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Monday 3 February 2014

Marionettes (2013)

Song lyrics


Spinning like marionettes
Reeling and oozing and falling into whatever’s next
This gormless passivity
Is not sitting well with me
Is this some kind of hex
Gotta tell you I’m vexed

Tell me your secrets, you know, but just if you want
It doesn’t matter, you know it, you know, if you don’t
Cause I’ve got nothing I can say
To bring back yesterday’s belief
In tomorrow’s hopes

They say it’s the way you that play it, and not how you win
With the journey itself more important than where you begin
These matchbox philosophies
Just don’t do that much for me
But I never asked anyone else to atone for my sins

And this is what I wanted all along
The time to explore in myself
But nobody ever told me down the line
You can't run from yourself
ah nah nah

Spinning the roulette wheel
I’ve  got til the ball stops to work out what’s right and what’s real


Whilst there’s beauty around
It’s too often underground
That’s a crass, brutish thing
So I drown me in gin
And they tighten my strings
And I watch the world spin

Spinning like marionettes
wild-eyed and weird and wired with wine and regrets
Though I’m fat, dirty with sin
There’s still somewhere left to fit in
Cause they ain’t got it yet
I still feel music left
And it’s not all smashed yet
And it’s not all smashed yet
There's still music left
Not all smashed
Yet



Demento and the broken dream (2013)

Written to accommodate Facebook plot points from various people when I should have been at work, working.

He didn't like it when people called him Dememto. But he realised that being given a nickname was being acknowledged; good or bad, it was better, so they said, than being ignored. The day was as swiftly deadly as most of the others. The rain flew sideways, needling at the eyes of the moiderers congregating at the former home of Bangor City FC. A crane loomed in a sky that quite frankly couldn't be bothered.

Once, these people had been comrades, screaming together at life defining moments like that time when Mossley visited and Spike fashioned a chance by playing a one-two off the knee of the ref, but the linestwat flagged in confusion and the finish was wasted. Or when Reggie backheeled through the legs of his own goalie, just so he could stop the ball on the line and dribble back the other way, a moustachioed harkback to Worthington, Friday and the rest. Or, in the case of Cassius Fag, the place he felt at home with all the other misfits, drunkards, musicians, revolutionaries and fast-eyed hawkers. No need to hide here at Farrar Road - Cassius was Cassius and the nickname was one he'd given himself anyway.
"Do you remember that time in eateasy?? When we were having lunch together??" said Totty, sidling past the crew watching the demolition ball ready itself to assault a stand of a thousand dreams.

Cassius looked back a generation and found himself empty of empathy. Did he remember? There had been so many lunches over the years. Pie, bacon, cabbage: the tastetrack of a different era. In those days, he felt, things seemed easier: ten hours a week - mostly evenings and Saturdays - and ten quid to knack on Bentley's Yorkshire Bitter necked down Belmont Road, getting home at 9pm and straight to bed, or a couple of bottles of rotgut plonk direct from Albania.
He smiled, regardless: old friends expect both silence and confusion, because they are friends and know how it is.

Cassius – Demento - knew this as much as most, but still felt dodgy about it. He had no real shocking secrets, which was something that truly disappointed him. Maybe he should do something, right now, which in the future would be something he could tell nobody about. He resolved to cottage like living fuck in the morning; hopefully arrested, or at least needing to rush to buy mouthwash immediately afterwards. That would do the trick and no mistake.
But by the time he'd come to that realisation Totty was gone, giggling down Farrar Road with Captain Bangor and talking about the time Erol shat his pants in the Globe.

The crowd watching the demolition of a dream seemed to sag at once when it became clear that the Jac Codi Baw wasn't moving any time soon, mainly due to the driver going for lunch. People murmurred and sighed; many had taken their lunch hour to come here to protest the erection of a hypersoup but the anticlimactic atmosphere was like a fart long-held in but released stinkless. Like the forest tree that makes no sound, a peacock flounders when its plumage is unseen.
Demento wandered past the paint shop and turned left down the high street - the second longest in Wales, according to a man in the pub. He lit a fag with as much ennui as he could be bothered to muster. Unfortunately, the Silk Cut satisfied him beyond belief. Disappointingly, it failed to rain. Under the slate sky, in truth, it was approaching balmy.
 And here, in the distance, at Kyffin Square almost, came DD.
The man of a thousand stories, none of which were true or interesting.
Demento veered into Wetherspoons, which he still felt strange about because he once went to church here as a kid and also lost his virginity in the cellar as a slightly older kid. Still, it was something familiar, somewhere he automatically ordered a Mackeson's and perched in the corner, half-hiding and half wanting to be found.

He took a sip of the ale, shuddered with its sweet foulness and looked up to find DD, orange WKD in hand as ever.
"Itellyamanitwasfuckinrighteous," burbled the dragonchaser, 
"therewasmepiersyaknowpiersthepervertedpercushonistanfavabeanfrank"

Demento shuddered again. DD was off on one; there was no escape.

"WewentdownOckyanPiersputhisfuckinstickinthisgirlsmingethedirtytwatthenhetookherfuckinhomewherewereyouanywayboynevermindnexttimeyougottabethereyafruitcakehesafilthbagmonkeyfuckmanfuckmehawhatatwatfuckintalkaboutbeergogglessheshouldofhadbeerfuckinIdunnobeerfuckinDVDorsomethinhessuchacunt"

A rumbling in the distance and both men stopped in unison; a wrathful chaos insinuated itself into the ears of the pair.
Clearly, the JCB driver had returned.

Necking his Macky and nodding at DD, Demento legged it back down Farrar Road.
Where once had been a football ground now should have been a rank aggregation of, well, aggregate. And there should have been half a hundred lads, lasses and grifters shouting at the desecration.
But there was nobody there; only a hole.
Demento panted with the exertion. The skies were black, he now saw, with vultures, circling and eyeing him because they knew that time was their only friend.
Waiting.
For him, or someone else. No matter, any dead dream will do.

One preened its wings, beading at Demento seven shades of hell.
Where the football ground had stood was now a purple, pulsing blob of ectoplasmic fug, beneath which was the outline of a thousand sets of referees' glasses prescriptions.
The air seemed full of curses, chants, songs from ten thousand games of football. The clouds above wended their way into an image of a footballer. Demento, Cassius, somewhere in the back of his bruised brain, recognised it as Dave Fuller, the left back who later found some kind of fame as the unwitting subject of one of those Man in the Street-type adverts. He was the only one who could correctly identify Garden Brown Spuds from Golden Idaho Potatoes. Such talents, mused Demento, are often hidden, maybe perpetually wasted. Who knows what a man is capable of? Maybe I'm the world's best korfballer, or turd chaser, or fatfighter. I'd never know; you just don't unless you try.
And the corollary of that: don't try, in case you find out. All learning is good for is reiterating your limitations. Better, by far, to keep everything possible for as long as possible.

But enough of such matchbox philosophies; appearing fatly was the everlasting DD, running toward Demento and brandishing his latest mixtape; a conflagration of over-rapped sketches and Beach Boys outtakes no doubt.

"demomanheresademoforyamanhahafunny"

Demento turned his back as the devils started to form from the portal to Hades that Watkin Jones' bulldozers had unleashed.

Sighing, he took the Maxell D60. Demento noted that it was called Basingstoke Beckoned, released on Zug Regords, of course. Who else could it be? He resigned himself to the future. There really was nothing else to do.

"Deeds, fancy a drink?" he managed to say, as cackling whorefish and half-headed demons piled into the world from the Hellevator.

"yeahmanwhynothowaboutAngels."`replied DD.

"Bosh," admitted Demento.


The two wandered off, together, backlit by the crimson screams of the underworld, shadows merging in mortality and the fundamental glory of pointlessness.