14 years later, Tom Waits Mule Variations CD goes "Gold" in the U.S.A.. Instead of a tickertape parade, I thought I'd use it as an excuse to, once again, talk about a brilliant songwriter and performer.
Aurora Roars
“I am the harbinger of the Apocalypse” cried Jerry Rigg,
while raking potato chip remnants from a wooden bowl.
The party down to coloured liquor from a long-necked bottle
sagged its way to the impending sunrise once foretold.
Muffled from the bedroom down the hall a squeaky boxspring sang
a well-worn melody in F; the headboard kept the time.
Diane then staggered from the kitchen with a happy face in mustard
painted on her chest as some tempting paradigm.
There’s a party in my brain and everyone is in slo-motion,
while I sit engaged in discourse with the figments in my head.
Jack is snoring wildly underneath the gatefold covers
of “Frampton Comes Alive” and some album by the Dead.
“Do you feel like we do”, rose the dissonant recital
from Ben stuck stagnant in recliner. I’d thought that he was dead.
A sudden wave of clarity then overtook my vision
with ghostly circumstances from this morbid waking stead.
I felt my leaden arms reach up and out to transient space
as a band of fire ascended and overwashed my face.
There’s a party in my brain and everyone is in slo-motion,
while I sit engaged in discourse with the figments in my head.
Sara shuffled up to me and latched upon my shoulder,
sat me on futon, took the verse I’d written, then she read:
Appearances seem to melt into a rash of consequence.
Connection to the world I left behind
dissolves into this bitter rind that flavours such meringue.
Sara spoke no more, she sat confused beyond relief
and falling from her consciousness an omnipresent sleep.
I thought I heard a siren from a million miles away
and flashing lights spark frightened wake-up calls to stimulate the fray.
Stepping backwards two more steps my waking world collapsed
trying to fight against the dreamworld coming I relapsed.
And Jerry passed out covered in some hardened nacho cheese
while Diane formed, upon his shirt, a ketchup masterpiece.
There’s a party in my brain and everyone is in slo-motion,
while I sit engaged in discourse with the figments in my head.
The battlefield is strewn with the bodies of survivors.
A morning sun has washed the scene within its bloodied red.
Maybe a bit more work-related than usual... and while I'm not supposed to be working no less. One of the harder episodes I've ever done because of my own hangup.
Sometimes stream of consciousness is the order of the day tripper from the heights of sanity to the bend around the Credence Clearwater Revival churchgoing folk never thought well of the young buck from Arkansas but soon found with a little bit of grooming he could become the astronaut we always thought he could be.
Signs pointed west, but signs will often do that when black is orange and orange is grape and there aren’t enough hostess potato chip bags in the world that could be simultaneously crinkled to quash the din of the baby crying in the booth across the restaurant.
Maybe if there was a time and a place the place could be venus and the time could be swiss and we’d chat gaily of the wandering secret agent who lost her memory amidst the culmination of a black box mission set down by the powers that be for the defence of the people by the people for the people made of people – soylent green.
So I ask you young psychotic blithering tattletale of the night – are you up to the call of the man in the pink suspenders and crying behind curtain number two the 86 year-old Monty Hall fan who sits in Beckett-like fashion waiting for a deal to be made and an appearance to be imminent and an autograph book to be signed somewhere between Bob Eubanks and Chuck Woollery.
I remember the days of wine and hosers when men were men and women were lite brite illusions on the battlefield of playtime when the vast ocean of meandering opened up its arms and said “Give it to me straight Doctor. I can take it,” without a second glance or thought or premonition about the forces at work or the elements at play.
Surely there must be semblance. Surely there must be coercion. Surely there must be a recipe that includes semi-sweet chocolate chips, because the semi-sweet chocolate chip lobby has been doing their work and putting out their 365 day tear-off calendars for the world to see and without their efforts the civilization would have faltered long ago and without their efforts the typhoons would have raged eternal and without their efforts the ghost of TS Eliot would have risen in April and decried the he was a pair of ragged claws on some beach-like region.
Oh sure, you may weep for the downtrodden with your tears made of copper and your heart made of glass and your Debbie Harry affections with consummate incredulity. You may weep for the death of the bison and the culmination of the cataclysm of the crisis of the caucus of the collapse of the cacophony of the Cucumber Club.
Oh Moose.
Oh Beaver.
Why have you forsaken us?
