the hanging apples in the grove,
All the tender messages that never arrive,
And every temple that the hammer stove.
I get down at the sound of the wind in the trees,
And when I know the strife is coming in threes,
But the curling hand is not a disease,
It's just a sign I need you out of my way, but I don't have the strength to move you.
Mengele in Brazil
No birthday gifts again this year,
Nor family, well wishers, friends.
I look to have dropped off the branch, or so it seems,
And on seeming depends :
The light that history chooses to shine over deeds maybe done, maybe didn't,
A long flight, a short throw, what is and what really isn't.
I'm half way to treating myself my dear,
Though I never said I was ill,
But they stabbed a poor dark skinned boy last night
Just to see what it is to kill.
Such a curse for a sensitive person,
Hamstrung, hollowed, discursed.
Been given the confine and stalling, and having to see in reverse.
O when did it come so tropical, when did the language shift?
O where is the golden summer of my youth and will this pall ever lift?
I'm half way to the man on the street corner, I know him for what he is, a shill,
But I get no relief with the former, not bottle, nor candle, nor pill.
Hark to ebony angels singing, and down in the centre a celestial ringing,
"All aboard!" shouts the east Indian, off to find my gentle twin.
When everything merges so possible, what I do or just what I don't,
A flint stone, a black crow, what resonates, what won't.
O when did it come to this and that, where are the pleasure and thrill?
"Will I smell the fresh mown lawn of my life?" asks Mengele in Brazil.
While ever the air is breathable, men will ever kill.
O yesterday, tomorrow, find Mengele in Brazil.
Lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)