Cavalcade

May 28, 2021

• Picture Disc
• Black LP
• CD
• Cassette

Buy Listen Golden Ticket

• John LWatch Listen Read

  Three encores of Oh Sonny Boy backed only by accordion
  Three rows of pale brunettes protect him from the crowd
  The curtain a patchwork of imitation vermillion
  A red bulb hangs low above the throne that has been found

  This is the scene on Main Street when John L comes to town

  Crowds of every age, creed and gender are abound
  Signor kitsch sings skits detailing each attendees sins
  First time anteaters lose themselves in the wings
  With vigour they scratch red spots, overwhelmed by their king

  In all the world there’s no escape from this infernal din

  “Children of Bethlehem, come all boys and girls,
  Come Listen to these, my eternal words
  Judge not who you see by whatever they may say
  But by their round eyes, lips, ears and curves
  A man is his country, your country is you
  All bad is forewarned, all good will come true”

  These words are heard on Main Street when John L comes to town

  This garbling non-song whips throng into frenzy
  The last echoes of his crooning now cease to be heard
  No-longer-pale brunettes are broken in two
  And thrown to the snouts of the anteater crew

  John L is in tatters
  His soapbox usurped
  His torn robes adorn the
  Tree stumps of the earth
  No hack with an army
  Will last long before he
  Breeds men who yearn
  For their own bloody glory

  That was the scene on Main Street when John L came to town

• Marlene DietrichListen Read

  Under soft lights
  With a taped back face
  Our soft spoken queen
  Takes her place on the stage

  As the big curtains open
  The last troops run in quick
  For the one and only
  Marlene Dietrich

  She whispers demurely
  “from The Blue Angel”
  The song we all know
  The one that we’ve paid for

  Fills the hall tight
  And pulls at our hearts
  And puts in her place
  The girl she once was
  In that suit of ’33
  Soundtracked by disapproving commentary

  And my shuddering neighbour
  Turns and roughly rouses me
  He says, “While a kiss on the lips may not make a frog a prince,
  An orgasm renders any queen a witch:
  Metamorphosis exists!”

  Damn all us idiots
  Damn us till death
  Relentlessly trying to untie our knots of
  Rivers and roads that defy all sense

  But her hands loosen all
  And her voice brings you youth
  Her cheeks cradle the holy breath
  That pumps the lungs of her Mackie Messer

  And she beats the heart of her Mackie Messer
  And she walks the stage with her Mackie Messer
  And she makes us smile with her Mackie Messer

• Chondromalacia PatellaWatch Listen Read

  Losing grip
  Another drip
  A new cold

  Air passing through a new hole on the white rocks of the pink mould

  No strength left
  To pull the cord
  Of the morning bell

  A million diamonds sing inside an empty shell

  Always crashing, screaming
  Relentlessly bashing
  Incessant, repulsive, backtracking hypotheses
  Seldom finished
  The beasts of the nighttime
  Canfrenkin borentis asotzkee, potzkee borree

  Fingertips folding, deep in their tunnels black creatures make nests no needle can rupture

• SlowWatch Listen Read

  Time winding down
  Slowly

  Just one more try

  I'm almost on my way
  Cracking, snapping, little footsteps
  Beaks all break

  Slowly

  Searching
  Still searching

  Slowly it falls and slowly it dies
  Slowly it crumbles right under my eyes
  And it takes so long

  And I wonder
  Just how long it took
  To get there

  I guess I'll wait
  How much longer
  Any day

  How much further
  Must I wake

  I guess I'll wait

  Slowly falls, slowly dies
  Slowly crumbles right under my eyes

  Slowly

  Stood up, shot
  Between the eyes
  Consolation

  Slowly

• Diamond StuffListen Read

  And only when
  The sun is ours
  Didn't take long to find out I'm a husk
  Made of diamond stuff

  I don't seem to bleed this time

  Hair slicked back to a black slick
  The red river pulls me up to scratch an itch
  On an anthracite field I am laid out
  And a diamond drill takes my feet off

• DethronedListen Read

  Defaced
  Dethroned
  The fate
  Unknown
  Unsure
  Unkempt
  His pride
  None left

  Snatched with rage, his gift was thrown
  Blindly into the depths below
  Irretrievable under that stone

  Almost stopped
  On the brink
  Somehow He still thinks
  Today is
  Just a blip
  The footnote that ends his entry at the centre of
  All self respecting encyclopedias

  That face he will not see again, will always be with him will never leave, will mock
  him in sleep, remind him

  In every reflection, translucent and shimmering, those marbles appearing to make him

  Weightless as ever, forever weak
  Forever needing a distraction to speak

  Elephant eyeballs hovering over all thought with lips ever puckered, aimless fishes within.

  He’ll never tell anyone, and no one will ever find out, it will always be with him no doubt
  He wants to feel sympathy for’m, but he’ll come back again and again

• Hogwash and BalderdashListen Read

  Hogwash and balderdash
  Chickens from the pen
  Coming down the rivers
  Of Salafessien
  Picking out fish bones
  On unstable rafts
  Checking every angle
  And foliage gap

  “Can’t keep this speed,
  The sun’s too much"
  “Balderdash settle! You’ve just lost the touch”
  This hogwash he stood
  And licked fingers clean
  While mocking his comrades
  Admits to defeat
  He kicked and he scolded
  And pulled on low cheeks

  Hogwash and balderdash
  Chickens from the pen
  Surveying the beaches
  Of Salafessien

  Picking out pebbles
  And throwing them ashore
  Checking each second
  For men of the law
  Hogwash stops and stares at the floor
  “From where comes this stench that can’t be ignored?”
  Lucky for balder his sweat escapes view
  This being the origin of the aromatic stew
  (Which led to the following bellow of “phioux!”)
  With his right on his nose, hogs left hand claps balder
  Across his bare scalp as if to extract
  His brain, thought submissive, that inside grows bolder....

• Ascending ForthListen Read

  Everyone loves ascending fourths

  \

  Paintings of orthodox monks on the wall
  Impotent Mark holds his pen to forehead
  Waiting for proof of his unquestioned gift

  3 open windows bring air to his cheeks
  The rest of him smothered in 3 sweat drenched sheets
  With commission spent and date drawing near
  And no newborn zeal or written ideas

  A receding hum, akin to pink noise
  Escapes his cerebral hand that toys,
  Miserably clutching it never avails
  Without resorting to kitschy entrails

  To stand up tall and straight is to break one leg
  Since last Third Quarter he has not got out of bed
  Meanwhile, envoys follow the stars, and the arcs of the larks,
  further north to collect the work promised to their employer noblemen

  He tries in vain for one pure line
  under the weight of tired eyes
  He gives in to the warm soft night
  to drift carefree beyond imagined eyes

  In dreams he finds a cure that for now will suffice

  Everyone loves ascending fourths

  Paintings of orthodox monks on the wall
  Watch Markus spill ink freely on his finest scores
  65 repetitions of ascending fourths

  As dawn breaks men arrive in droves, forcing the door
  His work unfinished, they do not accept and throw him to the floor
  He comes to in chains

  Brought in front of judges
  For testing good faith
  To try, to risk, to fail

  Unanimously condemned
  His masterpiece schmaltz
  Impure, no heart, no taste
  Markus ascends Forth, In the heart of the common man