Still-Life with Catfish, James Brown,
Dragon and Freight Train
This aint Bohemia, baby. This is skid row.
-Victor Smith
Dragon and Freight Train
This aint Bohemia, baby. This is skid row.
-Victor Smith
The walls are peeling
and the ceiling is rotting
and the clock in the corner
is chipping away at the night.
And outside, a dog is barking somewhere far off
and someone’s shouting down on the street,
HEY RON! HEY RON! IT WASN’T ME, MAN,
IT WASN’T ME!
And the fan on the floor is brushing out a sultry rhythm
and the pipes are whispering all the secrets
of those who’ve lived here before
and the fridge is humming low,
darlin’ do you remember meeee?
And the used car salesman upstairs
is laughing like a mandrill (or crying like a kookaburra),
the people next door, fighting or fucking,
through the walls it’s hard to tell.
But through the unlikely collusion
of these people, this place and all the little things
randomly arranged along the winding spectrum in
between, sometimes I think some larger,
more primal thing is trying to contact me.
I have to admit,
it’s hard to make out most of the time,
like there’s just too much metaphysical clutter
or white cosmic noise for the message to get through.
In a painting on the wall, for instance,
a fat catfish is giving the fish-eye
to a hook and worm.
In the corner, sitting on a table,
between a jug of homemade blackberry wine
and a bowl full of nectarines,
the bust of James Brown is eying me
just a little too knowingly,
letting me know with that wicked grin of his
that he’s seen everything (and that means everything!).
And somewhere, at the bottom
of the deep, murky gravel pit of my gut,
down among the bottles and bones,
the scuttled cars and sunken rowboats,
down among the spiky, prehistoric fish-things
and chitinous mollusks that skulk and sniff about
in the oily dark of this forgotten underworld,
the Duende / dragon / angel / demon hybrid
they say lives inside every sensitive artiste type
is tossing and turning again,
tossing and turning, cursing his rotten luck
at having been found out again
by the only bigger and badder monstrosity
on the block than him;
this accursed, marauding insomnia
that now comes calling whenever it pleases
(yes it does, whenever it pleases!).
Though, I know he has been giving
more and more thought,
as time slowly tics and ratchets by,
to raging up in a thunderous,
locomotional flurry of fang
and claw and fire and wing
and taking a good-size chunk
out of the ass-end of the world.
Just to see the looks on all our faces.
But outside, up here on the surface of things,
beneath a neo-classical, nocturnal scene
of cirrus clouds and contrails
and a big, bright, mag-light of a moon,
a freight train bound for Talala, OK,
Tucumcari, NM, Ithaca, NY
(or other exotic parts unknown to most of us)
is rumbling its way past the building again,
shaking the very pillars of the earth
like wave after wave of armored cavalry,
rattling the aching frame of Atlas, even …
How often’s it go by, man?
So often you won’t even notice.
and the ceiling is rotting
and the clock in the corner
is chipping away at the night.
And outside, a dog is barking somewhere far off
and someone’s shouting down on the street,
HEY RON! HEY RON! IT WASN’T ME, MAN,
IT WASN’T ME!
And the fan on the floor is brushing out a sultry rhythm
and the pipes are whispering all the secrets
of those who’ve lived here before
and the fridge is humming low,
darlin’ do you remember meeee?
And the used car salesman upstairs
is laughing like a mandrill (or crying like a kookaburra),
the people next door, fighting or fucking,
through the walls it’s hard to tell.
But through the unlikely collusion
of these people, this place and all the little things
randomly arranged along the winding spectrum in
between, sometimes I think some larger,
more primal thing is trying to contact me.
I have to admit,
it’s hard to make out most of the time,
like there’s just too much metaphysical clutter
or white cosmic noise for the message to get through.
In a painting on the wall, for instance,
a fat catfish is giving the fish-eye
to a hook and worm.
In the corner, sitting on a table,
between a jug of homemade blackberry wine
and a bowl full of nectarines,
the bust of James Brown is eying me
just a little too knowingly,
letting me know with that wicked grin of his
that he’s seen everything (and that means everything!).
And somewhere, at the bottom
of the deep, murky gravel pit of my gut,
down among the bottles and bones,
the scuttled cars and sunken rowboats,
down among the spiky, prehistoric fish-things
and chitinous mollusks that skulk and sniff about
in the oily dark of this forgotten underworld,
the Duende / dragon / angel / demon hybrid
they say lives inside every sensitive artiste type
is tossing and turning again,
tossing and turning, cursing his rotten luck
at having been found out again
by the only bigger and badder monstrosity
on the block than him;
this accursed, marauding insomnia
that now comes calling whenever it pleases
(yes it does, whenever it pleases!).
Though, I know he has been giving
more and more thought,
as time slowly tics and ratchets by,
to raging up in a thunderous,
locomotional flurry of fang
and claw and fire and wing
and taking a good-size chunk
out of the ass-end of the world.
Just to see the looks on all our faces.
But outside, up here on the surface of things,
beneath a neo-classical, nocturnal scene
of cirrus clouds and contrails
and a big, bright, mag-light of a moon,
a freight train bound for Talala, OK,
Tucumcari, NM, Ithaca, NY
(or other exotic parts unknown to most of us)
is rumbling its way past the building again,
shaking the very pillars of the earth
like wave after wave of armored cavalry,
rattling the aching frame of Atlas, even …
How often’s it go by, man?
So often you won’t even notice.
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