Shri, Lakshmi or Chanchala,

(One who is fickle and does not stay at one place.)

A Daughter of the Sea, a Sister of the Moon,
a Cousin of Aphrodite, a Consort of Vishnu;
with a smile and my pierced ears, my beads,
my beads, my battle axe, my maze of fine cuts.
A quiver of a single arrow: and the arrow is loos'd,
A quiver of thunderbolts: and the bolts are hurl’d.
Lotos-eater, daughter of Aquitane,
cudgel-scalpel, lance of a saint,
sword of a martyr, shield of luck,
conch-flesh, from egg to fork, tsar bell, sour wine-cup,
eight-bladed trident, in a noose of fallow hope.
Without me you have not this,
without you I have nothing.

I was at the court of Eleanor, a Meninas,
I saw Jumbo crushed by a train in Ontario,
his ashes are kept in a 14-ounce Jar of
Pyotr-Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter.
They paid 10,000 dollars,
they paid to see me, my kin,
he entertained the troops, you can meet him
in Normandie. Always identical
and of the same sex. Really? They open their eyes?
They return home? When the heart is one,
what of kidneys? When the blood is bloodier than blood,
being not my blood but the blood of all of us?
Without me you have not this,
without you I have nothing.

And all at once they sang, and all at once
someone said "will we not strive? Resting,
Resting weary limbs at last on some incinerator gas-bed?
Not a God, but not a parasite? Surely,
surely, slumber is more sweet than useless toil?”
My sisters, you cannot stay inviolate,
we may make it past adolescence,
but the names for ourselves will ever change.
We are worshipped for life, but of life
we have little. I must die in my garden,
so you may make your own:
without me you have not this.

Track 2: Have I Been Rescued? (The Ballad of the Broke-Down Blue)

(Introduction: Strictly Bass and Mouth Organ
Then a gradual wave of Gospel- getting louder and louder, like a Mouthie. Then).

Oh Gospel, could you hear me
when the water lapped my waist?
Heard nothin’ to alarm me
Put that devil in his place
Now just a dice roll from delusion
I blinked every second frame
I counted angles in the alleys
Every one was just the same.
Now my baby’s out of earshot
And she better be as blue
The pavement full of fractures
For my wails to drip into

Chorus:
You let me bawl about my baby
When I shoulda been asleep?
How could you let my fingers tremble?
Yeah, Let me bawl about that girl.

Say Gospel, could ya hear me
As the water touched my chest?
Don’t set fire to the bar-side, they said
But it was just a test.
I just don’t have the guts for heaven
and hell don’t have the guts for me.
You wear your sins like jewellery
And Now Honey, you’re guilt free

Chorus:
You let me bawl about my baby
When I shoulda been asleep.
How could you let my stomach empty?
Well let me bawl about my girl.

But tell me…
Gospel could you hear me
As the water reached my neck?
I was overcast with moonshine
I just hadn’t thought to check.
All my jokes before the bar side
fell flat out on their designs
So I plot a graph from Britain
To the Jwaneng Diamond Mines.

Chorus:
You let me bawl about my baby
When I shoulda been asleep.
How could you let my gizzards tangle?
Well let me bawl about my girl.

For Godssake Gospel won’t you hear me
Now the water’s overhead?
I’m screaming can’t you hear me!?
It’s hopeless now to tread.

Chorus:
You let me bawl about my baby
When I shoulda been asleep!
How couldya let my lungs fill
Lord I coulda been asleep!
All of this is your fault
So let me
Bawl
About
The
Girl.

Your Electric Light

When we need it, your electric light is there to find feet in the tangled night-time woods, traipsed recklessly. Whisky vision is good enough to reason with a small cliff-face, to spot a foothold, best yet to be delighted by it. The woods feel wilder than the ones I grew up with, and there’s no doubting I know them not a bit. Whisky only makes the heart grow unremittant, more fevered, lots of other things, more forgetful without losing reaction to it all. I forgot to navigate. A trickled stream makes itself known visually, almost catches your ankle, and a vague notion is swigged by my far too wandering mind delightful; streams run down, to the river, to the path, but we smiled relentless away from it, losing little. It feels like what it looks like, any time, from setting out to long before the dawn and there is no timepiece comes to eye, and it pleases me. I could die out here; I could live out here; brambles tear at legs and you, like me, keep walking. It is a universal truth, particularly applicable in the midst of flowing whisky, that there are no wrong turns when travelling blind. Very easy, and surprising to tree-trained eyes, a clearing strolls for seven yards ahead and the moon is visible only just. We sit or collapse, though not exhausted, and the still-flowered very early autumn stretch of woodland grass is not big enough to be a destination. We decide anyway, with almost nominal scepticism from some quarters, that the next leg of the journey is return. And that’s much quicker.

Your electric light proved as useful on the way back as it did on the outward clamber, maybe more so. We made it, as you know, to the safety of our harbour. The night’s sleep, though grizzled by whisky, was restful from adventure; morning, just lately, feels longer ago.

Next time, or the same time because the past has not kept grip sufficient, if I have my way, there will be no return journey, no thought of batteries. Your electric light will come from eyes and, converging with my eyes, and her eyes, and his eyes, will be light enough to grow the universe, make a clearing home; the roof dangling from clouds, the trees already walls, the sea nearer this time, and that patch in sunlight there looks to be a field of corn to me. Guitar alright with the smoke from fire come night-time, significant soon to birds, there is moonshine aplenty, but really we’re drunk from that and from actual shining of the moon, from crispest air, from your electric light, but mostly we’re drunk from that moonshine whisky and it tastes so very good.

Your Guide to: Identifying Charlatans & Daredevils

As a professor of colour-coding and a fellow of the Royal Guild of Identification I’ve been consulted and queried on the troublesome topic of bandits, brigands and ne’er-do-wells very, very frequently, almost as frequently as fruit or ladies.
An often-asked question is ‘how much of it is in the colour?’ and the truth is ‘alot but it’s also in the texture’. In this short guide we hope to give an easy to understand, pocketsize manual to recognizing the Charlatans & Daredevils of these fair Isles.
-Prof. T. S. Bentham


Red: Slender, Speckled and common all year round, no aspirations and often seen sitting on fences and pinching biscuits. Nests in the summer and has broods of 5-6. No need for a wife.
White: A native to the North and a winter visitor to the comfort of the fireside this reclusive hipster has been in decline in recent years and a petition has been started to see them more.
Blackened: Once known as ‘the Greater Dark’, a term now considered archaic and perhaps just wrong, this Charlatan is often found in less rural areas in small groups. Part of the hoodlum family, this species tends to wreak havoc in the evenings and prepare during the day exhibiting little want for sleep. Its cry is horrific and has been known to make a man cry forever.
Green & Lithe: Kept as a good look charm and occasionally a pet in the seventh century by the Boatmen, for its song supposedly turned sour when danger neared. It was introduced to these shores some time later and has stayed here ever since, it must like it here. Breeds in pears.
Orangey: Probably should be from Morocco originally, this rascal type once stole the heart of a young impressionable girl making for a tragic tale. There is only one and when it is murdered (witch is always the fate of the Orangey) it will no longer exist, it is not however the rarest [see: Graph Paper].
Striped: (colloq. the lesser moxther) Eats smoke and smokes the thoughts they wished they’d remembered. It lives among the cold lights and is, of course, a pirate.
Corduroy: “Do you know how far away the moon is? It will never be your friend Katy: it’s simply too far away to be your friend my dear”, and when the moonshine sparkled in the black of her eye out sprang forth the beauteous Corduroy and Brown Paper magpies flying towards the moon to whisper the messages young Katy wanted, so much, to tell it. And this is how the Corduroy came about (sadly the Brown Paper is no longer with us and is often forgotten). They are the only magpies in the Bandit family.
Graph Paper: The rarest of the daredevils and therefore everybody’s favourite. The Graph Paper Daredevil is, perhaps, most at home on a Tuesday. It sketches the outlines of everything that ought to be and never cares to rub out the pencilled accidents (this is where mistakes come from), or so the story goes.
Translucent: Little is known of this variety.
Nocturnal: Living only in the night-time this rogue does not believe the Sun exists for he will never see it. It mayaswell be of Cajun descent and forages only for the bloodberries that make it giddily morose. Two varieties of the Nocturnal have been recorded: the Cardinal and the Ganderian.
Wounded: Steals, thieves and swindles, a pick-pocket of the old fashioned vernacular. Sleeps in wires and feeds on a diet of rust and shrapnel. Migrates to the shadows. It calls at dusk like it’s in excruciating pain hence its name