Vinny Peculiar

I have created so many lies
To justify my weakness
I am Billy Fisher in disguise
And I’m poisoning your sweetness

Remember how I told you I was in a band
Well,
We never really mattered
Never got off the ground

And remember how I told you I was outstanding at school
Well,
I barely passed my O levels and mostly played the fool

And remember how I told you how I lost my virginity
To an older more experienced woman besides a raging sea
Well
I made the whole thing up

You were the first for me

And I told you I was here and there and everywhere to impress you

I told you I was someone but I was no one until I met you

I have created so many lies to justify my weakness
I am Billy Fisher in disguise and I’m poisoning your sweetness

War all the Time

It’s a set to and I’ll get you and I’ll rub your face in the mud
Wash out your mouth with the soap of my love

The Christmas crackers are exploding in your face
But I was never here and you were never there in the first place

As Penny drops her big ideal it crashes like a test plane
We clear the room and put in a chest drain

Nobody comes in nobody goes out there’s a familiar knock on the door
If the best mans speech don’t make you cry then the bridesmaids will give you what for

Sharing the intimacies of daily life
Bedding down and cleaning up
Needs are knitted together
Wool pulled over our eyes
All energy sustained by compromise

Cushioned in our pseudo contentment
We bury each other deep in resentment
Sharing the intimacies of daily life
Growing old and preparing to die

This is the nature
This is the nature
The evil nature of love

This is the nature
Of love

A satin bomber jacket and a pair of Oxford Bags
10 B&H and a peace patch
A frozen chicken in a wicker basket
Gibson SG and fruit salad slapstick

A cold war baby girl is left for dead in the cinema
We watch News at 10 and then The Prisoner
Losing the trousers in every house
Looking for a man and finding a mouse

As a shaven headed sports star
Collects his winners medal
I slip into something more comfortable

Another drug death this time at Cream
Jayne Casey very sorry on the TV screen
Who knows for sure at this point in time?
The facts are still emerging

Meanwhile
The world keeps turning

The weather girl in breathless weather whirl
The telephone still ringing
Cars need fixing
Driving
Jobs need working
Skiving

As the poor young woman’s family who have lost everything
Grieve

Soon all will be forgotten

Break-dancing Indian smells cowboy dinner in rich mans letterbox Misfits the treatment of odd-balls

Word salad crumbles in vacuum cleaner cash clown
My way works windows on a balcony skylight

Heart lays dormant beats at the foot of a singing statue
Late comer belly flops dangling in a bungee noose

White notes in the headmasters saloon of stolen wills

Payback time comes later much later
Now all you have to do is work and suffer and stay true to yourself

Forget about Jacks strident guilt machine
Ignore Allen’s visionary rainbows of sacred Buddha dreamscapes
Avoid Mr Burrows and the weird headmaster ritual
Forgo Neil’s magic bus trip to heaven

Payback time comes later
When you least expect it
When you have given up
When you have truly been rejected

Now all you have to do is work and suffer and stay true to yourself

I’m teaching them to play
I’m
For two hours after lunch each and every day

Here are the toys
Here are the charts
I just tick the boxes when the session starts

Attention spans can vary
So I use a stop watch
To measure performance and concentration

This way
We can argue for more money
To buy new toys

I teach them to play

The last day of school

On the last day of school I set fire to the volleyball nets
Never much of a fighter but a rebel none the less
With nothing in the pipeline
And no real idea
Of what I wanted to do next
And it still feels good when I picture the teacher
Smothering the flame and cursing my name
It happened long ago and far far away
Though I recall as if it were yesterday
And it still feels good
And it still feels good

The scientist on the radio believes we each have a spiritual area deep within our brains

And she says with conviction that a connection leads to heaven even for the most cynical of atheists

It’s not an IQ and it can’t be measured
It’s a spiritual quotient and it should be treasured

Take a young child to the shops
Spend money and kiss goodbye
Play the guitar wearing fingerless gloves and catch
Magic mushroom fever

Heckle yourself at a poetry reading
Grow a grey beard
Sell abba picture disc for buttons
And wait for the end of an endless day in silent office

Tell white lies
Green lies
Red lies
Blues lies and yellow lies too

Accept that your swimming trunks are afraid of the water

The personal awareness consultant asked me to define the most rewarding experience of my life
I struggled to find one single startling event…the birth of your children, passing your driving test…these things, she said, are often cited.
Well how about this and look into that
Give me some joyous artefacts
Well maybe ‘yes’
And maybe ’no’
And
Maybe
‘I just don’t want to know’
We settle for the best is yet to come
‘I wish I was dead’ didn’t seem appropriate.

Where are you now?

Doing up the well appointed loft space of your converted barn
On the outskirts of town and married
With your hair still long and thick and brown and beautiful

A part-time job as an art college tutor
Dropping off the children with child minder
And driving an old Saab

With your nervous laughter of mini-mouse proportion
Unsettling to colleagues
Endearing to students

Going back to the moon

Neil
Buzz
Mike
You made the big lift off and
We still believe in you
The two hundred and forty billion dollar promo will live on
Long after you are gone
Small step
Giant leap
Scripted by mission control or spontaneous wisdom
I guess we’ll never know
And here we are
Forty years later
And still dreaming
Still dreaming
Of a return
We’re going back to the moon