you all know everything here is true

its just the way i tell it

ive been a sponge for drugs and loud rocknroll

and my once brilliant mind is now dark and haunted

why

you know when i was twenty

years ago i flew to Los Angeles and

played on david neils sessions for  what would become the wilderness years

but dave had a huge stack of songs

and oh honey was one of them

since covered by that alt country rock band whose very name keeps escaping me

the truth is its daves most fantastic song and an instant classic

the saddest most burnt out song you ever heard in your life

i know because i played on the version that dave recorded

a demo in a place on sepulveda down in santa monica or something

Oh honey that sunny day just faded to a dead white gray

and people say strange things to me about you all the time

but it just made him too damn sad and he shelved it

imagine a cross between neil young and the stones at their saddest and most regretful

oh honey was a knockout

this is a terrible thing to admit here

but after david died i started telling people i had written this song

and in my own defence i must say that the descending bass line was actually my idea

dave told me

steve that damn bass line IS this song now!

so it isnt entirely untrue that i kinda sorta did in a way write this song

plus i suggested some words which david pretended to ignore

but he later secretly adapted them n then denied to all they were mine

so he wasnt the angel you may think

i was telling all this to the captain as we rode the ferry to Cosa Met

except for the bit about me not really writing it of course

i mean she probably would have understood

but sometimes the truth is like a car accident that everyone sees differently

the captain was it turns out nearly 5  years older than me

this is the 80s of course

she had been divorced twice from 2 ‘assholes i dont wanna talk about’

she’d been flying planes for ages

she seemed to have load of money

she was a vegetarian too and she loved oh honey

oh honey is it because youre a bit older than me

that your coldest shoulder is now turned on me

yeah your coldest fire just now burned on me

oh honey i hate it when youre just burning burning cold

Cosa Met seemed like a little island and different little bays

where there were these cottages just back from the shore

like these little huts or something

to flush the toilet you poured a bucket of water down it

it was kinda basic and exotic at the same time

we got the keys at the reception hut made our way to  7

we awkwardly kinda kissed for awhile when we first got inside

then she pulled away and she was asking more questions about david

and oh honey and stuff like that

we had our showers and the water pressure was pretty feeble

funny how you remember things like that

we wandered down to the restaurant that was situated in a kind of garden by the beach

there was a little grove and lanterns and all that

coupled with the warm starry night

it was the material  dreams are made of

at first like a true male bimbo

i had  just wanted to get to know the captain

because she was precisely that

she was the pilot of big old jets

thoroughly shallow i had had the socks impressed off me

yet sitting here under these delightfully romantic circumstances

she was a pleasant and engaging woman and when i made her laugh

there would seem to be a small endorphic reward or something

she appeared to be warming up to me i guess

but we talked about oh honey a real lot

which made me squirm a little in the silk shirt i had just bought

and it seems like theres always some fucking catch that ruins everything

oh honey you dont believe i believe all your stupid lies

oh how time flies past so fast as i listen to the stuff all the guff 

you try to devise but the truth is always there in your sad sad eyes

yes she loved the song and now i knew when she first heard it

and where she had first heard it oh and where she had last heard it indeed

and the other things she associated with it too

we had tofu and cashew nuts and noodles

and some beer and some coconut thing for dessert

what was it you stopped to pick up today?

i asked her during a lull in the conversation

she leaned over as if to kiss me and whispered in my ear

3 small jars of opium. Have you had it before?

oh yeah i lied

we walked along the beach and she put her arm thru mine

and leaned against me like she had known me forever

i liked this it felt pretty good

she abstractly spoke about under carriages and fuselages and baggage handlers

she talked of other countries where i had never been

when we got back to hut 7 it had grown quite dark

she produced her pipe and she produced her stash which looked like small vials of treacle

the pipe heated up then she put the opium in it which curled up in smoke

she took a few deep inhalations and passed the pipe to me nodding

i took a few long hits

oh wow its that familiar taste i never tasted before

but i knew it would taste like this

oh honey what a lonely lovely waste this all is..!

not a spectacular feeling at first i guess

kinda like a warm pleasant drowsiness filled with inklings running across a screen

she nodded at me and i handed back the pipe

this went on and on back n forth for about half an hour

i looked at her through the haze and the candle light

and she looked back at me

im gonna have to lie down i was saying dreamily to myself

she hopped into bed beside me

and we lay there embracing in a strangely chaste and childlike way

occasionally i came out of my trance and would gently nuzzle her neck

wow this is pretty good i dreamed i was saying

 yes of course she yawned kinda indifferently

shook her head and smiled as if to say

did you think that i would lay something fucking feeble on ya?

man i didnt think i could feel so deep and warm and protected

the tiny cabin the warm night the opium and her

some frogs or something or some crickets distantly

i felt so heavy felt so comfortable in my skin

we held on and i dreamed a million miles out and away

but i dreamt of the night itself and i dreamt i had been lying there forever

in an endless night thought had slowed down and all of that

language cannot go where opium can go

this calm majestic splendour and architecture

why couldnt life have been permanently like this..?.. i dimly wondered

oh honey i wonder what you are doing tonight 

after all this time  i still worry that youre gonna be alright

we fell down into the warm black soft womb of opium

it was all mixed up swirling and delicious

youre not supposed to say that about opium

but believe me it is delicious

there is a very heavy price to pay if you use injudiciously

but opium remains a most delicious feeling nonetheless

in my visions and dreams were david and the pilot

it was all out of sync

it was all jumbled up and reflected in waving ripples of pleasure

it was vague and ambiguous and as dreamy as all heaven

soon we were kissing and it was lovely but as tho from a million miles away

it was so unhurried man it was so languid

we kissed for a century in our hut

and only half aware that i even was

my mind was filled with music and women and films and memories

i’m waiting for my mother outside the infants school in Dapto

and she bowls up in our light blue Morris Minor

Quickly son i cant park here she says in her Burnt Oak accent

oh how beautiful she looks today

so young and in charge behind the wheel

oh i am overcome with love for her my lovely darling mother

slowly its all changing

twins are in my arms then they are young beautiful women

another set of twins come along and they too turn into women

my dad is watching on now hes meeting the kids he never met

i think of incredible bass guitar riffs

they go on and on so complex and yet so obvious

why didnt i think of all this before..?

when i sorta open my eyes i’m lying there next to a relatively strange person

she smiles and says hey

where did you go..?

i dont fucking know

where did i just go?

you know there are plenty of awful moments in life

even in this privileged life we lead here in the west

the pain the body produces

the grief of losing your dad

the humiliation and defeat that love can dish out

the ache of memory and the persistent throb of remorse

the thorns of disdain and scorn and mockery

the embarrassment when you fuck up badly and for me that means almost everyday

the harpoon of jealousy reeling you in to your doom

yeah you get the picture

well this night was the diametric opposite of all of that

it was languid hedonistic bliss

and man i dunno about you but that is my favourite thing

oh honey so now everything has gone wrong

i still thought if you just heard this song that i wrote for you

why if it smote you

i dragged it outta my head for you

and i laid it on your bed for you

oh honey have you forgotten how i bled for you..?

the song played on in our heads the soundtrack to everything

like we had been listening to it all our lives

like all our lives we had ever led converged here and now

between us and the opium

and thailand and the warm sea

and the tofu and the noodles

and all the music i had written and all the music still to come

and all the people i knew and all those i was yet to meet

old masters and young mistresses

the rascals n riff raff all in a cavalcade of rolling merriment

then snatched away forever

david and i sitting at a table in a restaurant

hes asking me

you said you wrote my song to just pull chicks steve?

but hes smiling and joking

and the food is delicious before it too is all snatched away

the dreams tumble out of each

she treated me like a plane

as we took off and plateaued and we descended

her hand on my controls firmly she flew me through all of her skies

it was all so slow and i was so sleepy

baby im all confused

see me landing

landing on sea

please come up to the cockpit and rescue me

and tonight we gonna soar

and tonight we gonna get some more

and tonight we really gonna live

and tonight we gonna try n forgive

david down in Seattle where he first got on the stuff

then thats gone

melting dreams into each other smudged and then replaced by the next

superimposition on superimposition

every pleasant thing you can think of

guitars and flowers and sunsets and love

yeah and stuff they dont have words for

yeah and words they dont have stuff for

she got out of bed and meandered to the balcony like the euphrates river

she rambled across the floor like a wandering minstrel

she looked so good in the moonlit room

white as the moon itself she seemed to faintly glow

a blurry apparition of the nakedest woman

but the opium had silenced the beast and so i gazed on in abstraction

the desire was still there

but all the fire had drained out leaving a sweet smouldering warmth

the sheets were so soft

the clouds were so blue

the stars were so white

the time was so stopped

in an everlasting moment i lay on my side

watching her on the little porch just standing there swaying in the night

dappled and slightly clothed in the darkness

beyond her the calmest sea stretching out into green and black

words fell out of the sky into my head

art pulsed behind my retina but in long dissolves

the sand was so yellow

the trees were so still

the restaurant still going down there

you could still just hear the music and laughter

yeah distant merriment thats the best kind

far off revelry? yeah but not too near to me

like seeing new years eve in on the balcony with your one and only one

theres stuff happening all around but you are wonderfully isolated

like going on holiday when youre an enchanted child

and being allowed in your parents bed when youre scared at night

like the names of all the people you ever been in love with

like a warm courtyard on a cold sunny day

these pleasures and so much infinitely more

but all with such a detachment

with such a distance

oh honey we hurt each other so much 

oh honey we flirt and we touch

such a waste such a taste of honey 

oh honey yeah ya took my heart and my money

then you gave me the brush and then the bums rush

she stood on the porch for ages and in the outside world time moved at another rate

a comet shot thru the sky

the world was slumbering but alive

the earth was hurtling but still

a mosquito landed on my arm and it took hours for my hand to travel thru space and squash it

then there was blood on my tanned arm and i gently smeared it away

then there was more music playing in my head

and i attentively listened to it

she came back in and cleaned and reloaded the pipe

the opium bubbled and the sweetest smoke billowed forth

and then the nicest reveries again

oh sister you went n kissed another man

oh honey cant you understand 

that damned near slammed me..?

you took me for such a ride

took my hide and my pride

left me empty inside

oh honey i think i nearly  died 

when you lied sincerely about oh

everything…

the smoke was soothing and soft

it filled your lungs

then it filled your heart

then it filled your head

oh honey i said