O Desejado

Know you my name?  Know you my name?

The Sleeping One, the Hidden One, Desired One…

Know you my name?

Each woman and man,

Here in the undulate, smiling pan,

Valley green, chosen land,

Dreaming a lack of me…

Paint me my picture,

Make me my movie,

Sing me my song of me,

Carve me in stone.

These are a few of my binding conditions

To wake from my sleep and return to the throne.

Hang me now, hang me now,

And look on you how

Spills the grain, feeds the sow,

All is ample, hang me from your mantle,

Sing the song of me,

The bronze and azure

And the limitless sea,

Bloodied was I

But they never found me,

Sing me the song of me…

Write me my story,

Render me photographed,

Play me my symphony,

Carve me in stone.

These are a few of my binding conditions

To wake from my sleep and return to the throne.

It could be so much lovelier,

All of it much better,

Lovelier and better ways

To do a thing,

Wake up your Sleeping King!

I’ll come alive

And wreathe you about my being,

All I’ve seen in the centuries

Abandoned to me,

Can you imagine my name?

Paint me my picture,

Make me my movie,

Sing me my song of me,

Carve me in stone.

These are a few of my binding conditions

To wake from my sleep and return to the throne.

Call me by my name,

Give me my mission,

Sing me my song of me,

Carve me in stone.

These are a few of my binding conditions

To make my ascent and return to the throne.

German Beer

I collect dead krauts along the bends of the Elbe,

I only see ghosts, they only see me,

I am a son of nowhere and nothing,

I hang by Augustus in the Blasted Tree,

and my mad burning hands are the conductor’s envy,

and in the Zwinger yard the ghosts of fine people sway

to the virulent music the white liquor lends me

we dream of the Green Vault’s hideous display.

I collect dead krauts along the bends of the Elbe,

and by the day’s end I have a filthy coin cup

enough to get me falafel, a curry, a pide

and kill a bunch of fresh krauts and get fucked up

and then the river dreams of the bodies in its bed

and then the stones feel all 3000 degrees

and in the Zwinger yard swords go flying overhead

and the dainty fat tourists go crook in the knees.

So you get born with this skin and these eyes,

So you get silence when one of us dies,

So you get born with this skin and these eyes,

So you get silence when one of us dies.

Pale, poisoned fish by the banks of the Elbe,

strewn in the reeds, belly up to the sun,

Some afternoons in Summer I lie in the shade

of the black tower bricks and I count every one,

But my spiralling mind is unequal to the edifice,

I vertigo in just looking at my shoes,

and in the yard of the people’s ghost palace

they send the guard out to have me excused

So you get born with this skin and these eyes,

So you get silence when one of us dies,

So you get born with this skin and these eyes,

So you get silence when one of us dies.

In the ghost people's palace all the fine people sway

Dreaming of the Green Vault’s hideous display,

I collect dead krauts along the bends of the Elbe

Day after day after day after day…

So you get born with this skin and these eyes,

So you get silence when one of us dies,

So you get born with this skin and these eyes,

So you get silence when one of us dies.

Hill of Muses

So high on the Hill of Muses

A crazed pine needle man

with olive teeth from a mythical heath

came bursting forth,

An Atlas of bruises, hair of sedge,

Just speaking me off the vibrating ledge,

I’ve been aloof for so long now

I fell like I was born knowing how.

I went to the Hill of Muses to listen

for what the sexless and loveless are missing,

Athenian youth in the grottoes a kissin,

Ancient nuns lookin on and hissin,

A bumblebee on a hyacinth,

a stray in the shade of Diana’s plinth,

dance music in the sight of the Parthenon,

night vomit baking in the furious sun,

But later in the unmade library,

When all the dregs have been filed away,

The Athenian Feline Congregation

Set about its recreation.

In truth all the Muses are locked below

in the chapel where no flowers grow,

and are most days silently pleased to be

scrubbing in the Byzantine stones on their knees,

For the height of Summer favours

a fury of cicadas,

hot piss of the ages mulled in caves -

a light lace, a gamey come,

fleet coronas of an ancient sun,

The perfume of Arcady’s one

for creatures who are hot or young or shady or up or in

for getting undone.

Malagrotta

Brave Little Boot had impossible loot, impossible loot

did dashing Little Boot,

How his sick sparrow sings of sorrowful springs,

Six sad springs, full of sorrowful sings.

How he kept it in a cave by the sea,

Many parties in the cave had he.

Of time and of tide there’s no doubt,

That’s what the sad song’s about - rubbish in, rubbish out.

Old King Coal had a filthy old hole, a filthy old hole

did the merry King Coal,

and many merry moments made his majesty,

reaching all around and pulling it free.

And he called on his fiddlers three,

“Make a ballad of my infamy.”

What do you think they did sing?

What strains in the praise of a king?

Rubbish out, rubbish in.

You don’t want to know

How does the garden grow.

Many merry moments are merrier made

When you leave the party with the bills unpaid.

Into the cave’s malevolent mouth

We will all go a’shilly shallyin’ south.

What a to do to die today,

But the dragon is on its way.

Whether the weather is hot,

Whether the weather is loud,

Whether we like it or not,

We’ll be together -

Rubbish in, rubbish out.

A Walk Along the Tiber

Mama come and clean for your children

cook them sprouts and greasy liver

mama can’t do one or the other

can’t you see she’s in the river?

Spinning, floating clots and skeins

ample fats and every fibre

Scattered now her soils and grains are

spread across the roiling Tiber

If I can be all by myself

and let the people pass me by

As I walk along the Tiber, not quite laughing not quite crying

Mama witness this play along the river

Passion is a fruit or a flower

wilting in the noon day sun

never lasting more than an hour

She flutters her eyes at the passers by

Their eyes are cameras firing reels

He sniffs at her neck and ogles her breast

like he’s eyeing a dish of perspiring veal

When all of us are dead and gone

the humours will align

and the moon and sun will vie for Rome

and make her bones to shine

The young vagrant cradles his ripe belly tumour

writhing in the wilting typha

For his Mama cry and keen

Beneath the Ponte Palatine

Mama cannot make you dinner

Mama won’t be cleaning either

Scattered now her soils and grains are

spiriting all away…

I can be all by myself

and hear the breezes softly sighing

As I walk along the Tiber, not quite laughing not quite crying

All of us are dead and gone

and the humours will align

the moon and sun will vie for Rome

and make her bones to shine

Horn of Plenty

Carpe diem Pulcinella, how’s about the dolce vita?

Did you drive on sweet Campania, sail the gulfs in pretty barks?

Did the women come to meet you,

Flocks of geese and hens to greet you

and kindly guide you to the bar…

To seize the day?

You were servant in the city, sticky slap out every doorway

In the mists of sweet Arcady you were Bacchus of the Valley

Through the villas of the wealthy, through the stalls of wine and honey

Music from the Horn of Plenty played…

Seize the day

Dancing in your filthy streets, a forced and constipated shuffle

Cigarettes and rotting meats, a lace of shit around your ruffle

All your children hide their sins, Sunday to the prayer house go

Like your little narrow bins, witness the overflow…

To seize the day

Your picked at bones will up and gather

After last evening’s slather

The state of things through eyes of yellow

What say you little fella?

The house wine always wins

sad yokes in bloody rims

The Horn of Plenty sings…

You’re done for, paid for, put to paid, this is the world they’ve always made

What potency is left there in your sly and silly little grin?

What shall we do now Punch is drunk

and strung out in the Old Town?

Who’ll pull upon the monster’s trunk…

and turn the tables upside down?

Carpe diem Pulcinella, how’s about the dolce vita?

Did we do all that we could do to break the banks and kill the monster?

Carpe diem gets away on the late breath of old Pompeii

which carries honey piss and hay…

Seize the day

Like there’s no tomorrow.

Irrational Anthem

Trust you remember to forget

Every day is remembrance day

As for the wounds that fester yet

Trust in time they’ll fade away

To make us love our country

Our country must be lovely

Spring comes in the winter now

And the people don’t know how

to feel about it or reconcile

with sunny days that don’t make you smile

To make us love our country

Our country must be lovely

Trust you remember to forget

All the holes in the safety net

True kindness never wore a veil

and there’s always blood along the trail

So listen close to a nation’s song

for all the notes of oblivion

the missing verse on the tip of your tongue

Trust you’ll never hear it sung

To make us love our country

Our country must be lovely

All Along the Isar

Summer is over,

And all along the Isar people

amble sad or idle down,

The sky is still and grey.

Summer is over,

But other things are over too,

You look to him and he to you,

This is a mournful day.

Summer is over,

And all along the Isar people

begin to set their minds to work,

and banish thoughts of play.

Napoleon is Colour Blind

Napoleon is colour blind

All the fields are burgundy

Winter is a foreigner

Blood is the season Spring

There's a poppy in the roses

It's fit as a reminder

Caesar liked the poppy

when it opened its head

A mile of bloody corpses

Is an emerald horizon

and a field of budding clover

is a station of the womb

A long white sky

and a wide clay sea

and a gleaming red cliff

beckoning to me

A long black hall

where there has never been anyone at all

for its feature is erasing

Any vibration

Napoleon is born again

In the little minds of men

It can't be stopped

it can't be helped

it's just the thing we do.

Every Song a Miracle

By the mute auditorium

Of the buried urn recitals

He attends the crematorium

Lighting furnaces with icicles

The Saint of Fakes is lyrical

And every song a miracle

The material is difficult

Coming as it does from a cold, cold place

And very far from ‘beatifical’

Every rhyme written is a memory erased

The Saint of Fakes is lyrical

And every song a miracle

Praise be, praise be

Water into wire

Icicles to fire

Come see, come see

How the streams all hurry up the hill to me

All the beasts know where to go

To the mouth of the melancholy cave

To see the ice into fire go

And see their shadows all misbehave

The Saint of Fakes is lyrical

And every song a miracle

Praise be, praise be

Water into wire

Icicles to fire

Come see, come see

How the streams all hurry up the hill to me

This

Words by Fernando Pessoa from the poem “This”

They say I lie or feign

In all I write.

It's simply that I feel

Via imagination.

The heart I never use.

All I dream or live,

Whatever fails or dies,

Is no more than a cover

Over some other thing

Where true beauty lies.

That's why I base my writings

On things remote,

Freed from my reality,

And serious about what isn't.

Feel? Well that’s up to you.

This Ought To Do It

O how will I ever pay my cemetery bills?

I wondered as I rode along the Tempelhof grills

Beneath the vampire sun behind the pork smoke for days

Through the fields of the dead dressed in tropical glaze

The air did whistle, atrocities dropped,

Dripping bone bracket city

with a hip static gristle pop pop pop pop

All the cities of the old world belch their mourning breath

And whisper to the firmament ‘O let us have our death’

All the years of being trod upon, the shit we have to eat,

Let the vines be the drapes and draw on every street

A play of summer lightning from on Letka Park

Inside a Prussian blue front casting Prague into dark,

Illuminates a church with all monkeys rolling through it,

This late stage gibbering menace ought to do it…

To do it, to do it, This ought to do it…

In a little emerald room inside a goodly ochre house

Where he writes like a lion and sings like a mouse,

On a little uptight island by a large unhappy island

All his efforts bend to flying to the old ghost world

For here in the antipodes they say it’s in your head

When you’re supposed to feel lucky but you mostly feel dead.

How fast my last European fever flew,

I’d like to walk you all through it, but I guess this ought to do it…

To do it, to do it, This ought to do it…

Mules

(Bandcamp exclusive track)

My memories rise up from the deep,

swollen and pale they bobble

in the shallows of sleep,

shameful and incomplete.

My memories may wander the streets,

after the bars and night clubs of my dreams

are closed,

may gather and meet…

and refuse to be mules

for the things I’ve done,

and propose to remember no-one.

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