The End (Has To Start Somewhere)
I’ll start at the beginning,
that is to say, I’ll nominate an arbitrary point
as the seed from which all other contingencies proceed.
Single cell organisms evolve into animals,
and at a critical mass of thought; become conscious,
writing raps about their origins, committing confession to hard drive.
If microprocessors could talk, what stories they would tell
about their organic master’s sombre cycle lives.
We’ll survive our sombre cycle lives,
and when we end, that’s when we’ll arrive.
My head is hiding places that don’t exist
and its filling with the forces i can’t resist.
So tell me bed time stories that end with ‘once upon a time’
and deliver them in raps that never quite rhyme.
So if you think that you’re living on the last page of a book,
I’d encourage you to reconsider your outlook.
History doesn’t like me and my sarcastic questions.
Don’t you ever get sick of repeating yourself?
Kicking Logic
I shut my senses and see a multiplicity of realities.
Variations on a theme of me, that never made it to the party.
In every now, the universe attacks with infinite facts
the mirror moment cracks, the image self sub-divides.
Which one can I call me? I can’t decide.
With logic as my bricks, I build a wall and hide.
I am a cat in a box, collapse dynamic dropped.
An unobserved life is both moving and stopped
hanging in the air, parallel, not the same.
Frozen fragments of forgotten futures fill frames.
Time Flies
It’s impossible to understand the significance of every plan you make
and how they’ll effect the steps you take; my first mistake;
arriving late in such a state that now
I have slipped through the cracks in the pavement,
I spend my days gazing up through puddles and feeling them ripple as I sigh:
Oh my, how time flies.
It seems like it was just the other day,
I could afford to look the other way,
innocence, in a sense, had such a price to pay.
now I’m so far away from I began, I feel like the ghost that used to haunt me.
but I’ll do my best to disguise:
Oh my, how time flies.
What we are now is all there has ever been,
but that implies memory is only dream.
It seemed so real when it was happening,
but now it’s clear I was imagining;
the question marks swimming across my eyes,
where does a moment go when it dies?
Hear the snowman as he cries…
St Patrick’s Well
I was hoping to return to the place that I left,
and I was hoping to find time to avenge the theft
of what was rightfully mine, the cord in my spine,
the birds in my sky and the sin in my crime.
If there’s a time and a place, I don’t know where they are,
but there’s a line on this face, in the place of a scar.
I need to vent speed, I need to let it bleed,
I need to never want, and I want to never need
but until I retrain myself to dodge the blame,
I’ll be getting wet and you’ll be getting the blame.
excuses, excuses, all waiting to be made.
I ought to write some down, before they fade.
It’s the same every year, trading our mistakes –
cards on the table having both raised the stakes.
I can spot the fakes; you are too young to lie well
but I guess it makes no difference, I’ll buy everything you sell
I know where that will take me – you won’t write me a receipt,
and once again I’ll be eggshell introduced to concrete.
I don’t take it like defeat, I’ll take it as it comes,
and coat it in rhymes and bass and drums
the commit it to tape, for its own sake.
Not for some misguided sense of fate, of late
I’ve been trying so hard to rehabilitate
and bring my art back to life, as it lies in state.
Show me the body of a saint,
show me the pictures your friends paint,
keep hidden what i’m looking for.
Tell me how your garden grows,
tell me the things that you used to know,
don’t speak of uncertain quantities.
Make me sleep while I’m awake
make we walk and stand up straight
but you don’t care for what you cannot change
Lead me to the base of a well,
pin me down where I fell,
extract a confession that suits your desire.
Refer to me by different names
as I pick flowers in the rain
I was close, but I was spare.
It was an act in aid of a test
I wait to see if i’m one of the rest
I received the results in the post.
So if I ever return, and I probably will,
keep this in mind if we repeat the drill –
that on reflection, if it seemed like a farce,
and the questions that you set were just impossible to pass
but that was the never the point, I don’t care to tick the box –
my interest lies in practice picking locks.
My mind is made, a process finally resolved.
The knot is untied. the mystery is solved.
Oh No
(features elements of ‘The Truth Behind Hip-hop – Rev John Jeremey’s attack on Bone Thugz n Harmony’)
I’m holding my pen at a different angle today,
using chards of chalk to colour my character.
Jumping over streams, getting lost in mazes of forgotten phrases.
The trees of my childhood are all cut down.
But i can feel their roots are still in the ground.
And i shut my eyes, I still hear the sound of wind in their leaves
and a flutter of feathers. an arc of flight
a bird out of sight, singing.
Just for the pleasure of it.
and i feel better for it.
But the feeling won’t last, I’m too far past the place where I fell
now all that’s left to say is ‘oh well’.
I’m holding my pen at a different angle today,
half-remembering the way somebody etched an epithet onto my arm
but the lines are long lost, to sweat and to blame,
and to pride and to shame; rivulets of blame run down my brow
stinging my eyes, making me stumble and trip.
I try to grip the rope that rings the bell,
oh well, my hands can’t form a fist.
But that doesn’t mean i’ll be grateful for anything
I’d rather starve until my stomach bursts and make a friend of my thirst
then turn to dust first.
When I’m out of rhetoric I’ve got nowhere to go.
My head is empty of thought, and I’m left with ‘Oh No’.
Arctic Fox
Eyes wide open, ears pinned back.
senses alert, my nose to the track
I’m chasing you through winter and haste,
chasing you until the day I taste
the full spectrum of flavour – I adapt my behaviour
fade into my surroundings, and spy upon my neighbours
I bide my time and lie in wait, and use all my art to achieve a state
of equilibrium – a feeling of zen
ten years could pass in the land of men.
My focus wouldn’t change, my devotion would have gained
concentration on cause and effect always the same.
I’m on the beat in the forest or on the street
and I will be until I find myself complete.
Ex-communicated from a burning church,
a heathen continues to search
for a piece of the puzzle in the puzzle of peace
peace on earth and peace underneath
this coat that covers and keeps out the cold,
but it keeps out more than I was told.
from this peak I can survey, from the fields to the bay,
but I all I want is someone to betray.
And give me a reason to be a cynic,
because at the moment, my heart’s not in it.
So with my eyes wide open and ears pinned back, I attack.
Like bacterial plaque – canines sink into a tender neck.
I rise, leave and shuffle the deck.
with verbal dexterity and musical temerity,
I talk less, though my meaning has clarity,
dreadfully concise, like my life, never think twice
never take advice or revise what I decide.
I live by instinct, not by right.
I never knew a moral to keep me warm at night.
So, if I sprint through the snow, you won’t know,
because I leave no tracks and prints won’t show.
Oh no – there’s a transgressor in the west riding,
and no-one could imagine the secrets he’s hiding,
I don’t like the way he’s smiling
an arctic fox with perfect timing.
he keeps on rhyming, to bring bad tidings.
an arctic fox with perfect timing.
