SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter) - Scott Walker

This is my job,

I don’t come around and put out

your red light when you work.

Silence

What’s the matter,

didn’t you get enough attention at home?

Silence

If shit were music,

you’d be a brass band.

Silence

Know what?

You should get an agent,

why sit in the dark

handling yourself.

For Lavinia

who goes like

gynozoon.

IX I V IX III V I For the citizen

whose joke lays

in their hand.

I V I

V IX IX III

To play fugues

on Joves

Spam castanets.

V IX IX

I VI IX I Cattle are slaughtered,

Entrails examined,

spread out across the moon.

The Tisza is rising,

topless bars overflowing,

pulsing through the flumes.

Drop-kicked coloraturas

fouling my ears,

bypassing

an anorexic sky and-

-scar jumping grafters,

chorion-crying.

How can you stoop

so high?

For Papiria

who plops

the Pantheon.

IV VI IX

V I IX I For grosse Gauls

who wont leave

our sheep alone.

V I VII

IX I IX I Norsemen!

DO NOT!

eat the big pink mint.

Flush hard,

its a long way to Athens.

Gone

from your wooden palace.

The wild mice pelt clothes

slipped from my toes

where termites

scribble the walls.

Twisted forth,

and gone,

'Little father',

The 'snip' off your

nine-ninety-nine,

from where you groomed

yourself too small.

No more

dragging this wormy anus

round on shag piles from

Persia to Thrace.

I’ve severed

my reeking gonads,

fed them to your

shrunken face.

Janus head

its said,

will give good door.

IX IX V IX I IX I For a Roman who’s proof

that Greeks fucked bears.

V V IX

VII V IV I Heard this one?

This’ll kill ya,

about the ropes of hair

care of Venus the Bald

tugging Mercs across the plain.

Those measuring road-rashed bellies

a perte de vue to me night and day.

The one

about the saint

stranded high

upon his pillar.

Thirty summers,

Thirty winters,

his constant visitor,

his mother.

But he’d stare into the distance,

ignored her calls from down

below…

«DID YOU EVER THROW YOUR OWN

MOTHERS FOOD BACK AT HER?!»

«DID YOU EVER TELL HER,

TAKE THIS JUNK AWAY?!»

«WHAT KIND OF UNNATURAL SON

WOULD DO THAT TO HIS OWN

MOTHER?!»

…The tasteless one

about the bantam

who couldn’t climb a rung.

Your Helipolis is scrapheap.

Gone,

the brown slug

of your tongue.

For eunuch Ron

who sleeps at night

across the emperors

bedroom door.

III V IX

IX I V I Grostulating-Gorbi

requires fresh packing.

II IX V

I IV IX I OVER,

its over,

Syrinx screaming

all around,

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

Aquil-Aetos!

Aquil-Aetos!

screaming all around,

Filling up my life,

screaming all around.

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

OVER,

its over,

your Nibelung

can’t be found.

Their shadowless

shadows,

wiping me.

Wiping me clean

away.

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

Where’s;

the scent of pine torches,

the lumbering caravans,

the felt covered wagons, moving like galleons?

The 'wedgie', the 'melvy' to threaten the air?

Only fledge muffled

long hollow bone-drums

a beating.

The dark day behind us,

the dark day ahead

the wind drone across

skull goblets.

THEN,

Basel-cum-Strasbourg-cum-Frankfurt-cumSpeyer-cum…

I hear the only place your ever invited

is outside.

Silence

If brains were rain, you’d surely

be a desert.

Silence

Look, don’t go to a mind reader,

go to a palmist;

I know you’ve got a palm.

Silence

Does your face hurt?

cuz its killing me.

CUT;

to Lost Lumbago City.

I am perched

against the sky.

A banner shoal of sparrows

sways in the twilight.

Down there,

as ish kabibble’s

schlepp the shade

forever,

earths hoary

fontenelle

weeps softly

for a thumb thrust.

A chorus of threadbare

black-stockinged legs

is fanning out

into a frazzled black

rose.

No phalanxes fleeing

like zippers of blood,

red plumes nodding

between the horses

ears.

HEY BUDDY!

GIVE IT UP!

HEY PAL!

COME DOWN!

JOIN THE LIVING!

WANTED!

A LISPING, HOBBLING, NOSELESS

RUNT.

Phone IX IX IX

IX IX IX I.

REMEMBER:

'SOMEDAY YOU’LL GO FAR

IF YOU CATCH THE RIGHT

TRAIN'?

HOW ABOUT,

'YOU'RE SO FAT,

WHEN YOU WEAR A YELLOW

RAINCOAT, PEOPLE SCREAM

TAXI?'

THEN THERE’S,

'YOU'RE SO BORING

THAT YOU CAN’T EVEN ENTERTAIN DOUBT'.

I’ll grease

this pole

behind me.

Grease this pole

behind me.

Grease this pole.

Grease this pole.

There’s an unfinished rumour

doing the rounds.

It seems the storks are seen

returning to the rooftops.

Carrying back their children.

Clacking like dried palms.

Loud enough to be heard

from Reims to Orleans.

River banks are cleared.

Bridges retaken.

Oblivion,

driven from the city

street by street.

So why

have screams of laughter,

the pissing stench

of mares-milk beer

come to bait

your toad down

from his toadstool?

And if

I’m melancholic.

And if I shed a tear…

'Don't forget to blink,

lest your eyeballs dry up, fall out

of their sockets and dangle on your

cheeks like Caesar’s shrivelled

coglione'.

…its when I hear

a sawed-off coffin rolls

beneath the Tisza

HEY BAR!

Ah, my noblest music.

HEY!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

HEY BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

BAR!

I’ll grease

this pole

behind me.

Grease this

pole behind

me.

Grease this

pole…

Grease this

po…

OVER,

its over,

but where’s

the electrons

squeezing all around?

Burning up my life.

Squeezing all around.

OVER,

its over,

Only freezing

all around.

I greased

that pole

behind me.

Greased

that pole

behind me.

Your Nibelung

can’t be found.

I’ve looked high and low for you,

I guess I didn’t look low enough.

Don’t move:

I want to forget you just the way

you are.

I really hope your face clears up.

You know;

I think you’ve got nothing there.

Infrared, infrared.

I could

drop

into

the

darkness.

Its so cold,

Infrared.

What if I freeze,

and

drop

into

the

darkness?