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.

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. 

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

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.

The Red Drenched Hill

This is....

The Red Drenched Hill

Lit by low-slung sun, 

This is the red drenched hill, 

I am going to die on.

 Like a moth 

in a trial of fire. 

Until all love and hurt is gone. 

Because 

Everything ends up used. 

Scattered and ever abused.

 And you keep on coming 

Round to play. 

As if you’ve not got the news: 

I feel nothing for you

still. 

You see I see you from way up here, 

Wonder if you can climb high, 

Now I’ve cut my hair short 

Let the stormy clouds rot. 

I’ve no need of them 

in my eyeliner sky. 

When you cannot reach me. 

Gravestones sewn beneath me. 

And the weakening sun ray.

 By the weary sigh on 

sigh. 

If you want some advice. 

If there’s any left to give. 

Dismount from your high horse. 

It’s dying in pain of your loss. 

It doesn’t make any odds. 

When all sunlight leaves us 

Don’t think darkness frees us 

We intertwine like lover’s brides

 And call out

 To our gods. 

Even while Hell is in our eyes. 

You know, 

We’re too busy feeding robots 

Because we’re all just robots 

Programmed to eat donuts 

And self-destruct a wish that we die. 

Make no mistake 

I feel nothing for you 

On this hill. 

Time heals nothing around me 

No cure has yet come found me.

Loss is never found. 

It is never more healed. 

Alone, watching all down below. 

I realise the carnage 

See the tragic damage 

Smell the smoke of Carthage 

And there’s one truth that I know: 

When everything is on fire 

That can catch on fire 

My love lies still beside me, 

Burning. 

Scipio, when he looked upon the city as it was utterly perishing and in the last throes of its complete destruction, is said to have shed tears and wept openly for his enemies. After being wrapped in thought for long, and realizing that all cities, nations, and authorities must, like men, meet their doom; that this happened to Ilium, once a prosperous city, to the empires of Assyria, Media, and Persia, the greatest of their time, and to Macedonia itself, the brilliance of which was so recent, either deliberately or the verses escaping him, he said: 

A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish, And Priam and his people shall be slain. 

And when Polybius speaking with freedom to him, for he was his teacher, asked him what he meant by the words, they say that without any attempt at concealment he named his own country, for which he feared when he reflected on the fate of all things human.

You Stole My Heart, by Jeanie Laub

I'm honoured my friend and artist @laubjean has found inspiration in my words of Your Thieving Hands for this piece of her art.

I love her interpretations of my words. I am so happy our artforms suit our styles so well. I hope we we collaborate more together.

I'm delighted to share this with the wider world.

This is:
You Stole My Heart, by Jeanie Laub