A Rock and A Hard Place

Round peg, square hole
Made to measure for a life on the dole.
Not the part you wanted, why turn up for the audition?
Your other self sees you fall to the ground
Glassy eyes buried in a deepening frown
In a play with a terrible script
Grabbed by the gaze that has all of us gripped.

That other self can't see through to your head and your heart
That's what you get when they say go
And even if you get the drift
You must get out and
Steal the show.

I can lie when it seems
It get me closer to a realised dream.
But the nightmares might be coming back to frighten me. (HA ha ha, he he he)
And the night time thoughts are the worst,
Tear me apart with the boredom and thirst
Stare at the wall, push ideas from my being
It's not another life, it's just another way of seeing.

The lost ideas that have escaped from my head and my heart.
Nobody knows where they all g-g-g-go.
Maybe they hide away inside
And come around to
Rewrite the show.

It's been a while since lost ideas I'd like to
Come my way
Have sprung into my head and given me the
Strength to say
I live , I breathe, I love, I feel. I have the
Right to claim
A bright idea with second sight when it's so
Painfully plain.

It's obvious I'll fall apart if every
Piece of crap
Replaces opportunities that fall in-
-To my lap
Give too much credence to the bullshit factor
What's the crack.?
Right now the moment is upon me get them
Off my back.

It ain't right if I try
To take an image from another mind's eye
Then change it round and warp it in my own peculiar fashion
Cos that just makes me bitter and choked
My own worst enemy right at my throat
Reminds me that I can be right for this play
As long as I don't let the bullshit get in the way

Of lost ideas that have escaped from my head and my heart
Now that I know where they all go.

Touch

In front of my face I see a story unfold
And then behind me, I see the hopes and they hold
Dearer. But I listened to tales
Of a different nature, and that's where I failed.
Not that I'm saying I never began
To be the male part of that woman/man
Experience, just soaking it up
Til my ego overflowed like a cup
Underwater. Well that is my sign.
Jumping about to the rhythm or rhyme
Or the 'thud, thud ,thud' that's a troubled head
Shoulda been paying attention to my heart instead.
But not me, I ain't done enough yet
Can't put a time on commitment or set
An agenda for life and it's trials.
Then it's 'bye-bye' There go the smiles.

Sink to the ground, bit by bit
See it swallow me up just a deep, deep,
Deeper despair. The interior
Lost self esteem makes you feel so inferior.
Sour grapes and delusions of grandeur
Don't tell people, so why should they understand ya
Don't give in, you know you've gotta relate
You've gotta listen, gotta learn
To put it all on a plate.
Then it's back to the heart where emotion is born
Temporary pain had sadly deformed.
And that negative/positive feeling had gone
But it's back now and I've got to hang on
To that love,
Ooh there's a buzz that goes with it hand in glove
Complex. Pure. Honest. Real.
Just touch, and you're beginning to feel.

In front of my face I see a life at it's start
Now I've got to be honest, put my hand on my heart
And say 'Look! It's a beautiful thing
That our temporal nature can help us all bring
Inner strength that can travel in waves
Pushing boundaries of personal growth to a stage
Where it weeps from your every pore
Get the picture, as pure as before
But it's changed,
Or have I? Or perhaps my perceptions have all rearranged
To a form only time can explain
Like the pleasure or pain
Which are simply devices we humans can use to find Love
Life and the buzz that goes with it, hand in glove.
Complex. Pure. Honest. Real. Just touch.

Orificial

How do you do Mr. Nice Policeman
How do you do what you must think you must
With the people in down No. Ten
Their heads all turned in shame and pure disgust
Whose desperate measures have called on you
Your morals drowned in seas of spite
Your ideals sold for bloodstained gold
A force beyond the peoples' might

A day in devil's deeds begins
The gloom protectors draped in blue
A mist will shroud your naked sins
With words of fire I'll murder you.

Whose feet are sure on wicked means
In strong defence of hell's own ends
The day of your reckoning has yet to arrive
Your own survival now depends
On those who seek to save your soul
For what it's worth now you've stooped so low
To stamp on your rekindled hopes
By dealing out your wicked blow

And when the day is over soon
You'll sleep in brave innocence at night
Your poisoned offspring by your side
You'll kill them too, when the time is right.

The Hook

Here's the hook! It's a self made miracle.

Coming to you to break through your own manacle.

Cloud and clutter and pain and suffering

Once you're in no room for no guessing game.

Feels like fire in ice cold veins

It's your party are you glad you came?

Music pumping up and pushing in sideways

Forward movement, squeeze like icing

Hope the cake is all that you never had

Fresh as the last thought that you have ever had

Jumping the queue for the roller-coaster

Passing other people as you roll over.

Turn to smile at the passive faces

All like mine, we've just changed places

Bumping on a track without an ending

Quicker than thought, but more mind bending

Just for a moment you're upside-down

Giving you a feeling that you're part of a sound

Take a warning, gonna be a firestorm

Inside, gotta get it under control

You've got savage ideas with no understanding

Building a life on advice but no plan

Take heart, take part, make a start

You know that you can handle it.

How do I feel, it's a fantasy world

Buzzing around me putting fears in my soul

Didn't quite get what there was to be gathered

Grabbing at life, there there it's all better

Putting my heart out for all to be seen

Massive rush in just to prove I'm as green

And as young as I'd ever have feared

Check my horizons to see if they've cleared

But no, there's the clutter again

Dragging me down like the virus within

Us all, I could make myself cry

Mindbomb, boom! Still dunno why

The unacceptable has to be heard

The unacceptable feelings and words

I don't want to hear but they can't be ignored

Cos to get where I am I'd have done that before

This point, where I sit and I say

Things I might understand in a different way.

Einstein

Lay awake in a darkened room
Did I speak out too soon?
Did I say what I said?
Got an idea in my brain
I'm the wrong side of insane
And I can't hold back my head.

Now I've been talkin' jive with Einstein
And me and him's got the future all sorted out.
Yeah, I've been talkin' jive with Einstein,
And now I know I'm left without no doubt

'Bout the ways of the mind
And the way that your mind
Kinda leaves my mind
Way behind
And I'm standing in line
Behind those I can't find.
Like good meets bad
And I shoulda had
A voice saying "Boy,
You're gonna go mad
If you're so sad
You just can't spot the signs"

Now the room looks like it's grown
And I'll sit here all alone
But that's just how it goes.
Well the penny is about to drop
When all the moving pieces stop
And the truth and lies will show.

Now I don't talk that much with Einstein
'Cos me and that guy just don't see eye to eye.
No I don't want to talk with Einstein
And watch my life just gently go floating by.

'Cos when the shit hits the fan
Then me and the man
Are gonna make sparks
Like only we can
And the world around us
Might just catch alight.
But 'till that time
I'm standing in line
Just waiting for things
To turn out fine
And hoping dreams come true
And they just might.

Glastonbury;The Last Rites

'Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood' Oh Flanders and Swann, how much fun would they have had with the phenomenon that is the 21st century mega music etc festival.

What can I say that hasn't been said by many after this year, and 2005 and all the other mud encrusted years down the line. It didn't ruin it, but FUCK ME SIDEWAYS, how much better is a music/arts/drugs/people/gathering/dance/everything festival when the sun is out. The photo here is proof that the sun did come out. This is it going down, a sunset on Solstice. I will always enjoy watching the sun setting.

I've had a couple of months to let all the memories fade into the kind of haze necessary to be my memories. Sort of confused, sort of tiny soundbites. They are like my dreams in that respect because I rarely remember my dreams in any massive detail. Shame because so few are nightmares of any genuine proportion. One nightmare though is where I'm in a field surrounded by people and everybody is wading through 6 inches of mud. Ah!

There is a human need it seems to say 'I was there' about many events. I've done it myself and am very glad I saw the poll tax riots, big festival stuff. I'm actually glad I heard Babyshambles because now I can categorically state the Pete Docherty is a thoroughly talentless cunt, which I would, with extraordinary venom, point out to him if he were in this room now. I wish now I'd been close enough to mud-chuck the twat off stage. In years to come, I may be happy that I listened to Bjork from a distance having suitably revitalized myself for Fat Boy Slim but disallowed myself from attending thanks to the appropriate 'byerk, byerk' sounds from my beautiful but puking girlfriend. I'm so very glad though that I was there watching the rediculous post-punk/still punk phenomenon that is Iggy Pop. I'm sure I'm not alone on that one.

It's still the big event on the calendar for many furry folk and kids and capitalistic opportunists. But evolution can turn the comely countenance that is bizarre free-form weirdness into the ugly physiognomy I have witnessed in part this time around.

I had plenty of laughs considering what piss miserable weather it was to be living in a tent. I saw a few bands through the usual wall of people taller than me, (which is virtually everybody) but if anybody ever says it's the same as previous decades, they lost the plot very badly in those previous decades and perhaps struggle to know what decade it is now. Sure, many things are the same. But it's all put together in an organised modern and leviathan package which flies in the face of the spontaneity and out of leftfield world which are it's roots.

I feel like a moaning old wanker just complaining that the world isn't what it used to be and desperate for somebody to give me the keys to the TARDIS so I can go back and witness those glory years again. But the thing is, I also know very well that I would find some of that boring as well. It's a sad part of my life that maybe I'm just not the kind of person to have done all the habitual and recreational drug stuff and still have the energy left to enjoy life for what it is on a minute by minute basis. I knew before I went that after an absence of 14 years that it was inevitable that I would compare the old days with the new. I tried not to, but it just kept throwing itself into my path like a suffragette in front of the king's horse. But I suppose that is the curse of any life. None of us get younger and we have no choice but to experience things and then compare them to things we have previously experienced. That is the essence of a life spent with eyes periodically wide open. There are alternatives, I don't think I'd prefer them.

The Holiday Is Almost Gone

I've slacked off a bit lately. Taken time off work, got out into the weird and wonderful countryside. Party times and wild woolly Moorland chill. I've not been that cold in bed in August for as long as I can remember, and that's because I may never have been that cold in bed in August.I'm still slacking now and so tales of wild ponies and last over victories and 172 year old fires and can-can dancers and pink fur and cocktails must wait until my creative self awakes from slumber following it's activity (and spacious behavior) fuelled week.

Some around me are lacking energy too. Soon I start a new job. Before then, my son goes back to school and my daughter goes to a new college. Soon they will move other house again, and fresh new foecal matter splatters haphazard into the air conditioning. The plucky little ship on the High Seas that is sometimes my family life will stir gently as more unpredictable ripples disturb the surface of the water, becoming less easily navigable. But it's spirit is never daunted, course bound still to a chart which unfolds ahead of it as it happens and not a moment before.

Rounding up the last rites of summer and looking onto equinox is the next task. I will need sleep and a clear mind. But I have no desire to sleep early, or clear my mind of wistful thoughts of distant loves and lives. I want to stay awake and let them wash through me again.

So it is not necessarily folly to fill my head with recent events, listen to my garden live around me, and wait for tomorrow in small, easily handled chunks.