SUPER DUPER LITERATURE TIME

[Jawn Disease]

the Parking Lot Where Pigeons Go to Die

I shouldn't shout and scream and break shit
So I cope in silence with my
Stupid smile stitched across my face
As I sprint in place.
It started snowing overnight,
And now it's white across the street
But grey and slushy in the parking lot
Where pigeons go to die.

And they say that I consent to the system I make use of
But there's no other system I could use;
And if I made another in good faith to help my people
They'd throw me into jail, I got the blues.

You came outside because you heard me screaming
You saw me in the snow giving myself a beating
You thought I slipped on the ice and maybe I was bleeding
But I was just drunk to death and my life was freezing
I'm sorry that I tried to punch you
When you tried to help me up
See sometimes the stupid kid inside me
Needs to get all fucked up

And they say that I'm a product of the world that I grew up in
Now what am I supposed to do?
And if I tried to start another world to live my life in
they'd throw me into jail, I got the blues

I shouldn't throw my life away yet
There's so much I haven't made yet
Stupid smile stitched across my face
As I sprint in place
Now it's dusk and it's still snowing
And I still don't know where I'm going
It's grey and slushy in the parking lot
Where pigeons go to die







untitled

Sometimes I get sober
Not too often
Just enough to feel the buzz

Sometimes it feels so nice
To control what
My body does

Sometimes I take off my boots
And sit inside
My living room

Sometimes it feels so nice
To sit inside
My living room

Sometimes I get awful
Pretty often
And I put up my guard

I don't want to be this way
So I try not to
Pretty hard

Sometimes I can't help it
Always end up
Going astray

Sometimes I am stable
But I know that I
Was born to run away








The Descendants of Jawn

And one day my descendants too
Will huddle in the shadows of ruins
Choked by tangled roots
Of foreboding and multicentenarian trees
And will live daily lives
And think not of me but of
Their pittances, their tangle-haired children;
And the wealthy from abroad
Will come inconceivable distances
To say, To think that they built
Such strange and elegant structures
So very long ago;
They still are not sure why this culture collapsed.
They called this building
"Parliament" in their own tongue,
And historians think this word means "talking";
But the linguistic record
From this region is patchy and complex
And the acoustics inside the ruin
Are not particularly good,
So no one is sure.
Shame about the natives here,
The poverty is terrible
Great food though
And some of them have the prettiest
Blue eyes (natural)
Especially in the country-side.






untitled

Is it just that I don't
Want to grow up
That I cling so stubbornly
To dreadlocks and mohawks?
Fuck,
I wanted to be older:
3 day old beard
Draggin' on rigs
With a light easy grip
On a king can of beer --
And don't get me wrong,
the cop-hating punk
With a paintbrush and
A can full of evidence
In me lives on --
but self-ostracized at 16
Anything is better
than clean-cut profit machines,
The Enemy;
(The point was not that I
Could not buy those stupid
Stupid fucking shoes
but that I did not)
So the shadowy slightly crazy
Always buzzing thing appealed;
That was, to me
Maturity, as opposed to
Self-imposed obscurity
As just another dick in the hall.
And now that I'm old enough
That drinking in alleys
Isn't glamourous,
I'd like to say I no longer do it
But do.



*
TRENDY HIPSTER CHILDREN ON THE METRO (sooo bitter, hahah)

You fucking people seem so perfect,
Where's the catch?
What do you do when you get home
I feel like you get plugged in alone
To charge your batteries
While your owner brushes his teeth or something.
You crazy crazy crowds,
Where'd you get those shoes?
I feel terrible about myself;
How do you feel? You can't even read
Paragraphs with more than six sentences
You probably couldn't name
Five countries in the former USSR
And yet you smile the display glass window
Smile of the recently dentisted
And you speak with such animation
About the most superfluous of things.
Some people say that I'm boring
Because if I speak at all,
It's about drinking, politics, news or depression
It's true, somebody said it to my face.
And it's true
But it's only because I don't care about
Newly available product lines.
I don't want to describe my friend's cat
I worry not about the size of my ass.
You fucking people seem so happy
Do you ever shut up and hate yourself?
Do you do the beaten-puppy and
Curl up and hope to die?
Is that unbecoming
For a trendy hipster fuck of your stature?







General Malaise

*
It's the general malaise
This is Our Time
What better time than now
What better place than here
To feel inadequate and alone

It's the general malaise
Stubborn catastrophe of the soul
The post-modern condition
Post-modern? After-now?
Following-the-part-where-we-thought-it'd-all-be-fine?

It's the general pile of shit
We live in a collapsing city
With a million immigrants
All working harder than us
There's light at their tunnel ends
I feel like we figured out
Quite a while ago
It's just a reflection
From our new cellphones

It's the whole part and parcel
The drugs and the lost love
The storylines we tread prefab
The looks we try on and discard
It's the whole thing
It's the general malaise.






Headless Statue


I think I love to torture myself and I love it when I am lonely so lonely that I choke. And all my friends have gone away or I have left them.

And when it comes right down to it, who were they anyway

Their faces are blurry now, I wonder how they feel about fading into black

I feel good about it

And I think when it is winter in the city we are all worn down torn up so broken like guardian dogs for the blind, beaten when not in use.

And I love my job but that's not the point

I did some laundry to make myself feel better about drinking alone in bed

Somebody I trust once said that fresh laundry is the nicest smell in the world. I'll wait and see, because it's still in the machine, spinning around.

When it gets dark so soon and I have so many things to do, I cry the slow slow slow tears of Mr. Bobby

Sing something good to me.

Paul asked me what's symbolically equivalent to a blank face, and I said, a headless statue.

What does he want to say?






Tchaika

Last night I dreamed
the seagulls were
all flying upside-down and
trying to land on the clouds.

And when they couldn't,
they would circle screaming,
"What is this? What's going on?
Someone tell me what
is going on?" Then,
eventually exhausted
they tumbled back to the ground.





Criss Yark Esti

Tu reviens chez toi horriblement sobre
Des gangsters font pomper dans des chars derriere toi
Pas d'argent, t'as faim
Ton alcool est disparue
L'herbe est fumee
Pis tu sens rien
Et ton ami a rammasse trois ska kids de 15 ans saoules
ou j'sais pas trop s'que sa s'apelle
Ces filles de 15 ans avec des cheveux mis teints
et des piercings et des accessoires en plastique brillants
Ces jours ci
Et t'est comme criss yark esti
J'espere presque j'aurais l'coeur ou le manque ici-la
pour fair ca.





What To Do

What to do when you can't know anything,
And what they teach in school is how to do nothing
And do it well, and how to know
That there's nothing left to show for ourselves?
I know the morals of too many stories
To live my own, and my gravestone will read
He lived and died and so will you.

How alone can a human being be?
I am more alone when every one can see me.
The more minds around you all alone,
The more you will never know another's soul.
I come from the age of cheap philosophy
I live too much and have seen
Too much to let it go.





Wisdom

the wisdom in my brain is new
it's like a hunch
i never had before
i found a clue
and maybe it's you,
or maybe not
because i cannot discount the possibility
that you are nothing and i am nothing and
my dreams are memories of sleep
and nothing more
and (relight cigar)
what am i to do?
well they tell me on the news
but i don't watch tv
i find it banal
i find it a cabal of death
a monopoloy of mourning
a cartel of cartoon catastrophe
a ploy of partisan presumption
consumption
i am the last consumer left
i am the last citizen of death
denizen of happy-go-lucky go fuck yourself honey
and i am alone and i am alive
and i am surrounded by the hive
but i can't dance the honey-bee hotstep
i have no neuro-transmitters to transmit my jitters





untitled

Eating lunch alone in Geneva
Last night's salmon is dry and inedible
I'm sure it was good;
I have never seen a salmon alive.
I have an array of bottles
Green to gold they range
All but one are alcoholic drinks
Pilfered from the liquor cabinet
There is no more milk or
Cranberry juice
I guess it's Martini and Baileys and
Mozart Chocolate Cream then a beer.
The mountains rise spectacular
My dad doesn't smoke but I found his cigars
One's behind my ear, and
I hear voices sometimes.
The number of beautiful intelligent
Soft and charming
Alarmingly attractive girls I miss
I cannot count on my fingers.

What's a slut to do?

*Drinks*






Spinning (song)

I'm just afraid I guess
Of being happy, feeling free
We're afraid in the end
Of being honest about you and me
What are the rules
For this game I always play
I want to break them
Break down and break away

We are just spinning
In the grip of who knows what
Are we just kidding
When we lock eyes and fall in love
This is the hardest part
Of growing up and falling down
I'll always grow apart
And end up drunk down town

I am so hopeless
but I find hope every day
I am so useless
But you can use me, that's okay

And all the indy kids
Whine and whine, whine and whine
And all the punk rock kids
Drink their wine, drink their wine
And all the drunk kids
Stay at home, underground
And all the sober kids
All alone, walk around

What is the problem
With the world, with this song
What's the solution
I don't know, there is none
When will the fighting stop
When the war is won
When will the war be won
When we're one, when we're one




Shiny Lies



I'll tell you why
When every shiny lie
Is mass-produced and
Spoonfed to the masses
The Pursuit of Happiness
Becomes hopeless nonsense
The wishful thinking
Of choking orphans!
I'll tell you why
We're abandoned at birth
Made to endure a companionless
Prison system existence without
Compassion or reason but with rhyme!
And time passes
As it does, and your
Country's kids succumb
And are violently raped in the brain by
A succession of smiling SS
Intellectual child-abuse
Annihilating all will to be!
The drive to be free
Is subordinated violently
To the dream of being better
It seems gold stickers
Are not enough of an incentive!
Bold thinkers are alienated
With alien invective made
To make you lay down and take it!
No human would create this
It makes us naked alone
Rushing to the folded clothes
On the plush throne
Just ahead.
Clawing out the eyes of your brothers
Shaming your mothers in your
Brutal efficiency
Vicious from infancy is
What they made me.
'Striving to succeed'
Is what they called it.
I called it "If you can't eat it, maul it.
Drag it back to your master
Work a little faster and
We'll give you a gold sticker
You sick twisted little serf
You don't even know better!"
Preparation for the outside world?
What world do I live in?!
What world was I stolen from
To rot in teenage playpens?
Looking for that good grade
So later I can get paid --
It's a joke, the cash
Will choke you and snap
Your spinal column and slash
Your soul's sedition, replace it
With inhibitions, let's face it:
Your grades prepare me
To be a better debt slave!
Your system is a easy ride
For lazy people to grab
Prancing like prostitutes
For a decade and a half,
All their best years taken
Away and counted and carefully
Placed in a bank vault, so that
When the time comes
They can be rugs for their masters,
Buy a faster car
To fill up with gas
And pay taxes and
Grab my ex-girlfriend's ass
When she works in the bar
You frequent 'after' work
So she can afford to
Put up with the bored board,
Backdrop of the inhumanity of school!
It's an easy ride!
For those who cannot think
Something that is not a lie,
Feel something passionately,
Know what it's like
To love your work and feel right
And at one with yourself and the Earth
To be happy with what you are
Not who you're better than,
To be honest, to live free
And not need a wide screen TV
To sing you to sleep.
Fuck grades.





Go Ahead

Chilling in crack dens with copkillers
He didn't know they were pigs
Nineteen years
Flew some coke into the country
They were undercover.

Last time he was drinking CC
Here, he ended up mauled by a pitbull
His pretty dog Diamond took
Out its throat.
Nine stitches

Only the good die young
Missing teeth and hair from the chemo
Two years ago he had one
And a half left to live
They say twenty now.

Split hearts and spillt souls I see
Souls leaking out drip drip
Like you forgot the cap
Another dude's like don't let the nigger
Come around, if I find him
Fucking my woman
I'll blow the place down

Go ahead Willy said






Cool Light Is Clean

Cool light's clean.
When I am at her place
The current breezes cool light through
The rooms, Russian dolls stacked
One after another
(An experiment in perspective,
Deep like mirrors looking at each other).
The warm air and the
Cool light inter-
Spersed with notes of sweet reggae
Something fries in the kitchen and I
Am at her place and I
Miss her and I
Still love her and I
Tell her that I
Think it is a beautiful apartment.






George

As George Washington glints
In the eyes of troops at dawn
Full battle gear on
Machine guns crackle
Down in the town where
They sound like bacon
Frying
But they're not

Democracy freedom
Security ATM machines cops
The men talk
And Harper glints
In the eyes of my banker
In Afghanistan more
Dead
Both sides

So cliche, so banal, so
We've been bitching since we knew how
Letters to Parliament
Torching upturned cars
Bring them home
Then: Leave us alone
We
Don't want to go

The first time a war
Is fought to protect innocents, defend
My liberty, my rights
My home, my Montreal
I will fight it
We will lose and history
Books
Will demonize us.



Icons of Authority

Do they owe us a living?
Of course they fucking do
You're amputated by the State
Just look what they reduced you to
Supplemental labour
Silenced majority
Groveling before
Their icons of authority!
Identify the icons
Icons of authority
Make their abolition
Your number one priority
Do I want to join the army?
Not very fucking likely
And if you try to make me
You're gonna have to fight me
Murdering the Afghans
Using people's taxes
It makes me want to take my views
And put them into practice
Identify the icons
Icons of authority
Make their abolition
Your number one priority

[Jawn Disease]

Any feedback?

[Guest]

excellent stuff!

i could way lyrical, but instead i'm going to criticize you (if you want adulation being an artist is the wrong gig for you).

i greatly prefer when you limit yourself with rhymes and structure.

[Jawn Disease]

For the non-lyrical stuff, the rhymes are internal and suggested, and the structure is free-flowing and syllabic