poetry

2006

Let not your heart
be so sad baby
jesus gonna meet me in the air

meet me in the air, air
you know my time is soon
meet me in the air
we’ll meet behind the moon

i been trying to reach you baby
in the mountains and the sky
in the distant echo of my memory
it’s no shame for you to cry

meet me in the air
you know my time int long
meet me in the air, maybe
soon I will be gone

upon the clouds, upon a white horse shining
steadfast, faithful and true
eyes aflame and with a head of many crowns
and with a name that no-one knew

met me in the air
you know my time is gone
meet me in the air air baby
you know my time is gone

Written in ‘96

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Flick the switch and turn off the machine

[Cauterise] my soul and set me free

Please help me god I cant breathe

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I only wanna see the sun

(x2 first time)

Collide with space and slowly burn away

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Cant we heal can we repair ?

Hurts so bad

Hurts so bad

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I only wanna see the sun

(x2 first time)

Collide with space and slowly burn away

Dont cry…the wires
Dont lie, desire…

_{Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002739 StartFragment:0000002368 EndFragment:0000002703}

I only wanna see the sun

(x2 first time)

Collide with space and slowly burn away

Flick the switch and turn off the machine

[Cauterise] my soul and set me free

Please help me god I cant breathe

_{Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000173 EndHTML:0000002739 StartFragment:0000002368 EndFragment:0000002703}

I only wanna see the sun

Collide with space and slowly burn away

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Don’t try to cut the wires

Don’t try to cut the wires

Life support it isn’t life

Life support its just a lie

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13 years after recording this into a YAMAHA MTX3 4 track,  here’s what I laid down as a guide; just faster:

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…working fucking hard on sorting through demo tracks recorded hastily under pessure when I wa flying up to the studio alot. It’s time consuming and of course, as everybody knows the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune still fly, and smart so keenly.

Myself right now, well I moved back down south;canned my job – it was sucking the life out of me -  living in an old spare room, next to the washing machine and that’s thanks to the charity of the only real friend I have; with little beyond a bmx bike, some clothes, one laptop, recently collected second hand literature, two mint condition old blues LP`s (muddy waters & ???),  a painting, two vases I don’t need, one stratocaster and one beaten up hofner for slide playing, a collection of rocks, pauau, a dreamcatcher bricolage of  found objects, talismans, feathers, trinkets, rosaries, crosses from as far afield as Barcelona, London, and Waikakahi, Hawea…

One day hopefully I’ll eulogise nostalgically about the good old days when I had nothing…and the washing machine was god.

down at the studio november `08 I cut this guide on the plank:

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Desolation angels everywhere….I’m on the road, thank god for freedom; after the sting of disappointment and the hard earthquake work of a tectonic shift is gone comes the mellifluous colour-tones and taste of time, motion; mountain, river and ocean, vision and celebration, dedication and devotion.

Be the water – you cant stay in one place too long but unlike the million raindrops falling on the glass around you  – avoid the path of least resistance. Take the difficult road and be prepared to die for what you believe in…risk everything to complete your vision…just to write and breathe; songs, messages, art that eat worlds…

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

Rudyard’s IF represents more than adequately the struggle and difficulties of being an outsider, a traveller with no real destination, a tree broken off from its roots, driftwood amongst a million lonely stones, dispossessed, lacking in direction. Encapsulating a moment ‘beyond’ time and space in the mind of the lone individual, fraught with the vicissitudes, slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; in the eye of the storm & the heat of the battle silent volumes speak.

I woke up this morning and crudely, using a cassette recorder, quickly threw down the lyrical amendments I`d written to the world gone track asi t played in the background.. so that rehearsal can start across the water. the sun is shining. it`s rough but a good guide…burning hearts…golden hearts scattered, lonely in the road bleeding…what does it feel like really breathing?

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Music can be inspiration, divination and self exploration within the ancient church of self; your DNA possesses and encodes evolutionary time…….the ancient “church” is everywhere; that is everywhere we haven`t desecrated it with base architectures and  pollutants often incorrectly disguised beneath a veneer of language such as “progress”, “industry”, “change” and more. Water is the carrier and light is the messenger.

Liberte, equality, Egalite…
freedom, equality, egalitarianism; the hypotheses of European Revolutionaries remain still only ideals enoded into arbitrary signs. I recently picked up a copy of the 1962 Freedom Movement songbook – unity & music were at the centre of social change.

the river became central to my experience…at the end of my time, the mother of pearl crucifix I wore around my neck for a decade had cracked and broken – on my last journey through the gorge cast my crucifix into the waters …When I came back into the countryside the following year,  the river welcomed me in high flood, submerging islands, wreaking havoc. I was inspired by true tales – real lives. sometimes anger and the devil will blind and trick you; choose the way of the gun and a vengeful Miltonic god or cast yourself asunder, through the tides.

n’

_{Last time I was in London I attended a party replete with goldfish bowls in the stairwells, famous chef, name dj and a stunning view of Tower Bridge, the Gherkin and the Eye. It was pretty good and the champagne was flowing. I also attended a business meeting in the West End. I arrived at around 12 and left at four. We made our way to the Tube/Underground afterwards to say farewell. As I stood within a maelstrom of bodies pouring in and out the entrance to the Underground I realised with complete acuity that if I had expired and fallen to the floor no-one would have paid the blindest bit of notice at all.}Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000186 EndHTML:0000043111 StartFragment:0000002570 EndFragment:0000043075

The architecture of destiny 2005

The conversation thus ignored flies on up towards the yellow ceiling

Cant decipher being bored, cant decode this desperate feeling

Whilst the truth fights the trash on the garage floor

Between the rotten old chairs and the broke down doors

And the rusty old cars, that rot out on the lawn

And I just don’t care

Really I don’t anymore

You say we`re all equal but some more equal than others

Who does the judging and as your god discovers

Your history is all lies and all your truths are whores

Call all your prophets, call your disciples call them to your cause

Your suffering fathers and all your surrogate mothers

To wash all your dishes and sort out the cupboards

The kids start to fight and the rain beats the shutters

Theres a howling in the wind for Jacqueline, but she only mutters,

Strange cries in the kitchen the antenna just stutters

Smoke ourselves to death outside whilst the rain fills the gutters…

And of course you`re just so, over it all, and you say I don’t give nothing

back at all

Oh mercy me, bad luck designed

Oh mercy me, bad luck design, my destiny

Three sisters in the distance their resistance fills my eyes

They fight the amber rain, whilst silently we drive

Im waiting at the station for the future to arrive

In this desperate situation the conversation… slowly dries

There`s Jesus at the crossroads hanging out to dry

Abandoned by his god baptized in thorns and lies

And even that kids got something to say

When the arguments don’t go your way

Its okay I`ll leave all my faults here at the door

You can stamp them all out as they creep across the floor

Guess it`s just a change youre going through, guess its got something

to do with the moon

Oh mercy me bad luck designed         

Oh mercy me bad luck design

I think the house is talking to me, asking me to leave

You fucking friends who hang around are just old buildings falling down…

Falling down.

In november `08 three years later I went down to the studio to cut a guide track and see if I could make it through the song:

Architecture of Destiny guide track

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… I could write a million acerbic verses…..

It`s a beautiful day so I am going to leave this MACHINE where it belongs, in a room,  and head outside for some fun. Sitting in front of it can sometimes be stultifying, inspiration so often comes from elsewhere – NEVER directly from the machine or its environment. Its just a box. Machinery will never replace the emotional complexities and responses of people – not least until we start building “machines” from things like proteins or cellular material, utilising chemical reactions rather than the simplicity of binary. Imagine the speed and capabilities. ON or OFF is that as complex as we can make it?
Hopefully the dichotomy between man and machine will remain.

After all if this machine even wanted to desire to find its own inspiration, it would leave the house too. And Paint. Perhaps what makes us human is that we are blessed with self awareness and from that springs the capability for evolutionary ideas. So, simply put, maybe you want your song to have inspirational and therefore human qualities and that requires an inspired writer, someone who lives on the edges. Someone with an idea. It doesn`t have to be the biggest idea, or the best idea but it ought to be your idea, one that you OWN.

The kernel of an idea will more likely come from an experience external to the writing medium itself; a book or a painting or a conversation or a place.
It may be melody, one word, a name, a sound, an event, a roadsign….it`s up to you to find it….

You have to remember that a guitar listens as well as talks too, so you have to feed it the best poetry you can.

If not just stay at home and listen to the microwave or type something into google and get the kind of dull, dry, paint by numbers songwriting advice, a sawdust that will just smother your flame and leave the taste of boredom in your mouth.

Do you think anyone who ever wrote a great book prepared in a sterile, environment – performed characterisation without meeting people, wrote dialogue without conversing, expresed emotion without feeling. No they fucking well didn’t. And when they weren’t living on the edge or thinking or experiencing something great, they were reading. Not plugged into some ghastly machine.