Can't help but describe this as very Tori Amos. (glad nobody is reading this crap. Describing musicians solely through other musicians isn't exactly helpful nor flattering.)
'tis true though, she really sounds like her.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Eddie White - "The Cat Piano"
Long ago my city’s luminous heart, beat with the song of four thousand cats.
Crooners who shone in the moonlight mimicry of the spotlight.
Jazz singers. Hip cats that went ‘Scat!’
Buskers with open-mouthed hats hungry for a feed.
Parlours paraded purring glamorous songstresses.
Smoky hookahs and smoking hookers.
Strays strummed string and sung a cocktail of cat’s tails.
A decadent party of meowing sound.
A bohemian behemoth, post-midnight soiree.
Amongst the chorale ‘o tuneful ones was one fair queen who drew me from o’er the way.
Her fur, an amorous white and a voice that made all the angels of eternity sound tone deaf.
Blind with love at first sight, touched by the taste of her sound,
I longed to be the microphone she cradled near her breast.
‘Twas our Shang-ri-la of sound,
A paradise found where nothin’ could stop us.
Or so it seemed.
Singers began to vanish like sailors lost at sea.
Snatched from stage alley way
Shanghai’d from behind scarlet curtain.
Into thin air they disappeared without a single cry.
Police study the clues.
Foot-prints from human shoes.
So you’ve heard of every instrument but?
Torn from your history books is this pianola,
This harpsichord of harm.
The cruellest instrument to spawn from man’s grey cerebral soup.
The Cat Piano.
Confined were the cats in a row of cages.
With each note struck upon it’s ivory tusks,
A sharpened nail would pierce each cat’s tail,
Forcing a note from each pitch on the scale.
I ran my cursed writer’s run to tell her beware.
She wasn’t there.
My soul capsized.
Like a fish, paralysed.
On a chopping board, its spinal cord ripped forth from its body,
Her vocals the last the thief had needed,
A rare celestial pitch that would complete his collection.
The city in unrest.
Fights broke out in its sleep.
I couldn’t dream anymore.
There was a hole in my heart and everything fell out of it.
All music forbidden.
Keep your lullabies hidden.
And your A and E minors off the street after dark.
My town grew cold and bitter.
In icy hibernation was the once thumping heart.
Now seizing up.
Freezing up.
Katzenklavier.
The torturous worm of sound burrowed deep into my ears.
Le Piano du chat
I thought of Van Gogh.
Neko Piano.
I’d put an end to this incessant, inescapable drone.
Mao Gang Qin
I enlisted an army of the brave and I their general declared war.
Poised with tooth and fire in paw.
We would finally settle this musical score.
Eyes with fierce intent that glowed.
Through tempestuous waters we rowed.
Storming the shores,
Swarming in scores,
Scaling its walls with well-sharpened claws,
We invaded the tower through all its doors.
Up the winding stairs,
To meet him with blinding stares.
There he sat.
The organ grinder.
He turned, we pounced, we scratched and bit.
He stumbled.
Fell through the window.
Screaming into the indigo waters below.
We freed the chain gang from their jail.
Cremated the piano.
And for home we set sail.
The city had reclaimed its vestal muse.
It would live again.
Beat again.
Cats would sing in the street again.
And I in anonymity as I had been long before this soliloquy,
Could sit and listen from afar.
The Cat Piano, now a healed over wound.
And this ode its fading scar.
Crooners who shone in the moonlight mimicry of the spotlight.
Jazz singers. Hip cats that went ‘Scat!’
Buskers with open-mouthed hats hungry for a feed.
Parlours paraded purring glamorous songstresses.
Smoky hookahs and smoking hookers.
Strays strummed string and sung a cocktail of cat’s tails.
A decadent party of meowing sound.
A bohemian behemoth, post-midnight soiree.
Amongst the chorale ‘o tuneful ones was one fair queen who drew me from o’er the way.
Her fur, an amorous white and a voice that made all the angels of eternity sound tone deaf.
Blind with love at first sight, touched by the taste of her sound,
I longed to be the microphone she cradled near her breast.
‘Twas our Shang-ri-la of sound,
A paradise found where nothin’ could stop us.
Or so it seemed.
Singers began to vanish like sailors lost at sea.
Snatched from stage alley way
Shanghai’d from behind scarlet curtain.
Into thin air they disappeared without a single cry.
Police study the clues.
Foot-prints from human shoes.
So you’ve heard of every instrument but?
Torn from your history books is this pianola,
This harpsichord of harm.
The cruellest instrument to spawn from man’s grey cerebral soup.
The Cat Piano.
Confined were the cats in a row of cages.
With each note struck upon it’s ivory tusks,
A sharpened nail would pierce each cat’s tail,
Forcing a note from each pitch on the scale.
I ran my cursed writer’s run to tell her beware.
She wasn’t there.
My soul capsized.
Like a fish, paralysed.
On a chopping board, its spinal cord ripped forth from its body,
Her vocals the last the thief had needed,
A rare celestial pitch that would complete his collection.
The city in unrest.
Fights broke out in its sleep.
I couldn’t dream anymore.
There was a hole in my heart and everything fell out of it.
All music forbidden.
Keep your lullabies hidden.
And your A and E minors off the street after dark.
My town grew cold and bitter.
In icy hibernation was the once thumping heart.
Now seizing up.
Freezing up.
Katzenklavier.
The torturous worm of sound burrowed deep into my ears.
Le Piano du chat
I thought of Van Gogh.
Neko Piano.
I’d put an end to this incessant, inescapable drone.
Mao Gang Qin
I enlisted an army of the brave and I their general declared war.
Poised with tooth and fire in paw.
We would finally settle this musical score.
Eyes with fierce intent that glowed.
Through tempestuous waters we rowed.
Storming the shores,
Swarming in scores,
Scaling its walls with well-sharpened claws,
We invaded the tower through all its doors.
Up the winding stairs,
To meet him with blinding stares.
There he sat.
The organ grinder.
He turned, we pounced, we scratched and bit.
He stumbled.
Fell through the window.
Screaming into the indigo waters below.
We freed the chain gang from their jail.
Cremated the piano.
And for home we set sail.
The city had reclaimed its vestal muse.
It would live again.
Beat again.
Cats would sing in the street again.
And I in anonymity as I had been long before this soliloquy,
Could sit and listen from afar.
The Cat Piano, now a healed over wound.
And this ode its fading scar.
John Bennett - "Much Ado About Nothing"
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. The obsession with uniqueness is the one relentless constant in human evolution. We set ourselves apart and then corrode with loneliness. We invent a machine to spank our champion chess player and then fret ourselves into a frenzy. What does it mean to be human, we cry out, and being human, we're left without an answer.
Pure laughter is the highest form of intelligence. a computer will never laugh. Program one to do it and see how it makes you feel when the thing starts making its noise. Technology is how we mock ourselves.
Wanting to know yourself is the worst form of schizophrenia. You can't know what you are. You can only be what you are. Wishing to be God, we become nothing. It is, after all, as plain as the nose on your face.
Top of the morning and a tip of the hat to you, fine sir. Excuse me while I shuffle off to Buffalo in my baggy trousers. Down along the railroad tracks rusted with progress. Smelling roses and weeds with reckless indifference. Cloaked in secrets never meant to be accessed. Whistling, by God, like a bird on a wire packed tight and humming with a fast current of useless information supposed to pry my imagination. Face turned to the sun where everything is straightforward and warm.
There is no such thing as artificial insemination. A stallion mounting a mare in the greenness of a high mountain valley spawns ponies that cannot be cloned.
Joe Brainard - "Art"
Looking through a book of drawings by Holbein I realize several moments of truth. A nose (a line) so nose-like. So line-like. And then I think to myself "so what?" It's not going to solve any of my problems. And then I realize that at the vey moment of appreciation I had no problems. Then I decide that this is a pretty profound thought. And that I ought to write it down. This is what I have just done. But it doesn't sound so profound anymore. That's art for you.
Luis J. Rodriguez - "Rosalie Has Candles"
Rosalie has candles in a circle around her bed.
One night as I lay on a couch
in a tequila stupor,
she takes off my shoes and trousers,
pulls a cover over me and snips
two inches of hair from my head.
She places the hair in a glass
near the candles. I don't know why.
I don't know why she searches for me.
I don't know how she finds me in the bars.
I don't know why she ridicules the women I like
and uses me to meet men.
Rosalie usually finds solace in a glass
of whiskey. In my face she finds the same thing.
I don't know why. We argue too much.
We feign caring and then hurt each other
with indifference. With others we are tough
and mean. But in the quiet of darkness
we hold each other and caress like kittens.
She says she can only make love to someone
when she is drunk. She says she loves men
but has lesbian friends.
She loves being looked at. I want to hide.
She hates struggle. That's all I do.
She has Gods to pray to. I just curse.
I don't know what she sess in my face,
or hands for that matter. I only know
she needs me like whiskey.
One night as I lay on a couch
in a tequila stupor,
she takes off my shoes and trousers,
pulls a cover over me and snips
two inches of hair from my head.
She places the hair in a glass
near the candles. I don't know why.
I don't know why she searches for me.
I don't know how she finds me in the bars.
I don't know why she ridicules the women I like
and uses me to meet men.
Rosalie usually finds solace in a glass
of whiskey. In my face she finds the same thing.
I don't know why. We argue too much.
We feign caring and then hurt each other
with indifference. With others we are tough
and mean. But in the quiet of darkness
we hold each other and caress like kittens.
She says she can only make love to someone
when she is drunk. She says she loves men
but has lesbian friends.
She loves being looked at. I want to hide.
She hates struggle. That's all I do.
She has Gods to pray to. I just curse.
I don't know what she sess in my face,
or hands for that matter. I only know
she needs me like whiskey.
Gerry Gomez Pearlberg - "Sailor"
The girls go by in their sailor suits
They catch my eye in their sailor suits
Big or slight they all grin like brutes
In steam-ironed pants and buffed jet boots
They saunter right up my alley.
I study their easy, confident strides
Crew cuts and white hats capping decadent eyes
They shiver the pearl on nights oystery prize
They shiver me timbers, unbuckle me thighs
This alley was made for seething.
From the sweat of a street lamp or lap of the sea
A smooth sailor girl comes swimming to me
Says she wants it right now and she wants it for free
Clamps her palms to my shoulder, locks her knees
to my knees
This alley was made for cruising.
Her face is dark coffee, her head has no hair
Her cap shines like neon in the bristling night air
She pins her brass metals to my black brassiere
Tucks her teeth like bright trophies behind my left ear
This alley is very rewarding
She tosses her jacket and rolls up her sleeve
On her arm's a tattoo of an anchor at sea
She points to the anchor and whispers, "That's me."
And the wetter I get the more clearly I see
This alley was made for submersion.
Her fingers unbutton my 501's
This girl's fishing for trouble and for troubling fun
She slides off her gold rings and they glint like the sun
Then she smirks, rubs her knuckles and spits out her gum
This alley was made for swooning.
Now she's pushing her prow on my ocean's sponge wall
Uncorking my barnacle, breaking my fall
And there's pink champagne fizzling down my decks
and my hall
As she wrecks her great ship on my bright port-of-call
This alley was made for drowning.
Ron Padgett - "The Fortune Cookie Man"
Working for ten years now at the fortune cookie factory and I'm still not allowed to write any of the fortunes. I couldn't do any worse than they do, what with their You Will Find Success in the Entertainment Field mentality. I would like to tell someone that they will find a gorilla in their closet, brooding darkly over the shoes. And that that gorilla will roll his glassy, animal eyes as if to cry out to the heavens that are burning in bright orange and red and through which violent clouds are rolling, and open his beasts's mouth and issue a whimper that will fall on the shoes like a buffing rag hot with friction. But they say no. So if you don't find success in the entertainment field, don't blame me. I just work here.
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