he would have discovered him
trying to change the water formula in his tears
he tried to exist/insist/resist
where no body was thinking
the man without moon
suspended in a terrorizing labyrinth of faces
His own
he was a method man
growing salt in his eyes like minefields
teaching it the taste of the earth
anxiety like mountains of fog eradicating crossroads
he wants to exist inside the body of the world
with the decency of negotiated desires
and the hands get lost in translation
truth is a black truffle
sweating and swearing
sensuous craters perhaps
he killed many singing birds
searching for imagination, his body
muted, renegotiated soon after birth
staying alive, denying the soul of zebras
He lacks verbs, some nouns
learning from the theory of absence
how the effortless U(n-conscious)
is a Poet that
rhymes the body with the mind
of the world

He summoned the shaman, the artists, the tango teacher
to the wake of his body
while learning how summer waves contribute to a theory of mind
his self white
white while forgetting Magritte,
a taxi for Chopin
or the whiteness of the cotton pickers
perhaps

You tell me that I am young
That life has merely licked me, not stung
That I do not understand, that I have not yet lived
Enough to grasp the substance

I have known disease
Slow tears, muted pleas
Pain that nothing could appease
I have known the smell of hospitals for summers
The beeping and slurping of machine in massive numbers

I have spoken to voiceless loved ones,
Loved ones with teethless mouths and twisted tongues
Distorted jaws and wheezing lungs.
We have spoken with little green charts
And broken hearts
From the inability to connect the mouth to the thoughts in the head
And I left without understanding,
What they had said
Because I eventually had to let it go
(I still don't know)

I have spent countless summer nights
In nature’s garb, floating silently in a river
So warm that my limbs, skimming the surface, didn't shiver
Under a clear sky, the stars like paradisiac lights
Without anyone ever finding out
About these wild and primal escapades

I've drank, I've smoked
I have burned my throat
With coarse lemon gin
Until I could no longer feel my skin.

I have been frightened
Yes I have felt fear, like a noose around my throat being tightened
Like a gruesome black crow, perched on my shoulder
I have often awoken affright at night,
Longing, praying, for the morning light
I have felt fear, wild, fierce and turbulent fear
More than anyone will everyone will ever know
By men, by life, by myself
Desolate under the sheets, like a forsaken toy
All by myself

I have seen Paris in the rain
Traveled the French countryside by train
I've woken up to New York window views
And seen New Orleans afternoons, filled with heat and blues.
I've swam the Mexican Baja waters, turquoise and clear
With snakes as sharp as spears

I have known humiliation
Causing my cheeks to turn carnation
A spoon, emptying my insides out
Like a gourd

I have loved
I have known the aching pain of a swelled heart
And the way it can tear you apart
I have gushed torrents upon my pillows and sleeves
Tears running down my chin like guilty thieves
From a lit-up house

I have known death, and grief
The meaning of "never"
Whimpering in the school bathroom
And cold, lonely nights

I have seen the works of Van Gogh, Mondrian, and Miro,
Modigliani, Cezanne, and Frida Kahlo
Of Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, Magritte, and Picasso
I have wandered through hallways of masterpieces
Holding tight to my grandmother's hand
And I have wept shamelessly for joy
Before Degas's La classe de danse

I have been diagnosed
I have undergone computer programs designed to shift my brain, to better it
To get me to be normal, to submit
I have had brain-altering medicine shoved down my throat,
Like stuffing a goose,
To make my brain run a little less loose
And I have submitted and gotten use to my brain being altered.

I have had kisses that were mere trifles
Frivolous, yet fierce and acute like shots from a rifle
Lips of mere flesh, not sweet godly nectar
And gazes that meant everything
That seemed to connect with an invisible yet indestructible string
Iris like distant galaxies and pupils twinkling like black jewels
Eyes that seemed enkindled by some ethereal fuel
Speaking of emotions far too secluded, cryptic and cluttered
To be worded and uttered

I know the way in which violence resides
Not in commotion, brusqueness, nor physical harm
But in silence
In the time that covers pain and secrets
In the slow impossibility of trust
In the way that some secrets become inconceivable to tell, time has so covered them in rust
In that dull, dismal ache
In all that is doomed to remain forever opaque.

I have read, for pleasure,
The works of Balzac, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Voltaire
Of Bobin, Gaude, and Baudelaire
Of Flaubert, Hemingway
and good old Bradbury, Ray
Émile Zola,  Primo Levi
Moliere, Rousseau, and Bukowski
I have read, and loved, and understood

I have known insomnia
The way a beach knows the tides
Sleepless nights of convulsive, feverish panic, of clutching my sides,
Of silent hysteria and salty terror.
I know what happens at night, when sweet slumber seems so far away
The worries and woes seem to multiply and swell in hopeless disarray
My lips grow pale, my eye grow sunken
As a time ticks by, tomorrow darkens




I have witnessed horror
In the form of a blue body bag
Being rolled out with a squeaking drag
By two yellow-vested men
With apologetic eyes
That seemed to say "Oh god
We're so sorry you had to see that
Please, please
Go home
And try to forget"

But you are right
I am still just a child
Naive, innocent, and pure
I have known nothing dark or obscure
I have not yet lived.

Clean shaven, bowler-hatted, crisp-suited men
are spattered across the canvas,
       with stiffened spines,
              vertebrae militarily ordered,
Plunging toward the ground,
       not falling,
              plunging,
              leaden,
from a sky the color of a smokers’ lungs,
        gray and blue from lack of oxygen,
sputtering them out.
       They seem not to notice.


Blank-faced, easy-armed, composed,
they seem not to notice they are doomed
        to be piles of splintered bones
                webbed with sinew and lumps of skin,
Thinking as they head toward the ground,
         praying,
         “If I pretend it’s not happening,
         maybe I’ll be okay”
from the heartless pavement,
         gravity with the whole world behind it,
yanking them like teeth from the air.
         Only a few clenched fists betray their terror.


Or,
the

Choking, muted, and embittered city
could be letting them go,
          allowing them to evaporate
                 back to the sky where they belong,
Welcoming them home, that sky,
           not with violence,
                  welcoming,
                  gently,
to a sky where ennui is beautiful,
           star after star after star,
whispering that they are important, splendid, lovely.
           One can only hope.

dead head the roses,
suffocate in silk. stifle
their feelings.

dead head the roses,

suffocate in silk, stifle

their feelings.

bundle them blind with
bloodied rags, boiled

clean.

bind them twice. the smell
is decay.

Magritte.

sbm.

i swirl in van gogh.
i am charcoal stains
on blue,
a smile of barbed wire
for the painter,
i am mona lisa, true.

monet, he paints me
calm waters,
water lilies floating
in solitude,
he doesn't see
the fire sprouting
in my veins.

picasso cannot stain
my heart with colour,
magritte cannot
create a masterpiece
out of my eyes.

to be immortalized
i beg in pink
lick the brush
and paint myself
alive.

end my days
in escher,
sketch myself
out of the stairway,
into the globe.

throw myself
at deaths eye,
kiss the canvas
rotten, ******,
*pretty.

This is not a poem.

Clouds
cover my thoughts
the fruit of knowledge
covers my face
I can,t keep up
with hypocrisy's pace

break it up break it up

I wish I could smile
just once for real
it feels so vile
just for a while
make it real

How can you just move on?
A highway to ignorance
200 mph
until you crash into reality

I am the forbidden fruit of knowledge
Or am I being covered by it
Do I even have any?
maybe it's all a lie
Imagination to face reality
show me your
true face
face the truth.

“How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out
Yes! No!”
–Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”

1.

The coils of this labyrinth remind me of the small intestine.  This vexes me.  Walking the labyrinth is supposed to be a spiritual experience, isn’t it?  Neither time nor place for unlovely images of the body.  The truth is that I dislike the labyrinth.  I find it too constraining, too tedious—all these looping, repetitive coils.  The truth is that I hate the labyrinth because it is pale and remote, and silently indifferent to me.  If I am going to engage with something, I’d like for it to talk back, please.  I have questions, you know.  I have some concerns.  And perhaps just one or two small issues with control, and delayed gratification.

2.

“I think serenity is not something you just find in the world, like a plum tree,
holding up its white petals” (Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”).


3.

“Watch how we encounter each other,” you say, and we walk, slowly, separately.  Around one turn we meet, and you kiss me, and your tongue is muscular and wet.  Around another turn you say, over your shoulder, “Hello,” and continue walking.  It is hard for me to keep my balance even though the path is smooth and flat.  I feel like we are in a Magritte painting.  Your white shirt glows softly somewhere to the left of my awareness.  A voice not connected to your body says, “Do you like my hat?”  We are walking.  We are together.  We are not together.  


4.

“Imagination is better than a sharp instrument.  To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work” (Mary Oliver, “Yes! No!”).


5.

So now:
Quiet, quiet—the darkness is full.
Your skin is listening
to the night air.

In the center of the labyrinth, someone has placed a gift.

Quiet, quiet—someone is telling you a story.
The oldest story in the world, and his body hums and pulses
under your fingers.

In the center, there is a gift.

Quiet, quiet—this is not walking.  
This is surrendering to the path, your body long and outstretched
against the stones.

In the center, someone has placed a gift.

My first day modeling for Monsieur Magritte,
he asked me to take off my clothes,
and stand facing the easel.
During the next break, I snuck a peek.
There I was , fully clothed,
wearing a bowler
but, instead of a face,
there was a green apple.

As I found out, this was typical.
I have posed as a tree,  and a cat in a hat.
My shadow has been a window.
My face has been a bird,
My torso a bird cage,
A pipe was an organic extension of my nose.

I never understood why he needed a model at all,
perhaps an immediate someone to share his visions.
The money was good, and I faked it.
Wouldn't you?

  dedicated to Rene Magritte *

An image of my grandmother
her head appearing upside-down upon a cloud
the cloud transfixed on the steeple
of a deserted railway-station
far away

An image of an aqueduct
with a dead crow hanging from the first arch
a modern-style chair from the second
a fir-tree lodged in the third
and the whole scene sprinkled with snow

An image of a piano-tuner
with a basket of prawns on his shoulder
and a firescreen under his arm
his moustache made of clay-clotted twigs
and his cheeks daubed with wine

An image of an aeroplane
the propellor is rashers of bacon
the wings are of reinforced lard
the tail is made of paper-clips
the pilot is a wasp

An image of the painter
with his left hand in a bucket
and his right hand stroking a cat
as he lies in bed
with a stone beneath his head

And all these images
and many others
are arranged like waxworks
in model bird-cages
about six inches high.

I’ve written on a flyleaf: I hate you, mon amour
with hard working passion I hate you.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe, your father have told you.

you’ve been so busy to cut the day off from the night
-quite an old fashion-
and just when the silence evacuates  its void to be the great pretender
perhaps Magritte had dreams about annihilation to compensate a ******
but I was dreaming of you sleeping with lions

I’ve felt your cage – the splitting of now and then into so many suspicions –
unbearable waking hour -  I wake up in the dark and I can see that I love you

when the hour gently subsides to the moon
and I can find no comfort in haunting memories
I pray to the air to touch my lips with your gaze

HEART GALLERY

You step forth
from your bath

as if you were
a Bonard

come alive

spread yourself
across crisp cool sheets

as sensationally
sensuous

as a Modigliani
****

or a Noguchi
sculpture.

Here, you
Matisse

if only
for a brief

moment now so
Ernst!

Now so
playfully Picasso...ish!

I smile
as you Vermeer!

"Come here
& kiss me!"

You my Magritte!

You my Dali!

You my laughing walking talking
'art gallery!

Back down the million mile road
down south again, buildings
familiar love, fashionable stones for throwing
across the Thames, office fields, floating stocks,
driving to the train rythm of city gulls and movement,
eager, bored, and feral, but
you’ve gotta choose your home…

London-queen of
mimetic ceremony
silhouettes cornered in pristine rooms,
finer than the attire of imagined skin, remembered and felt,
classic
projected
films
moving
into one line
of crowded parade,
stepping to
and fro, dressed differently
every time

the city and i- we
head to a shop
that puts a crate of beer
on my shoulder,
and a better drunk than us both
asks me for one

i say:
“sure man, take one”
and i offer him my smoke too,
“take it, just made it”
we add,
“ah! you’re Captain Scarlet!” he tells me
as the man sings the theme song and rewards
me
with a dance.

And sometimes the sickness and poverty of it all
helps
and its ok
tell me that after two breakfasts land down,
for a while, and two tumours laugh
in an empty car park
at the same thing.

The name for god always changing,
some days a digital
word,
sometimes
a bird stood upon a lamp post
at 10:16,
the way
someone smiles,
the science behind welcoming,
cancer guns
and the engravings
on the handle,
that you care for more
than all the dry sweat
night dripping,
the kind that paralyses
insomnia
and rises from your bed
outside your mind,
again:

that familiar smile.

We won’t be a salary in the morning,
we’ll be a Magritte, or a Picasso
at the weekend,
we’ll stand in front
of artists dead
and see no difference
between lamb, now roasting-
and the experiment in seasoning,
that you, or I
added

there’ll be a non-charging cash point,
counting sounds
that are lost in chaotic uncares,
and if my lights go out at 4am,
whilst we’re linked,
the vat
will at least
be made of us

the androgyny
of burnt climaxing sky line
will be clear through the polluted hive line
of buildings,
we’ll be wearing hooded macks
in the rain – sliding between still light
and shadow,
crossing the intersecting lines
of humming traffic
and unheard noise
we’ll pass without tickets,
as they fall from the bridge,
and the edge lifts away
from our feet

and the rest goes underground,
behind ageing tunnel wall of aging
graffiti skull -
tracks nulled by snow in winter,
body late, perspiring -
pouring peddle down, response
automatic,
eyelid better for counting
time, than opening eye -
synthetic wait for for any fire
that is kind,
raising corners that blink
in false dream

our seven seeming tied, and untied, bonded,
and unbonded,
gropes untied with hunger,
the sky kicks in the brick walls slaying the hours
with calls from strangers and friends
indifferent-

one.
-
two.
-
three.

seconds
and faces.

(and the city hates slowing down
doesn’t (s)he?)

until its ready that is,
the only joke being to wait and drool over corpses and post mortem like
thought the place being in your heart and the ever-glow being the same
as any love that you feel and the way you need it to take you forward
and just let you ride the and forget that its there because I’ll die
before I stop acting on my instinct for you the ever-gloom and the skull can unwind elsewhere! Oh the poison
that forgets itself if only needing the same formaldehyde
to keep it still-

That’ll do.

…

Perfection is a woman without eyes.

Perfection is a man without limbs.

Perfection is the home that walks you back when the day is yours,
and someone elses.

Perfection blinds the crippled mask.

Beginning.

One that fits your birth.

Your death.

All of the ****
islands.

All
of the ******

****

islands.

without gills, we breathe on the moon.
the humble tortoise has a house and our theories
are quaint. we have all the havoc of time
in an opulent balloon.
an unusual as usual, floating in open wounds
where the worlds on fire are the frozen ones
and all the Islands of our apostrophe
all pause the revelation
as quickly as you
Like.

summer in a spoon is all the cheap heat of our medallions
suckling the ambivalent inferno  of our ice age
spooling an endless wrinkle of our entire folly on a plinth
‘neath a pillar of vaporous Dawn!
Empirial in aspect,... but as fleeting as the miracle.
concave sparks are the Eldar Sign of our implicit medieval chicaneries.
all is the storm of an imperfect thing gasping for black holes-
at the senior prom. the corsage of our immortal souls
adorning the brevity of Life Itself.
we continue in this way
for no reason
with a hat.

Wind whips, whistling in the seat belt,
Crooning along to the emotional ululations
As I succumb to the emphatically teenager-like emotions,
Grand in their extremity,
Both realizing and fully embracing the cliché-ness
And dramatization of every quip, gesture, glance.
My mood soars irrationally with the voraciousness of my tires,
Devouring every granule of cement at velocities upwards
Of 30 miles per hour.
Jason Mraz and I make an excellent duet,
As I’m quite certain the disgruntled woman a lane over
At the stoplight thinks as well.
He sings of skies “getting rough”
And I allow my eyes to wander to our own ominous clouds,
Creeping from the east like panthers prowling in search of prey;
I appreciate their slate undertones and umber rumples,
The gold shining from behind and within, tinting their edges,
But I turn my attentions slowly, with a bittersweet notion,
To their fluffy brethren, friends of Magritte,
Iridescent and captivating as they weave among the rays.

!HEART GALLERY!

You step forth
from your bath

as if you were
a Bonard

come alive

spread yourself
across crisp cool sheets

as sensationally
sensuous

as a Modigliani
****

or a Noguchi
sculpture.

Here, you
Matisse

if only
for a brief

moment now so
Ernst!

Now so
playfully Picasso...ish!

I smile
as you Vermeer!

"Come here
& kiss me!"

You my Magritte!

You my Dali!

You my laughing walking talking
'art gallery!

After Magritte*

Maybe that man in the painting,
Grey, upright, unfeeling,
really is the Son of Man—
Divine: of the father and of the son,
And of the holy ghost.

How did he spend his Christmas mornings as a child?

If he is mortal after all—
the kind who strolls along with an Eve at dusk:
Who is his Gabriel?

Did he ever place an offering on the desk of a Teacher?

Whoever he is, does he wash them all away,
Or rather hide behind his sins?

And is that really even an apple?

So, there is nothing
that can arise from this
except for the ultimate
leveling: Maya Angelou
and Wallace Stevens: equals,
until opinion renders
their worth.

And the canvas colored
by Magritte’s vision is equal
to a child’s ***** matter
framed in a special place,
until your eye comes
and favors one over the other.

Yes, I’m ready to accept
this fate if it means no one
can ever declare
that my **** stinks
and makes the air faint.

https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-you-can-call-me-al/


The songwriter explains the new methods used to write this and the others songs on “Graceland.”

If you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you call me,
You can call me Al
Call me Al

From Paul Simon’s landmark Graceland, “You Can Call Me Al” is quintessential Simon. It’s whimsical, rhythmically infectious, poetic and conversational, all before it expands into a whole other realm.

The famously funny yet enigmatic chorus, Simon said, came from a funny memory of going to a party at the New York apartment of Pierre Boulez, the conductor-composer. Simon and his first wife Peggy arrived, meeting their host at the door, who evidently had no clue who they were. Boulez introduced them to his guests as “Al and Betty.”

It was the first single from Graceland, and became a hit, launched by the famous music video with Chevy Chase.


“I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption, don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard”
All the songs for Graceland, unlike his previous work written with voice and guitar, were written to tracks he and his friend, the producer-engineer Roy Halee, recorded in Africa. Simon brought those recordings back to his New York City home, where he allowed the energy of the music to inspire the lyrics and melodies.

It was completed at the Hit Factory in New York with Roy Halee in April of 1986. Rob Mounsey, who played synth, also arranged and conducted the nine-piece horn section (five trumpets, two trombones, baritone and bass saxophones).


There’s a delightful bass break by Bakithi Kumalo, which was not part of the original arrangement, but suggested by Paul when learning that it was the bassist’s birthday. Bakithi improvised the fast fretless break, which Roy sonically doctored in New York; he used the first half of the phrase, then reversed it for the second half, creating a musical palindrome.

Jazz musician Morris Goldberg played the other solo on the song on a penny whistle.

Simon wrote the song using a new approach to lyrics, which combined colloquial speech with abstract, “enriched” language.

The lyrics shift from the ordinary language of the first verse to a third verse imbued with enriched imagery, the “angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity…” That progression is not random. Nothing Simon does is random. Which is not to say he calculates his lyrics; he doesn’t. As he said during our first of many conversations back in 1988, “I’m more interested in what I discover than what I invent.”


“He looks around, around, he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity, he says, 'Amen and Hallelujah!’”
Asked what the distinction was between discovery and invention, he said, “You just have no idea that that’s a thought that you had;  it surprises you; it can make me laugh or make me emotional. When it happens and I’m the audience and I react, I have faith in that because I’m already reacting. I don’t have to question it. I’ve already been the audience.”


“But if I make it up,” he continued, “knowing where it’s going, it’s not as much fun. It may be just as good, but it’s more fun to discover it.”

To get to the right place to allow that discovery to occur, he’d listen to the music while tossing a baseball against the wall, and catching it. Asked what effect that had on this song, he gave the following answer, which leads into his explanation of discovering what became “You Can Call Me Al.”  


“You Can Call Me Al,” the video with Chevy Chase.
PAUL SIMON: The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural and calming. It’s like a Zen exercise, really. It’s a very pleasant feeling if you like playing ball, and while you do it, your mind kind of wanders, and that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander and to pick up words and phrases, and fool around with them and drop them.

Because as soon as your mind knows that it’s on, and it’s supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn’t or it produces things that are very predictable.

And that’s why I say I’m not interested in writing something that I thought about; I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go or what object it wants to pick up.

[The mind] always picks up on something true. You’ll find out much more about what you’re thinking that way than you will if you’re determined to say something. What you’re determined to say is filled with all your rationalizations and your defenses, and all of that what you want to say to the world. As opposed to what you’re thinking.


And as a lyricist, my job is to find out what it is that I’m thinking. Even if it’s something that I don’t want to be thinking.

I was trying to learn how to be able to write vernacular speech and then intersperse it with enriched language, and then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly, then some image would come out that was interesting, then it would go back to this very smooth conversational thing. That was a technique that I was learning.

It didn’t have anything to do with logic or anything; I don’t know where it came from. But on Hearts and Bones,  there’s more of that. “[“Rene & Georgette] Magritte” has more of that. “Hearts and Bones” is more of that.


“A Train in the Distance” is in itself that kind of speech: “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance; everybody thinks it’s true.” That is imagery, and that’s the title.

So by the time I got to Graceland,  I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally in the course of it, so that you wouldn’t really notice it as much.

I think in Hearts and Bones, you could feel it was coming. Whereas in Graceland,  I tried to do it where you wouldn’t notice it, where you sort of passed the line and then it was over. To let the words tumble this way and that way, and sometimes I’d increase the rhythm of the words so that they would come by you and then when a phrase was sort of different and came by you so quickly that all you could get was the feeling.

So I started to try and work with more feelings around with words because the sound of the record was so good, you could move feelings.

“You Can Call Me Al” starts very ordinary, almost like a joke; like the structure of a joke cliche; “There’s a rabbi, a minister and a priest….” “Two Jews walk into a bar…” “A man walks down the street…”  That’s what I was doing there.

Because how you begin a song is one of the hardest things. The first line of a song is very hard. I always have this image in my mind of a road that goes like this: [motions with hands to signify a road that starts narrow and gets wider as it opens out], so that the implication is that the directions are pointing outward.]

It’s like a baseball diamond; there’s more and more space out here as opposed to like [motions an inverted road growing more narrow], because if it’s like this at this point in the song, you’re out of options.

So you want to have that first line that has a lot of options to get you going. And the other thing that I try to remember, especially if a song is long, is: You have plenty of time. You don’t have to **** them; you don’t have to grab them by the throat with the first line

In fact, you have to wait for the audience. They’re going to sit down, get settled in their seat. Their concentration is not even there. You have to be a good host to people’s attention span. You’re not going to come in there and work real hard right away. Too many things are coming; the music is coming, the rhythm is coming; all kinds of information that the brain is sorting out



“You Can Call Me Al,” Live in Central Park with Chevy Chase.
So give them easy words and easy thoughts and let it move along, and let the mind get into the groove of it. Especially if it’s a rhythm tune.

And at a certain point, when the brain is loping along easily, then you come up with the first kind of thought or image that’s different. Because it’s entertaining at that point. Otherwise people haven’t settled in yet.

So “You Can Call Me Al” is an example of that kind of writing. It starts off very easily with sort of a joke: “Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?” It’s a joke, with very easy words.

Then it has a chorus that you can’t understand what is he talking about –  “You can call me Betty, and Betty, you can call Me Al.”  You don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t think it’s bothersome. You don’t know what I’m talking about, but neither do I, at that point.

The second verse is really a recapitulation of the first: A man walks down the street he says… another thing. And by the time you get to the third verse, and people have been into the song long enough, now you can start to throw abstract images. Because there’s been a structure, and those abstract images, they will just come down and fall into one of the slots that the mind has already made up about the structure of the song.

The guy in the third verse thinks, “Maybe it’s the third world, maybe it’s his first time around…” I thought it was interesting to combine what was on my mind with that music. I thought it would be interesting to an African audience, if they could get to the point of hearing it. And they did, once the album became a big hit.

So now you have this guy who’s no longer thinking about the mundane thoughts, about whether he’s getting too fat, whether he needs a photo opportunity or whether he’s afraid of the dogs in the moonlight and the graveyard,  and he’s off in: “Listen to the sound, look what’s going on… there’s cattle and scatterlings…

And these sounds are very fantastic. And look at the buildings – there’s angels in the architecture.

And that’s the end of the song. It goes “phooomp,” and that’s the end.

I dream of an empty chair
in a field of golden wheat
It’s a lonesome scene of solitude
with no one in the seat
I peer
I stare
Nothing seems to be there
but a surreal world
of Monsieur Magritte

though coffee never
I could see in the corner
René Magritte, tacitus
handing me the lovers
lovers under a white quilt
he didn't bother
only my fingers
on the tiny postcard
induced the feeling of
evanescence
that night I was alone…
my venerated lover
which down the river flowing
initiated slowly
a strong concupiscence

the light is raging, colours are hiding
when we hide our hearts full of dusk
we are mercenaries of ensoulment
listening to this manic-depressive couple,
power and helplessness, makes one wanna scream:
darkness is vulnerable too
clockwise the mind in action flows looking for its anti-time,
our actions can stand as tall us
anticlockwise is a flow into the trance of the unknown
into foreign bodies full of the tension of keeping the light
apart from day

Magritte is dreaming his hat, Freud his pipe
The Empire of Light perhaps
Ceci est une pipe, a vital voyeurism, the pleasure of stirring up
so many levels to listen for their hidden symbols
we are antiparticles for each other, when we collide reality starts screaming for each soul to witness
but a homeless pain possesses our dreams
unable to recognize the ******* of caring

too tired for rage, I am only wondering
where to find the necessary love for this fiery world
I ask the trees, the birds, the mind of the wind,
I'll pray for them to teach me their grace