verse and rock

[Teratogen]

this is the first time i have ventured into this forum. i wanted to write something, but i didn't know what to put in here. i write a lot of poetry, but i am also a musician, and i write verse specifically for songs of mine. i consider them all as poetry before i turn them into songs. but i went through a list of songs i recently released on a cd (only to friends) and tried to find something to put in here. i found 3 songs and a poem i put to creepy music. i would like to share them all. i noticed that all 4 of them are quite different in style, and i think it pretty much shows my gamut of poetic abilities. though out of these 4 there is a wider range of stuff i write about and a wider range of ways i write as well. but here they are, in no particular order... for your viewing pleasure.

also, for those of you who are offended by vulgar language... too bad. haha.

THE VALSALVA MANEUVER

[note: the beginning of this recorded song has my version of the "pledge of allegiance," which is some jingoistic anthem, for those of you out of the country who might be unfamiliar with this. they make all the kids say it every day from grade school up to high school. in high school i refused to sing it. but my version is not written in the lyrics, however, i will add it here as an added bonus! haha. it will be the italicized portion.]

I pledge malfeasance to the drag of being in the Delighted State of Hysteria, and to the Dictatorship, for which it name-brands, one creation, sold by frauds internationally, with bigotry and violence for all.

I am the illegitimate son of hate
My Mother Earth of dirt and dearth
Bore my name and bound my fate

We are sons of bitches in America
The Kip Shop stains of bum fluff brains
Serving our time as Children of Hysteria

My black angel of death
Tell me who sent you
We’re falling to a state
Of neurotic dementia

Candy-coated diamond-studded watered-down plastic dolls
Moirai made a mockery of Momus’s dead avetol
The Bonhomie Bruisers of the Booboisie
The Gutter Pups are greasing up for Adam’s arsenal of glee

The motherhouse of Tartuffe, Te Deums ‘fore the kiss
From four-letter words to five-fingered fists
This is the naughty nomenclature of Babel’s brigade
Clootie’s my name, I bring you Shame, this tower I’ve made

My black angel of death
Tell me who sent you
We’re falling to a state
Of neurotic dementia

Your sour apple pies have been devoured
But lavishly the travesty
Has left us lush cove cowards

John Merrick and the Bodacious Monoecious
Hell hath greeted us gracious, now Heaven is spacious
The cult-flavored derision from the color television
To win: exploit the Maladroits for a radiant collision

My black angel of death
Tell me who sent you
We’re falling to a state
Of neurotic dementia


SOULED-OUT

I’m always in love
but never out-hated
It is what it is
and never overstated
My fellow humans
have got it underrated
‘Cause your bullshit war
has escalated

There’s an Amber Alert
on the talk-show dirt
But the shit hits the fan
when it thins into sand

It pays to be good
but it sells to be bad
Turning our lives
into a sold-out fad
How idealistic
From the makers of sound
Bought-in, shipped-out
stocked-up, marked-down

I’m bigger
than the rainbow of fear
The nigger
is the color scheme here
But the shit hits the fan
when panic hits the land

Expose your children to rock and roll
It will cleanse the body and save the soul

It’s quid pro quo, it’s tit for tat
You fuck my kitty, I fuck your cat
Sex is best in excess
yes, I confess
So let’s undress
and make a fucking mess

“SARS—the new AIDS”
for the stars in their shades
in their cars custom made
behind bars where they stay
but I say
the shit hits the fan
when we don’t give a damn

Expose your children to rock and roll
It will cleanse the body and save the soul
Expose your children to rock and roll
To the glory of love and the power it holds


THE LOTTO

Love can be outrageous in a fool’s brigade of hope. I’d rather play contagious to dreams than to light a candle and mope. Your woman knows no Sati, so with pain she now must cope. I tell you this is no lottery. It’s just some terminal dope.

This world is so confused, so expect nothing less. Drawing numbers for money, or drawing numbers for death.

I wear a counter-culture T-shirt that allows for such stereotypes. The way you flash your mouth just makes me hurt, pulling tricks for stars and stripes. Your vegetative state is loving pottery, but your music is losing all the hype. I tell you, this is no lottery, it’s just planet Earth being ripe.

Malleable justice does not know smoke from breath. Drawing numbers for money, or drawing numbers for death.

Sex is incandescent if you’re present on the moon
Unrelenting and incessant with the monsters in the womb
In her station, procreation leads to babies hurled
I’m a monster in the dumpster of the world

The military instills discipline
Religion distills morals
Your parents’ fists always seem to win
Your homework drills its quarrels
And the TV’s got to fight for it all to be right
You know that’s what God’s dreaming of
Well, monsters, too can love

I found my heart inside some art, painted as it sounds
They killed me for what I was doin’, now I’m ruined, out of bounds
But I’m not dead, I’m just breast-fed on nature’s willing and able
Come to me, I’ll let you see my truth up on the table

The military instills discipline…

Never let your guard down, never let them see
I love you for your beauty, your intellectual virginity

But all the disenfranchised bugs beneath my lunar shoe
never let me love them, so please, let me love you

Wasted by brigades of fear, afraid to know themselves
The war goes on like nothing’s wrong, but I am still myself
Let the violin keep weeping, we are sweeping up the ashes
Let your veil of loss prevail, we’ll still cover you in black sashes

The military instills discipline…


WE ARE UNTITLED

[note: at the end of this track i wrote a little sermon and read it aloud on the recording over some organs with my best evangelical preacher voice. first i put in a soundbyte of someone saying a prayer in latin, then it was followed by my little sermon, and then after the heavy music came in there was a portion of a soundbyte of someone reading from genesis in hebrew. my sermon bit is also not in the lyrics, but i will write it here, as an added bonus! it will be in italics as well.]

those psychotic worlds
run by eccentric dementia
god sits atop his throne in my mouth
spitting his angry love at the religious
petty lives mean too much to a place where plastics make it possible
you are a product
you are a rating
you are a dollar bill
you are a consumer
gluttonous and happy
like pain is after a fat pill that floats in your stomach acids

tell me you know who you are
because fear has communicated to the dead
collateral is as empty as my brains
and these words are motored by the nonconformist masses
who’ve just become maggots amidst the flies

a plastic capsule shell with powdered love inside
a plastic capsule shell with powdered love inside
nobody tells their life stories like
a plastic capsule shell with powdered love inside
nowhere to hide

a dance of poets in a strange land with discotheque living rooms
a dance of poets in a strange land with discotheque living rooms
my television sings anti-songs that lead to
a dance of poets in a strange land with discotheque living rooms
a-bomb shrooms

the only requiem remedy for Satan and his production limbs
is a vacation in Sodom with a rotten apple carousel
save yourself from the closed minds
your infamy is our entertainment and we love your hard nipples
your infamy is our entertainment and we love your hard nipples
yeah
we love you

Brothers and sisters, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of America and the bomb. The holistic breeding of death, destruction, war that will take place, and the humankind who will televize the proof. O brothers and sisters! Hold hands, chew bubblegum, and spew vomitous worship hymns for pharmaceuticals and magazine beautifuls! Embrace your enemies with fire and brimstone, O Lord, packed tightly in a codeine shell of nuclear power! O brothers and sisters, God shines down upon us with a miracle flashlight in the darkness! Satan relinquish! Relinquish your stronghold on the people of our nation! And we shall blow, blow your ass straight back to the fiery depths of HELL!


and so there you have it. hope you liked it.

[witty_owl]

Hi Teratogen, I do not know if "like" is an accurate description of my reaction to your songs/verses. I am impressed and I admire your directness and honesty in the lyrics. Why you have posted them here is a bit of a puzzle as I am not sure most Cohen fans would find appeal with these songs. In my experience strident verses posted here are vilified or ignored by most here. What style of music do you set to these songs?
I think the content and political/social viewpoint of these songs has more in common with Frank Zappa's work who was always critical of mainstream American society in his lyrics.
I should like to hear the musical context of these songs and I would be interested to read more of your writing; thanks for posting them.

Regards, witty owl.

[smccallon]

Excellent... I certainly enjoy this (but you know that)...

[Teratogen]

ok.... i just wrote a HUGE post here to answer witty owl's questions. i described in length bits about each of these songs, and when i went to go post it, it asked me for my name and password, and after i entered it, all i wrote was gone. so, i'm not even gonna bother writing it again. if you would like to hear these songs, i'm sure that it can be arranged.

but to briefly answer, i am very attracted to leonard's darker side. i am a huge marilyn manson fan. been a fan since i was 12 years old. the first song i remember hearing of leonard's was "the future," and it was so attractive to me. it was a beautiful and masterful description of the social and cultural apocalypse that seemed exclusive only to what i heard manson describe. it was something i identified with and supported and trusted and agreed with wholeheartedly. it cannot be denied that a lot of leonard's music is like this, too. even some of the early stuff like "there is a war," "diamonds in the mine," "you know who i am," and "please don't pass me by" are darker and comically bitter in their judgments of social and political and religious realms.

i posted these here for more than one reason, and for cohen fans to read it was only one. anybody who posts here in this particular forum posts so that they can hear and read what others think. we are all curious to know if others enjoy what we do and think about the same things and respect what we say. that was another reason i did it. also, i always think there's never enough of the types of things i write about. and i also thought it would be more respected here, especially as literature, than it would elsewhere.

the collection of songs i pulled these from was a set that i purposely intended to be unique and different. i tried to pull from various genres as well, but keep it as some very unmistakable teratogen music. haha. "the valsalva maneuver" was my attempt at fusing a well-know, overused classic guitar riff with some sort of jazz/swing type music. rock and roll jazz. "souled-out" is a heavy, distorted, short-and-to-the-point-like-a-sucker-punch song that might be more associated with industrial type music. "the lotto" was my attempt at a late-'60s rock and roll song. of course, the style of writing and the length of the lyrics are unorthodox to a '60s song. "we are untitled" was mostly just weird synthetic sounds, with synthetic drones and creepy notes in d-minor with computer-automated synthetic voices speaking my poem. haha. i have a program where i type in anything and a voice of my choosing will say it. i absolutely love it. a good example of this would be cohen's "the great event," which is also another darker image painted by cohen through song.

this is a much shorter post than i had originally written! but like i said, if you are itching to hear it now, i'm sure that can be arranged.

oh, also... this is about the third of fourth time i've been compared to frank zappa. and it's weird because i actually never got into zappa. i've heard great and many things about him and his music, but it was just something i never picked up and listened to. by now i think i ought to! but thanks for your comments.

jason.

[witty_owl]

Teratogen, pity the detailed posting was lost. I know how frustrating that is as it has happened to me on a few occasions. There are two ways of avoiding the problem. (1) Write your post in "Word" and then copy and paste it into the forum. Or (2) Frequently check your post while writing with the "preview" button. That lets the server know you are still active on line and not simply idle.
Perhaps I should give Marilyn Manson a fair hearing to see what he is on about. One other band that caught my attention as resembling Zappa in a musical way is "Primus". They seemed to be quite inventive and skilled in a way many modern bands are not. But then I am a creature of the 60's and 70's in my musical heritage.

Cheers, Witty Owl.

[lizzytysh]

Hi Jason ~

Another thing that you could do, and I finally got in the habit when I had NetZero [with the name 'saying it all' ], is right-click and Copy everything before you Submit it. Then, if it's lost, you can Paste it ~ after you know for certain that you are 'active.' It used to happen to me all the time, and some of my personal emails suffered greatly .

I still haven't had time to read your huge posting here, but will.

~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Hi Jason ~

I finally got a chance to read your poems. I'm also very impressed, with how you express your views. Your pledge of allegiance is an amazing and unique 'adaptation' . Did the 'coolest' teacher love you? I know they all didn't, but some of them surely did. I agree with many things you've said in these poems and songs. I can understand why you're so drawn to Leonard. Your writing is very descriptive and graphic. I hope your writing continues with your deeper perspective of what's out there. Please keep sharing here whatever you choose.

~ Lizzy

[Teratogen]

thank you for your comments and helpful tips. i know all of these tips. you know that feeling when you have a lot to say and you just keep fucking typing!? hahaha. i just kept going, pausing to think for moments, then typing again. like i said, it was a LONG post. i didn't stop to think, however, that such a thing would happen.

but anyway, thanks lizzy, for your comments.

to witty owl: actually, i saw primus live as well. sean is a bigger fan of theirs and they were "re-forming" so he wanted to go see them and i said i'd come along. they're a 3-piece band, and the lead singer/bassist, les claypool, is probably considered one of the best bassists in the music industry. their music is mostly funk metal. i know, difficult to visualize in your ears. haha. that doesn't really make sense but whatever. they're a little wild and VERY alternative. if you are familiar with the big alternative music of most of the '90s, primus DEFINITELY fits that mold.

as for marilyn manson, i can tell you that he too is a product of the '60s and '70s. he was born in '69, and his father was just out of vietnam. i'll try not to give the whole damn biography here, hahaha, but to let you know, i think he's the modern literary genius of this generation. a lot of kids don't listen to him now because i think they don't understand him. a lot of kids have grown dumber i think, and i think it's mostly because of mtv and various other things. the youth always has the ability to make something of itself, but i see them going nowhere. my stepbrothers are 14 and their generation of kids have been given dumb-down rock and roll. i am proud of the resurgence in alternative music that's been going on the past few months. but back to manson, you gotta realize their band's first album came out in '94. they're in-between the modern metal bands (who i just despise) and the grunge/alternative movement. manson is very flexible i think, when it comes to his music. some of it is simple, but some of it is complex. what i want more people to be concerned with is his lyrics. they are just amazing literary pieces if just looked at by themselves. i know a lot of people aren't into heavy kinds of music. but take punk music for example. in its heyday, its lyrics were meant to invoke, and it was more of a movement than a musical trend. the music was loud, obnoxious, and probably the most simplest form of music i can think of, besides folk. and when people think of manson, they don't think about what he's done artistically. he put out 3 consecutive albums that were a part of one whole story. any art piece that comes in three is called a triptych. and the term is mostly used in paintings. but "antichrist superstar," "mechanical animals," and "holy wood (in the shadow of the valley of death)" are 3 separate albums that each tell a story, but they are all supposed to fit together. in high school all i did was research this stuff. it goes so deep... the religious stuff, the cultural stuff, the historical stuff, the story line, the characters, the meaning of lyrics.... it's incredible. nobody seems to realize that he's done all this. but anyway.... i truly forgive you all for my ranting.... hahaha. it's my pitiful defense. this is a leonard cohen board on a leonard cohen website. so anyway, thanks again for all your comments, and maybe i'll look into some of my other stuff to possibly post.

jason.