AWOL

Three dozen cycles, give or take a sum,

The sum of that experience - how to keep running.

O I know justice, it's a birthright if you're born right,

and I know how handsome is that trick of the light,

So don't be mistaken in thinking I'll do right

given the chance to do wrong again and again.

Summer romeos casing the park,

by the uniform urinals of love's rural province.

O don't you know time, with its petty vial of sands,

inscrutable face and merciless hands?

And don't you know love?

It's a whirlwind of feathers,

tickles you to your nethers and leaves a terrain of despair…

And I know when grief goes unchecked,

There's a kind of relief in the wreckage for the wrecked…

Weren't you alone last time I saw you?

How do you keep running from the world and the war?

O I know young fathers who once were like soldiers,

AWOL in flung places

or without standing orders,

Alarming approaches to time and it's killing,

no victimless crime again and again.

Monday night, Goodies and The Doctor,

Now that bath time's over, time for pyjamas.

O I know self pity, it begins with nostalgia,

and you'll die of melancholy if the dolor don't get ya,

And I know a poem on a wall next to a picture

of a dick and a fanny, by a smear of regret.

And it sings of its own long demise, something about imperium,

and a new sun will rise,

and "O please don't go with those horrible guys, they only want one thing."

O please don't go with those horrible guys, they only want one thing,

Again and again.

After The Crack Up

After the fun, after the freedom,

The discipline of married men?

What a fanned out feather paints it rosy,

What a rank file of flowers make the posey,

What a limp congregation.

I was sick before the germ got a handle on,

I might've been the very cattle it was riding on,

With the right information,

Moderate education, middle home.

What a fella needs to know,

Is all a fella doesn't need to know,

If you suffer you don't talk about it,

Which was the lie that laid me low.

Under the coat, under the blanket,

In the wicker chest, in the sparrow breast.

What does it tell you when it tells you now you grow up?

What does it tell you when it tells you now you be a man?

Tidy your thinking up, finish your drinking up?

Be the Tom, be the Jack, beat the beaten track,

Die the slow death your forefathers died, in fact

Be ever lonely and angry inside of that

Maze of rage and inchoate affection.

What a fella needs to know,

Is all a fella doesn't need to know,

If you suffer you don't talk about it.

To "men who know and men who knew…",

Who for the "Silent grip of hands will do"*

And if you suffer you don't talk about it,

Which was the lie that laid me low…

After the fall, after the crack up,

Nothing then? Nothing then.

*Henry Lawson "I'm an Older Man Than You"

Bastard Time

Nothing gave birth to time,

Time has no birthday, no mum no dad.

Nobody ever taught time,

No social contract, moral code, No good no bad.

And in the dirt, in the bottle of our poor atmosphere,

The lesson here is never learnt.

You feed on dogs bodies, on carcasses of government,

You tongue the graft over the grief.

Bastard time, you give no relief

but it’s said you give relief.

You heal the wound like a crocodile saves its victim for later…

What do you love?

Leaves turned, woods burned, ashes then

Are what you love?

Fraud time, child’s birthday,

Spring deceit, brood love,

Tiny feet, callous time.

You light the womb like a pantomime stage,

Give dress to plainness, cake to age,

And make us clowns…

You heal the wound like a crocodile saves its victim for later…

You give the cheeks a rosy hue

As the lips are turning blue,

This is the artist in you, bastard time.

And you our guide to perpetual suicide,

But what makes you sad, what makes you tired?

What says to you as you’re passing it by

“Oh no, no, no, this should never have died”?

To be the snake, and the sword, and the veil,

To author the joke and be the sting in the tail…

No currency can buy,

No tale can ever tell,

No thread can make a stitch in you,

Nor any tolling bell arrest you.

A Dog Starved

Muddy and familiar tracks lead into the room where no-one goes,

only I know its true dimensions -

In a hotel on a burning shore, derelict and furnished by the war

that no-one ever mentions

Give it all away, baby give it all away, nobody wants to

hear about the price you pay, you're a dog starved.

Everybody knows their own, stick to their imaginary zones

to keep the information.

We only differ from the rat, given a stranger in the pack,

in how we improvise to tear the strips from him.

Give it all away, baby give it all away, nobody wants to

hear about the price you pay, you're a dog starved.

Now do you play the beating organ for attention

or to effect a gerrymander of the soul,

you hear the murmuring of mournful incantation

"don't re-enrol, don't re-enrol"

Today you only have to play along,

or make it seem as though you tried,

Or did I ever only play along?  Why would I?

Half an hour of rain, half an hour of sun,

In ode to violence the island sings its uncanny song

and I can only think I don't belong, and is this oblivion,

Is this oblivion?

And so the pattern will repeat,

see the same worm at the same sheet,

where all desires seem to wane or taper.

You say no worst, now there is none,

Look how the palimpsest has won,

how father breaches son like brick through wallpaper…

Give it all away, baby give it all away, nobody wants to

hear about the price you pay, you're a dog starved.

Give it all away, I've got to give it all away, I've got to give it all away,

Just a dog starved.

Hobart Obit

When should I wash the smell of you from my hands?

I've a bottle set by for the afternoon but I've yet to make my plans.

I been trying to clean up,

But there's always another nest of glass, another nick above the eye,

trails of blood in the grass,

But the folly wants reason, thinks it's justified,

that I should parse the matter…?

I tried to care for you the best I could,

We mapped it out and reconfigured the old neighbourhood,

But time is a bastard, time is vial of petty sands,

the body's a basket emptying to the niggardly hands

Of Aeon for his array of our strung out decay,

A little more each day, such is the arrangement.

In the years, in a vigilant garden, nothing to fear,

O in the years receiving your love, having your love.

Send a message to the Hell of the hounds,

Not a hair on this pair will e're your Cerberus stare down.

To Elysium express, to the hedgerow of the blessed,

Make it wide and warm egress, no more Winter for them.

Honour to the animal,

Come to me in my new pall,

and embrace me at the wall,

make it crumble and fall…

In the years, in a vigilant garden, nothing to fear,

O in the years receiving your love, having your love.

When should I wash the smell of you from my hands?

I've a bottle set by for the afternoon but I've yet to make my plans.

Better than blue skies, jasmine in the Spring,

Thinking to conquer death with a whiff of the other thing...

But today it rains on, and the mountain is mist-ified,

With Toby already gone, now Billy has gently died.

Father Jack And Mr. T

O how many houses have we lived in?

How many still are standing after each and every fall

of you and me,

Brother Lock and Sister Key?

And I would think it funny were it not so wretched

In how it plays out like the cheapest fare

this age adores,

But then what are we, Brother Lock and Sister Key?

Only exile, only separation, only disavowal

when the information comes.

Nobody's free, Brother Lock and Sister Key.

And do you know how masterful is Brother Lock?

Insinuates himself into each recess and door

To make a lee for Sister Key to marry in once more…

Only spasms of love that get by on memory,

raw passages of a cooked up story, that nobody reads,

and nobody ever will.

Only exile, only separation, only after a while,

when the cheap sensation's done,

And nobody's free, Brother Lock and Sister Key…

How's it to wake to find another tooth is missing,

and vaguely recollect the stone that you've been kissing?

How's it to find you've been many years blind

and always leading?

And I would think it funny were it not so jaded,

and I would think it pretty were it never so degraded,

as by verdigris, Brother Lock and Sister Key…

Only exile, only separation, only disavowal

when the information comes,

He'll put her down, she'll send him up.

Only spasms of love that get by on memory,

only passages of the same old story, that nobody reads,

and nobody ever will.

Only exile, only isolation, only after a while,

when the cheap sensation's done,

And nobody's free, Brother Lock and Sister Key…

St. Helena

So, there are things I know

Cos I get blind

But it’s not for show

It’s another kind

Of heel and toe,

Behind the curtain

O out mine eyes,

Vile jelly-o

I had you pegged as a kind of friend

Who would see the matter through,

When I looked up you’d shot through,

I had to wonder was it you that I was talking to?

With a sea between us, it couldn’t have been us

Take this wine away

All my imps are come to play

Sometimes I get so low

Low and lonely,

There’s no-one I know,

Not here for me,

Just flowers and stone,

Out on my throne

I sit repealing my cameos

I had you pegged as a kind of friend

Who would see the matter through,

When I looked up you’d shot through,

I had to wonder was it you and me who schemed

To have a submarine to come and free me

Take this wine away

All my imps are come to play

O out mine eyes,

Vile jelly-o

I had you pegged as a kind of friend

Who would see the matter through,

When I looked up you’d shot through,

I had to wonder was it you that I was talking to,

Or refuse, obscene chimeras of my dream

Take this wine away

All my imps are come to play

The Faking Boy

"Smash my glim!" cried a regular card,

Blast my eyes,

The faking boy'll never speak again or sing again O O O

Oh no, see how the floor is a window,

and suddenly nothing below

I have a pink and

living guise still

Lively girls won't make me eyes

I'm not burly, I'm not wise

The faking boy to the trap has gone,

I'm not burly, I'm not wise

Definitive History

Definitive history, splinters of foundation,

Weaving of our horrors into pig silks full of glory holes

And fabrics of contrition.

Curtsey to your betters,

Who picked you for a nothing, tried to knock out your stuffing,

Bold in their beers, straw between their ears.

The same smug expression, same false cheer,

Same air of predation –

“Stranger welcome…” just not here, just not here, just not here.

All men are mice, all men are mice, it doesn’t pay to be nice,

Take all before you.

Definitive history.

Pay respect to the common folk, it’s an obligation,

Let common sense commandeer you,

Take up all the hard work,

Steer your thoughts in a circle jerk.

Make abominable children, vicious little animals,

Reared up like pit bull dogs

By the ordinary Australians…

O one for the mother, one for the dad,

One for treasurer, one for the plasma screen, and don’t forget

The developer’s dream,

A tumour for them all in the belly of the sprawl –

Definitive history.

Two young men took a Chinese girl

Early one Thursday morning,

Brick to her head and a cord round her neck,

Hands on her body…

Drowned her in a bathtub, rolled her in a sheet,

Dumped her in the river,

Tragedy crowed the newspaper letters…

“In our own backyard!”

In our own backyard,

Oh how could it be with all we’ve taught them?

O one for the mother, one for the dad,

One for treasurer, one for the plasma screen, and don’t forget

The developer’s dream,

A tumour for them all in the belly of the sprawl

O one for the mother, one for the dad,

One for treasurer, one for the plasma screen, and don’t forget

The developer’s dream,

A plot to bury them all at the edge of the sprawl –

Definitive history.

Villa Adriana

Take the train to Tiburtina,

Through the mountains,

To Tivoli.

O I would, anyone would,

Anyone would,

Being free.

Cross the bridge

By falling water,

Take an Aperol in the sun.

Ride the bus

Through the winding groves

to the villa of Hadrian.

O I wonder how to live,

How to live with patience.

Thunderstorm comes like clockwork,

Perfume of pines

and ancient dust.

O to touch

The dedication,

Impossible love,

I am nothing.

O I wonder how to live,

How to live with patience.

Day's end comes,

The bus is leaving,

The cats are sleeping,

The villa is dark.

I am full,

So I say thank you,

To Hadrian,

And Mme. Yourcenor.

Millenarians’ Mirror

As a bird you are constant at war,

so sharp and so early,

but the world was so weary before

so how can you expect me to rise in the last light of the moon?

Do you know what these feelings are for?

You dissemble, don't show them to me,

But the world is not worldly anymore

so how can you expect me to be?

Not the low louse, not the starry mote mouse,

there's no-one here are lower than me in this house

of the earth, o the earth,

come mimic the moon.

Lintel, lintel, over my door,

Load bearing brow of my galaxy,

Why don't you break when you've broken before?

Banish my ceiling and vanish my floor?

And the world doesn't hear us anymore,

we are poorer than sounds without echoes,

echoes and only echoes, no more,

engaging in raising the hollowest roar.

It's the last round and nothing's been found

save for numinous traces, lines in our faces, in the air…

You are lonely of late,

I am gone, in a state,

There's nothing to tell you but wait for the earth,

O the earth to mimic the moon.

Sailing To The Moon

I need a house, a house not a home,

A problem to solve, a maze I can roam,

But good vibrations don't last for long…

Goodbye April, goodbye June, I was always going to lead you to ruin.

So long every crowded room, I might as well be sailing to the moon.

I want to hear where the sun meets the sea,

But the heat and the water won't rally oh oh oh,

Unless it's in party with the troublesome land...

Goodbye April, goodbye June, I was always going to lead you to ruin.

So long every crowded room, I might as well be sailing to the moon.

Never Been Sad

Louche Karl, winsome Victoria, the eras all fold in I can't make out the soul of ya

Porn filters, recycled newspaper, how many times can we use the same blueprinter?

In trash you go digging for gold, in dung heaps, in sewers, all that

I'll hazard you've never been cold, I'll wager you've never been sad

You oughtn't wish that you had...

Lissome Pete, Angelica apple cheek, ever the inheritors, you don't strike as mild or meek

Just a genre, fodder, no canon, you read like a dunny wall I don't want to read at all

The Crime

GAR, BA Lit,

3rd poet of Avalon,

exiled to the broken bit outside Imperium,

Not for any mischief,

Just enormous indifference in song.

You are the people, the people are you,

Need I say more?

I showed you my back and you showed me your door,

Now you don't know how to open it anymore. 

I suppose I'll get used to it after some time,

The soil is ridiculous, they make a good wine,

The weather comes bracing when it isn't just treating you fine.

But I feel I've grown older here and not to the wise,

Everything just hurts a little more,

Except for the lies,

and when the truth comes I cannot disguise my fear.

You are the people, the people are you,

Need I say more?

I showed you my back and you showed me your door,

Now I don't know how to open it anymore.

If I mocked my metropoli, pilloried the pillars

of an edifice in search of a cliff,

With my rank and profession

so far in recession,

is it even a question of if?

There are days I'm reminded, as I gaze on the harbour,

Of a younger man blinded

and spurred on by ardour

for all things eternal,

But when you know that you're mortal,

You just can't afford to admit.

City you are the people, the people are you,

Need I say more?

I showed you my back and you showed me your door,

Now we don't know how to open it anymore.

iTunes Bonus Tracks:

Forking Paths

I’m tired of bad news,

I’m tired of fighting,

I don’t remember when life was exciting,

Is this the way it’s going to be till the end?

I don’t want to leave it wondering.

So hard to empathise,

So many hostile,

Like parsing babble to arrive at the gospel,

Only to find it wasn’t very interesting.

I don’t want to read it wondering.

My love and hate were always married, never friends.

I love the high road, I love the low road,

I’ve taken both roads and never known why.

It shouldn’t matter so, but I seem to need to know,

Why each foot in a row will lead me round the bend.

It’s just the way I’m going to make it to the end.

I don’t want to leave it wondering.

Arthur's Chessboard

Lately I have dreams in which my kittens both are dying,

while rednecks from my past life mock my tears in their brutal strine,

And I in grief am paralysed, my head in rictus hands,

and pine for oblivion all nature demands.

And in the dark rows of my cinema sleep

diminishing audience make whoopee or go to sleep,

the drama unfolding does not their foibles meet,

the lightning box office shows a sad receipt.

The American singer leaned into the mic and

said "Your beautiful country's what our country used to be like"

Like two days in St. Kilda confers an honourary degree,

but you're free to condescend when you come from the land of the free.

The fashion designer girls, the magazine boys, would nod

in strange agreement as he got on with the noise.

But as much as they'd like to think we share the same load,

to each their own apocalypse, we're not all on that road…

Lately I've been drinking to the point of kissing stone,

and accusing random street signs of Young Liberal plots,

and telephone boxes which appear to me but to nobody otherwise -

paranoia keeps ringing lullabies.

I have friends, I have family and a woman I don't please, demands upon a weak man only distance can appease.

But how could I recognise myself in exile, making moves on Arthur's Chessboard and dreaming all the while?

Marienbad

I’m in sickness and in health,

I’m in poverty and wealth.

She’s moderate as well.

Remember dancing on the lawn?

And all the glamour of the ball?

Well I don’t.

I don’t remember well.

Was I under a spell?

O I couldn’t tell –

Neither poor nor well,

In heaven or hell.

I’m in darkness and in light,

The sun don’t shine on me but it might.

And if it’s true you know me well,

You’ll know it wasn’t ever mine to sell.

I never disappeared.

We never disappeared.

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