Poet's desk

I like this. It's how I want to be sometimes, writing for Greville and the Tombstones.

Many thanks to Jeanie Laub for finding and sharing this with me.

The Glorious Verse sleeve art

@tellthee created this appropriate sleeve art should a CD of The Glorious Verse be released. Which it wont because #thereisnoCD #thereisnoband

All the same, this is wonderful.

The glorious verse

This started out as a series of unconnected lines I wrote.
This is as close to a philosophical tract as I may muster.
I imbued it with malice.

The Glorious Verse...  

If I can’t get a muse,

An archenemy will do for me just as well.

I walk beside the river,

Through the membrane, fingers reach for me.

I’m a collection of atoms.

Put together to witness astrophysics and cruelty.

There's a crack in my ribcage

To put a cassette in, to playback my same position.

Like a pinned moth on a board

I’m uncomfortable and in need of a physician.

[Break]  

In this lecture theatre

We are both the studious and the studied.

A flash of the Pale Cutter's needle,

Neat stitching transforms us into what we are. 

A last exhale

slipping its mooring rope, roadkill, a cadaver.

[Break]  

If I require a reason,

I am surrounded by a past so have to not seek any further. 

I know, I know, I know, but you
and your woe can go right on ahead and fuck one another.

I try to claw at time.

Tremble as she shapes her legs along her parallel universe.

[the glorious verse]

I'm well aware.
I'm only too well aware of this.
After love there is loss and God only knows what we miss out on.

I’ve found no redeeming qualities in moral redemption:

They place a jar, ring a salt circle, make a flame small.

I've discovered no hopes in falsehoods masking desperation:

A world of physical tenderness
is the most mournful gift to the lonesome of all.

And I know about it,
I know only too well all about it.
Won't expect your mercy in your all enduring judgment.

And I know all about it.
How people shift into better; into worse.

When she steals my gaze in amber, I hear the glorious verse.

Christmas Tombs card

Wishing all adorers of Greville and the Tombstones a very gentle festive time.

May ghosts come to settle by candlelight.

May bones be placed in your stocking.

May there be a new year for you.

Card design by @tellthee

Ghosts are real

This is... Ghosts are real

Dead relationships are dead.
Ghosts are real.
Haunting the old haunts.
Some people contact them.
I don't believe in them.
Ghosts are real.
Dead relationships are dead. 
They float silently by my eye.
They never age, but rot.
Ghosts are real.
Dead relationships are dead.
I hear the shrieks.
I hear the sound trees make.
Ghosts are real.
Dead relationships are dead. 
I think I must be dreaming.
I hear them in my bed.
Ghosts are real.
Dead relationships are dead.

There's another ten verses I could tell, but everything I've said covers it just as well.

A Perishing Lament

Greville and the Tombstones are not very good at Halloween. But this little one seems appropriate for reading on a Halloween night. Listen and you might hear it through the wind, through the window, through the wall, through to morning.

This is:
A Perishing Lament

It’s not what fleshes our costumes.

It’s not the glow of a lantern,

flickering a face through a windowpane.

It’s a peculiarity which consumes.

A gothic, sloshing, formed within.

It’s an invisible foreboding without name.

It’s joining in a parlour game,

All silk dresses, paraffin lights and warm. 

And sensing not all is tomfoolery intent,

Disguised by cinder toffee scent.  

And the spirit moves on from you. 

And the spirit moves on

Because of what you have done.  

Watching players all sat in the round.

The Medium’s fingers of reed,

Flickering in refined ethereal breeze.

Listening out for your mortal sound.

The channelling is meant to mislead.

The panting in breasts as breaths freeze.

We’re joining your parlour game.

All creaks, knocks and earie manifest.

And moaning out eternal undying torment,

It’s a perishing lament.

And the spirit does rest with you.

And the spirit does rest

Because of what you have done.

S-booky decorations

Composition and photo by @tellthee

Wishing everyone a very spooky Halloween.

Terminal agitation

I wrote this fast in a bath. Greville and the Tombstones appear to take the most melodramatic baths.

This is:
Terminal agitation

I cling to the side of the pool.

My naked body in supine pose of the tormented Jesus.

Knuckles grooved rivets.

A fleshy sac: loose yolk exposed.

My modesty slapped in oil.  

I consider dying.  

It's been two summers.

It’s been so much longer now.  

I wanted ovations.

Men punching the air.

Women falling into arms.

To be beautiful forever.

I wanted certification of life.  

I consider dying.  

I’ll not find ways back.

I’m alright with how I am now.  

Blood lacerated in the dance.

My hair, slippery and lank from the steaming pool.

Hanging willow branches.

Creating little concentric ripples.

Vulnerability coiling fingers.

I consider the pain.

A hymn for a nihilist

This was an interesting piece. I tweeted a couple of early drafts as I worked on it. Then it disappeared, deep into the well. Now it has resurfaced, the stones out its pockets. It is much changed. It went in a therapy and came out a hymn.

This is: A hymn for a nihilist

Wipe clean your eyeball on a sleeve,

This is not a benediction for your strife.

Pick up this note of mourning on cold days.

Days when skies are nicotine yellow lit life.

You could be happier, I’d say.  

What claims victory in war,

when you’re only fighting yourself?

What case are you trying to prove,

when you prosecute your own defence?

You want to watch some drown,

but to do it you must wade deeper in.

Don’t pierce that voodoo doll of yours,

you’ll only prick a finger with the pin.  

Young romantics, youthful dead.

Though who can truly tell the difference?

The trophy on an arm and another

skeleton cluttering the cupboard.

Rattling bones hush the screams.

Out of car windows, Time discards you

like empty tins, rattling on the road.

Seeing the car get small, you’re cut free.  

Velvet, burst stuffed heart cushion.

Dead fragile, vein thin leaf smoked pew.

Wallpaper peeling from humid stress,

Everything needs a redecoration.

Every bit moulders in ruins.

It’s complicated and it’s ridiculous

how decomposition is natural.

Come to terms with whatever the point is.

The perished, holly berry mildew,

worn out as a coat that really suits you.  

Years poured in, paper thin.

All the people are junkyards,

corrugated dolphin companions in the surf.

Wipe clean your other eyeball on a sleeve,

See through your ghosts giving up.

Wring out the excruciating tone.

View terror under grief within.

Creep towards The Word like medication,

Take it anytime, whatever dose,

It won’t cure your mortal bone.  

God, how did you get so old?

Trauma keeps from feeling the years.

Stolen act of misguided kindness.

I sense works growing cold in my warm core.

Watching tornadoes touch down on the ocean floor

make it worthwhile to endure.

Is this good therapy? I’m really, very, not so sure.

There is no Live album

There is no band. There is no Live.

Many thanks to my friend @tellthee for this great image and design.

It's so realistic. But it is not a real album. Like all Greville and The Tombstones albums, if they did exist, they would be blank. Not even any grooves in the vinyl, I would think.