1. |
The Peter Principle
02:57
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Peter, your predicted progress
Peter, was it true?
Peter, that they found your thinking
periwinkle blue?
Peter, placed as prime impostor
presiding over proles
problems he produced keep people
falling into holes
Peter pushed the puppets down
by pulling on their strings
placation, pacification,
pleasant plastic things
Peter pushed the pencil in
to the paper's aching face
Peter pushed the pencil in
to nail us in place
Peters past their prime promoted
Peter, now your plan's pronounced
it's dead before its born
instead we need those led by greed
to pickle us a corn
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2. |
As if Not Now
02:38
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I'd say the ideal gig
has a pit and has a podium
Not for their heirarchies
But for the ways that people feel
And if the stage is a space to explore yourself
Then the room can be a cage for those with impaired health
It's not embarrassing for you
It's embarrassing for them
As if improving society ever had a when
As if a lark never leapt from a single stem
As if a thrush never sang at 4am
As if not now it'll happen then
Often desire is turned passive
we consume before we eat
we rarely valourise when we could wish for a defeat
when I am moved to act
without noting my mind's beat
you can catch me on the bird app
I'll be sending,
no - reading,
no
scrolling
past
some
It's not embarrassing for you
It's embarrassing for them
As if improving society ever had a when
As if a lark never leapt from a single stem
As if a thrush never sang at 4am
As if not now it'll happen then
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3. |
Stasis Outside Bakeries
02:15
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I can show that you were happy here.
When your Gran counted silvers for ice cream
and the garage door invited an attack
When it seemed like every one of your conversations
started with the salutation:
'Hey man, can I have some on that?'
But happiness is just a state of play
so you left in that now familiar way
My bandaged bridge was torn down
your glass house was shattered by my kicks and stones
And stasis outside bakeries
meant you could never quite make peace with
the person you felt you'd become.
And people you'd call toxic
build bricks within their boxes
to face the future 'progress' plucked away.
And others talk of the weather
whilst pulling people together
to inch towards the time to have their say.
Yet on the day you left to look for truth in stories sold
I'll swear I saw a sycamore swiftly shed its swirling load
In truth, it's all enigma, but if any can be found,
you've got to lay down your roots,
and tap it deep from your own ground.
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4. |
Devices
03:28
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Please don't leave me to my own devices
Because I will just play games on them all day
Oh, please don't leave me a present
Because the present only ever fades away
I'm waiting for a break
a change, a chance to rearrange my life
round lines I didn't draw myself
And lately I can't seem to find
a thing on which to set my mind
and I've lost my'focus, losing sleep,
and I can't keep the thoughts in my head
In my head
You can leave me to my own devices
I will use them to describe the way
that you have left me a present
The presence to present myself and say
Please don't leave me to my own devices
Because I will just play games on them all day
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5. |
Autumn
02:42
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I know that autumn's never as perfect
as you hope that it might seem
It's like the leaves conspire with powers higher
to never be crisp and clean
I know your thoughts are never as easy
as I tend to hope that they could be
It's like you're fighting a fire whilst I enquire
if you'd like some more bits of dead tree
Yet I know you know the beauty
of those bare, fractal branches
It's not a form of decay
it's a stripping away -
it's another of life's dances
So please know you can come to me to try to shed your leaves.
In the strange silence of fog
moments drift and lose their substance
The grim growl of a black dog
a susurrus insistent
When you tell me you feel better for the chat
it really feels like you mean it
And I know that I can't ever really know that
But I trust you like you'd like to trust yourself.
Grey then black
These evenings are cracks
Yellow and brown
Our foliage crowns
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6. |
Cig Break
02:19
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I have squatted beneath this air vent
to smoke a thousand times
My fingers flit from pouch to mouth
as I reach to find a rhyme
It feels familiar
to bend my knees just so
The sun drops, rain beams
sink into my thighs
My own unhealthy glow
Sometimes I notice the yellow tinge
in between my fingers
Sometimes I notice the grey which flings
itself across the sky
As time ticks by
I find that I
I am alive
I am alive
I would break myself in two
One to work, one to renew
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7. |
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Between the bus ride to your office
and the one straight back to bed
Did you find a minute moment
To consider if you'd said
Anything beyond a greeting
or platitudes that day
'cos your colleagues are all robots
and they don't have much to say
So if you're dying for some dialogue
Just hit me up and we can talk
'cos I'm itching just like you are
I'm vying to feel a part
of a world subsumed with screens
Real rainbows and analogue dreams
are just fleeting, faded memories
Am I just a number-crunching, often hunching cog in a system?
Am I part of their design to take away what's yours and mine
Or am I doing my best to resist from the inside
All I want's to see myself grow young
Come on, it's fun!
Don't you give in
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8. |
The Half Space
02:16
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A wet warmth works its way into my evenings
A synchronous, ambivalent dissent
This spreading skein winds walls around conceiving
the notion of being proud that I went
To work
Today
To bills
To pay
To wish
Towards
Trumpet
And a crash
Considering the nature of this feeling
Tips tension into tracking its intent
It seems forever always to be leading,
While I slide slowly somewhere self-unsent
But in
between
my breath
it seems
is space
and seams
to rupture
and at last
Hush, the feeling's fading away
softly, I will sate today
Seek solace in the half space twixt your heart and your mind it's a fine place you can find
Some reprieve when you kick back with me
In the long grass and sunshine
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9. |
Groundwork
02:41
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Animal Byproducts Manchester, UK
placid pals peddling patriatrchy-poking parp punk.
Manchester/Leeds.
linktr.ee/animalbyproducts
Animal Byproducts recommends:
Power pop poetry for political punx
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Plainly perfect paeans to the populace
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Proggy prickle pops pointless preconceptions
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