The Perfect Blue

‘Don’t fall in love with a Thai bar waitress with the hourglass figure and the Scorpio eyes. She’s got the skin of a smooth cat sculpture, she’ll steal your heart and never call again.’

I and I and a Jamaican prankster we danced till dawn on a Monday morning. Nights in Pai can become freezing. Put another log in the fire for me.

 The Perfect Blue is a distant blessing: a pool of milk and a lake in each eye. On her arm was a black crab spider. (It’s been so long since you have held my hand.)

Joe and Simon and a mexican gangster in a Russian joint in the heart of Beijing, we laughed so hard my nose was bleeding. Do a little more of this dance for me.

 The Perfect Blue is the one I’m missing, dying of thirst in a foreign country. Birds migrate with a rhyme and reason. The way she moved was like a symphony.

Had a date with a Cambodian princess, two showers a day couldn’t wash off Phnom Pehn. This rib is a cage and lust a prison, trust, a strength within the heart of men.

 The Perfect Blue is the one right between a Yorkshire grey and a sycamore green. The waitress smiles and my ribcage is prancing. Pour a little love in this glass for me.

Pour a little love in this glass for me.

Variations On The Theme For Melancholia

Last night was a call and a cry in the cold of the night.
There was a fire: the carbon monoxide that escaped with the ashes was just trying to find home (it was just trying).
In the bath where you sink there’s a drop of blood.
In the salt of the sea is chloride.
When the heat from the star hits your skin, you’re still tired.
I try to shake you up but what comes out is a black puddle of bile.
There’s regrets in the past: an imbalance of chemicals.
Oh you can run, run, run, you exercise, but you can’t always hide it.
All the salt in the house cannot soak it up.
I never told you that, but you’ve got the right to be trying.
You’ve got the right to be trying.
You’ve got the right to be sad.

O Thunder

O Thunder make it rain
O Thunder rescue me
Bored by the New York party brag.
Yamwning at conversations out loud.

O Thunder come what may.
O Father where have you been?
Lost in a Paris metro line, a stone’s throw away from Notre Dame
One day I’ll find your sorry eyes. I pray that it rains and lightning strikes.

Bloodpaths

There’s a voice echoing and bouncing over our loud walls, A man dressed in a white suit with more charm than an angel.

There’s a rifle hidden under your poor father’s bed. We can hear a marching band, excitement in the square.

It’s the last time I might see you my brother in arms: let’s climb a tree and see the mountains I will miss their pride.

The crowd is waving flags and smoke is choking up the town. Your father with arms in the air like he is being drowned.

It’s the last time I might see you my brother in arms: let’s climb a tree and see the mountains I will miss their pride. Paths abound in this scorched land and yet it is so small. Blood might take us on one each and I won’t see them all.

A Foundering Heart

Staring at the oblivion, I now address my future son —or future daughter for that matter— let’s give you birth wrapped in a song.

You’ll learn the history of France, the painters of the Renaissance. The names of rocks stuck in the dirt

Of the earth that you’re standing on.

With a foundering heart that I can call my own

The night finally falls on me.

You’ll be gone for a while, but when you come back home

You’ll have everything that you need.

You will spend time under the sun. You’ll fly to the Costa Del Sol, fall in love with a spanish dancer, one that you’ll call mi corazon.

And every hour and every second you’ll gain a century of wisdom. Poetry is more precise than science

You’ll feel it deep inside your bones.

With a foundering heart that I can call my own

The night finally falls on me.

You’ll be gone for a while, but when you come back home

You’ll have everything that you need.

Out of sight out of mind. Not out of mine my love.

Your skin was fashioned from my own skin.

What I’ve learned in my time I’ll teach you now my child

What you have learned you’ll have to teach.

See it’s George that was right. Once I have spoken my words

Are nothing more than memories.

Whether they’re heard or they’re not,

Once they’ve escaped my mouth they’re nothing more than memories.

East / Far East

The city boys are all so drunk: their ties hang loose around their necks. In a couple of days they’ll choke inside a Sunday best.

I’ve swapped numbers with an old friend I know I’ll never call again. (And by old friend I mean an acquaintance at the most.)

Out of the ditch, the Kingsland Rd is full of lust. Well I suppose I’ll forgive you anything if you are cute enough.

Now if I ever shaved my head I am so scared of what I might find underneath all that hair: a bunch of half baked ideals, promises I’ve never kept and promises I will probably never keep.

I know compassion is a must but when there’s a fight on the night bus, I get irate at the idiocy of violence.

The summer heat and alcohol makes my blood curd and my head boil and I almost snap when you start mentioning your clothes

Fashion it’s just an industry and style’s become a currency. (And I’m as shallow as everybody else.)

Now if I ever shaved my head I am so scared of what I might find underneath all that hair: a bunch of half baked ideals, promises I’ve never kept and promises I will probably never keep.

Of all the reasons to be there the one I care about the least is that there’s money to be made. And I could put mine where my mouth is, become a monk in the far east, but I guess I’ll probably have to shave my head.

Spring Overture

I wasn’t cut out for this gig my love: I drop things on an hourly basis. The newspapers bark and the manager’s wrath has descended upon me.
Some things break, some are fixed, there was a crack in the window and so you’ve spent the whole winter in the cold.
Look at the leaves so green my love, they grow back from nothing at all.
Here’s to the first days of spring.

The Leopard’s Drum

I’ve seen more than they say meets the eye: I’ve lived more than a life in this lifetime.
Did you know that I was crowned heavyweight champion of the world?
I’ve seen the fall of the Roman Empire,
I’ve been a poet, been a slave and a mother,
I’ve slit the throat of the lamb and the soldier.
Did you know that I once sacrificed my reason for a girl?
I’ve seen the light in the heart of Africa.

As I sit at of a train full of strangers, I see the people on my left and on my right and I’m sure I’ll soon be scattered to all four corners of the earth, so I’m bound to become one of them then the other.

You know I have been the leopard with the drum, I have been the teacher and the child.
And all the while I’ve known without a doubt: your eyes are mine.

I’ve seen each of the world’s seven wonders,
I’ve spent more gold than a king, dies a pauper.
Did you know I’ve been the audience who’s now hearing these words?
I’ve been you, your enemy and your lover.

You know I have been the hunter and the cub. I have been the yardbird and the guard. I have been the preacher and the crowd. I’ve been the writer who went blind. You know I have been the leopard with the drum. I have been the teacher and the child.
And all the while I’ve known without a doubt: your eyes are mine.

Powder Blue, Prussian Too

You can be so loud when you sigh.
You can be so loud that the room will shake and the glass will crack,
And I’ve done so much to make it work, so much to make it right.

You can be so loud when you sigh
The painting’s a mess, the starlings flocked south
And I’ve done so much to make it work, so much to make it right.

When we said: all we wanted was a roof over our heads and four white walls to hold all the pieces we’d been working on: sculptures made of red clay, porcelain and tortoiseshell, Portland Limestone, and the bones of a plastic skeleton. A Memento Mori among the pots of paints and all the stains on our dungarees: Chinese red, vermillion and Powder blue, Prussian too, peacock feathers that we used as brushes. Two broken paintings hanging high upon the wall. All we wanted was to make something bigger than ourselves and I have failed more than once, it wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last.

Blossom Winter

The snow swallows the city. He walks —Simon walks in the street. The old windows are splitting, the cold blue-froze my lips and I find it hard to think of anything else but him.

The pores of an alcoholic, dark holes engulf his teeth. The sores ignored by his feet, the soles worn down to the skin. I saw him outside the shop, drunk till he dropped fast asleep.

In the blossom winter, a glass of liquor to keep us warm
In the blossom winter when sons and daughters are coming home.
In the blossom winter, a glass of liquor to keep us warm
In the blossom winter the homeless bastard drowns on his own.

Out Of Napa

There’s the sun, there’s the sea, footsteps in the sand that don’t belong to me. They come and go but this is home, and I want out of Ayia Napa.

There’s the Turks, there’s the Swedes, the Brits with the skirts so short that it’s obscene: they rodeo holding the horns of a bull. In my sleep these electric sheep graze the glass on the high street: they come and go but this is home and I want out of Ayia Napa.

There’s a ghost that I see every night in the back seat of the taxi as I head home. I see it glow. It’s an old part of me: slightly see-through but braver than I’ll ever be. It sings I’m off, I’m out of here, yes I’m out of Ayia Napa.

Mie

Mie, the art world shook as you entered the café
Me, I was there gradually filling up the ashtray
Jaded, but not enough to ignore eyes gold and gentle
So I stood up straight a soldier before his general

I couldn’t look at the paintings, I couldn’t look at the photos, there was enough of your beauty to fill the entire museum. But when you asked me if your language sounded a bit like it was sang, I just said no.

Clichés pour out of you when you’re faced with so much beauty
See I didn’t know Erato could be found in this city
Mie, your olive skin warm as the rooftops of Cairo
Me wrapped in excuses: you were the muse and I too old.

I wrote your name in the concrete before it dried, and on the wall I wrote in paint and graffiti, filled twenty two photo albums. But when your lips appraoched my lips as you stood tall on the platform I just went no.

No no no no no no no.

Four Darks

I was high in the building little darling, and the night was as dark as it gets when the heat started melting the city —so quiet. And the brown sky was roaring and the lightning was flashing on the ocean like it was taking pictures, with the temperature rising and I ran and I ran to find it.

Yes I ran down the stairs little darling, found myself in the street suffocated by ashes: a grey snowstorm in town and I couldn’t see ahead, but I witnessed the end —or the beginning— with the rubbles of towers piled up for a horizon and a red fence of smoke rising up from the flames, to find it.

And when I found your hand little darling, we walked our eyes closed till the morning: the blind leading the blind little darling. Out of the city where the choir was singing:

Water, water, waves, shower rain
Bathe our souls and wash our sins
Water, water, waves, shower rain
Wash it all and start again.

La Lune

Slowly she slithers
Bathing the landscape
In white and blue drapes
snake-skinned in rivers.

Blame it on the moon, Silent, smug and proud
Crescent mastermind
Smiling bright and cruel

She knows I can’t sleep
Doesn’t say a thing
Aims for the morning
Smiling bright and cruel

Cornucopia

I drank mulled wine from the horn of plenty. And as the sun rises to the east, I realise I’ve been alive for a bit more than twenty five years, and I’ve spent another nine hours in your sheets.

I’m always losing track of time. I haven’t checked my phone for a while. I’m always losing track of time when I’m with you.

(The brazen head spoke thrice: time is, time was, time’s past.)

One (Laplace’s Demon)

In the lapse of time between two claps of your delicate hands:
One can commit the worst crime, can confess all the sins,
Complete a masterpiece, one can see one’s whole life
Flash right before one’s eyes, can dream inside a dream
Feel like a year has passed, see atoms split in half,
Can give up everything, can hurt one’s dear love while
Deciding to turn left instead of turning right
Can try with all one’s might to make the world stand still
But the smallest decision will cause a chain reaction turning one’s life around and others in between. Now if the said decision is also the reaction to something that’s been done a thousand years before, well is the whole equation calculated and written? Or are the bunch of numbers thrown together at random? If so, why’s it so goddamn hard to believe one second that there will be accidents? There will be accidents, a lot of things can happen -a lot of things- in the lapse of time between two claps of your delicate hands.

Summering Here

Let’s go out tonight. You have got blood diamonds for eyes and they will shine until we cycle back at dawn. You want to buy less. Twirling in your new vintage dress the smell of dust fills up the room, it fills my lungs.
You heard it from a friend: a spanish troupe ended up shipwrecked on an island off the south coast of China. When the natives met them, they thought everyone in the west was either a juggler or a clown or acrobat.

When you cried for Liberia I thought you meant freedom. I didn’t get it’s where you r grandfather was born.
The first taste of success would be to afford your own place: somewhere that you could go back to and call your home like a beach house, just a place in the sun where your skin, tanned, will always smell of coconut. I will never pronounce the word right, you’ll be making fun of it. We are street-smart, but I guess that for this year, we’ll be summering here.

Like a beach house, just a place in the sun where you will drap a map in a page of The Capital. I will never pronounce the word right, you’ll be making fun of it. I hear an X marks where the treasure is buried.

And I will hear you sigh as you get out of the shower: it’s a bit sad that in one way or another you will always have to sell something to someone else. Yeah we’re street-smart but I guess that for this year we’ll be summering here.

There’s no gold in sight, the streets are paved with broken glass and you’ll still take off your high heels at the bus stop.
You want to buy less you’re so tired from craning your neck to read the names of all the books in the junk shop.

Forever Young

The illusion of a time lapse is shown through a series of images of the boys and the girls I’ve said I’d rather be friends with. In Gothenburg the coffee is black but it’s lightened by her story. She used to housesit for a man way back in east Berlin. When the dog died, she freaked out, packed her bags, put the dog in a suitcase. At the station someone helped her with it, grabbed it and ran away. She says: I never get attached, I don’t like to stick around too long, and it’s easier to live in the past because the past never moves on.

Forever Young.

Well it’s summertime and the weather’s high, he’s put the sofa in the garden so he can sit outside by the constant flow of cars: it’s the poor man’s ocean. Back at his there’s a poster of a family posing happily in the room. They have a boy and a dog too and it reads:
don’t let this happen to you.

At the Palm Tree the drinks are on me, I’m on whiskey, he’s on rum. On his backpack there’s a Black Flag badge and he asks me where I’m from because he’s walked around the planet, and when there was nowhere else to roam, he whispered: all my life I’ve searched for what I had when I was young.

Forever Young.

Now the boy in the bubble grew up and when the bubble finally burst he said: I know it’s not a race but I fell that I should get there first. I’ve got three loves in my life: New York, London and Paris. I’m surrounded by millions the only one I trust is me.

Karen Dalton sings in the kitchen with a voice like a saxophone she sighs: I’ve dug myself a hole trying to find where I belong.
Was it the cat that told the mouse: top off, half done, all gone?
The moral of the story is probably that there is none.

Forever Young.

Capture / Release

Remember this fact: it’s distance I despise.
This piano is creaking like an old steam boat, it got me thinking about our old home sweet home. You’ll be doing so well that I’ll be glad to let you…
Remember these facts: time is of the essence, the universe expands.
We’d grown far apart and I could hear above you were dancing on the creaky wooden floor with the blinds shut tight so no one else would know you were dancing in the kitchen on your own.
You’ll be doing so well that I’ll be glad to let you go.

Amsterdam

In the darkness of the bar the old sailor looked at my glass when he said: water was meant to be sailed on. Now there’s not two ways about it: water was meant to be sailed on. But I do know some who swim in it. Yeah, I even know of some who drink it too.

Are you happy are you an idiot? Are you worried are you invisible? Are you sorry, are you so cynical? Do you believe in anything at all? Are you naive? Do yo still believe in love?

I met him at the warmest hour of the coldest night by the frozen canals of Amsterdam. He said: I’ve met the planets and the stars, oh how little we are! It made my head spin! And the name I was given by my mother faded out in an hour, it sweated out of my skin. And I saw myself in relation to the universe, I saw my status melt away between the tulips, I swear my thoughts were the coal of all my anger. And I thought oh lord what should I do when this is over? I thought God knows… Well I’m not even sure that He does. What am I to become now that nothing really matters? Now that everything’s gone at the same time it is all over? Well you guess it I had love, and that to me was like an anchor. I thought no more will I be scared I’ve got the answer, now I’ve got the answer.

Then he said: ater was meant to be sailed on. Now there’s not two ways about it: water was meant to be sailed on. But I do know some who swim in it. Yeah, I even know of some who drink it too.

The Persistence Of Memory

The dreams you had where you were kids were rather surreal: horse’s heads in the arctic sea, fishing fo eels, melon seeds in your brother’s face, the strangest things you’ve ever seen, drawing the maps of places I’m pretty certain don’t exist.

Cathedrals made of stone covered in snow, frozen in gold. The tin drums played by ghosts of kid who’ve lost their sights and homes.

In waves and in streams when things weren’t always as they seemed: you remember everything.

The Persistence of Memory is smashed up to bits. When you don’t know that you’re asleep, you cease to exist. That’s when inanimate objects morph into shapes from white to green, drawing the landscape of a painting that was never meant to be seen.the sky burning in flames high as the clouds of orange shame. Umbrellas on tables and cellos bristing in the rain.

In waves and in streams when things weren’t always as they seemed: you remember everything.

And it’s a hake that spoke to me. It said: there’s a truth behind the truth and it’s the one I’m swimming in and what you see is something else when you can shut off you senses, your skin gets so thin yo can slip in the waves and the streams, where things aren’t always as they seem, and you remember everything. The dreams you had when you were kids were rather surreal, and somewhere memories persist so you remember everything.