Seeing as the writing is stalling, I have linked all my previous music podcasts for ease, below.
These go back to 2013 and are more about the songs than anything I have to say about them. Please do have a listen/share with anyone you feel might dig them.
A rock to the head
The flash of white
A percentage of epiphany
Something you know
always knew
A corner bitten off
The dawning of the first
Real
Morning of your life
So what are you
On the train
Walking to the job
All smiles and fakery
No hate or love
Just
Just…
You know
You always did
To live inbetween
Happy and nervous but still
Home
Neither here nor there
But now
Locked into this role
A post holding up
The weakest links
The man above
The ones below
Really who gives enough
Of a fuck
So here we are but
For how long
How long before we can bring it all
Crashing down
We are well versed in that
Bring it to me and I can kill it
Not a night’s sleep lost
So what are you
Now
Today
Tomorrow
When you’re awaken at 60
And how do you make it so
All those around you
Those for whom you truly care
Will even remember
What you were
After you’re finally
Gone?
Drugs are truthful
Making you spit teeth and cry freedom
Drugs open flowers and crush hearts
Under the weight of dying stars
Drugs are feared by man
And woman
Yet are under our control
As we are disabused
A drug is the bark on a tree
The hair on a street dog’s back
It is ocean water and lightning strike
Love
Is no drug.
You a fighter?
He barely heard her voice over the music coming from across the bar
A small and ancient box spewing out tinny pop radio
God am I in the wrong place
He thought for the 3rd time that afternoon
No, why
He finally asked the woman
She had been sat there when he walked in and
Likely still would be after he left
If he actually got out of there alive
You have that look. I’ve seen it a lot. I know
She slid her hands over her cigarettes and lighter
Dragging them along with the heavy bottom glass of bourbon
And shifted from her seat onto the stool right next to his
What do you know? I ain’t a fighter. Not big enough.
Had maybe three my entire life.
Outside the sun had begun its descent, on the hottest day of that summer
A black McGraw Electric fan was just about making it around
The blades ticking along in unison as her red lips moved
A shitty breeze was better than none at all
As she continued to dig in
So what, you a runner? Nah you’re no runner.
Your eyes are tired. Black. That’s because you fight. All the time.
That why you’re in here – all day, alone?
He took a last sip and stood up to get out, the clicks inside his back
Betraying both his age and his purpose.
Your jacket, she gestured. It had fallen under the bar stool and
Was lying in what he could only hope was old, dried booze.
That’s piss.
She said, laughing
Yeah
Yeah
I know.
How many uninformed
Uneducated and desperate
How many willing but
Unable are
Waiting on the red letter
How many starving or
Almost starving await
The hard KNOCK on the door
How many on the outskirts
Outsider yet artist
Introvert yet intelligent
Swatting flies with a year old
Copy of the New Yorker
Or
Glancing as an aside
Towards the black & white brains
Within the pages of the Atlantic
Wishing
Hoping
Dreading to be included
Be part of the club
Lauded, envied
Pretending to understand
Every single page of comment
And culture
The world above so
Unlike below
We curl up in bed and type this shit
Watching coffins drop
Seeing pixelated blood over pixelated body
Not hearing gun shots only
Because we had the windows closed that night
No art here
Sorry
No academic retreat or book festival
To exclaim aloud our perspective on
Every single
underlying injustice
sorry
Rather
Just one more
Outsider
Introvert
Swatting flies
Glancing
Towards black & white brains
Wishing
Hoping
Dreading to be included
Be part of the club
Lauded
Envied and
Pretending to understand.
I have not written in months
Because the world has become a joke
When the world fails
Poetry fails
All great art fails
Becoming only a knee jerk reaction
To some ironic sorrow
As the sky now remains an undecided yellow
Not winter nor yet spring
Just keeping you guessing
A ubiquitous distraction
And so it is best to fall back and
Pause within a moment
To recall and retain an old anger
Or sadness or what
Little humour there is left inside you
And to bottle them
Cork them tightly and wait
Fall back to old routine
War films
Coffee
Wasting days and nights with nothing
Wasting your life as you lie over and over
That there is so much life to spare
Refrain from meaningful human engagement
Yes and no and thank you
Now and then and
Only enough to ensure you are
Not looked upon to be a fool or insane
Eventually the masses will settle
Real life becoming sunflower soon after
Poking its bright yellow head from cracks in cement
Then you may start up once again
To reflect and inform and express real life
On the page or on the canvas or in dusty black
Vinyl grooves
But you must wait
Relax
Drink bad liquor
Watch bad tv
Sing
Take long baths
But do not write or paint
Or even think about any of them
Out there
Until the rest of the world is ready
to catch up.
I superglued the handle of the shower brush
The veneers had split but it was still useable
I wrapped some tape around the handle
To hold it down in place until the glue dried
Throughout this she was looking at me
Like I was crazy
It was not a new look
‘…just buy a new one?’
That seemed obvious
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it
I think sometimes that I come from a place
Where a fear rules every single cell
Of my body
And a pure survival kicks in
And the adrenaline kicks in
I removed the tape
The handle looked pretty good
Not perfect but no need to just
Throw the thing out
I had bought myself a few more weeks
Of sanity
Maybe not what you consider sane
But as close as I can get in my day to day
I try to tell myself that not all broken things
Are beyond repair.
I didn’t know how I’d ended up on the floor
But there I was
The only one finding any amusement in the goings on
I felt my head
All ok
‘ambulance?ambulance?’ she repeated at me
I struggled to speak – I couldn’t tell if my brain wouldn’t instruct my mouth
Or vice-versa
But it wasn’t happening
‘nnnnnno. No.’
I got there after a few tries
Why was I on the floor?
The explanation came – I won’t go into it here
Suffice to say it was a new one to me
Old man maybe. The world is catching up to you, old man
Well, shit
I drank some water
Looked into the eyes of the few people around
To these strangers I was clearly both a liar and a fool
To her, I was lucky and a fool
In my head I split the difference
I kept repeating – because it was the truth
‘I’m fine.’
But No one believes an old fool
There is no moral to this story.
It’s just a story.
Though
At some point you find yourself on the cold-ass concrete
And it can take a while
To figure out how you got there.
It seems nowadays
That all one need do
In order to make a name for yourself
Is the same thing over and over
To buy the same bread from
The same market stall
Over and over
Commit the same crime
In the same signature style
Over and over
Write the same poems
About the same thing
Over and over
Until eventually you
Run out of steam
The market closes
The rain stops falling
Blood runs cold
Dogs sleep
The cars run out of gas
Dust devils making the horizon
Disappear
And then what
How do you define your remaining time
Here
A season changes
And the windows are closed
For the first time in a while
I do not care for the accepted rule
My writing remains centre-less
Orbiting as planets around my brain as dying star
The coffee pot is dry
A policeman is shot on the TV
Someone downstairs bangs and bangs and
Bangs
And in my head I make jokes
That I will never tell anyone
Because they’re just
Too
Goddamn
Funny.
More rain had fallen in the hour just past
Than on every day in the last month
And it fell on me
On the other side of the windscreen
Was a curtain of water
Car lights faded and the road met the sky
In a blur unseen at 60 miles per hour
Everything disappeared then
The road had no end
No symbolism
No metaphor
No soul or forgiveness
I looked for a break
For a time out
A sliver of blue or
Glint of light
A chance to just open the door and
Get out
Respite was not on the cards
The day remained a single lane
No hard shoulder
Stuck in a hell of inbetween places
Not really present and not really past
And though I knew what was there
At the end of the journey
Still my foot was held to the floor
Speeding blindly back to it.
A meditation on monoxide
The siren’s singing bowl
Ear drum burst and a voice lost to concrete dust
The roads are littered with writers
Dead from the onset of spring
Poems half-written lay crumpled beside curb stone
Blown along by the final winter breeze
Pushing them down drains on its way out of town
And as magnets repel one another
Heat pushes instinct away
Blue sky raising dead spirits
Somewhere to lay heavy head supported now
By broken neck
How happy a world
A distinct lack of madness as interest dissipates
Interest in anything out there in the gleam
All so clean and naked
Truthful and honest and painfully dull
As
The summer threatens without storm
Just more yellow
More tomorrow
When
Really
Hearts seek out the nourishment of bones packed in ice
Sinew as lichen for the carnivore poets
who wander the landscape seeking darkness and thunder.
The roads are littered with writers
Dead from the onset of spring
And there I lay alongside
Them.
It was one of those days like one of those nights when
The storm blew into your face
Whichever way you stood
The world forcing its way down your throat
No escaping the shift of seasons
Unsubtle and sharp
The old lady tried to walk against it up the hill
The dog
Half dead
Followed on 3 legs
The 4th limping as an afterthought
They were both fat and close to death
I bet myself which would be the first to go
And whether it would happen before they reached the
Top
I heard the mutt cough and gasp
‘come get your steak’ she garbled to it
I wasn’t sure if that was a bribe to keep moving
Or a reward for already crawling that far along the street
She dropped her 5 carrier bags and began to rummage around
I kept walking
A steak sounded good
But I needed to get out of this goddamn hurricane
That was cutting at me
Forcing me to stay still and
Keeping me from reaching summer in one piece.
Bloody
All caps
No apologies
Cut to death
Chewing fat
Grinding sweet marrow
Animal at the trough
Nails scraping
Knuckles down
Whisky bottle empty
Tears rolling
Teeth broken
But still half the world whines
Spinning round like a fairground ride fallen out of all favour.
A string of war movies
Cowboy movies
Anything except the real world
The vultures have circled for so long
They too have given up and
Flown home
The grey sky full of nothing now
But cloud and smoke and
Dreadful promise
And new habits form
Those of survival and denial
Which you mould and re-form into regret
But still a new and shining version
Of a time honoured disappointment
Until the unavoidable occurs
And there you are
Reading the morning headlines
The words seeping in
Old water from a broken pipe
Time has been decided by the devil himself
A game played on a broken watch
Nothing certain but purgatory
And so
I will go out under cover of darkness
And set fires across the city
Burn the palace
Torch the god’s houses into grey ash
Something to feel in control
Something to create life
Anything to jump start the failing world.
