Featured artwork by Robert Beatty. Click title image to visit his studio.

Listen to Suggested Audio

Tangerine Dream “Stratosfear”

Ladies and gentleman, here’s a little something from the forthcoming album…

Chance would be a fine thing
No really, all sounds dreadfully exciting
Indeed, it would seem it could not possibly have been any better in timing
Vultures are starting to make themselves known and they are not known for fine dining
Showing clear signs that I’m cracking and lacking the backing to pull my neck back in

Backed in the corner with likely lads
Blunt, Force and Trauma
Playing hide and seek and getting desperately warmer
Inability to stand intense heat is one thing, quite another getting out the fucking sauna
Considering the blistering, I’m nitro-fucking-glycerine for listening to simmering suggestion
That somewhere in the nervous tension bunched-up in my gut
Lies the prize with eyes confiding I will one day make the cut

Made it in my own mind
Took the time to back it up
Odds before me stacking up
Open vein for jacking up
Divorced from second thoughts hellbent on racking up remorse endorphins, forcibly endorsing me to cracking up
Snatching up air pockets as they pocket final breath for later
Something distasteful to savour while knocking back sixth whiskey chaser in swiftest succession

Before I could click Restore Session
They got into my registry
Most unproductively making a ruckus and shouting no end of obscenities
Took me to extremities progressively more desperate
Ram-raided the treasury and made off with my precious
Recklessly abandoning all best laid plans while vandalising anything that tantalised them, ever keen to scandalise then dramatise it
Quantifying bugs to fix
Knew that which I must affix
Anything to come to grips with giving fatal slip the slip
Before some wise guy tripped the switch
Handed me shovel, proposing I dig my own ditch

These were my fears and I owned each and every teardrop that I’d ever stopped in its tracks
Appeared no good reason for choking them back
Through wave after wave of relentless attack
Unmentionably slack were the reins on my brain
Thus, I cut them some crack, they soon perked up again
Going insane is one thing to declare
But what if, in fact, one is already there
Not the vacant stare kind of crazy
Nothing quite that hazy shade of winter-like
Purest fucking crystalline
The kind that blinds
The kind that binds
The kind with universe behind it

Couldn’t have been better timed
As straitjackets are generally inclined towards the fitting up of chosen skin we’re in
Tuck us in real tight, read us some Enid Blyton, smile and leave a light on for the monster in the closet
Meanwhile, back at deposit lounge
We are soiling our linen
Clutching for our penicillin
Asthma pumps and sugar lumps
Our dreams conceiving requiem
Within the padded walls of sanitarium

Should crazy be a state of mind then why not redefine it
Find the time to slacken hinges, binge on any food for thought provided
Court a little madness, on occasion raise some hell
May not possess amazing wealth but hold the key for all containing cells
With ailing health betraying self and life behaving less than well
I bid for the unfailing help of destiny to guide me
Unaware the headquarters were actually inside of me
I spaced myself from anything that seemed to have designs on me
And took the time to finally confide in me

Chance can be a fine thing
I’m living, breathing proof of that
Every word I say is truth
Much rather die than lie to you
Only got one point to prove
That every mountain can be moved
Just need to run a river through it
Don’t just talk about it, do it
Form a fist, enlist full clench
Set yourself a benchmark then persist to punch straight through it

The answer is within us all
What’s more I bloody knew it
Curse myself for stealthily subduing it
Turned out to be a blessing dressing up in distressing disguise
Impressing upon a whole throng of emotions devoted to doing me wrong like they had divine right
Mark them out a hopscotch and there’s precious little stopping ’em
This is why I won’t leave home without my fucking stopwatch
In less than a second, I reckoned on the lot of ’em
Dropped ’em at the landfill just to clamber up on top of ’em
Moistened up their gussets just to soften ’em
Then lined ’em up like firewood, had myself a damn good pop at ’em

Obviously I’m here to tell the tale so that’s a start right
Had I dressed not for success then I would have left myself open all hours like Arkwright
That is to say I’d be fair game for buzzards
Jackals and the like of usual suspects and their shady others
Parading in a meat gown as I drown in shark infested waters
Thinking Shirley Valentine was played by Julie bleeding Walters
Bringing my own daughter to the slaughter
Just to run my son out at the altar

Often it feels a done deal that we falter
Take it from me as the truth in my eyes lives and breathes
Seems the only answer to concede and die not trying
Would it not be thought more keen to ween from feeling beat and try not dying
If that’s a yes then I have to confess, I’m all in
Fate may be hateful as eight but I dress to the nines when reminded of destiny calling
Will fall-in in a second and remain there while the skies are falling
Just to watch a nation rise from ashes
Should that mean me batting my lashes, then actually I’ll go one better than match it
Tuck my cock back just to flash them the gash
Should get ’em splashing the cash

So you see, it really is most dementedly exciting
No boundaries to please with the numbers for the madness I’m inviting
And who’s to say there won’t come one fine day when this does indeed parade as one from the forthcoming album
Fuck it, make that triple platinum
Set a multitude of goals and duly smash them

Screw inaction
Life’s too short
Battles lost still battles fought
Second thoughts for chimps and wimps
Feed them to the swinging gimp
Not absolute beginner to the end
But bona fide winner set to trend
Chance is fine when tide is high to reach the sky and blind the sun
Replenishing the river as it runs
Together, we need never come undone
Take a chance, advance from looking out for number one
Twos and threes will soon precede infinity
And, if that’s not divinity right there
Then fuck it, I am cashing in my share

Richard Charles Stevens

Keeper of The Crimson Quill

Click here to purchase All of Me Vol. I, II, III, IV & V

Click here to purchase on Amazon

© Copyright: Rivers of Grue™ Shadow Spark Publishing™