Saturday, 4 May 2019

Laying these here to rest

If Greville and the Tombstones had an EP of rarities and B-sides, it might well be called Laying These Here to Rest.

But, of course, there are no rarities and B-sides, only poems I began to get me to the point of being able to say something else. Or were written but never quite enough to be deemed finished. Or have, until this, never been published on the band blog before. The following are notes and starts and stops of things written completists might like to read here in this collection.

Please enjoy the misfit things.







Hymn for anxiety

I’m living life according to my zodiac 
I’m dealing blackjack at the card table 
Stopping my hands from being idle 
I’m in control. 
Because I’m doing all my exercises 
Taking medication detailed on the label 
A caw as comforting as it is demented 
I’ll tell you straight 
It sings to you.
I’m burying deep on my big mistake 
Failures exist only if they escape 
And they won’t 
Because I’m emotionally stable
I’ll hunt them down 
If they do.
When you figure out it’s all meaningless 
You’ve no fear leaving behind all this.
Bundled up in heartfelt anxiousness 
Because we like death 
Well, at least that’s true. 
Holes can be dug for all sorts of causes 
Echoes appear as dead voice noises
I’m only a mourner 
Just like you.






Rembrandt has nothing new to say 

You say you won but you’ve no stomach for the conflict. 
Best hope is if you lose yourself to never be told it. 
Say what you like when you don’t believe in it. 
When you’ve got a hammer every nails’ hit. 
Buy into it and buy into it and buy into it. 
Fall for it and fall for it and fall for it. 
Get over it, get over it, get over it. 
Complicit, complicit, complicit. 
Guess that’s just the way of it.
A martyr. 
Bone silent mother. 
Silences like no other. 
Skins, grind and scatter.
Ink frayed and cloth in tatter. 
The end is only going no further. 
Accept grief, prepare death a supper. 
Men’s smooth faces need no line to flatter. 
Teeth melt like wax in white heated candour 
Nothing to live up to so it really doesn’t matter. 
Nazi nurse so feminine, see the cat-lick eyeliner. 
No hint of things wrong, you say you are the victor.
Dead before consequences of the actions of the actor.






We All Want To See A Big Death Scene 

Eyelashes dust on astral blusher. 
Tendons straighten their ties from soft muscle. 
Relaxed cords loose themselves from joints. 
Hourglass hips time an empty sensation. 
Ringlet hair to accentuate. 
The lips, the eyes, the neck. 
Plunging robe narrows at amethyst heart.
 Daisy-chain the ankle to scent a summer’s day. 






Twenty Four Hours of Words Make A Truth 

I suffer for you






My muse makes me write things because it likes to frighten me

My muse likes terror tales,
The bloodier the better.
Dead trees, dismemberments,
Hanging skies of sickly pallor.

Told as Wurlitzer tunes,
Dark works to drip and ooze.

My muse collects them.

In cold, tin pails.

To write poetic exhales,
Sighed upon my muse.
Each phrase a precious jewel,
Lay them precisely at red shoes.
I'd like to write life-kissed arias.
My muse demands them
Little terror tales. 






Thursday, 18 April 2019

The personification of my poetry

If they inputted all my works into a great computer and they looked at the image the algorithm outputted onto the screen, this is what the image would be.

Dorothy Graves

Friday, 8 February 2019

A shape out of town, counting down

This took me the longest time to write. I wrote a whole other piece just to pick this one out from the dust it left.




This is...
A shape out of town, counting down

I deal in moonshine truths.
Love and Loss are the only meters of the soul,
Where the scales are counting chambers.
There’s a very old shape out of town.
And it is counting down.
I don’t do whimsy, or metaphors told.
It is my blood that’s bad.
My heart that's dirty.
It’s my skin that craves.

Confusing lack of sleep
with keeping thin.
I’m a believer,
Just not of what you are in.
Was this it? 
Was this all you could muster? 
Was this all it took?
To sate your bad blood.
Jump your dirty heart.
Satisfy your craving skin.
This is meant to be temporary, you know.