The Song Challenge

 A song I discovered this month is Mary by Big Thief 

A song that always makes me smile is Electric Dreams by Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder

A song that makes me cry is Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits

A song that proves I have good taste is Tomorrow Never Knows by The Beatles

An underrated song is Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches

A song title with three words is Easy/Lucky/Free

A song from my childhood is Mamma Mia by ABBA

A song that reminds me of summer is 1234 by Feist

A song I feel embarrassed listening to is Feel by Robbie Williams

The first song that plays on shuffle is The Scientist by Coldplay

A song that someone showed me is Landslide by Fleetwood Mac

A song from a movie soundtrack is Worried Shoes by Karen O and the Kids

A song with no words is Gymnopedie No. 1 by Eric Satie

A song about being 17 is I'm Not Okay by My Chemical Romance 

A song that reminds me of somebody is Another Brick In The Wall by Pink Floyd

A song to drive to would be Halfway Home by TV on the Radio

A song with a number in the title is 99 Problems by Jay-Z

A song that I listen to at 3am is All In The Stream by S Carey

A song with a long title is Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh by Bright Eyes

A song with a colour in the title is Blue Suede Shoes by Elvis Presley

A song that I've had stuck in my head is Sticks 'N Stones by Jamie T

A song in a different language is , "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien" by Édith Piaf 

Voices Without Faces

A pantoum

There will be voices that call themselves yours.
Without faces, they could belong to ghosts.
They may be your words; they may be an illusion.
I don’t know- language is my fortitude and fault.

They could be ghosts, whispering phantoms.
If I could ask them, I don’t think that I’d dare.
Because my language is faulty yet a fortune.
I spill all attempts to say something beautiful.

I don’t think I would dare ask who is speaking.
The quiet is a sort of kindness, anyway.
Spilling my attempts to say something beautiful
I would not want to hear. I do not want to hear.

Anyway, the quiet is a sort of kindness.
The words may be yours; you may be an illusion.
I do not want to hear. I do not want to hear them.
Voices without faces that call themselves mine.


Playlist // nostalgia

A playlist of beautiul murmurs

The Act of Murmuring from daisy christabel on 8tracks Radio.

I Need A Phone Call

Not poetry really, just something I just had to get off my chest before I go to bed.
Thank you, you know who you are.

There is that concept that they name 'stranger danger'
and of course, thunder can clap and the unfamiliar
can hurt you. Detectives examining bruises,
police stations in general; I'm blessed to have someone
there to hold me while I fell into a broken leaf.
But danger doesn't always come from storms
or from strangers. Sometimes it comes at the hands
of the familiar, of those who you thought loved you.
It's been a long time since the first stranger.
Even longer since the familiar.
People are good. They are basically good.
People are good. They are basically good.

A phone conversation today meant the world to me.
Reminded me of what happened, what I came out of.
Felt my heart breaking a little- the voice that spoke to me.
It's been over a decade since we knew each other,
and yet I want to hang on to every word,
and I want to speak of things I have so long buried.
Friendship works that way, I am sure of it.
People are good. They are basically good.

i'll never give up on that.

Don't Think Twice about Love Letters

Love letters are the kinds of things I can only write at night. Hello moon, how do you like these lines? Insomniac sentences who always wear muddy hems, refuse to reveal more than absolutely necessary. And only what’s necessary counts. When I write them down, I want them dirty. Gritty. I want my recipient to find dirt under fingernails after reading. Maybe some behind the ear. Tongue coated in saliva. Do you need a bath, love? Your skin’s looking a little grimy. My love letters aren’t fluent in softness, sweetness, regret. They’ve a bitter edge, tartness. They only lift their dresses when they shouldn’t, are only addressed to who they can’t have. What, moon? Love and her letters aren’t always as pure as you and your Cheshire grin.

8 Friday Thoughts and a song

i. I am my own worst nigthmare. A glass drops into my hand and my palm shatters- conclusion: I'm too fragile for all this. I try to bite the rust from beneath my fingernails- conclusion: there are endless walls and walks and rides and the damage collects, and I know it, I'm just no good at fixing it. A book opens and closes, another on top of it, a hand is raised expectantly in a school room- conclusion: I am a question, unsure of being answered. A phone rings and rings, hands shake, the blinds close- conclusion: I am afraid, I would prefer to be invisible. So why is it that it means so much to me that I am remembered, noticed, loved? I blush, I hide, I need, I rattle. I am a nightmare.

ii. Pits of hunger feel better again. I'm a fool and buckling and I know it. I used to be able to stop it. Where did the strength go? Where did the rain go? Why don't I talk anymore? I would give anything to go back and start over, to when I could be and wanted to be heard, and I didn't see a tombstone standing in my doorway, and I didn't see myself from above and see an eyesore.

iii. Somewhere, sometime, someone said I was going to be okay. I didn't believe them before. I believe it now. I am still porcelain and not stone. I am still rust but not decay. I suddenly finding it strange to be myself.

iv. Possible diagnoses (not yet invented): disenchanted brain; history not one's own (delusion); abandoning of flight; undemanding tightness; birdbath stomach ache; translucence; corner cowaredice; blind trust; a healing through scar tissue; sanity through sentence structure; a reckoning. 

v. I suppose this is half-imagined. Like imagining choosing songs to whistle in the mounains or to sing on the street, like a radio looping in your bain. Like looking straight into an eclipse. Meeting a cheerful ghost at a rundown factory. Leaving something special behind when you go.

vi. The walls sweat anxiously and you whistle softly to me. There's nothing but nostalgia in the clouds and a heart thrumming in my mouth- mine or yours? Why did I never have the right words to say? I tried to write them. I tried to be a dream more than a nightmare, but maybe self-knowledge at the end of it is better than being just a phantom of regret.

vii. Someday- if I have the time- all of this will get the better of me and that will be the end, and I'll go to a place beyond this with books and bathtubs or just waste. Or it won't get the better of me and I will shrug it all away, or else I'll do anything at all- with no exceptions, besides having to remain alone forever- to fit the puzzle pieces back together. Loss breaks me apart in a way I can't articulate. I'm not finished. I'm not crazy. I do love.

viii. I don't know where I am going, or who I am, or what I can do. You have to tell me. I'm just made up of mirrors. I've known dead-ends and disasters but I'm still here. I shouldn't be but I am. War should never be happening, but i is, always will. I don't deserve to be happening here, but I am. Isn't that some kind of evidence that magic really exists?

A new recording

I apologise for my apology (?) towards the end and all the quietness. It just moves me quite dramatically, the lyrics.

I am not the only traveller who has not repaid his debt

Those who wish to sing always find a song

Some seconds of song

Conor Oberst says it too well

"Now I walk around in some kind of altered state.
The drink in my hand is starting to shake.
I get used to it if it has to stay this way.
A new bunch of flowers I'll have to arrange. 

I don't want to eat or get out of bed.
Try to recall what the therapist said-
Ego and Id, the Essential Self,
You are who you are and you are someone else. 

But I'm worn gossamer thin.
Like Delicate Arch, carved by the wind.
There's a glass psyche at stake.
Throw me a brick, see if it breaks.
'Cause the mind and the brain aren't quite the same
But they both want out of this place."

A pretty duet

Could We Start Again Please? / Daddy

My Last Mistake- a song

Just a daydream

Paper Bag

I thought it was a bird but it was just a paper bag.


I've loved this song since my late adolescence. Because I can relate so much to the words.
Recording proved difficult with malfunctioning equipment but I think it was okay.
Inspired by Bob Dylan's 'I'm not here', I'm not here, certainly anyway.
I thought it was a girl but it was a just no one.

Death is (not) the end

First singing I've done in some time. I felt shy and breathless and heart going bang bang bang while doing it and I think it sounds that way but I'm happy to be trying again. Trying to get my voice back. Everything I give voice to is just a hiccup in the back of a classroom or an echo in an empty lecture hall or hospital ward or a telephone ringing somewhere beyond wall after wall after wall.

The way we were

Other Lives (Reincarnation Imagined)

TRANSCRIPT:

I don't know if I can tell you this: that there's something sinister waiting to happen. It's a rattlesnake beneath the floorboards type of feeling. A falling to your death just before you wake up because you've been dreaming type of feeling.

Do you believe in past lives because I never have, but if I did, I'd like to make them up for myself the way I make up the meaning of this whole universe, just because I know there isn't going to be a big reveal at the end or at any point, and nobody is going to let me in on the secret.

In one past life, I'm sitting on a porch and the evening is humid, I'm looking out over a creek, hearing but not listening to a cacophony of crickets and insects' monotonous drone, and splashing. I think I'm somewhere in the dustbowl I've read about in all the books about the American Dream. Or the shattering of that Dream. Or the illusion of that Dream. Or a dream of a Dream. But in this dream, or past life, there are two boys throwing punches at each other and they are in the water.
On one side of the creek, there's a pile of clothes. I know that there's a pistol hidden in it. On the other side of the creek, there's only warm darkness, hot night.

Another life now. I am a we. There's a you and a me, but he isn't my you and I can't be his me, or her- we are just somebodys. We are trying to find out what our insides look like using only words. His handwriting is messy, messier than mine is in this life. I mistake his scribbled hearts for small butterflies tacked to the end of a message he penned in a card. Anniversary. Valentines. Birthday.
It's another life. A harvest moon means something in this life. A heartbeat like an insect hitting the window pane. Again. Again. Again.

I'm in a car taking a moonlit drive with Jim Morisson. He's feeding me pieces of heaven. We are midnight heroes. This is another life entirely. But he bites his fingernails, and above his bed is a ceiling fan that whines like a dog in pain, and I hate myself in this life.
The mornings are ugly and my lips look like something I've fallen on. I am cold all the time. I am not introspective, and I do not know why I want to end my life, but I do, so it doesn't last long.

Next life, I chew the inside of my cheek when I am angry or nervous, or both, which is often, and in this life a man is yelling at me in Japanese but I know what he is telling me- you are not worthy. I want to tell him- yes I am- but I do not lift my eyes.
I think I made a long life in Japan but never spoke back. It wasn't the right time, not the right life. But this one, this could be the one.

I'm missing three fingers. I'm probably going to lose half of my nose. My skin is turning to the colour of chrome, it glows amongst all the white. I'm at the top of the world. I made it to the top of the highest mountain in the world.
We may not make it back down alive, but we got here, and this is a feeling I want to package, to put away in a bottle or small box and bring back with me to this real life.

But that was another life, that never happened, forever ago, never ago, and there were many and there were none and I was so special in some and so insignificant in others. See- it doesn't really matter. You can say it's a dream- you can take that pistol out and shoot a bird, you can let the warm dark swallow you, you can put your hands into his chest, you can take your last breath in a dimly lit bathroom, you can say nothing, you can say everything, you can be brilliant, or you can be worthless, but in the end it means exactly the same thing.

Train Song