Thursday, July 15, 2010

Today's moving song

The Perfect Space - The Avett Brothers


I wanna have friends that I can trust,
that love me for the man I’ve become not the man I was.
I wanna have friends that will let me be
all alone when being alone is all that I need.
I wanna fit in to the perfect space,
feel natural and safe in a volatile place.
And I wanna grow old without the pain,
give my body back to the earth and not complain.
Will you understand when I am too old of a man?
And will you forget when we have paid our debt
who did we borrow from?

Okay part two now clear the house.
The party’s over take the shouting and the people,
get out.
I have some business and a promise that I have to hold to.
I do not care what you assume or what the people told you.
Will you understand, when I am too old of a man?
Will you forget when we have paid our debts,
who did we borrow from, who did borrow from?

I wanna have pride like my mother has,
And not like the kind in the bible that turns you bad.
And I wanna have friends that I can trust,
that love me for the man I’ve become and not the man that I was.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

These words caught me today

Straight in at 101 - Los Campesinos!

I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock
Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never get me off

You pull your dress over your face, and I stare down towards my chest
Chastise both our greasy hair, wonder whose gut is the softest
Stand with my ear to the door, listening to the landing floorboards
Working out when we'll be safe, to dash from mattress to yr bathroom

Where I ball my fingers into fists until my knuckles glow bright white
Press the heels into eye-sockets 'til I see the flashing lights
Stop me when my stories change, when they have started to repeat
'Cause last time I was a mess of sleep of icy feet

So baby; all apologies
It was going to happen, inevitably.
Ohhh.

I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock
Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never touch my cock
And what exactly do you mean now, by
"what can you even eat? And how does that affect how I'll get off this evening?".

I flew down south to Mexico, had a minor realisation
I understood why kids draw the sun with its rays emanating
And the beams broke the clouds, the sky looked like a concertina
I'd sat on in my pocket for weeks, folded up from a picture

I've been playing straight chicken with gay girls
(It's never enough)
She keeps on pulling the peace sign
(And it seems like a taunt)
She licked a glaze on her lips
They shone like Battleship Grey
She never liked the wisdom I gave:

"Some people give themselves to religion
Some people give themselves to a cause
Some people give themselves to a lover
I have to give myself to girls"

So baby; all apologies
It was going to happen, inevitably
And if it helps, I mean, even slightly at all
It's best to dust yourself down and get straight back on the horse

I condescend a smile and wink directly at the camera
I leave you led in both our scents as I tip-toe out the backdoor
I skid down icy streets and view my face in the reflection
Of a high street lingerie store though it wasn't my intention

I phone my friends and family to gather round the television;
The talking heads count down the most heart-wrenching break ups of all time
Imagine the great sense of waste, the indignity, the embarrassment
When not a single one of that whole century was... mine

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

My song of the summer

Perfect Day - Lou Reed

Just a perfect day,

Drink Sangria in the park,

And then later, when it gets dark,

We go home.

Just a perfect day,

Feed animals in the zoo

Then later, a movie, too,

And then home.



Oh it's such a perfect day,

I'm glad I spent it with you.

Oh such a perfect day,

You just keep me hanging on,

You just keep me hanging on.



Just a perfect day,

Problems all left alone,

Weekenders on our own.

It's such fun.

Just a perfect day,

You made me forget myself.

I thought I was someone else,

Someone good.



Oh it's such a perfect day,

I'm glad I spent it with you.

Oh such a perfect day,

You just keep me hanging on,

You just keep me hanging on.



You're going to reap just what you sow,

You're going to reap just what you sow,

You're going to reap just what you sow,

You're going to reap just what you sow...

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

3 poems that have moved me lately

Symptom Recital by Dorothy Parker

I do not like my state of mind;
I'm bitter, querulous, unkind.
I hate my legs, I hate my hands,
I do not yearn for lovelier lands.
I dread the dawn's recurrent light;
I hate to go to bed at night.
I snoot at simple, earnest folk.
I cannot take the gentlest joke.
I find no peace in paint or type.
My world is but a lot of tripe.
I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted.
For what I think, I'd be arrested.
I am not sick, I am not well.
My quondam dreams are shot to hell.
My soul is crushed, my spirit sore;
I do not like me any more.
I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse.
I ponder on the narrow house.
I shudder at the thought of men....
I'm due to fall in love again.

The Cinnamon Peeler by Michael Ondaatje

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
-- your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers...

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond by E. E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands