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1. |
The Love Is Song
05:12
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Love is as lost as love is found
Love will and will not make the world go round
Love is a drug, a glowing playground
Love is bad blood, a mind-blowing hellhound
Love is a parasite, a mooch tagalong
a lie washed white, a heart-rending gong
a church bell Stygian banging you into oblivion
like an anti-Darwinian Branch Davidian ding-dong
Love comes like a God, like a thief in the night,
to even your odds and loosen your tights
Love is a French tribade, a fine fresco of dykes,
a dripping wet peach, a soft kiss that bites
Or a hetero hick starting halfwit hick fights,
an incel dick punching out his own lights
Love is a surge of Himalayan heights
or an abyssal dirge for your last rites
Love’s a silk skirt unearthing the swing in your knees
or a hair shirt girthing an infinite jest
Love’s a cockroach in the kitchen taking its ease
and the only true religion of the dispossessed
Love is a groundswell of spleen et misère
more bloody hell than a body can bear
or an avenging angel smiting fascist bores
vaccine wars and Trump’s pompadour... hair
Love is killing you and love is killing me and love... never killed anybody
Love is a pyramid of the capitalist system
a maja in Madrid, anarcho-syndicalist wisdom
Love, dixit Proust, is space and time hewed to the heart
while love, dixit moi, is the dog park on Montmartre
Love, for Frankie Go Go, is a dark purple rest
copulation untethered, a mauve-feathered love nest
It’s your hand on my chest is my own – Neruda knows
and when I fall asleep, it’s your eyes that close
But love is for chickens and love is the dickens
Love is mad pigeons binging on kittens
Love is ever blind and forever sighted
Love is fine strychnine and never unrequited
Love is oh là là and love is blah blah blove
love is hate and hate is love
Love is a blast and love cannot last
for love is a feast and love is a fast
Love is hating and hating to love
Fixating, dictating, unmaking is love
Love is killing you and love is killing me
and love... never killed nobody
Love is red, black and blue and Catch-22
Love is dread to die for in a room with a view
Love is nothing if not true
and killing you softly is all love can do
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2. |
The Burning Woman Song
08:12
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Careful not to splatter her glassy black heels
She relieves herself between two automobiles
Hitching up her dress, crouching down low –
a move smoothed by practice... a sly urban sideshow
I say “You’re Kristen Scott Thomas!” and it’s love on first take
She says “No, I’m not, Miss, but I’ll embrace your mistake”
Then salting the vignette, going killer coquette,
she says “Give me a kiss, Miss... or a proper cigarette”
And with the war at the door and nothing more to lose,
we go foraging for food, for rapture, for booze
Death scenting the wind in the ungodly din
we go for pleasure without measure... and heart-rending sin
On the edge of Armageddon we do thus conspire
to shake up the Marais and send the mercury higher
How the strait streets redden in the glare of our desire
and all the world’s our ash tray as we... we play with fire
Blinded by the night we still find a way
to fall into each other on the rue Pavée
She says “We’ll never again see the light of day
so boy you’d best give in and begin foreplay
With the barbarians at the gate, it’s too late to escape
Love is all we can make in this end times dreamscape”
The cherry moon our motor, we fracked the hell out of our schist
and the well we did blow, the oil flow did feed our tryst
Yes, into my arms did this woman that night fall
and with bacchanal majesty, this woman gave her all
Drunk on war, drunk on flesh, we watched buildings go down one by one
And – SHALALALALA – made love ungently, did all we could do but come
to our senses and try for cover to run as the world began to combust
And – SHALALALALA – my lover was gone and all I had left was handful of dust
With oceans brimming and oxygen thinning and mad babies overrunning the planet
All you can say is let’s slip away, come on take me like bloody pomegranate
Gobbling every seed, all six hundred and thirteen
my end times lover sucked me in and spit me out
Pleased to break her fast, I did not dare her contravene
but I knew it wouldn’t last, once she started to shout
“There are no good brave causes left to die for anymore
Goddamn, I hate these times, God, I want a just war!”
She went on like that until her vocal cords went cold
and I saw where this was going and never felt so old
Her cherry moon had gone sour, sad, bad and bitter
Her broken voice in my ear now but a hoarse whisper
when she gave me to understand I could never be her man
and... SHALALALALA, WHAM-BAM THANK YOU MA’AM
Blinded by the night we still found a way
to fall into each other on the rue des Rosiers
She said “We’ll never again see the light of day
so give me a kiss, Miss, ‘fore what we have slips away
With the barbarians at the gate, it’s too late to escape
Love is all we can make in this dire dreamscape
Now say goodbye to your lover for you’ll never have another...”
And it was then that I ran... I ran for cover
Oh that woman I did revere, did cheer her rampage
but when she wouldn’t leave the stage, she began to combust In a rage,
in the haze, I saw my end times lover blaze
leaving me with nothing but... but a handful of dust
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3. |
The Baby Song
07:00
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I was looking for a change, to sing a song I’d never sung
and I found it in babies and how I’d never had one
how they’re ugly as a Trump, shriveled old men
how on milk they get drunk and puke all over the playpen
and no matter how many times you tell them to abstain
they’ll do it again and again, again and again
Self-centered little fiends, they crap wherever they like
then take forever to learn how and where to do it right
And by the time they have teeth and can finally chew
if they don’t like their feed, they’ll spit that up on you too
If they don’t like... anything they’ll wail and whine till they’re blue
and your ears will be ringing by the time they’re finally through
It’s a simple fact of life, a tribulation so true:
Babies only care for themselves, babies care nothing for you
But despite the roaring din and boring waterworks,
there’s something to be said for those nasty little jerks,
something to be said for telling the unvarnished truth
and that’s what they’re all yelling until their last milk tooth
I want this, I want that, I’m too cold, I’m too hot
I want more, I want less, happy I am, happy I’m not
Never going in circles (except when they try to walk)
No beating around the bush in baby straight talk
Truth incarnate and no hint of vanity in this downy concentrate... of humanity
Ah, but you have to carry them everywhere, some can’t even crawl
And spouting nothing but gibberish, they make no sense at all
The time you waste trying to decipher ‘em, you’ll never get that back
and then you have to diaper ‘em, going down the river of baby scat
Tiny tyrants, pint-sized autocrats,
Exploiting your affection, they abuse your best intentions,
and leave you regretting sidestepping contraception
With their pampered pleas and cries to be coddled and nursed
and their grievance-gushing eyes, lord, babies are the worst
It’s a simple fact of life, a sad reality oh so true:
Babies only care for themselves, babies care nothing for you
I’ll never be a seeder, never be a breeder, never one day multiply
never ever know how it feels to hear your very own baby cry
But this is not the end of the world, for the world’s long overrun
Better care for those already there melting in the unfiltered sun
They didn’t ask to be here, to survive getting by on the dregs
but the smoking sphere we’re leaving them is on its last legs...
Oh, those baby blues, greens and browns, those baby giggles and grave baby frowns
Those plump baby arms to-die-for sweet, those good enough to eat bitty baby feet,
The capacity to inspire a true love supreme, they know all the tricks to keep us caring
They got our number, those cunning drops of gold
that we’re programmed to want to have, to have and to hold,
to feed and clothe and keep from the cold, oh, horrid despotic dove
that we have to have and have to hold
that the wonder of evolution in our genetic constitution
impels, propels and compels... compels us to love
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4. |
The Dog Song
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5. |
The Cat Song
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6. |
The Chess Song
06:10
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The mistral blows...
like a bad fight in a bad dream
in a bad night in a bad scene
in a bad show on a sad screen
in the echo of a mad scream
while Boo Boo... Boo Boo advances her queen
She loves her queen, but goes down on her knights
Will even sleep with a bishop if she likes his looks
Fighting for her king, smiting any pawn that bites
she’ll coddle her corners frying prawns for her rooks
She’ll drill you with blacks or kill you with whites
with little to-do, old Boo Boo... will punch out your lights
The mistral blows and blows...
like a bomb the south to cleanse
a vicious means to purified ends
like the scolding voices of balding boyfriends
like a million choices and fashion trends
like a bad fight in a bad dream
in a bad night in a bad scene
in a bad show on a sad screen
or a torpedo homing in on a submarine
while Boo Boo surveys the board, unsheathes her sword, and advances her queen
She loves her queen, but it’s victory her thing
and she’ll gambit her dame to get to your king
Fingers tipped with knives and daggers in her eyes
She’ll mow down your guys and watch you agonize
She’s a mean machine dancing over the squares
to catch you prancing in your worst unawares
Yeah, Boo Boo knows chess, will your queen decapitate
and with lethal address, Boo Boo will your king checkmate
The mistral blows and blows and blows... like Sami snow, like ice floe prose
God huffing His puff, putting us in our place strutting his stuff o’er the whole human race
like a bad fight in a bad dream
in a bad night in a bad scene
in a bad show on a sad screen
like a dying banjo down to one string
while Boo Boo runs your knight through,
and impales a bishop or two
killing your crew, kilning piece after piece,
she cooks every last one of your star-crossed geese
sculpting you blue and skinning you green... Boo Boo advances her queen
like a torpedo eye on a submarine, Boo lets fly her queen
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7. |
The River Song
08:14
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In the beginning, there was the water, a drop in need
of another bead to bond with and give birth
Might have come from cats and dogs rain to us sustain
or bubbled up like champagne to maintain life on earth
Drop after drop a-cruising, source and snow melt fusing
never ever refusing the pull of gravity
and everywhere infusing every cavity...
Going down, down, down to the sea
then coming back for you and coming back for me
Sculpting our mother’s rocky flesh with luscious lines and sultry gullies
that hydrochisel made her gorges wet carving her coulees to beget
a ravishing vanishing vignette, a song of sorrow and furrowed regret
intoned over the untamed domain by wolf, elk, duck and whooping crane
losing their link in the old food chain to bipeds run amok in the gospel of gain
damned to idle in an arid oubliette, a walled off remnant by despair beset
while we spout babies and the growth alphabet, bound for hades in a handbasket
to howl with the devil in a toxic tête-à-tête
while I befoul this revel with every rhyme I can net
but I can’t stop singing, I’ll be the last to leave the fête
for whether right or wrong, I’m paying off a debt
to all the river life-givers that can still do it
to every stream and streamlet, every creek and conduit
filling every cavity, drawn along by gravity...
Going down, down, down to top up the sea
and then coming back for you, coming back for me
Springs they do meet and merge to form creeks
joining streams as a means to emerge as a river
to feed another river that will other rivers seek
the earth’s life blood flowing down to the deep
carving out its contours on its way to the ocean
curving carnal detours, a perpetual motion
through mounds of flesh jutting, o’er the dark fundament
the blood water’s ever cutting a voluptuous descent
A Camille Claudel torrent is our sacred three per cent
Running home to the sea and the other ninety-seven
before cycling back to us after a stop in heaven
to plump up the raindrops and sharpen their teeth
for a return to the rivers waiting underneath
I can smell the rain coming together with the fire
making mad love, the eternal purifier
and I’ve got nothing to hide now not even my desire
to fill every cavity and go down with gravity...
Down with the river, down down to the sea
then water cycle back to you, cycle back me
Oh, trying to free my lines of rhymes, I’m stuck in the usual snare
Going for Neruda, Plath and Stein, I’m still doing Dylan and Baudelaire
Meanwhile...
The bats start to fly once the sun has set
The elk crossing upstream make for sweet silhouettes
I enter her fully treading ever so slowly
the bed of rocks lining her liquid assets
A royal coachman I whip, a red fly I slip her
It alights with a quiver, a courtesan come-hither
Pardon me, ma belle, excuse this intrusion
here for one last wild thing to electrify up my line
You know I have no illusions about the likely conclusion
For our shared effusions, this could be the last time
I open my eyes
I open my mouth
I open my eyes, I open my mouth, I open my hands
and lean into the water, into her hard drive
trying to fight the power, trying to stay alive
I resist the push, stand my ground against the pull
but I’m at sea in the middle, wondering which way to go
It’s the eternal riddle, the undying tale of woe
When the river of love has you in its sway, do you let it just sweep you away?
Or make your way to solid ground and live to love another day?
I don’t know, but I’ve been told, the way to go is gravity...
For so goes the river down down down to lose itself in the sea
and then come back for you, it comes back for you and me
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8. |
The Russian Warship Song
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Microcultures France
Microcultures Records is an indie French label (Phantom Buffalo, Soltero, Nesles, Jim Yamouridis, John Cunningham, Nicolas Paugam, Bertrand Betsch, Manolo Redondo...).
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