This is another song lyric as storytelling, here on that fine line of finessing the grotesque, but there is certainly no sensationalising or obviously glamourising. This also, like the recent Jason Isbell, shouldn’t be divorced from the melody which in this case is sublimely beautiful and that is why it works so emotively in its juxtaposition:

His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne’s T-shirts
When the swingset hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things
Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

Are you one of them?

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room on the bed he kissed them all
He’d kill ten thousand people
With a sleight of his hand
Running far, running fast to the dead
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips
Quiet hands, quiet kiss
On the mouth

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

It wasn’t a great move for Angela Rayner yesterday to call a Tory scum MP ‘scum’, and I don’t blame her one jot, because it allowed that scum party to have a momentary, slightly elevated position from which to dribble some self-righteous drivel, this only marginally above the effluence and big fat liebergs in which they normally reside.

I’ve written before about song lyrics as poetry, and Elephant by Jason Isbell is certainly poetic, but it is the storytelling that is most affecting. It shouldn’t be divorced from its melody, and this is a superbly written song, but I share for that plaintive, heartfelt storyline:

She said Andy you’re better than your past
winked at me and drained her glass
cross-legged on the barstool, like nobody sits anymore.
She said Andy you’re taking me home
but I knew she planned to sleep alone
I’d carry her to bed and sweep up the hair from the floor.

If I had fucked her before she got sick
I’d never hear the end of it
she don’t have the spirit for that now.

We drink these drinks and laugh out loud
bitch about the weekend crowd
and try to ignore the elephant somehow
somehow.

She said Andy you crack me up
Seagrams in a coffee cup
sharecropper eyes and her hair almost gone.
When she was drunk she made cancer jokes
she made up her own doctor’s notes
surrounded by her family I saw she was dying alone.

I’d sing her classic country songs
and she’d get high and sing along
she don’t have the voice to sing with now.

We’d burn these joints in effigy
cry about what we used to be
and try to ignore the elephant somehow
somehow.

I buried her a thousand times
giving up my place in line
but I don’t give a damn about that now.

There’s one thing that’s real clear to me
no one dies with dignity
we just try to ignore the elephant somehow
we just try to ignore the elephant somehow
we just try to ignore the elephant somehow
somehow
somehow.

Ten years ago now I finally got to try the Dead Hippie burger at the MEATliquor in Jubilee Hall at Covent Garden. Two beef patties, seeping juice and grease, winking pink, onions held: it was delicious. No queue, and great to sit up in the mezzanine watching the market surfers below. If there had been a next time it would have been the chili dog and the corn puppies [corn meal wrapped around polish sausage, deep fried]. My kinda food.

Having said the above, it looks like ten years later the chili dog and corn puppies are no longer available. Ah well – it’s still possible to drool over this menu.

He comes here
by whatever way he can,
not too late,
not too soon.

He sits, waiting.
He doesn’t know
why he should
have such a patience.

He sits at a table
on a chair.
He is comfortable
sitting there.

No one else
in this room,
no others, no expectations,
no sounds.

Had he walked
another way,
would he be here,
like they say.

Lyrics to this song from the Richmond Fontaine album Post to Wire

Everyone inside was half ruined and almost gone
Outside in the frozen parking lot
He held her in his arms
As he led her inside her glasses fogged from the cold and
They both stood there dressed in their best clothes
“Has anyone here seen my dad” the girl called
“Cause he hasn’t been to work and I don’t know
Where he lives anymore”

Not everyone lives their life alone
Not everyone gives up
Or is beaten or robbed or always stoned
Not everyone

The bartender bought them rounds
And made a toast and
With a Polaroid he took their picture and hung it
Up on the bar mirror all alone
And for a little while it was like
The whole world was alright like
No one was beaten or forsaken or had given up
When they’d just seen light

[image by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

The first picture was taken at the end of May when I placed that slice of feathers in the hedge, hoping to fool anyone who passed into thinking it might have arrived their by natural means. The second picture was taken earlier this month, and in the unlikely event anyone has spotted by chance in passing – at either time – it would be interesting to know their surmises, but especially the surprise and sense of genuine discovery for the second. Perhaps the winter will expose more of that encore shot, back to its original deception.

Thank you Rupert and IT for my poem here today.

i

go with the freeflow of its water go with the multitudinous go with the myriad go with the going go with the withing go with the mental process texting which is the mental process as text not the other go without the corrections and caveats go with the emotional and poetic mind go with the paralleling go with the internal monologue of the interior go with the seamlessness go with the other which is jumping from one to the other or to the next go with the onrunning of perception go with the erratic and fluctuating go with the ice cream flavours

ii

go go
cream

go with
the go

go
flavours
go

go to
the going

the go
with go

go
the
go

going to
the go

cream
go go

iii

go to the one emotional process
to the next without corrections and
go for fluctuating caveats to go to
and go to the myriad text with its
interior freeflow perception, with its
multitudinous internal paralleling
multitudinous internal paralleling
multitudinous internal paralleling
multitudinous internal paralleling
go to its seamlessness of the poetic
go go erratic onrunning onrunning
the go to flavours texting as process
go to the monologue of corrections
go to a myriad poetic of perceptions