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.
A reading of George Orwell's 1946 essay, Why I Write.
"And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a POLITICAL purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally."
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.
