The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

bernini crumble

i murdered a million words

and perverted the course of sentences

i bang on about silences until i am shouting at nothing

i hold my tongue and bite my lip where i should be aloud

i terrify myself in the darkness where i begin to vibrate

i forget whoever i was

it really is the most inconsequential thing

nullification seems like a dream to me now

the bleakest shore at dusk a boat leaves in the mist

the crew row and groan as the lash finds their back

i am oblivious

i am gone

i am nowhere

i am no more

in my anonymous niche in a warm stillness

turned into energy that bolted instantly away

turned into finest ash a solemn vase

turned into memories that immediately start to fade

turned into a dead end off a lonely street

youre not alone says a voice beside me somewhere

a comforting voice a soothing voice

a voice that speaks without any words

a voice you needed no ears to hear

i look around wildly theres nobody there

this is a trick hisses my old broken heart

and i walk on forever before the voice speaks again

saying my name with such a collective sigh

like a hundred women in stygian tragedy ululate me gently

the coils of the snakes

the legs of the ladders

i plummet clutching 1000 pound notes

yet the earth does not rise up

i yearn for some clean warm creature to take me in

something bigger and softer than me

something kinder and better that i cant see

something to nourish me with nepenthe

and sing me to sleep

i want to sleep

let me go to sleep

yes yes says the voice again so close to your ear

go to sleep my little darling 

a warm gentle hand on your forehead smooths back your hair

ssshhh says the voice with the sweetest breath

like summer evening in a vanilla chalet

like hay in the sunshine

like the mouth of a river

sleep sleep sleep urges that faraway voice

and finally

you are safe from everything

and then

you feel yourself expand

dizzy spell

she said its the same night over and over

the colours oh everything

everything is the same

soft sea croon breeze purrs like an a/c unit

the fridge starts up again it runs too cold

it releases noble gases that drift up to the very stars

the strip light throb of my old life leaves me aching and quaking

under these majestic palms which sway along the ocean way

i was running for a bus that never came carrying my guitar

i was jostling in a fish and chip shop trying to find some salt

suddenly i was among the throng where my song was extinguished

in anguish i fled to a room i had taken

on sullen evenings they all ignore me

alone as a child alone as a man

the mirror is full of pits and dents

the awnings over the shops gently rocked by summers zephyrs

the sound of the surf sublimated in traffic

the automatic transmission of day into day

the relativity of goody good and naughty evil

neon night weighed against the unlaid day

i am a white old blues man only i do not sing the blues

the days that intervene do so of their own accord

but the night has returned the same

with  a reddish quality to it

with a worn out familiar slipper feeling the same night again

on a jetty someone caught a little monster in the dark

the blue sirens saturate my frame changing the game

the same kids with the same fucking tattoos

the cigarette the same bottle of booze

my eyes wander over a desert of talent in awe

seems i been thru all this before and

before

jim jim

my everlasting soul suddenly weary of the fork tongue world

i took sanctuary in a dream that seemed like a room

oh steven someone was saying now you got it all mixed up

some urban thoth weighing up my accomplishments

complete bird brain head machine man will match competitors offer

wild- party i was a child among such people

sydney: insistent rain and crack of thunder in limo with spirit

i alight on the reddest carpet dyed in the blood of poor soldiers no one remembers

i dressed in the warmest wooly suit of clubs of which tonight i am king

men and women come and go at my black and call

i snap my fingers impatiently

and i am attended and given advice etcetera

my marker is graduating purple window you see over my shoulder

i frown for all the poems that didnt consider me to write them down

someone offers me a drink no thanks i am straight i think

i announce to another empty room

under a single spotlight i cogitate and calculate something i cant remember

the answer is crucial to humanity now i wish i hadnt forgotten

you let us down! cries a voice from the darkness

oh leave him alone hes nearly finished anyway shouted an unseen mosquito

i really liked that song you know that one said a voice in my head

which one ? i asked the voice

come with me said a hand and i followed her name to the edge of the land

miraculous angel carved in a cemetery there

i shudder  in all my many lonelinesses

i cower from all possible futures

in some cheap hotel room i materialise with life in a suitcase

gosh suddenly i feel so tired i cant focus on the small prince

none of the numbers i know can ever reach anyone outside in the rain

i turn to my companions who have all (sadly) gone down the drain

well thats no good!  bellows my sergeant major out there imagined

day-mare what you have dreamt is that not what you meant..!

this christmas weather sultrier than any blonde dawn

the factories and chimneys outlined in haloes of flare

we were there

sister brother

we were there

oranges in lemons

a poet i hallucinate words

a mystic therefore i get glimpses of good

a fool that is why i talk to the sea

a man but first a human

spirit in flame  never burning

layman i lay out your memory

player i play for your love

singer a bringer of a sad song

maker make of it what you will kilbey

a fuckwit meddling in the puddle

prophet in the margins between column spaces

soother the holiday man and the crooner

a soul trapped in this body i crave and fear release

region a grey area a season in some heaven

insignificant which is why ive beaten my own drum

so fucking humble oh hear me shout it

so funny almost make myself say ha ha ha

vicious fox dog and i growl in my muzzle

a liquidator of luxury sweets

mover of mountains unseen in some cloud

every black cat go on pretend it is me

an echo on the line lets you hear yourselves again a second time

builder  executing labyrinthine grotesque and uneven lines

an architect who designs the invisible that will never be seen

napoleon in my front tiered room i have conquered 2 chairs

am noah on this sea of existence carrying with him a much reduced zoo

nemesis dawn in opal vienna i carve and i carry and i swerve and i sway

hopkins himself i have come back to work thru this medium rare

stone alone on a hillside singing a silence song

present when beasts materialise they must think i’m matter

so this while it lasts and then must on to next thing

i never stop i hurtle headlong blurting something

i am an ordinary joe

i’ll be blowed if it isnt good

by tomorrow

red my book

trippers i am the freak

am he who am she who am you and me

bangers i am the transubstantial poet in black velvet and grey chord

dazed by a fever i bear down on these keys full of a glorious madness

let a museum of memories explode over  les folies 

old theatre hound bound down before you everyday in anyway you want me

i peddle these thoughts some which i bought with my own blood

i hum the drumming thumbs that rolling sound when tambourine mountain

hurls back the deluge at the boiling ocean sky

girls approach me from out of a forest i almost know why

i summon the glum lord slum lord of storm and steel

but why would anything listen to me..?

strung out in a web of lows

struggling for the sure

nevertheless i am no less clever than your average fool

for the ghoulish a pool of bleach and wheres my kohl

older times in sepia soft glow

spin that wheel upon the bumpy airspeed tho

everything you think you know is tray faux

i dont need to take any dope

for fucks sake cant he be the great white hopeless ?

i am the in to the inner

i am the sin after dinner

i am the crook old fox

the thud within your heart box

i slide down any madness in freefall

this is why i get paid the (gulp) big bucks

that is why

that dark matter sucks

sweeping sickness

well something swept in it certainly swept in

across nights portals where mere mortals fear to breathe

some pummelling bombastic germ hath conquered me good

and my ahem dental problems compounded as well

i lay in abed full of fever and ruinous dreams

where everything sweet seems wrong

every aching limb arching in the dim bleak break of dawnish banks

oh how i writhe to the heavens without any thanks

the sweating thoughts themselves shudder in darkness like mice in the wall

the inflamed repetition of some banal phrase hold you in thrall

the way you are diverted

mid thought you fade away…

oh i dont know where you go then though

its seems too soon to know said the voice below

my skin is burning in the etheric sky

i am alight and falling in pieces over allemagne

coming down so fast like a man comet ablaze the earth rushes up

i hit the ground in an agonizing jolt

but i wake up in the child who runs from his bed

to tell them about his terrible dream

dont let him go back to sleep then says a voice

let him sleep if he wants to we will watch out for him

says the voice below that

the child rapidly grows up and flies through a window in time

the father and the mother must love one another

the complex ritual of the flies buzzing in your sunlit afternoon

the clouds outside signifying everything and absolutely nothing

everything put together a bit wrong though

oh illness poisons body and mind  so effectively

swimming in a sea sick sea of nausea and deliria

i beached in my bed of tangled sheets and pillows killing my head

the ripped out tides of fortune soon to make me marooned

the doom of everyman playing the pop tune

i got this song in my head and its going round and round

its like corruption endemic at every level

some true life devil must have concocted it

some nordic giant in his studio of steel

hits record and we are in the neon season of yule

to get his sonny jims mind off the crashing dream

we all drive out to albion park rail

one hot dry and dusty christmas eve

wow theres a nativity scene we’ve driven to see

baby jesus with the shepherds and the kings

in this barren australian summer wilderness

that gives way to the fireworks going off in some night

some night like tonight in fact

i must have blacked out a minute or 2

i know there is a world beyond the tawny walls of my room

out there is everything else and more much more still to see

but trapped in echoing mind i find myself asking

who am i?

i  dont know says a voice

i do

says the voice below that

some geezer going flat chat

still life in motion

i had a dream all my teeth fell out the charts

and my songs were full of haze and bits of mauve broken shell

wandering in a wasteland of fender bits and the carcasses of bands

running lost on a deserted highway against the most purple heather evening

my hands were understanding music just as they turned off the lights

blackened backstage i stumble around amidst the props

suddenly silent the auditorium glides on empty

the players are all gone

in my humid dressing room among mannequin chatter

and some mannikin appears guarding a portal to uh enchanted place

in my drawers crushed tiny stones arranged in a helix or something

a silver thread back through oblivion

little creature who art thou so solemn and so rude?

little angry elemental bastard summoned unwillingly to this realm

this chapter of engagements

this freakshow of yesteryear today?

beyond the nominal veil of illusion

materialising within this very vortex as my lives whirl away?

oh master please forgive me 

here i am!

it said and stamped its foot

here i am to sing your song of song of songs 

that take me out along the coast no one has seen?

that take you out beyond this tricksy burble

into pastures of the blessed past?

yes that was all just a dream 

it had brushed me aside

rushing through the breathtaking hush

alive and more alive

no wicked for the rest

nature arranged at all its levels

meticulous and tuned

salt air rushes thru my murky flat

an expectancy as another storm approacheth

a vacant field where no building seems to have ever stood

with minimal undoing the undulating rain

in the shallow cave of an afternoon reverie upon my mind

the sky suddenly blackens as the parking expires

lying in bed with a thousand memories

treading the boardinghouses and the stage behind a laundry

in alleyways that connect our worlds

malcontent clouds unleashing into thimbles

empty vessels pouring into empty vessels

the heat when its all over discharged into vapour

in languid valleys i would long for

i surge to be out of this miasmic malaise

becalmed in the early saturday evening seas

i embody the time ravaged fool

adrift in the green and grey

headful of sea spray

blunt stone pearl

minutes before it all happened

in another world away

the wrong world

conscience pounding onstage

in sydney where yon darkness lies

where the alabaster statue blackened in the traffic

beckoning the baffled oncoming and unheard of hordes

warriors and addicts aside their virtually virtuous steeds

swarming in like a pack of sins

hey where you been?

in a warehouse district my deal has gone bad

some mother future where i will be as lamb

ahimsa akimbo baby my road

will be only available as download

i will be a little child again then in unknown grove by sea

the winding horns of lyonesse will surely fanfare me

but now my sweat is burning my skin

in trouble deep in

magenta evening shadows cast by the bulletin

i forget my parts up on some big old platform

the crowd were a blur

swaying outside my minds city limits

they were down by the umber river tumbling in its course

the music the machine was making

a colossal hum the hum of a god

the magnifico and dulcet miss lou lou bellette seated at the piano

why a song takes shape as it begins to fly

the words are found within thin air i believe i sing them there

the char boils up like smack suddenly gone

the women evaporate like mist in the sun

the chorus rushes to its lovers leap fifty furlongs in the sky

the groans of ecstasy made in a shady glade have faded to a dull throb

my head on a platter a matter of common cents

my flayed frayed but not afraid mind be so kind to have signed it

my electric guitar is a hundred years old

thats how they sold it to me

the tiny glowing controls that stole souls whole

i refrain from caressing its nickel strings

altho i do not have better things to do

in marvellous sydney where the humid taxi lurches along a wall

a mosquito has left your legs covered in tiny red and yellow bites

in my own head i am a hero that righteously fights for days against knights

in my groin i carry the future coin from which will spring the elemental bling

in my heart which cannot be told apart from its twin

amid the recklessness of planets out in space where they spin

oh so lovely maha vishnu dreaming out universes from pores in his skin

i guess i must have digressed

and its a hurry i’m in

white out

in the hot sydney night as conspiracies hatch in darkness

languid sea in the shadow of cliffs

in the murmur of the thunders muffled in distant clouds

reefs of sky a jungle within the box

the memory remains

retaining walls of lives juggled and lost

inhuman shield admitting soft rays

the green hundreds

the khaki fifties

the need for black money

on balconies drinking wine

under the skylights relax before a screen

the intrepid illusion of security measuring you for a size

the women show up paid for and plastic

once they were children monstrously lovely

again in the garden they piss on the roses

the gangster in nissan watches impassive

some cash would be nice but blood will do nicely

some hammer some freedom some chick and some slack

a shower in hotel where gabriel came down

a bed in the delta where the little boats go

some dog started biting i felt his fangs sinking

although it all happened aeons ago

they call you a taxi but youre still inside swimming

impossible strokes on the flesh down below

wriggling and writhing and running around them

the sand in your shoes is slowing you down

christ i see your face in the billboards and posters

in windows in mirrors in doorways and malls

in the tides that appear with their jellies and anemones

in the hum of the fan that spins in dead air