Get all 10 Bardonthewire releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of The Ruined Hall, Marked for Life, The Breck's Isle Rap, Dr Who Am I and the Zen Trails of Hafiz (album), I Got On At Hallelujah Lamppost, All The Saints, 'Hiraeth' - Symphony Number 1 in Coal Minor, It All Comes Out In The Wash (album), and 2 more.
1. |
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The Angevins were Very Bad,
And Worst of All was John:
As foul as hell is, it’s defiled
By Eleanor’s Little One.
Usurped his Lionhearted Bro,
The One Good Angevin;
Jugged Merry Freeborn English (yay!)
Forest-flying Robin.
Villain of the Good/Bad History
School and book and song,
‘Inadequate with some Capone’
John. King John. …Bad King John.
In 1216 at all time low,
His ‘soft sword’ half advanced,
His shrunk-crown empire Richard-pawned,
Normandy lost to France, (pah!)
Despised by all those Magna barons
Carting him to heel
Flinging him to French invaders
And Abdullah’s deal:
England given to Mohammed!
A rock moored off Morocco,
Hapless John at bay and 4 years
Excommunicado.
Villain of the Good/Bad History
School and book and song,
‘Inadequate with some Capone’
John. King John. …Bad King John.
From Lynn, he armied up to Lincoln
As the Wellstream rose ,
Despised by Emperor, peasant, guild;
His Rome-rule churches closed;
3000 men, wheels coming off,
Up creek without a guide;
The royal dosh lost in the Wash -
He never lost our pride.
Three wheels on my wagon
But I’m still rolling along
I’m wicked, selfish, lecherous, cruel,
You learned about me in your school
Now I’m under the cosh
Lost my dosh in the Wash
But I’m singing a happy song.
For out in Norfolk we do different,
And his haven, it was Lynn,
Their domain he made our borough ,
Gallant little Linnet king.
Victim of the Good/Bad History
School and book and song,
His Brother’s Bad Book Good Book Keeper
John. King John. …Good King John.
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2. |
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Twisting round my hair in knots,
Twisting round your neck with thoughts.
My oh my, you have to agree
Certain issues of poetry
Can’t conceive of a harmony.
I’m twisting pastoral flowers into your face.
I’m twisting your kind of thinking into place.
I’m twisting…
Listening to you plum for choice
Between degrees of passive vice.
‘There’s much that may be said for Donne.’
I am the outside world come in,
Butchered hands and axe grinding,
OPEN YOUR ED AND LET ME IN!
I’m twisting pastoral flowers into your face.
I’m twisting your kind of thinking into place.
I’m twisting ….
Your rich aesthetic literariness
Is like the lush grass on a grave.
My oh my I’m rotten through
But life moves through and it’s sick, of you.
I’ll thrust you off me and trample you.
I’m twisting pastoral flowers into your case
I’m twisting your kind of thinking into place.
I’m … Terminating this debate!
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3. |
Roaring Margery Rap
01:48
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Some would wish her in the harbour,
In her floods of weeping sunk,
Some would say it was an illness
Or the ravings of a drunk.
Some say they are un-Ladylike,
Un-Saintly and untrue,
Some curse her tears with oaths so lewd
They turn her white robes blue.
Some would shake her very gently
By the roaring seething throat,
Some would wish her on the ocean
In a bottomless boat.
Some carp that she's a Holy Joe,
"Eats no meat and drinks no wine,
Makes an altar of high table
And keeps crying all the time!"
Some say "Marge for the love of Christ,
No ass could bear your folly!"
Her confessor chides "chill out or get!
It's a pilgrimage, a Jolly!"
Some would shake her very gently
By the roaring seething throat,
Some would wish her on the ocean
In a bottomless boat.
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4. |
Geek Chorus
03:32
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5. |
Green Shirt
02:25
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6. |
Hell Rock
02:24
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Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
Birth of the deadliest thing on the planet,
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Damn all these currents of feeling that kiss
And wear me, so much, with their wetness, or grit,
Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
Silence, a stare, are my anaesthetists.
I freeze out pressure, heat. I won’t admit
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Sunshine, tears, won’t melt my heart like Ice’s,
I’m dead hard. Whatever moves, I’ll kill it,
Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
I went to pieces once; perhaps round this
More grainy core, less brittle, I can fit
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
Made of dead reactions, buried stresses,
Grist to milling Earth, I’ll never quit
Solidified might, past-imperfect as is.
The Verb into Noun, the process into stasis.
credits
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7. |
The Calling
03:44
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Love’s not for Sunday schoolgirls ; her rosy beam
Is blood on soles not blushing peach and cream.
God gave us religion to kherque* and vest our egos
And showbiz to smash them to smithereens.
This calling in the wilderness, so far,
So near, so very faint, so heartbreak-keen.
This art and soul and song and dance on wings,
My vision died for, made a perfect scene.
Love’s deva peak, his heaven come to earth:
The angels weep to see or haven’t seen.
Art’s risen Adam-dawn and dewy Eve:
The breaking silence of the broken dream.
O Leila, he’s your Majnun lost to you
In boundless love, your Ocean in the stream.
Oh Majnun, she’s your heaven-scent pursued
To hell and back to where she’s always been.
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8. |
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I only you could hear my heart, my ill-umination,
The music of my soul, my life's driving vision.
If only I could find the words that don't keep it hidden,
This meaning that I've found, this heart-communication.
I sing the six degrees of our separation
And the one leap of faith to your seventh heaven.
The Harbour Boat Inn’s going hammer and tongue,
Six sheets to the wind and all hell going on.
Its tavern crowd shuts up, hearing my song,
By the die-for chorus, it’s singing along.
I sing the six degrees of our separation
And the one leap of faith to your seventh heaven.
I don’t want the 3 worlds, I want to destroy them,
Reverse the equation, our long division.
I don’t want mind’s relics, prayers, altars, hokum
Except as remembrance of love’s oblivion.
I sing the six degrees of our separation
And the one leap of faith to your seventh heaven.
But don’t smash them up, you God-crazed fools,
Blast them out of your mind to kingdom come.
Six sheets to the wind, with all hell going on,
Love blows me away; I blink and I’ve gone.
*
And so at last it’s only you, my Friend,
The same old testament between these lines,
No other matter in these quiet signs
But You, no spirit, sense or start or end:
You gift the giver and your gift transcends
The fairest words, the subtlest rhymes:
A love-struck silence speaking volumes chimes
The un-forgotten lost soul chord, and sends:
What do you give the One who has it all?
What else, a Christmas book my hurt has made
From broken beat and strings and love as blind
As snowflakes on the wind, a debt repaid
A seven-petalled rose; love’s answered call;
The All in all I gave my all to find.
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9. |
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This face that burns upon my Eye in searing fiery gale:
More clear than any seen on Earth or heavenward trail.
The Lancelot shot down in flames, the highest craft of all:
Conception deconstructed lifting Guinevere’s veil.
‘I see your face in everything, but cannot leap the gulf
Between belief in what I see and being what I fail.’
It’s Leila’s I-consuming, never-ending, parted love
For Majnu, her sole bleeding where his sole trod upon a nail.
He feels his wreck in her, a bliss that pierces his heart
And bleeds from hers like wounds of Passion’s holiest nail.
The agony of longing long, the ecstasy of pain
In hearts that See their grail through golden bars of a gaol!
Your Sun is Everything and there is nothing that is not the Sun:
My black hole All-consumed in one whole - yet shadows prevail.
In sainted flames of love, with nothing else it can see
It burns away in grief, this Eye that can’t have the Grail.
O Heart of Hearts, her Absent Heart is All to you now.
She’s in the Seventh Sun, where Lovers leap and visions...fail.
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10. |
This is God
01:05
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This is God. On the highest of highs through the gulf of a tomb,
(This is God.) I’m on top of the worlds born of mind, spirit, womb.
I am not. Now the bubble has burst, there is nothing but sea:
This is God. I’m as drowned in His kiss as the bud in her bloom.
I’m in Love. All the pain in my heart’s disappeared like a dream:
This is God. I am dead to the worlds and awake to my swoon.
I am Him. Now the primal beloved and lover are one:
This is God. I’ve become Who I journeyed towards and from Whom.
Oh my love! He’s embraced me and brought me at last to himself:
This is God. Now I see there is only my Self in his room.
I’m the soul. “There’s no dark where there’s light, no unknown where one knows.”
This is God. Little mind has been razed with its search and its gloom.
O my God! You’re beyond the beyond but you’re found on the Earth.
This is Me, All in All, in the flesh: this perfection, this Home.
© Gareth Calway 1991, 2015. Re-published in the Sheriar volume "http://garethcalway.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/6-degrees-of-separation-7-degrees-of.html 2015.
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11. |
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|
The Angevins were Very Bad,
And Worst of All was John:
As foul as hell is, it’s defiled
By Eleanor’s Little One.
Usurped his Lionhearted Bro,
The One Good Angevin;
Jugged Merry Freeborn English (yay!)
Forest-flying Robin.
Villain of the Good/Bad History
School and book and song,
‘Inadequate with some Capone’
John. King John. …Bad King John.
In 1216 at all time low,
His ‘soft sword’ half advanced,
His shrunk-crown empire Richard-pawned,
Normandy lost to France, (pah!)
Despised by all those Magna barons
Carting him to heel
Flinging him to French invaders
And Abdullah’s deal:
England given to Mohammed!
A rock moored off Morocco,
Hapless John at bay and 4 years
Excommunicado.
Villain of the Good/Bad History
School and book and song,
‘Inadequate with some Capone’
John. King John. …Bad King John.
From Lynn, he armied up to Lincoln
As the Wellstream rose ,
Despised by Emperor, peasant, guild;
His Rome-rule churches closed;
3000 men, wheels coming off,
Up creek without a guide;
The royal dosh lost in the Wash -
He never lost our pride.
For out in Norfolk we do different,
And his haven, it was Lynn,
Their domain he made our borough ,
Gallant little Linnet king.
Victim of the Good/Bad History
School and book and song,
His Brother’s Bad Book Good Book Keeper
John. King John. …Good King John.
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Bardonthewire England, UK
Performance poetry with a library card (voice & drum, folk ballads, ghazals, sonnets, beat poems, sound poems, raps) much of it happening 'on the street' or jostling to be heard in the tavern. Researched stories of folk heroes and real folk. History for you. Bardic poetry striving (as all arts do) for the condition of music (from punk though rap to to prog). Visionary lit. for your average Blake. ... more
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