The Actor



The actor plucks
A plastic rose
Man or woman?
Nobody knows
The actor walks
On the sea
CGI divinity

Thick as thieves
With kings and queens
They're fun to know
Especially queens
Bagged a role
In Squid Game 4
Been so lucky
So far

Lashed to the mast
In a yacht rock world
He's not a boy
He's not a girl
Lives in LA
But it makes him sick
None of it's worth a fiddlestick

Had some husbands
Wives as well
Don't call him
Conventional
Love triangles
Make him sick
Never could do
Arithmetic

The actor knew
Bowie too
Used to take Duncan
To the zoo
Speak in camel
Speak in giraffe
Duncan grunted
Bowie laughed

Lashed to the mast
In a yacht rock world
He's not a boy
And he's not a girl
Lives in LA
But it makes him sick
Do do do do do do do do

Celebrity Square
Holy cow
The fat lady sings
For the actor now
Time to end
His flame-free fame
Time to forget
His fake-ass name

The actor croaked
While making
Tax-deductible
Charity donation
A chatbot ghostwrote
His obit
All the other chatbots
Ghosted it

Lashed to the mast
In a yacht rock world
He's not famous
Any more
Lived in LA
But he loved it not
None of it's worth diddlysquat

Where's he now?
He's in a book
There on the cover
Just look
He got the chop from
A plastic sword
Give that prop
An Academy Award

Orange Pills



The orange appetizer
Can't appetize at all
United you will rise and
Divided you will fall
A donkey knee-deep in manure
Could do a better job, I'm sure
But swill and swill
And drink your fill
Cram your mouth with
All his orange pills
Of death

His greatest gift is hatred
And the one he hates is you
You're living on the frail branch
That he is sawing through

Strung up between the night and day
The rights he wants to take away
As he crams you with the horrid orange pills
The horrid little orange poison pills
Of death

Civil war and World War Three
Across your whole society
Blowing hard until you're set free
Of every shred of decency
Did the tone go too high, maybe
In the 18th century?
Don't swallow all those horrid little pills
Of death

There's horrid orange bad breath
Stenching in your face
Division of the sexes
Division of the race
United is the way you rose
Divided you can only lose
Crunching on oblivion
Those horrid orange pills
The horrid orange pills
Of death

Continuity Girl



You put the set in order now
Do your best to make things look the same
Though we shoot the scenes on different days
Was the ashtray an inch more full of ash?
The daffodils wilted slightly more?
Get the instant hair dye, spray them brown

You're the continuity girl, you
Make the things in my life
Stay the way they've been
Though we know time can be cruel, you'll
Smooth the change away
From scene to scene

Was my hair this full last season?
Did my skin have freckles then?
They became the liver spots of age
But you've got all the tricks of the trade to
Make the anomalies fade away
Make the illusion nothing's wrong

You're the continuity girl, you
Make the things in my life
Stay the way they've been
Though we know time can be cruel, you'll
Smooth away the change
From scene to scene

Does anybody still remember me
The way I used to look in Season 3?
If they changed the actor now would anyone even care?
You could make the new guy look just like me

You're the continuity girl, you
Make the things in my life
Stay the way they've been
Though we know time can be cruel
You'll smooth the change away
From scene to scene

You collect the Polaroids of the sets
The bed with the underwear
Apparently casually strewn around
Your reconstruction's so exact
Who could guess
So many years have really passed

Does anybody still remember me
The way I used to look in Season 3?
If they changed the actor now would anyone even care?
You could make the new guy look just like me

You're the continuity girl, you
Make the things in my life
Stay the way they've been
Though we know time can be cruel, you'll
Smooth the change away
From scene to scene

Love Yourself



The answer to
Everything
Is always a-
Pparently to
Love yourself
But what if you
Already do
Love yourself to death
What then?

Self-care
If you dare
Take yourself for granted
You start
At the end
Work back
And so of course
Back to front
Get haunted
By yourself

Oh you gem
It seems you are
Already at eleven
On the scale of one to ten
No more to know, nowhere to go
When you're already there
The wind machine
Directing handsome breezes through your hair

Self-care
If you dare
Take yourself for granted
You start
Acting weird
Work back
And so of course
Back to front
Get haunted
By yourself

At your destination
Nothing left to prove
Monster of perfection
You who make the ocean move
Your response to
Every problem
Always is a-
Pparently to
Love yourself
So love yourself to death

30,000 Nights



Lost in a labyrinth
The labyrinth of my life
The pleasure puzzle I must play for
30,000 nights
30,000 days and nights
Inside this spiral maze
In the architecture of delay

A nightmare of a minotaur
Making monsters in my house
It's been raining for a century
It's been years since I got lost
I don't believe in newspapers
They can never quite come clean
They even make the weather
Seem obscene

Setting out on the odyssey
The odyssey of my life
Counted up the oddities
And decided to call them nice
Now the ghosts that slither through my house
I call them phantom friends
And we'll be haunting history to the end

I'm sitting with the minotaur
Making monsters in my house
It's been raining for a century
It's been years since we got lost
We don't believe in compasses
Their obsession is obscene
Stalking north constantly

My best friend the minotaur
Is the master of my house
We stay up chasing paper ghosts
It gets us both somewhat aroused
We lay out threads and follow them
To see where we'll arrive
In the labyrinth of 30,000 nights
(Making monsters in my house)
In the labyrinth of 30,000 nights
(Labyrinth of my life)
In the labyrinth of 30,000 nights
(Making monsters in my house)
In the labyrinth of 30,000 nights
(Labyrinth of my life)

My Apprentice Devil



In the archipelago
The beetles dance apace
Each heavy exoskeleton
A holy carapace
Like bishops in their bishoprics
Intruders in the nave
Sacrilege their diocese
Vandals at the gate

Like creatures of the forest
Or secrets of the brain
The actors in the newsreel
Never explain
The pilot's introspection
In the darkened aeroplane
The trickle of the lipstick
The babble of the sane

The spooling scree of fiction
The bobbin of the film
The rough and ready pottery
Rotating in its kiln
The steeplejack remembering
The chimneys he's been in
The ice cubes in the whisky
The lemon in the gin

Black earth under pine trees
Fircones on the stone
Gas in the volcano
Parodies back home
Serpentine confetti
A tickertape parade
It's never been less risky
But never more afraid

The massive gate is open
The fountain choked with leaves
Arguing in English
But killing in Chinese
Encouragement and friendship
And the musty smell of beer
Losing all the battles
But winning the war

The murder of the lapdog
The mishap on the lake
The man who loved his wife too much
To realise his mistake
The painter trying to capture
The way his dream begins
The ice cubes in the whisky
The lemon in the gin

My apprentice devil
Swaggers on a horse
Swearing by the jaguar
He'll kill you with a curse
When he flicks the switches
Extinguishing the stars
He darkens all the universe
And gallops back to Mars

The bozo's summer holiday
The chandeliers that clink
The seventeenth commandment
Commanding us to drink
Black earth under pine trees
Back where we begin
Ice cubes in the whisky
Lemon in the gin

Spoiler Alert



The best-laid plans of mice and men
Invariably meet a cat
The cat meets a dog
The dog meets a leopard
The plot works out better like that
Aristotle said sorrow and pity
Could bring one catharsis, thus purging one
Not sure about you, but I'd take catharsis
And tell it to take a flying one

This is my spoiler alert
Things never turn out for the best
Happy endings are boring as hell
God's got it in for us
Block your ears now, spoiler alert
You're going to come to the crunch
Things will start rotting from rack down to ruin
Characters? All out to lunch
You've got to get screwed with the best of them
You've got to get stuck with the worst
God's law, Sod's Law
Spoiler alert

Put all your strength into stopping shit happening
Nobody cares if you're dull
The requirements of life, the requirements of fiction
They're not the same at all
Works of art need passionate chaos
The tragedy's never enough
Life on the other hand
Tends to repay us
The more we get shot of that stuff

This is my spoiler alert
Things never turn out for the best
Happy endings are boring as hell
God's got it in for us
Block your ears now, spoiler alert
The plot will get bitter and twist
Things will start rocking from rack down to ruin
Characters? Do not invest!
You've got to get shafted by heroes
You've got to get saddled with jerks
God is a sadist
Spoiler alert

The Quietist



There is no point
In intervention
When it only makes
The bullies bully more
You'll just give them
An excuse to crack down
You know they love
Imposing martial law

And there is no point
Kicking against the pricks
Though there are so many
Awful pricks around
There are!
And there is no point at all
Drilling through your prison wall
Life is just too short, you see
And time will tell

So I'll do nothing
In the camp of internment
Nothing
When they come back with the priest

And I've got no time
For your revolution
Jusification
To put us all against the wall
Heaven knows this world is going in the wrong direction
But I'm too broken
To mend it all

And I said nothing
When they came for the quietists
When you're a quietist
Nothing's what you do

So I'll do nothing
In the camp of internment
Nothing more
When they come with the torture screw
I'll be a quietist
When they come for the quietists
I'll do nothing
Nothing's what we do

Noise Reduction



On my left
On my jet
A new-born baby's raging
i'll reduce
That regret
Til we land in Beijing

Motorbike
On my right
Makes a fearful row now
I switch on
Noise reduction
The din is gone

Am I living in their world
Or are they living in mine?
Does their right to sonic violence
Trump my fragile right to silence?

Is quietism killing me
Hearing the world as it ought to be?
And who rules the vortex of sound
Pandemonium all around
And the ruckus of corruption
But here inside my head
Noise reduction

Going insane
I think about
Approaching a policeman
They zip by in their cars
Sirens ablaze

I tear my hair and in despair
Turn to politicians
Who creep like snails
Along their trails
Of dirty bills and oil

Am I living in their world
Or are they living in mine?
Does their right to sonic violence
Trump my fragile right to silence?

Is quietism killing me
Hearing the world as it ought to be
And who rules the vortex of sound
Pandemonium all around
And the ruckus of corruption
But here inside my head
Noise reduction
Noise reduction
Noise reduction
Noise reduction

Trauma Bingo



Who brought in this cynical new lingo
Which treats sex as trauma bingo?
Seduction used to be the great sensation
Now you've got to call it "predation"

What is it about sex that so displeases
The young, is it a fear of new diseases?
Or is it just too dirty for their night?
It's only dirty if you're doing it right
Don't walk around with sticks stuck up your arses
Make passes at people who wear glasses

Once, when we were hot to get our rocks off
We'd say: "I want to see you with your socks off!"
Now you need consent for the mere intent of inviting
And preferably get it in writing

You're courting a demographic disaster
When you really should be courting each other
Asexuals struggled for the right
To stay inviolate at night
But the rest of us could struggle with a lover

Just make sure it's not your mother
That's the kind of love that tends to smother
It'll take at least ten minutes to recover

If you're terrified of the judgment of the other
It's only based on envy and begrudgement
These people who poo-poo you
Want to be you or to do you
But they're super scared to fuck in case they fudge it
Swiping through the apps upon a gadget
Gazing like the gormless, how they fidget
Gulping at the gulf they fail to bridge it
Never daring to do anything illicit
They slap at a mosquito or a midget
Their fear of exploitation makes them livid
But they do have a tattoo which makes them vivid
Speaking in their cynical new lingo
Treating sex as trauma bingo

The Butcher's Beautiful Wife



I glance in the direction of
The butcher's beautiful wife
Time is running backwards, I
Remember with a crystal ball
Life shoots through its fire hose
Like foam on electric fire
And I've given up giving up
Desire

The firebug burned his house down
Sparking joy with a match
The bald comedian
Choked on the smoke
Of a joke that failed to hatch
I sit here with the architect
Who saw his life's work fail
His mission, his ambition
Just staying out of jail

And I'm sat here in the ambulance with
The traitor Larry McKee
Some idiocy is happening
But it's nothing to do with me
I read in the financial pages
That statues topple in storms
And notice that my trouser cuffs
Are torn

The beastly eccentricities
Of Cardinal Polly McGoo
Adrift on a sea of polythene
Under the lights of Studio Two
Slim the Sly and Rustik Joan
Rock hotpants through the scene
Overpowered by sheer charisma
And the power of steam

I read in the financial pages
That statues topple in storms
And notice that my trouser cuffs
Are torn

I look in the direction of
The butcher's beautiful wife
An idiocy is happening
But it's only ants on the floor
I read in the financial pages
That the scandal will become a storm
And notice that the seam of my trousers
Is torn

Life With Eno



Off the map
Insofar as there is one
A film soundtrack by Eno
Plays in my ears
Events in Thick Fog
Is what it's called

No singing
Just a pleasant sense of being lost
As the fog of the real world
Starts to swirl

And Eno, I imagine him
As friendly
Like a guide for the blind
Showing the dead
The catacombs beneath the Panama Canal

At the airport
There's a Chinese supermarket
And a briefcase synthesiser
Eno now unfolds
To play us sounds he's made
From birds

I believe
He just wants his music
To sound like animals and birds
Fair enough
Every day is a good day
When nothing's planned

I sink into my bath
In our hotel
And drown in these events
In thick fog

Impostor Syndrome



My father died in a giant vat of chocolate
He was the real thing, I was his successor
His looks and charm, extra-virgin olive oil
Smoothed the path of my subsequent progression

I dodged the draft, naturally, being principled
A crime committed in a higher cause
I met the rich in their cold casino
The most seductive croupier there ever was

And the beauty is, I was born with the bravado
To make my real face look like a facade, oh
The beauty is, I was born with the bravado
To make my real face look like a facade

That's the real joy of impostor syndrome
You just pretend that you're not really who you are
The person others take you for is who you take yourself for
And soon enough it's really who you are
It's who you really are

So I became the lover of the fabulous designer
Who died by the assassin, then I was his successor
Building up my empire on double-breasted suits
Status became business and the rich were in cahoots

I brought a kind of honesty to a world built on deception
My crimes committed in a higher cause
Always alone, completely in the open
The most transparent confidence trickster there ever was

The rich saw through me from the moment I began
Seeing through my ruses, seeing through my scams
The rich were charmed, helped me on my way
No doubt seeing themselves in me

That's the real joy of impostor syndrome
You just pretend that you're not really who you are
The person others take you for is who you take yourself for
And soon enough it's really who you are
It's who you really are

Imperial Phase



Chevalier of arts and letters
The medal must be in the post
I'm joining my elders and betters
They're preparing the phial for the toast

I've lived all my life like a hunted animal
On the run from I know not what
But now it's the time to accept my reward
It'll be all I've got

Imperial phase
It's my imperial phase

The emperor claims that he loves me
So I must love my emperor too
He gave me the key to the city
And a space in his best catacomb

I am the new poet laureate here
And I'm wearing a crown of hot tears
I've posed for the death mask
Rewritten my will
It must be my year

Imperial phase
It's my imperial phase

In heaven they're sounding the trumpets
In glory my name will be blazed
Everything prior's been burnished in fire
And I'm dressed up for my salad days

And you who never believed in me
Had better believe in me now
Or else face the wrath of the powers that be
I'm the sacredest cow

Imperial phase
It's my imperial phase



Index