A Growing Boy Needs His Lunch

In lonely gas stations with mini-marts
You’ll find rows of them for sale
Liquor-filled statues of Elvis Presley
Screw his head-off and…
Drink like a vampire
His disciples flock to such a fitting shrine
Sprawled across from his
graceless mansion
A shopping mall
Filled with prayer rugs and Elvis dolls
And I wonder
Yeah I wonder
Will Elvis take the place of Jesus
In a thousand years
Religious wars
Barbaric laws
Bloodshed worldwide
Over what’s left of his myth

A growing boy needs his lunch

When pesticides get banned we’re safe up north
We just sell them to those other countries
Soon there’s lots of exotic deformed babies
Somehow that’s not our fault
Just dip ’em in glaze paint ’em orange and green
For the Arizona roadside stands
To sell alongside plaster burros and birthbaths
And I wonder
Yeah I wonder
Why so many insects around us feed off the dead

Death squads
Starvation
Foreign aid?
Just leave it to the magic of the marketplace

A growing boy needs his lunch

Everyone should just love each other
Dip your toe into the fire
Drop your guns and lawsuits and love each other
Life begins beyond the bunker
And while you’re busy hugging in the streets
Outgrowing your hatred
For all to feel
Jiminy Cricket’s found a game to play
Stick your neck out on trust-
It’ll be chopped away
Jimmy through your locked front doors
Rifle through your sacred drawers
Line my pockets
Deface your dreams
‘Til the cows come home to me
Nibbling like an earwig
Winding through your brain
Bound like Lawrence Harvey Spreadeagled to a bed
The migraine gets worse
When you find out we lay eggs
And no one in all of Borneo
Can hear you scream
Turn on
Tune in
Cop out
Drop kick
Turn in
Tune out

Lyrics: Jello Biafra
Music: Dead Kennedys
From the album; Frankenchrist

The Spoils Of Victory

Look to the north, look to the east, look to the west and south

On all horizons storm clouds loom and roll across the sky
The river bursts its banks and vomits soil into the mouth
As thunder breaks the silence, a young child cries!

Between the night
And the days first light
The leaders made a pact
To raise the rotting corpse of war
And set the wheels in motion
The stage a heaving battlefield
Would support the final act
While the authors hide in satellites
Or forts beneath the ocean

And in this play
We’re cast as fools
To blindly play
By others’ rules

Now the dust has settled
And the stench completely clear
Then return the victors
To claim their wretched crown
But from the fleshheaps of the slain
There comes no cheer
Their game is over
The chips are down

You arrived like a breath
From the angel of death
Famine, disease and a life on your knees
Guaranteed
When you put them in power

Lyrics And Music; Amebix
From The Album: Arise

Civilization Street

Civilization Street
Here we all are on civilization street
Where the neighbours never meet
And you have to be discreet
Don’t ever talk to strangers
Even when they offer you sweets
Keep your mouth shut,
keep your mouth shut
Keep your head down

Here we all are in civilization town
Where the shops are closing down
And the people rush around
No time to stop and talk
While the clocks are going round
Keep your head down,
keep your head down
Keep your mouth shut

Here we all are in civilization city
Where the lights are oh so pretty
And the concrete smells of money
Laced with years of exploitation
Got no job, got no job
Oh what a pity

Where the church is empty
And the graveyard full
The skies are gray with chemicals
And all the books lie in the dust
The televisions never rust
Watch the people wither away
Alone together – ‘Have a nice day!’
Have a nice day!

On civilization street the jigsaw’s incomplete
We got the whole world at our feet

But we ruined all the good bits
And cut down all the trees
And dumped the radiation
Into the big blue sea
And carved up someones landscape
Just to get from A to B
Just to move that little bit faster
In your five speed luxury
Just to move that little bit closer
To the world on your T.V.
Everyone needs more money (ha!)
Cos nothing makes ends meet
Cos time is money, time is money
And money buys time
On civilization street
Civilization street

Lyrics: Dick Lucas
Music: Culture Shock

Choices, Experiences and Various Views Through The Lens Of My Psych

A collection of poems written by Mark Catlin.

https://t.co/E0D72el9Io

Indoctrination??

Preconceptions fed
Closed minds
Chorused voices
Dog-whistle opinions
With back biting considered

Countered facts
Spreadsheet empathy
Cold ideology
Band-wagon mentality
And repression with impunity

Fragile unity
False Exceptions
Carnival of ignorance
Alongside
Headline ignominy

Wasted efforts
Deep ingrained lies
Social regression
And
Tissues of lies

Group hypnotherapy
Cultured insanity
Plastic hypocrisy
With
Corrupted heredity

Controlled hysteria
oxy-moron(ia)
Faked emotional
Leading to..
Future dystopia

Mark Catlin
May 2016

 

 

Fade Away

We live we die
And in between
We sit and wonder why
Why must we someday die?

Tried and tested
We live our lives
Like our dear parents did
Tied down and restricted

Of gods and guns
Do we need to die?
For Christ’s sake or for anyone?
They call it religion
And so we pray
For god to save us
From our evil ways
They call it self-decay

We live we die
In fear of gods and guns
And never knowing why
Why must we someday die?

So live your life
In fear of no one
We must have our say
Before we fade away

Lyrics: Dick Lucas
Music: Subhumans (UK)
From the album; Worlds Apart

Mask

Behind my eyes he stares and stares
Looking out at a world
For which he does not care.
He’s locked inside -this other me
A creature I dare not let free.
He rages, complains and paces my mind,
Towards me his words are always unkind.
Sometimes my anger
Nearly sets him sets him free.
This hidden thing – this other me.
What he might do I dare not ask.
He must always remain
Locked behind my mask.

Mark Catlin–November 2012

Twin Obsession.
My twin is inside bleeding
My twin is cut and scarred
He’ll tempt me-
Then he’ll punish me
For being feeble
Leave me here-
Alone-hollow

(Altered States–Lyrics)

 

 

 

Word Factory

In the silence of a grave
In the words of someone’s hero
A blue television screen
Words don’t mean anything
In this word factory
Replacement parts are free
Pictures of failed ideas
Only took me 15 years

All your words can not describe
The attitudes that lie inside
Subculture killed at birth
Got bored and slowly died
In the silence of a graveyard
Someone’s talking to himself
Oh! what a let down
Oh! what a boring let down!

Such a perfect face
Words are such a waste
let me paint a picture of you
And hang it in this empty place

Can I quote from your ideas
Hang your excuses on the wall
Devalued words
Blown up to mean sod all
oh! what a let down!
oh! what a boring let down!

Did you just say something?
It must have blown away
Got bored and slowly died
Forget what you have to say
Who wrote this anyway?

I’d rather look at you…..

Lyrics: Dick Lucas
Music: Subhumans
From the ; Time Flies (but aeroplanes crash) EP.

Subjective Acceptance

Of roads not taken
Of paths un-trod
Of life’s inertia
Fulfilled or not

Others pass by
In themselves absorbed
intransient myopia
Spun out of control

The pages fill
With tears that fall
The emptiness of a silence
That can capture us all

The wasted seconds
Seemingly timeless years
Looking into mirrors
Trying to embrace your fears……

Mark Catlin
March 2016.

Choices, Experiences and Various Views Through The Lens Of My Psych

A collection of poems written by Mark Catlin.

https://t.co/E0D72el9Io