Stripping away what's beautiful

Greville and the Tombstones tries to write beautiful things. But #thereisnobeauty sometimes and this is my attempt to write something that has no beauty at all.

This is... Stripping away what's beautiful

The clouds are gathering.

The crows are gathering.

The day is autumnal because it is spiritual,

the air hangs with natsukashii.

The leaves are gathering, the teeth are gathering

Don't plug me back in, don't reconnect my limbs,

they broke in the season of summer.

Did the sun ever shine like you said it did that time?

I don't think it even shone once.

Rain in glass shoals as it swirls, splinters and falls.

My weakling eyes can't raise because they've 

only witnessed sunsets.

Souls scraping to escape their little black holes.

Coagulating around blood-wet introspective ground,

I've never been so lonely.

Medical experiments and philosophise treatments.

I don't fear these masks no more, they fetishize.

Nurses need the bodies.

Then what will you write, knowing it'll outlast you?

Whatever it is, write it out neatly.

The act of vandalism was not what was pulled from you.

Here admit deviations, recognise you were a

Dead symbol to begin with.

The nights are gathering.

The lines are gathering.

The heartless don't use a key to set the cruel beast free 

from the basement.

They leave it to crawl, pretending it's not them at all.

They thread a needle, call it transparency: 

that's where they hide in.

Does it matter if the saviour invites me to her chambers

So long as she saves me?

Goddess iconography, wood incense of her presence.

No telling after what position she'll chain me

because I'm still agnostic.

Confused at a life that won't love you back.

Now the murder is no longer nesting

in the bell tower.

Memories huddled, the birds' chests are bloodied.

You say sentiment of the missed don't haunt you

then find books with bookmarks.

It's not really so much, it's not really so much

feeling for a pulse.

Check gently for my own, it's here or there I know.

It might be feint as a word sung on skin

But I'd like it to be felt.

The candles are gathering.

The animals are gathering.

Scatter flowers anywhere, they don't matter. 

Supafilm

Is it a cover version when you are covering your own material?

This is something I wrote over on The DarkThrow, the poetry site for my poems that don't always fit in with the Greville and the Tombstones image. However, I think this might find a life of sorts here in the Greville and the Tombstones catalogue too. If you like this, please hop over to The DarkThrow and tell your friends about others you like over there.

This is...  Supafilm

Taking sad photographs

On 24Supafilm spool.

Not sure if tide’s rolling in or out.

With a photograph, guess it’s hard to tell.

Turning a yearbook

Through a Japanese lens.

The developed print was blurred.

People called it societal commentary artwork.

Exposing intention

With a cherry bomb flash.

Framing was for all to view.

Everyone spoke to their own interpretation.

She took a photograph

on a 24Supafilm spool.

She tore it into pieces at night.

They dropped like sycamore seeds.

Don’t shoot at my heart.

Don’t shoot at my heart.

Song for Winona

I woke up in a morning with this lyric in my head. This is like my McCartney dreaming Let It Be.

This is... Song for Winona

I got a crush on Winona.

Hangin' out hopin' she's gonna

One day go steady with me.

Sometimes I catch a movie of her

On Alternative late-night TV.

Half-eyed, it's like she's in the bedroom with me.

Or I'm hangin' at the back of the scene.

I got a crush on Winona.

Hangin' out hopin' she's gonna

One day go steady with me.

Inertia Pareidolia

My attempt at writing in britpop.

This is... Inertia Pareidolia:

Sitting at a window. 

Rewinding and forwarding the view. 

Even while it's bleeding out. 

Still life creaking, high rising, falling hard at you. 

Missing what it's all about. 

Sea-glass forget-me-nots wash into the picture, 

From the eternal, uncharted wave, 

Her driftwood voice, slow quotes scripture. 

Jesus would come again for the head she gave. 

I'm seeing faces in the time that passes by the door 

oh-oh-oh 

Are they from a future I will never see anymore? 

Sliding the abacus. 

Counting out bad dreams. 

Taking register when they return home. 

Horizons narrow, hands reach cold walls as she leaves. 

Lost eyes will always be burnt holes. 

Man way up in his moon puts down songs of sorrow. 

They're limited and out of tune. 

Morbidly listening in to heartbeats in the afterglow 

of love long since abandoning the room. 

I'm seeing faces in the afterlife that walk by everyday 

hey-hey-hey 

Are they ghosts of the usual or have something new to say? 

Watering houseplants.

They keep dying one by one. 

Even while they're blooming. 

Words picked for their beauty of lovers to listen. 

Birth roots dirty and ripped open. 

Is that the sound of rainfall, or is it the typewriter 

stripping petals to their waist? 

"Restlessly pulling at bedclothes, I recognise her. 

In creased sheets: her taste."

I'm seeing faces in the static received by my tv screen 

yeah-yeah-yeah 

Are they reflections, premonitions or moving in-between?

Botanica no. 23

Botanica no.23 by Gail Potocki.

I adore this painting.

The pre-history of the post-apocalypse

This is... the pre-history of the post-apocalypse

Saturday, twenty-first century.

Let's paint the floorboards red.

With a dress, a dress, a dress.

Philosophers say we must be living.

But I can't hear

One breath, one breath, one breath.

Alchemists write "the World must turn".

But I can't feel

Any breeze, any breeze, any breeze.

The last great voice of rock 'n' roll was

Lana Del-Fucking-Rey Or was it

Nick Cave, Nick Cave, Nick Cave?

This is the pre-history of the post-apocalypse. 

Broken down submarine hits the bottom of 

The sea, the sea, the sea.

In 1989, we knew every line.

"We Didn't Start the Fire"

We were the fuel, the fuel, the fuel.

Rent our bodies from the government.

Tells us the goodwill's spent.

Because we didn't buy it, buy it, buy it.

We all mistake the bad things change,

and the good remain 
the same, the same, the same.

Sitting in a parody of a sunny day.

No one gets to stay in a flash bulb moment.

It burns out, burns out, burns out.

Gluing back how those shredded affairs could have been.
Home recorded cassette tapes, touching lips.

What the nets dredge up when grief goes fishing.

 This is a checklist of the pre-history of the post-apocalypse.

 Seek an explanation by our nature.

Hindsight lies a useless mute.

Foresight blindly reaching out as the grave.

Surrounded by modern saviours.

They lost the power to save.

It's ok if you're not all that brave.

Three weeks until daybreak.

Longer depression breaks.

It's a chain of light and darkness anyway.

Empty opportunities is not to say

I didn't fill them.

It's that they cannot come again; it's always the way.

Life’s ups and downs remind me of

Graceful acrobatics

Back in the pre-history of the post-apocalypse.

Saturday, twenty-first century.

Let's spill a little, warm red.

In a glass, a glass, a glass.

My happy place

I wrote this very quick today. I lay down yesterday to calm the calamites and sundries. I remembered someone saying they go to their happy place in their head. And I thought of what would be my happy place.

This is... My Happy Place

Over the iron filigree fence clutched in ivy,
I’m sitting, quiet, in white cotton pyjamas.

Trees tuned, precise garden.

Wildflowers roll like the ocean.

No, an absorption.

Swallows the sun and the panic.

The nurses are also dressed utterly in white.

White shoes too.

They are quiet.

Go to your happy place, maiden.

Sweet airs scatter ideas like a murmur of birds.

Inside, the library contains writing paper

Finely tuned and furnished.

Silent, like pointless haunting.

No, a heart sickening.

It pleads for an injection to beat.

The nurses take my arm and often guide me in. 

I feel a sting.

They are quiet.

Go to your happy place, mister.

Where I go to. I can't remember ever leaving.

I’m in my happy place with melancholia.

Perfectly precise and tuned.

Hospital hangs moon white.

No, seashell upturned.

Spirals, reflections, part of the body.

Lunatics around me, dressed white as pearls. 

And I am one.

They are quiet.

Go to your happy place, animal.

Six feet apart

This is... Six Feet Apart

Disconnected and senseless

Me in my spacecraft

You in your spacecraft

Only six feet of space between us

It might as well be three hundred years

Might as be as wide as my fears

I try to feel what you're feeling

Me in my spacecraft

You in your spacecraft

Birdsong

This started off a happy little thing about the joy of birdsong. However (and there always seems to be an "however" with Greville and the Tombstones) it developed into a treatise on something which is altogether of the weirder songbird.

This is... Birdsong

Graveyard under moonlight.
Grass blades form of twilight.

Dark winds whistling a sweet song to it.

 It’s where you want to be all along.

To feel you can belong.

 Life is in tune everywhere.

Wings cut through deadened air.

Evening rains dappling down on stone.

Private carriage, you’re all alone.

All you seem is all you’ve known.

Then the needle looped at the vinyl’s end.

Scratched out beat sounded so final that you cried.

I offered up kind words of my own,

but you placed them all down and replied: 

“I hope there is a B-side”

You know of a wild, star bush.

 In the middle is it’s seeded fruit.

Times you crack it open,

put your frail hand in,

Grazes your skin, every thorn sings.

You’re reminded of the sting.

 Masquerade night sky ball.

Silently waltz in the grand old hall,

Deities wear baroque masks to fool all

behind them they can hide ridicule.

You need to be a fool.

Then planets fell off their springs. 

I didn’t know what was happening, I cried.

You whispered “Life is not only being alive,

it’s seeing its terror and not being terrified”

Well I hope I didn’t waste this ticket

on a free ride.

How did I miss her birdsong has died? 

No celestial bodies to hold, flowers fell by my side:

 “The birdsong is long gone”, you sighed,

And that’s the sound I realised:

 She stopped singing to peck the flesh

from my goodbye.