1. |
Big Break
03:31
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Try to stand out wear a loud shirt
Or a white suit like Tom Wolfe
Make sure it's flameproof
There's no rules to it anymore
Ask Tipper Gore
Second best wins and makes L Bush FLOTUS
Elmo's mouth's gotta be worked by someone
I'm someone and I'd go back to college
Learn how to work a muppet
Fuck it I'll say marionette
I can dream of it while slurping my vanilla briquette or ice cream sundae
Yeah someday I could be the next Jim Henson
Cash in the pension
Move to LA
Punch and Judy shows outside the movies
Who is Judy anyway?
And what year is this?
The smell of summer nights drifts through the window
The smell of summer nights wafts through the back door
You say you're sure you saw my face before
I doubt it, I mean I don't really get out much
You're probably mistaking me for your neighbour's grandson
She thinks he's handsome
I'm not so certain
Most nights this week I've sewn my own curtains
Buttoned-backed, blackout fabric and tab tops
It's usually a conversation stopper
Now I've read 57 books this year
Most with big pictures read out loud to my nephew and niece
Rhys and Bernice
Distilled truths told by animal families
Ignoring the fallacy they'd be each others' dinners
A crocodile taught me about sharing
A dinosaur expanded my vocabulary
A dog sold me a lie about how he could fly and still
The smell of summer nights drifts through the window
The smell of summer nights wafts through the back door
This could be my big break
Maybe she'll up her own place
Advance tickets to Kings Cross
In Camden Town I got lost
But this could be my big break
This could be my big break
Set up some meetings
Put off the bill for the heating
This could be my big break
This guy called Neil reckons he can get me a publishing deal
Needs some cash in advance for the work though
But he loves my rhymes and unusual flow
Says it sounds a bit shite and that's what he likes
And this could be my big break
Maybe she'll give up her own place
This could be my big break
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2. |
At Large
02:26
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The grass is always greener when the sun shines
The charcoal's white hot and ready
Eagerly pouring effervescent wine in pleasant company
No one here knows you're legendary
At the last job left the bike behind
But a decade's passed and you've still not been found
Demand notes handed over silently then walked out with the money
Life was extraordinary and secret
You'd keep just what you needed
In case the notes were sequential
You're a lot shorter than your description on the tele
Cos you stood up tall walking out those doors with no panic at all
A desk job
Disappointing annual performance reviews
These don't suit you
Play squash on a Wednesday but never get the win
Cos you keep missing the lobs and you've got weak drives
Never told your wife
But thought about it twice
A deathbed confession won't work if you die alone
Keep your story in audio on your mobile phone
Still in wanted in Mansfield, Harrogate, Kelso and Leith
Daventry, Peebles, Linlithgow and Dumfries
Sought by the Halifax in Halifax and the Clyde Bank in Clydebank
Northern Rock's gone to the wall
But that was hardly your fault at all
Ulster Bank was a ferry too far
But you took ten grand from a branch in Stranraer
Still wanted in Seahouses, Inverness, Nelson, Burton-on-Trent
Colwyn Bay's Handelsbanken called your bluff
So you held up the petrol station
Maybe this year you'll tell someone
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3. |
Ghosts In My Attic
02:57
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It's weighing down on me
Pressure on the thin beams of the house effecting my sleep
Swear I can hear my memories twitching about up there
Took that box of VHS's to the recycling centre
Only for Chris to fetch them back
Saying they'd caught her eye while disposing of her cathode ray tele
And that there's loads of films I'd like in there
So I popped it back up the ladder
Behind the spare Christmas decorations
Crackers with card gone soft
Unusable Yo-yos, paper hats
Jokes still so bad they'd unite dinners in groans
I've got a cache of worn out mobile phones
Keep them to stop the mining of my data
And as touchstones back to when we were dating
I could send texts without looking on my Motorola Flip Phone
Snake keeping me awake on my thirty-three ten
I've got ghosts in my attic
That I'm sentimentally attached to
It's becoming a fire hazard
I know it sounds over dramatic
I don't want to see them
But I can't ask them to leave
I put a lock on the hatch
And it rattles when they dance
But today I'm clearing it out
Tuck trousers in socks to enhance bravery with spiders
Why does this box contain earwax candles
Two thousand and six diaries and calendars
A stack of letters from my sister's French penfriend
Who I always regretted not running away to age twelve
Pages covered in hearts
She never knew I was all nervous false starts
We'd run down hill just for the fun of it
Wanted to tell her but I couldn't pronounce it
Now why to we have five tents and twenty dried out paint cans
And why didn't I ask her to dance
Next to the soiled breadmaker
A cylinder of photo slides with no projector
Neglected transparencies of childhood holidays on the seven seas
Waterfalls and Disney character breakfasts
An expectant family on a Dordogne campsite
Who only come alive when you hold them up to the light
I've got ghosts in my attic
That I'm sentimentally attached to
It's becoming a fire hazard
I know it sounds over dramatic
I don't want to see them
But I can't ask them to leave
I put a lock on the hatch
And it rattles when they dance
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4. |
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You know you're getting old
When there's trees younger than you
But taller than your house
I mean deciduous not evergreen
I was a clever teen but lazy
Now the brain's fogged and hazy
Fingernails grow at two millimetres a month
That's three full sets a year
A planet scattered with clippings
That might not decompose for millennia
It's a myth that nails grow on corpses
Neither does hair
It's a morbid trick played by a shrinking skin
A fallen fortress
Final convulsions then zinc, iron and glucose stop pulsing
Through veins, valves and ventricles
Capillaries softly stilled
The heart's just a muscle
Despite what they've told us
In hundreds of languages
On screens and pages
But I feel love in the forearms
And the aches of my legs
Long drive South
The A1 a swamp of grief and sadness
Impossible Soul played over and over
Emptying houses
Who decides what's junk
The smell of metal on grayed fingers
Romantic letters in a trunk
Chuck moldy groceries
Pick out the best crockery
Read a letter from the notary
Sat in the rockery
Throw a penny in a well that's only decorative
Just an inch deep
Wishes rejected
Leave the coin in the lawn
Should I be more forlorn?
Have simpler dreams?
A log cabin by some water?
Skip martydom like St John
Do nothing fancy
Make no one a fiance
The heart's just a muscle
Despite what they've told us
In hundreds of languages
On screens and pages
But I feel love in the back of my neck
The arch of my feet and behind these tired eyelids
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5. |
Messages
01:27
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6. |
Terminal Velocity
02:39
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When we first fell through the skies
It was the greatest thrill of my life
You and me only
The G Force holding us tight
Felt like my first time on a horse
At the age of eight
The smell of hay
The smell of fresh air
A loss of control
My fear of heights
The wind in my hair
Claire was never sure about you
I thought that she was just bitching
But when we got hitched she still came down
And she's the one sitting here now in jodhpurs
As I'm lying in my hospital gown
Terminal velocity
Terminal relationship
Church chapel wedding
Crown court ending
Tears on my pillow
With no one to wipe them
I couldn't move my arms
For a week and a half
You said her perfume was a new Eau De Cologne
But you lost the sample bottle
You drove me down her street
CD blasting
Engine at full throttle
Craning your neck to check if her light was on
They made a plaster of Paris cast of my impression
In the damp damp damp soil
It's in a gallery on the Left Bank and you're the artist
This is your invention
I drank too much wine at the freefall convention
My liver's still bruised
But it's mine to choose
Before the cables were cut
You tried to blow me up but weren't able
I smelt the gas as I stepped in from the stables
I'm erasing all the things you meant to me
I've ripped out your shoddy carpentry
Your pool table
Your bagel maker
Our bed frame and your surname
The Power of Love was our favourite song
First it made me sing and now it makes me weep
Last week I jumped again with Denise
One twenty mph to peace
When the chute released
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7. |
Picking Fights
03:06
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When my cat got sick
Last October
He couldn't tell me what was wrong
That's how I felt when trying to explain
Why I ran out
Used strong words
Took the higher ground
Yeah I'm sure it was something deeper
I'm not the kind to quarrel over packing a freezer
But the tiny things spark it
Could be defrosting the car
Buying reserve cutlery
Deciding how to cook eggs
Your reluctancy to buy a new coat
From a charity shop
But why did I pick fights
You said I could make a conversation about me in two moves
I guess you're right
But how d'you think that makes me feel?
I'd never seen so many stars
Couldn't understand why everyone was inside
watching a Matthew Broderick flick
Although Election is a great movie and he's always good value
There's snakes beneath me and the winter ghost of a hummingbird in the trees
Orientate my internal biography around tennis results
The night he hit the tape
We'd just got her own place
That loss in Monte Carlo
Was when you said I was shallow
There was drama under the lights in Rome
Tears at home
Waking up cold
You hit me a lob I didn't even run for
Chased a ball out wide and gashed my thigh
Fell back over-dramatically like a dropping chandelier
It's scraping frost from the car
Or folding the laundry
Me clipping my toenails
Or talking with a mouthful of oatmeal
Could be the summer market shop
Or the veg shop
Who forgot the tote bags?
It'd have been feeding the fish
If we'd owned fish
Or cleaning out the tank
God knows minor decorating decisions
Aren't like choosing a religion
So why did I pick fights?
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8. |
Diplomatic Interventions
02:39
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I'm taking classes at night
French and Photography
It's all about the right light, obviously
A candle in a bottle of Bordeaux, oh
Pick the wax not my scabs
Developing fluids and progressing my vocab
Je ne t'aime pas comme ça
Où sont les autres?
Je regrette ce que j'ai dit
Noticed something unusual on the way back from my oral exam
With Sam we cut through the back way
Squeezed passed discarded mattresses
Cans of pop and blood-stained bandages
At the house at the bottom, the back gate is open
From the shadows we can see straight in the living room
There’s two people shouting
He spouting, says he’s a grown man, she says start acting like one
Creep nearer so we can hear clearer
The accents more Thames than the Wear here
It’s getting nasty
I run and hammer on the door, as he puts his hands round her throat
So it turns out they were just watching Eastenders on a giant TV in the living room
Just an old couple sat with the volume cranked up, shovelling dinners from trays on laps
The shock of a bang on the door, from behind
They’ve got a 5 to 1 system but it’s louder than surround sound
Causes them to jump up, fling spaghetti bologonese up the wall
Floral crockery smashed on the floor
We exchange stares for a second, my pointing finger trying to explain
Then I just turn and run, Sam's long gone
Gash my knee as I’m upturned by the grandkids trampoline
Get home my hands smell like gasoline
You can’t intervene
When it’s on a flat screen
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9. |
No Reserve
02:13
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Put my past lives on Ebay
With no reserve
But they won't sell
It's what they deserve
But I'll relist
With more hyperbolic specs lists
Photoshopped pics with the mistakes brushed out
None optional but free
Personal delivery
An hour of anecdotes on your sofa
With the careless previous owner
Choose from a wide selection of anxieties and rejections
Misplaced best friends unintended consequences
Fashion sense that's off trend or causes accidental offenses
And for those looking for a more positive tip
I can offer some purely fiction alternatives
Like antarctic explorer who saw so many Aurora Australis
Made a Spotify playlist themed on frostbite and the Southern Lights
You were a hero to a great nation
Performed self-digit amputation
And you're still down there now
Like Frankenstein's monster
Out wandering the tundra
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10. |
Captain of the Stars
02:31
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Sometimes it's easier when you cry
Cos we can both let it all out
I know I can push you to it with my silence
My subconscious self is a total prick
Warp and gnarl and twist and screech
These arms that bind me close to thee
I'm so totally alone
Even my friends say I'm hotheaded
I'm an egotistical
Raskolnikov-like piece of shit
I sank for a day before I could see the bottom
And from the bottom the fathoms block out all the light
But I know I take it for granted all the time
The way your touch and your smile
Make me feel
So alive
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Faithful Johannes Durham, UK
Sincerity Rapper.
Electronic Sound - ‘The Alan Bennett of Hip
Hop’.
Tom Robinson (BBC 6MUSIC) - ‘a great artist’, ‘a rivetingly charismatic live performer’ and ‘if you have any chance at all, see him live’.
Deb Grant (BBC 6 Music / Jazz FM) - ‘clever and authentic and really affecting’.
... more
Faithful Johannes recommends:
The Fall of Man
by Burgundy Blood
rhymes rhymes rhymes.
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The Circle Dance EP
by Me Lost Me
Switch of the light and lie on the carpet.
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