1. |
||||
|
I read myself to sleep.
Phone apocalypse.
Late night blue light
news feed for scripture.
It’s hard to rest
when everything you read
tells you the ship is listing.
We’re springing leaks
but the captain
and the crew aren’t listening.
Smiling while fighting, teeth,
the colour of ambition.
Now even in my dreams
I’m rescuing children
from floods and liars.
Turn the ship around,
please, turn the ship around.
Does anyone else even know how to steer it?
Gold yachts,
poison plots,
treasure chest beaters,
clean suits
and arms dealer dinners,
oil, aftershave
and families torn
like cheap meat.
Rebels and rubble,
power in a bubble,
cliches littered like dog turds.
Strobe light news cycle.
Squandered blood,
auctioned hopes,
sinking boats,
songs for the dead,
prayers,
headlines,
hymns,
fires,
footballers,
celebrities in the jungle,
gossip on the blindside.
If you blink and cover your ears
you’ll miss the bodies like flotsam,
drowning and burning,
falling and running.
The sea’s rising to meet us,
the clock’s running down,
lack
like a lock and key,
clock’s running down,
privilege
like a lock and key,
clock’s running down
and newsfeed
and newsfeed
and newsfeed
and I need to sleep.
And in the dream
a creature comes to me.
She has the body of a griffin,
heart of the blackest ocean,
voice of Nina Simone.
She crushes my phone with her piano key talons,
I say, but the ship! The ship is sinking
and that was my window.
She says, windows
are only as good as the view they frame.
She says, imagine another ship,
a different ship.
Tall mast,
oars and sails,
a figurehead,
a boat built only from breath
and the smoke from yesterday’s fires.
She says, paint it in whatever colours
you imagine love to be.
She says, breathe in,
stand on the deck,
listen to the whump of the wind
in the canvas,
the groan of masts
the clatter of rigging, sit
on one of the long benches,
notice the others sitting with you.
I look around and everywhere
people are rowing, singing as they do.
Bus drivers,
nurses,
poets,
tight-rope walkers.
She says, now, row.
Press the oars into your palms.
Feel the weight of waves,
foam on skin of blue belly below
and row.
Breathe.
Row.
|
||||
2. |
||||
|
Love started all of this.
I say petrol,
you say gasoline. So?
How come some love
says some grass
is more green?
Or some hearts
are unclean?
Or some past
kneels to the wrong queen?
Cheeks get slapped,
fish-hook goaded,
tinderbox tongues,
locked and loaded.
Faith in flames,
faith is flag,
flogged,
strip-searched,
told it’s wrong.
Then love is bitter ash.
Bomb.
Mosque.
Bomb.
Synagogue.
Bomb.
Pop concert.
A torn sleeve,
a charred face,
dust and blood,
wailing mothers again,
grief, like oil in the throat.
Chorus:
Gasoline kisses from explosive men,
making of me a garden,
a battlefield, a question.
Hits and misses, all us and them,
making of me a cemetery,
a vigil, a blessing.
Bomb.
What’s your favourite karaoke song?
Dancing Queen fills up armouries,
an arms dealer on a pin ball machine.
Scattershock…
the apple drops,
or is it a grenade?
Is it a stem or a pin
that lays on the ground?
Wait for a sound.
Ricochet…
…what’s it say on the ticker tape?
Same shit, different day.
What causes more explosions,
gasoline or apathy?
Shatterproof glass menagerie.
Nobody’s chosen to fight,
a stone in the hand,
a drone in the sky,
home in a land,
hope is a lie .
Chorus:
Gasoline kisses from explosive men,
making of me a garden,
a battlefield, a question.
Hits and misses, all us and them,
making of me a cemetery,
a vigil, a blessing.
Learn to make games of the rubble,
to shake the dust,
hide shrapnel in laughter, scattershot…
to scream, dream and dance
to a war they made far away,
wrapped and sold in flag and country.
But here there are names,
only names,
too many to utter - too soon to forget.
Learn how spinal chords shaking over wreckage
play a violin prayer out loud,
pray the world to listen.
to sometimes just stop.
Scattershock, ricochet left to dream
Scattershock, ricochet left to dream
Scattershock, ricochet left to dream
Scattershock, ricochet just like me
Pray the latest rubber bullet is not a child’s eye.
Learn prayer can also ricochet.
Prayer can ricochet off buildings no longer standing
and hills that have seen too much.
Here there are names and prayers.
Only names and prayers
Too many to utter - too soon to forget.
Too many to utter - too soon to forget.
Chorus
Gasoline kisses from explosive men,
making of me a garden,
a battlefield, a question.
Hits and misses, all us and them,
making of me a cemetery,
a vigil, a blessing.
|
||||
3. |
||||
|
I call on the siren sound for guidance.
Water fills the lungs of the daughter
who has war on her fingertips.
Reckoning fills her lungs with soot,
everything about her is black
and missing,
somehow angry. They never let her tell them
the way she would invite a kinder blessing.
I am the one who would save the ocean from itself.
I am the one who would save.
Too often I feel
running on empty, I manifest the moon as my armour
and begin the journey home,
a place that is riddled with significant dreams
kept in insignificant bodies.
Every body a pawn to the thought of freedom,
every siren song a riot encased in joy,
tinged with wounds and a crimson so violent ,
it challenges the sun at its rise.
I am the one who would save
the ocean from itself.
A roar in the night will find me curious,
will find me knee deep in soil,
begging for the moon to consume me,
always looking to be consumed.
We forget how quickly the tide will come.
I am the one
I am the who would save,
but no one will give me credit.
I am the one
I am the hero in every context,
I am the nigger in every context,
I am the answer to every prayer,
I am the fear in your daughters eyes,
I am the one
I am the one
I am the one they said would not be.
They tried to stop the earth from dancing
but I did not comply.
|
||||
4. |
||||
|
Vanessa: They stroll up,
all floppy haircut
and Generation Y awareness.
Oh, they've evolved now.
The fuck-boys can quote
Gloria Steinem with the best of them.
Read all the articles,
wrenched their hearts, held their placards.
Front line stance at all the marches.
But we're so relieved to
have a love that's not a feast of fists,
we let the condescension cascade
round our ears,
let you speak over us and for us
because it still matters that you love us.
How bitter to admit it
but it still matters that you love us.
But here's that familiar rhythm now.
We're still falling in step now.
Dizraeli: Bring your attention
to
Me!
Battling the iron spider,
the giant iron spider
that vomits flames
and
Me!
The only hope for
what’s-her-name,
who is in the grip of the iron spider
facing
Me!
The giant iron spider vaporiser
with the laser-bladey-sabre-
razor-cutter-spider-fucker-upper,
I’m a walking fist.
Pectorals pump a single pump
and see me flung up towards the spider
with a flying upper cut.
The punch connects,
the angels all applaud,
the giant iron spider falls
and so does She.
Into my arms,
I’ve won it all.
The girl, the guts the glory,
gurt wanger.
Everywhere I jizz a church sprang up.
Vanessa: I’m here at the alter with a question.
Answer me this.
There is a body
and there are rumours that that body was once mine.
Walks, talks and sounds like mine.
Have you seen it?
It's circling round a town of best guesses.
It used to be full of piss and vinegar,
barrel belly of riot grrrl folklore.
Not any more.
Its a sight for sore eyes.
Its a sight for your eyes.
Have you seen it?
Dizraeli: Pretty sure yeah,
arm like the neck of a swan,
hip like a rest for a hand,
dip in the small of the back,
sweat on the brow,
eyes like the call of the wild,
yeah.
Pretty sure I saw that
brilliant thing
promising skin against skin
promising a pressing of flesh,
a dimming of lights,
a sudden up-springing of life.
Pretty sure I spied that
dream made flesh,
answering my teenage cry
with Yes.
I couldn’t make out the features but still,
I can obsess how it would feel
and if It were mine
I would plunge in,
dick it all night,
swing it unhinged.
I would be creature be conqueror deep as a root in the dirt of it,
let me un-think.
Vanessa: What is her name?
Were you there in the bathroom
when she ate a whole box of tampons
one after the other?
She did not want you to know
how full of red she was,
how shame makes her own mouth
a cave of afterthought.
Have you seen her?
What is her name?
Dizraeli: I promise I’m a
broad brained
third wave,
choice loving
whole grained
whole hearty feminist.
Cock-fighter,
rebel soul smiler
with a brick resolve, kinder
to the man in street,
than I am to me.
I promise I’m a
news transmitter,
never hand-sitter-onner,
I’m a candlelit vigil of a man,
sister,
promise
I’m the first to the barricade,
black flag waver,
dedicated to my niece, Salome
and the vow I made.
Fire to the Patriarch,
fire to the fascist state,
sister take my heart as a hand grenade,
ready for the burning bras,
wishing for when women take charge
and I’m sorry I keep looking at your…
Vanessa: Hey!
Dizraeli: I’m sorry I keep looking at your…
Vanessa: Hey!
Dizraeli: I’m sorry I keep looking at your…
Vanessa: Hey!
It’s OKAY.
Say it for what it is, good sir.
Put the megaphone down.
Place your real intentions
in the air where we can see them.
I know she looks like the opening credits
to the film of your life.
I know you like the view of yourself
from those pudding bowl eyes of hers.
BUT YOU’VE HAD YOUR FILL NOW
So answer me this.
What is her name?
And have you seen her?
Really, seen her?
|
||||
5. |
||||
|
Not drowning,
take a breath,
I’m at your grave again,
say your prayers,
man on wire,
take a breath,
I’m in your shoes again,
half aware.
Not drowning,
take a breath,
I’m at your grave again,
say your prayers,
man on wire,
take a breath,
I’m in your shoes again,
I’m in your shoes again.
|
||||
6. |
Row feat. Joshua Idehen
02:06
|
|||
|
Row, row, row this boat.
Just keep ‘em safe.
Don’t know where I am going,
but i know I've got to there soon.
Been in this canoe for so long.
Ain’t seen the land
am sick of sky
my feet are patchy from the salt.
There’s water, water everywhere
but I would sell my soul to quench my thirst.
Oh Lord.
If you must claim a life tonight
take mine and spare my poor family.
Keep my children from the sharks,
keep my wife from mens remarks.
When she smiles bring out the stars
and keep ‘em safe
and park ‘em down Compassion’s Bay.
Through this awful storm find them a way.
Just keep them safe.
Just keep them safe.
Don’t know where I am going,
but i know I've got to there soon.
Row, row, row this boat.
|
||||
7. |
||||
|
K.O.G: Time!
A time is coming now
A time is coming now
Better days across the river
Scars and wounds,
black n blue.
Screaming from the worries
I don’t choose.
In the headlines,
on the news.
I’m a profile
to defuse.
My survival,
is no use.
I’m just a commodity
in their view.
You know the reality,
you know the truth,
a phantom enemy
they will assume.
Chains on hands,
chains on minds.
Suppressed, oppressed,
institutionalised.
Elements colide,
it’s borderline.
Young ones were taken
from mothers and tribes.
Lost identity,
warped reality,
mirages and fables,
deadly voyages.
The souls of men
judged by colour.
I’m here to tell you
there’s hope in the future.
Chorus
Dizareli: My old man said a better time is coming
K.O.G: A time is coming! / Bei ko baa ba
Dizareli: My old man said a better time is coming
K.O.G: A time is coming! / Bei ko baa ba
Dizraeli: By a muddy river,
in a murky town,
I sit in sirens,
seabirds circle round.
I see a gull upon the rooftop without wings,
I watch it edging to the edge in mad winds,
it’s a mirror for within,
in a new chapter,
in a whipping storm,
a cyclone of food wrappers,
a kid is born.
Nah it’s a trace of green,
nah it’s a taste of something strange & sweet.
It doesn’t heal but it makes some peace,
puts a smile on the face of freaks
and it releases from the closet those afraid to breathe
and now we’re wading in an army up against the stream,
‘cos we have seen that there is insufficient day to dream.
One minute Sonny’s deep up in the make-believe,
next minute Mummy’s kneeling at his grave to grieve.
Too cruel.
We are cruel and we’re angels.
We kill life and give life with a movement of the arms,
chase dragons in the crucible of Saint Paul’s,
topple statues in a revolutionary march,
by the Muddy river,
then we chuck him in.
My kids’ll not grow up looking up at him.
My kids’ll not grow up in the ways I did,
watching white mates morphing into racist pricks,
never never,
the muddy river raising up.
I raise a rhythm and a bass-line in praise of us,
I raise my kids in a toast to the courageous ones,
who kill the devil with a hundred million paper cuts,
singing a change’ll come.
In the course of all this craziness
I see my mates parade like they were made for this.
And they grew up facing shit that I never faced.
They’re still turning up the temperature for better days,
still turning up and tracing out the blueprints
for new ways and new architecture,
new movements
for new stages.
And you could celebrate the dawn
instead of panicking and Sellotaping doors shut,
instead of gazing gormless
at the gold framed stories of the (slave-made) empire
that decorate your walls.
Look.
We celebrate the dawn,
we break them ornaments,
we work making structures that we never made before.
I see my children standing with us at this river
so I’ll work until the water comes and elevates us all.
Chorus
Dizareli: My old man said a better time is coming
K.O.G: A time is coming! / Bei ko baa ba
Dizareli: My old man said a better time is coming
K.O.G: A time is coming! / Bei ko baa ba
|
||||
8. |
||||
|
Amy: Yesterday I found some keys that weren’t mine,
tried them in my door and in my mind.
Fingers disintegrate,
aways fading,
almost.
Zia: Gate’s closed.
Chris: On whose say so?
Zia: No tengo dinero.
All about the pesos.
Chris: The Benjamins.
Zia: How many Indians
do you know called
Benjamin?
Case closed.
Chris: Change clothes?
Zia: Dad said if you wore a suit
they wouldn’t ignore you.
Hello?
Hello?
Chris: Gatekeeper.
Zia: Aka, I’m not colour blind.
Chris: Here the grass is cleaner.
Zia: War crimes defined by the winner.
Zim zimma.
Who got the key to my
gate?
Chris: It’s all ivory and gold coast, mate.
Zia: Story-writer.
Chris: Bathed in chamomile.
Zia: Story-reader.
Chris: Soaked in the easy milk of inheritance.
Zia: Fire-breather.
Chris: Of course the keys are hidden.
Chorus
Amy: Yesterday I found some keys that weren’t mine,
tried them in my door and in my mind.
Fingers disintegrate,
aways fading,
almost.
Chris: It’s easy to marvel at the craftsmanship.
Zia: Land stealer.
Chris: It’s taken generations to paint these gates.
Zia: Wheeler dealer.
Chris: Colour of heroes.
Zia: I’m He-Man.
Chris: You’ve got stones.
Zia: No-one needs to see that.
Chris: Goliath broke your slingshot.
Zia: No-one’s gonna need that,
I’ve got a green tank.
Chris: Throwing stones brings a rush of blood.
Zia: Power needer.
Chris: Throwing stones brings a rush of blood.
Zia: Power ranger.
Chris: Throwing stones brings a rush of blood.
Zia: Power seeker.
Chris: A relief…
Zia: Wait…
Chris: …in smashing windows.
Zia: …follow the wall.
There are cracks in the cement.
Chris: Weakened by weeds.
Zia: Move like the vines.
Chris: Grow under and round.
Zia: Dig down.
Chris: Burrow, new shoots.
Zia: Trees, one day
Amy: Gatekeepers keep keepin’,
I’m gonna keep seekin’.
Got my eyes on the prize
with God in my eyes.
Gatekeepers keep fearing,
keep fearing me,
‘cos when I take
you’re gonna see.
|
||||
9. |
||||
|
Tick box,
long form.
White wash,
wrong norm.
Categorical,
razor wire historical,
mythological talk
for do you belong?
Toads foot and raven wing.
Degenerate spirits, whispering.
Curses come in languages
we can’t understand.
Shape shifters,
black eyed
bearded drifters,
tongue clickers,
window lickers,
shirt lifters.
Oaths sworn
to another god,
or no god
or half god, half goat,
half here, half remote.
Tick fence climber,
tick young gun,
tick stowaway,
tick old timer,
tick gold digger,
dead ringer for trouble.
EMPIRE!
Built by other.
EMPIRE!
Strikes Black.
EMPIRE!
Votes leave.
EMPIRE!
Flat on back.
Open up, open up!
Shut down.
Empire send boats
or empire let drown.
Other on the boat,
Other, watch them float,
Other, out of reach,
Other, on the beach.
Little brother,
face down.
Open up, open up!
Little sister
sleeping rough.
NOT BY THE HAIRS ON MY CHINNY CHIN CHIN.
DON’T LET THEM IN!
DON’T LET THEM IN!
DON’T LET THEM IN!
Little sister and her cousin
missing now.
Tick
missing now.
Tick box,
another box,
box Other.
Tick box,
another box,
box Other.
Tick box,
another box,
box Other.
I just wanna break that box,
I wanna beat that box in,
I wanna tear that box up,
put the box in the bin,
cos I just want to tick
peace.
I want to tick wonder,
tick tender,
tick Mosque or Tinder,
tick fluid gender,
tick hand lender,
broken tick-box mender,
tick box rule bender,
render void.
Tick love,
tick green,
tick feminist,
tick gay,
tick any other way
than straight white, rich, male line.
Tick him, her, they,
tick non-binary,
tick brown, black, white,
defining Me,
You,
We,
who?
Shades?
Hues?
Keys.
Clues.
Body ladders.
Tooth of a Kenyan uncle,
eyes of a Nordic witch.
Love for God or beards or queers,
patch work,
each of us, one stitch.
Other, other, everywhere
and not a stop to
think.
‘Cos all we are is everyone.
All we’ve got is everything.
All of us,
just all of it
in the palms of our plans.
Sometimes a square peg does fit
in a round of applause.
When will we arrive?
When will we remember?
All we are is everyone,
and all we are is everything
and all of us and all of it
and all of us and all of it.
All we are is everyone,
and all we are is everything
and all of us and all of it
and all of us and all of it.
|
||||
10. |
||||
|
The hole at the bottom of the boat
was small at first.
Started off the offspring of a pinprick.
There were rumours of a storm up ahead
but how could that have been?
The sun was flirting with the sea's surface,
we were beautiful and endless.
Couldn’t hear the steady hiss of water
over the songs we were singing.
Childlike, we let the tide mother us,
sing us to a stupor,
until it had reached our toes,
had reached our ankles,
had made a well of our chests.
The hole became a tunnel, became a mouth,
became a wound, became a geyser.
Now we scoop out water with cupped palms
and it returns twice fold.
The thirst of the hole, now, unquenchable.
And as the boat drinks, we sink
and all the songs we sang sink with it.
We barter and blaspheme for one more glimpse of sun.
We turn to each other, wonder who is to blame,
who to throw overboard.
The hole became a gap, became a lack,
became a scream, became a prayer to a god
who has already condemned a lost cause
to a flood before.
We have been here before.
We will be here again.
Please listen to us,
before we are epitaph,
before we are sediment,
before we are footnote.
You must understand,
the hole at the bottom of the boat
was small
at first.
|
||||
11. |
||||
|
Anthony: My friend, go visit the tombs,
the cenotaphs, the graves and find
the wind the ashes look for rebirth in.
Find release in giving,
the OK with not knowing,
let the rain keep the slug safe,
burn jackets when unsure or unwise.
I once knew a man who tried to
disassemble his shadow.
He’s probably still there
looking for the tools,
looking to step out of his catastrophe.
Amyra: Sometimes I feel like a star
watching all of my kin die
before my eyes,
somehow graceful,
somehow beautiful,
somehow constant.
The scarcity of our time together
makes me want to love you more,
makes me want to miss every siren and memory,
makes me want to have that harmony,
harmony looks like colours becoming,
like a butterfly coming from a barren womb.
The earth rejuvenates like the liver
and consumes all things with care.
Anthony: What does it mean to breathe?
To take a breath
like music before it’s played,
sound before it’s birthed by melody,
to breathe,
the arithmetic of blood,
electric body of hair and air,
to trust, to regulate whatever hunts peace,
to sleep in the gentle science of warmth.
Breathe out and into this cavernous boon.
The universe is one giant lung,
one capillary holding everything in,
one giant ending.
Amyra: I wanted to know where God lived.
I used to love peaches because the idea
of something so sweet going rotten made
me believe in miracles. Just how simple
an angelic song can rise trauma from the kindest eyes
and none of us will have time
to witness them leave the room.
Do you think we are way up,
way up somewhere?
Away, away from other living things
in a universe that
sometimes I believe.
Sometimes I believe
I am the daughter,
the innocent one.
|
||||
Tongue Fu Bristol, UK
For over a decade Tongue Fu have built a cult following at their live shows where people expect the unexpected. Writer,
musician and founder, Chris Redmond, invites poets, comedians, storytellers and rappers to take risks, re-working material live with improvised soundtracks from fleet footed, genre-crunching musicians.
Previous collaborators include Kate Tempest, Soweto Kinch and Akala.
... more
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Brilliant (and agile) experiments in improvisation by amazing players, many of whom we work with. True independents.
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i haven't listened yet!! but everything rowan touched thusfar has been golden, so he's welcome to my pennies ;)
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