We Bought a Jeep on Monday
It has a working cassette player.
We have not owned a cassette player for sometime and once I noticed that we now did. I pulled out my 200 or so cassettes from under my bed and have started listening to them again. I forgot about a lot of the music down there and have decided to post lyrics from songs occasionaly here and if possible videos of said songs at Dave Out Loud.
Today's song comes from Steve Scott a poet/musician whose 1983 album love in the western world contained this gem.
This Sad Music
The whales are dying now,
hurling themselves upon the beaches
black dice reckoned under the sun's watchful gaze
There's sweat on the preacher's brow
as he talks about damnation.
The whales are in love with no one
They wanted to die without explanation
He mops his brow and quotes Malcolm Muggeridge
on - quote -
"the collapse of western civilization"
- end quote -
and the book he waves in the air
is as black as whaleskin
He urges people to "make their decision"
and the whales have made their decision
An awful silence surrounds them
Like a ruined castle they lie
still, passive, beyond explanations
Beads of sweat on the preacher's brow
like small clear animals clinging to a rock face
or like tiny transparent whales
flinging themselves from the boiling seas of his eyes
into a slow, certain dying
The sad music in their brains, a piper's lament
from that old castle in the mist-thickened night
"FIFTEEN THOUSAND CINEMAS ACROSS THIS LAND,
DEPICTING EVERY SEXUAL ACT KNOWN TO
THE HUMAN IMAGINATION!" shouts the preacher
His voice is a door slamming shut
the sea's noise is a vast intake of breath
a gesture in a room to break the silence
now the whales have broken the silence
They are the color of the preacher's harsh words
The white foam rushes to embrace them
like mother and father
The whales do not want to know, and now
There are people sprawled on the beaches
chained together by "HUMAN IMAGINATION"
All the music has bled out of them,
drained from the ends of their fingers
splashed from the loudspeakers of their wallets
And at the end of the service, people walk forward
Perhaps it is "the collapse of western civilization"
that moves them
or the sad music of their slow, certain dying
that guides their feet
And at the end of this poem
a strange light comes off the bodies of the whales
gathering up the shadows like driftwood
and splashing them against the far walls
you would think the shadows would make
the words there hard to read
However, I find it's at a time like this
I see the writing clearest of all
(c) Steve Scott 1983
The whales are dying now,
hurling themselves upon the beaches
black dice reckoned under the sun's watchful gaze
There's sweat on the preacher's brow
as he talks about damnation.
The whales are in love with no one
They wanted to die without explanation
He mops his brow and quotes Malcolm Muggeridge
on - quote -
"the collapse of western civilization"
- end quote -
and the book he waves in the air
is as black as whaleskin
He urges people to "make their decision"
and the whales have made their decision
An awful silence surrounds them
Like a ruined castle they lie
still, passive, beyond explanations
Beads of sweat on the preacher's brow
like small clear animals clinging to a rock face
or like tiny transparent whales
flinging themselves from the boiling seas of his eyes
into a slow, certain dying
The sad music in their brains, a piper's lament
from that old castle in the mist-thickened night
"FIFTEEN THOUSAND CINEMAS ACROSS THIS LAND,
DEPICTING EVERY SEXUAL ACT KNOWN TO
THE HUMAN IMAGINATION!" shouts the preacher
His voice is a door slamming shut
the sea's noise is a vast intake of breath
a gesture in a room to break the silence
now the whales have broken the silence
They are the color of the preacher's harsh words
The white foam rushes to embrace them
like mother and father
The whales do not want to know, and now
There are people sprawled on the beaches
chained together by "HUMAN IMAGINATION"
All the music has bled out of them,
drained from the ends of their fingers
splashed from the loudspeakers of their wallets
And at the end of the service, people walk forward
Perhaps it is "the collapse of western civilization"
that moves them
or the sad music of their slow, certain dying
that guides their feet
And at the end of this poem
a strange light comes off the bodies of the whales
gathering up the shadows like driftwood
and splashing them against the far walls
you would think the shadows would make
the words there hard to read
However, I find it's at a time like this
I see the writing clearest of all
(c) Steve Scott 1983
Click here to watch the video at Dave Out Loud.
