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Cale surveying the neon prairie,
Glancing at the spittle-blasted asphalt,
Dug his hijacker boots to a sturdy halt,
A one-armed bandit graveyard's
Hum moaning through the gaslight fog.
Said "I smoke to keep the cigarette alight.
I'm not the kind of kid who likes to fight."
'Why's a handsome kid like you,
Per-ambling the spew-spurned streets at
Curtain hour, now?" asked
The teetering bozo hobo wrapped in card.
"Just a-gandering for a hook or crook
On which to rest my weary coat of arms.
I've tasted love and other psalms,
And drained a thousand amulets of charm.
I've cruised circuitous avenues of sleaze,
Disease and all those affectations of a bruised isle,
Call it the vain pursuit of vain pursuits.
Or call it the wistful rambling of a snowblind foal,
Askew, adrift, adieu, adieu.
And ultimately what's it worth to you?"
The vagrant stirs, strikes up a dog, and shuffling
Like a deck in blackjack virgin hands laments
The privileged bored, rasps, "so why the shades?"
"Today is not a day I want to see in technicolour"
Cale abhorrs the poisoned light and tilts the moon,
Implores the rich to choke on their doubloons.
"I've cursed the sleeping, mocked the slain,
If everything is all there is, I'll take nothing
And a refund from St Peter's Porch,
Thanks all the same.
And driven by the frazzled ghosts of womb impulse
I'll write a song that takes me where my heart
First opened fire,
Where everything that follows makes us liars."
The hobo falls and takes a bow,
And frisking for a signpost, Cale drags
From deep and ragged pockets of the dead,
A chapbook weatherbound in skin,
Still warm from the last heartbeat of the stiffening sinner.
'How to make amends and get a fix.'
'How to keep your friends while turning tricks.'
'How to welcome providence,
And how to keep your distance from the dramas
That design to decimate your wit and wonder.'
An aphoristic bible, a headbomb for street survival.
An Machiavellian armoury of techniques
To keep your head when bedding down with freaks.
Cale rips off the spine, and chews the pages
Like communion wafers, a flask of urban moonshine,
Washing wisdom down his broken pelt.
The moon a period crimson broad,
A cigarette kiss in the silkscreen mist,
Illuminates the cyphers he has downed,
And guides him to a fissure in the ground.
A booming techtonic sub-woofer bursting forth
Sounds of the suburbs in plaintive and searing words
Once the terrain of the gods of the underworld.
Now the mouthpiece of the damned,
Where heaven and hell can link hands.
Cale drags his sorry and shit-stained ass
Fast to the shelter of spiralling stairwells
And steaming manholes; in his pockets
A bilious bible,
A titanium heart and a dream,
The desire to know all that he means.
A cast-iron playground is rusted with days,
As the clouds leak a lustful malaise on the streets
Full of hope condemned full by flotillas of busying
Germs who would hobble your feet,
While you strive to dance to your heartbeat,
With your head between cask and concrete,
With your loves marked by sunshine and sleet.
"There goeth before [King Paimon] also an Host of Spirits, like Men with Trumpets and well sounding Cymbals, and all other sorts of Musical Instruments. He hath a great Voice, and roareth at his first coming...." El Principe
The enigmatic Frank Ene's solo record lives in a magical world where Serge Gainsbourg fronts Yellow Magic Orchestra. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 17, 2022
