EDEN

Slopped down from Eden
Oh, you slopped right down from Eden
Yes, you slopped down from Eden
I can see by the look in your eyes

THE STEEP FACE

Is this too far removed from nature?
Is nature far removed from what is really there?
I fold a crease across your landscape
Now it cannot be rolled

You derive your distance from an ancient trick
Quickly described
Like a thin, limp bough soft behind the rain
And far out past cement-flecked glass

Like ripped vision, excitement of the mind
Setting the heart aquiver
Almost making the body flake
I speak to myself and the flora creeps in

But later it's fought for, smothered indoors
Muffled again by cloth and underpinned by mould
And cracked like the paint that trims it
Artificial stinking snowflake uncomfortably rucked

To clear or to clog?
The sharp but distant tang of wet brambles
Eating into your presence with soft, black teeth
What did you hope to learn? Modernity?

WRONG

Well, I knew that there would come a point
Where I'd see myself as something more
And what did I expect to find
But bitterness within?
And for you it was just distraction
You taught yourself another rule
To govern vicious impulse
And to lead yourself away
And I know I'm no kind of leader
I'm more the kind that just falls short
Through laziness or sheer remorse
Through a burning lack of desire
I invert this into everything
Brought to bear and only able
To acknowledge what I fail to see
I fail to see at all
So I am wrong

So you reside now in intervention
I try to reach through the layers of
My own self reverence, to come to some
New point of revelation
That doesn't just pass, forgotten
With the host of tawdry, daily miracles
That afflict me still
Afflict me still the same
And for you it was just distraction
An unreminder rinsing off
The silly whims of every other day
That passed unreformed
A gloss for my intuition
Because you know that there is really
Nothing they can tell you
There is nothing there at all
So I am wrong

THE MILL

Pinched in at the middle
Her small frame smiled out
But lost in suspicion
I failed to grasp it
Her word was an umbrella
It had me on its point
Her stroke was euthanasia
It swept me up in its charity
My helpers came
I didn't recognise them
They gathered about me
I shrugged them all off

Your sides are splitting
As you fall to the floor
I summarise my hatreds
And leave
I cloud over
And feel with the edges of my hands
The beige kernel
The man-made husk
Chafing all around me
It funnels me out
And sorely I'm let
Reeling

As I spit through the mists
I know that you fall away
You're watching me punish
My body for its own issue
I want you to look
At my back as I walk
I want you to know
The crook of my knees
I don't want to turn
I don't want to face you
Because I know if I turn
Then I will turn on you

And this was a haven
And this was a lie
The hangings were yellow
And small in my life
And I don't like to think this
And I don't want to say
And I'll wrap it in something
And I'll send it away
And it will be received
By a poor, distant fool
Who will wrap it all up
With weak, weak lies

HIT THE SQUEEZE-BOX

Hit the squeeze-box
Some malady
Comes trailing down the staircase
Seep through shoes
The costume is hot
But it almost fits
Studded green
Leather chair
Fails to enfold
Elephantine
Alas, a lack
Is all I have
To bargain, to brain you
You are dismissed
Touch it in dreams
It may yet seek you out
Oh, believe me
I've sinned against you all
Every last one
Of you

Slipped in heat
Passed upon disgust
Driven to arms
In flecks of mischief
In specks of solid doubt
Hard and fast
Cast me from the sheets
Lobes of meat
Of lost deceit
Truffles of heartache
To be savoured on occasion
Staked out
Doffed in splendid boredom
Leaked from the body
In desire
Worse or better
Can scarce occur at all
Between them
They've seen it all
But can they speak?
No, they choke
And cough days away
In depreciation

MOTHER, I'M TEXTURE

You saw my flight in the hallway
I saw your face on the stairs
I tried to be your son
I tried to be wholesome
But nature has never been fair

I was the man whom the trees loved
Digging through dust for a book
But now I've been caught for
Rappacini's daughter
She's wiping the bait from the hook

Mother, I'm texture
I'm righting men wrecks her
Mother, I'm born many brood
Mother, I'm yawning
I slide on your morning
I chide and deride me your food

I know that you won't understand this
But listen, I'll try to explain
With poor imitations
And weak demonstrations
Why my friends all smell the same

The turkey-neck reeks in your kitchen
Your children are bound to complain
They sing in the toilet
While you stand and boil it
It's aural, it's nasal, it's pain

Mother, I'm texture
I'm righting men wrecks her
Mother, I'm born many brood
Mother, I'm yawning
I slide on your morning
I chide and deride me your food

Now that I've spent all my sources
The drooling, the moth-like are gone
I'll find a new place
For Lowly Worm shoelace
If that is what pushes me on

Mother, I'm texture
I'm righting men wrecks her
Mother, I'm born many brood
Mother, I'm yawning
I slide on your morning
I chide and deride me your food

NO, REMEMBER

On my way to die
I laughed on the only breast
Alight with no continence
Nothing grown or known
How cool the breeze that licked my arms!
How quick my step!
Trees that lived in autumn winds
Wilting through my mind
My limbs were hanging wilfully
Unfastened from that page
Curled into and yet away
From the animal breath
On my way to die
I laughed on the only breast

Never was there message
Only was there fact
A different kind of diagram
Sealed with exclusion
Now support my need
Living uncontained
My form, it leaks all kinds of things
I scent every lack
To pride and to origin
I once again repair
To leaves and to earth
In some traditional sense
Never was there message
Only was there fact

But no, remember

TORN WHEAT LEAKED

Every time I see
Bread baked upon my knee
I recoil at the lie
But any time there'll be
A body next to me
It will wake and I will smile

Making do, I skirt
Pools awash with dirt
Innocent in despair
Then I'm behind you
And I'm on top of you
I am everywhere

The next train will leave
An hour before they'll see
But I no longer care
Because I see my wheat
Caked, since torn and leaked
Crowning your muddied hair

OCCASIONAL TABLE

Time loomed up like an erection
Just as those bright bulbs glowed open
On what basis was I chosen?
How can I now be beholden?

Occasion makes me your table
I'll bear the weight if I'm able
We try to make time more supple
I grip at your legs; mine buckle

Can we still counter disaster?
Can our question be our answer?
Plumbing the depths of the rupture
Life in confusion hereafter

You crush the facts of your own life
And smile over them as they die

THE DEVIL

On your way home you were falling off kerbs into rubbish bags. In an alley, a sign was flapping at the rain with a man in a Bonaparte hat. A false alibi was created, based upon an old, exposed template, with one eye open in an affectation of wisdom. It's hard to tell from a small sample. For example, it's impossible to tell how or if things will tie up with previous or later events.

Take a seat or have a piss
Then I'll tell you what the issue is
Take a look at what you missed
Who could want more than this?

Your cough echoed up the back stairs like a gunshot while the soft oven of your brain described it. A big pie full of leeches. Great big hat full of weeds. A dirty great row of bags, all full of possessions. You cut a rat up to find out how it works. Neeps and tatties. You left your phone downstairs. It hasn't worked so far, but there's still enough time.

Take a seat or have a piss
Then I'll tell you who the devil is
Eaten up by artifice
There really is no more than this

Tin-pots rattle as the man-trap whacks you over the shoulder. Forget it. Cancer is bad today and an onion was used to spot greed. It's like shouting into a Johnny. As dreams prove, identity and characteristics are not connected. For example, gap-eyed monsters in a holiday stable. Don't try to account for it if it never actually happened.

THE PETTY TASK

Our lives are locomotive
To the liberation traitors
The petty task of 'greatness'
Estranged from the urban

Education has risen
And transformed our impressions
The dominant teach heroism
To imply a greater sphere

The universal is replaced
With a greater assembly
And culture sinks into
The talent of the city

The modern proletariat
Make poor art
They want democratic accomplishment
But time has passed them by

Words by Lloyd James, © 1999-2004