quote

“I seem to have the blind self-acceptance of the eccentric who can't conceive that his eccentricities are not clearly understood.”


- Saul Bellow

Unknown Destination

Grady took an overdose of pills in the bath
They laid him out at midnight softly on his back
They could swear they heard a whisper from his mouth
Saying get away gentlemen you don’t know what its about

There’s crows in the tree line and flowers in the grove
Landmines exposed where the grass has just been mowed
The likeliness of Grady stamps his feet and slaps his thighs
His suicide note was broadcast and won a Pulitzer Prize

Grady is carried to the Church of England for the inquest
His clothes are cut off and there are wires across his chest
Troops muster along the skyline embedded with victims past
Meanwhile the organs are removed and the mold is cast


- Chris Mansel

All About The Night

“Once upon a time there was a little boy who went outside, and that boy was me — I went outside in music.”
- Harry Partch

On the floor there’s hunting
The insects scurry at the dog’s decay
On the ceiling they’re running
And it’s never far away

How outspoken are firecrackers
When the worms crawl across the match
You can see the centipede count his fingers
Just like the anthill when the babies hatch

I’m a gypsy at the cave’s entrance to hell
Like the doorman over the sewer grate
It’s nice work if you can stand the smell
One day all of the insects will come to mate

Chorus:

A deer in the headlights,
a dove down a well
It’s all about the night,
like the henchmen in the dell


- Chris Mansel

Hunter S. Thompson

(Joe) Finnegan’s Wake

The ghost of John Cassavetes has been embedded with the insurgents his camera circling the small bowl of heroin displayed for the Time magazine photographer. Cassavetes sits motionless behind the lens as the photographer changes his flash. The photographer is silenced before he can speak. His silence is felt through the Pakistani cave.
Posthumous reels captured by civilian contractors are sold to a small news agency and surface at the Sundance film festival. Celebrities their gift bags in tow flock the small fifty seat theater and begin to speak on their cell phones. Air is pumped into the theater as the celebrities breathe in the black ash trucked in special from the graves of Rwanda. Articles show up in Maxim magazine and feature photographs of celebrities vomiting onto the snow caked wood balcony of a local hotel. The ghost of Cassavetes stares blankly at the small rain clouds gathering over the horizon.


- Chris Mansel

Don’t Cha) Bury A Working Man (For the workers and Woody Guthrie)

Stretching my soul over a conveyor of steel
For every strip of human flesh it rolls
Soot caking on my face and the wheel
Deep into a poverty mansions hole

I heard my footsteps along the gravel
I stopped as the dust from my clothes
Hit the door before me as I unraveled
I sunk into the floor until I didn’t know

Houses line the fences like headstones
The yards are the only thing alive
A palace like this could never be a home
Where the kids have stopped crying

How hot does hell get before you feel the chill
How slow can you melt the steel before its filled
I look at the scars I got at work just today
Where in the hell did hell come from anyway

Chorus:

It’s an insult to bury a working man in his skin
What does the ground know about where it’s been


- Chris Mansel

Lucinda Williams