Here are the lyrics for the songs from Pig Over Seoul. I’ll add internal links to this page when I get around to it.
Spinning Reel
home spun and sugar free
packed up and ready for the big adventure
wanderings in enchanted forests
feeling your way through the night
the needles and pines
tempting green nurseries
it’s a big one for the nominees of cloning
ain’t it a shame
that she’s left behind
the cable’s the same
and the house is mine
solar heating prodigies
caught up in big company that shadow them
hanging out at the water palace
saving all your coins for a rainy day
rucksacks full of memories
but you stayed there and you worked on the rites of Spring
Dancing Fool
I’ve been walking on fire
Trying to bring your blue skies back
Reaching out for your strangled features
Kicking people in the gut for fun and pleasure
The TV man he dropped by
Fed me biscuits and he said “you’re my style
Then he gave me a couple of white lines
Fixed me up and made me the dancing fool
It wasn’t working
Working at all
The sun ain’t shining
Shining no more
Late Afternoon Grass
Is it the sky that makes me blue
Or is it just my mind
Follow the sun as it makes its way
Down to lagro time
Anyways I lost my head
Left it in a cave somewhere
Followed around by a horse and cart
The driver was Wemantan
Seven days I’ve been waiting
(You know it’s been such a long time)
Anyway I’ve been deflating
(You know the colour of the grapevine)
Sifting through the day’s ashes
(Finding the bones of the postman)
Waiting round for the lagro time
Driving round the city square
Makes my hair go grey
Accusations fly like bees
Is there any hope for you and me
Looking For Mr. X
You were in my dream last night
all naked and bare
pushing through the atmosphere with your
cream coloured hair stretching coathangers out across the sky
with a message for noone except for those real high
Cruising round in a beat up tank
slowly closing in a town on life-support
with its cornerstones blank
waiting for a break in the heat
waiting for the rain
to polish the streets and the gutters
for your message to crank
Your big ass big attitude won’t deceive me
but I’m way too lazy
you got your head in the clouds you got your feet in the sand
but I’m way too lazy
Mars
There is no life on Mars
It’s a sad sad revelation
You can see them all driving their cars
There goes another gas station
There is no life on Mars
But there are those who watch the sky and wait
There are no fish on Mars
Nothing to eat, nothing to pray to
They all stare into their picture tubes
Somewhere there’s a dream for two
And yet they dream of water
And all its lusty derivations
When you fly in through the clouds
Hope glimmers and lifts the dust that’s settled down
Light up the sky, fire up the night sky
Like a fire burning down
Making friends then leaving town
In a hurry to forget
Running crazy lose my legs
The many miles to you instead
RSL
noone listens to a word you say • noone listens anyway • the forest is burning underground • choppers are flying round and round • now you’re hit you’re going home • previously unappreciated • all the people that you’ll meet • down at the Bega RSL • the RSL what a great institution • spotted gums, casuarina, grey ghost, melaleuca • ive gotta see you
Sea Shanty
Caught up in a good dream
Sand in my hair
Walking thoughts and digging ditches
The sun tastes the air
Tastes the air
Sun to stare
Run aground
Caught up in a whirlwind
Sand in my hair
Laid down surrounded by sound
The sun tastes the air
Tastes the air
Sun to stare
Run aground
Sand through my fingers
Sand through my hair
Drawn to the circle
My mother put me there
Sex & Electronics
you hit the lights
your fire is burning bright
you stoke up the flames
’til it burns up again
you’ve lost all control
electronics has taken your soul
you’re pent up in shame
til you it want it once again
somewhere between my guilt and remorse
your telepathic heat takes its course
driven by lust and all things higher
my computer, my love, my love takes me higher
your mind’s a parasite
flowering neon lights
your feet have ossified
and your brain liquidized
Vega
it’s up to you to say
that you don’t want it any other way
when you get that dry biscuit
you’ve got to slowly chew it
always stupefied
by her dazzling, dazzling eyes
she’s my spirit Vega
she’s my one desire
candida multiplied
a pox on you and your desires
i never asked for your concern
i’ll chop you up and watch you burn
cos i’m just a swine
swimming in forsaken brine
beleaguered now that she’s gone
my Vega she’s the one
i still dream of her every day
when she comes to me i will say
you’ve got me hanging at every turn
the Goddess of Mercy she’ll never learn
Shivji and the Ecstasy of Butter and Fire
(Originally published as a poem. See the notes at the bottom of this page for more details.)
The harder they fall, alright.
Skin hard like cane reed, he squats low
in some alleyway, syringes in his many hands,
rubber tourniquet clenched between his teeth,
ghee boiling hard in filthy spoons. It’s impossible to tell:
is that his natural shade? or is the blue his withdrawal?
Nobody can drag words back past the brink of his accent,
not even in the shadowy corner of Kwality Tandoori
on West 52nd; or is it in Harlem now, where he hangs,
recounting stories of Parvathi’s lush addictions,
explaining the roots of his interest in free-form jazz,
the strange octopus beauty of Roland Kirk, with
his rack of duct-taped horns across his chest, which
convinced Shivaji, eight-armed, he could do it, too.
When he woke at the top of Mt. Kaylash,
she was gone. He searched for eleven years,
found her shacked up with some musclehead
Hittite, essentially a hit-man for a small
cartel of Egyptian demigods, trying to make a comeback.
He left her there, in plastic flip-flops, at Giza,
and off he went, to America, to be a jazzman.
A tactical error. The death of one saxist Coltrane
came in 1967. Disarray. Sleeping under peoples’ porches,
having to play tonal in funk bands just to eat,
solos on tunes like “Big Mama!” and “Mama Come
and Jump Me!” and “Red Hot Big Mama Song Hyunh!”
Eventually he sold his horns, pawned them off
one by one. Took to drinking, syringe in hand, bitching
at his loss of Vedic income to that slick
bastard Krishna — “that slimy populist”, as he says.
Too broke for ghee, doing regular unsalted
butter in the darkness of numberless alleyways.
Spitting randomly at Hittite-faced cabbies and paperboys,
wishing on fire-escapes that he’d never bloody heard
of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Always comparing
himself to Krishna, whose charm was always a little
more glittery, “the Elvis of the Ganges, he were,”
and Shiva will then point out to you, the name
Elvis contains within it Evil in the plural.