VINYL

P.O.

I’ve seen your face a thousand times
I’ve seen you hide in the crowd
I feel you run within my blood
But dreams are never quite enough
Not enough

All I want to believe in is the look in your eyes
All I want to believe in is your sigh
Let me stay here forever, let me stay here tonight
Let us stay here together for a while

No one knows you better than me

ST. PETERSBURG NOTES

The cigarette smoke in the air
The smouldering waves everywhere
Full of eyes
Prune-coloured eyes
In Moscow and St. Petersburg
The places turn into a blur
In your mind
A violent sigh

The salt water traces that burn on your skin
The words that you hid in letters never sent
Your heartbeat’s a rage never tamed, never shown
Wherever you go, you’re never alone

The alcohol glows for a while
It’s shining like gold in the light
Like a trace
Of halcyon days
Like ghosts in their circuits of loss
You carry your own little cross
As a shield
Against any need

Wherever you go, you leave something behind
The parts of yourself you’ve been trying to find
The smell of the night seems to stick to your skin
All locked in a cage, the journey begins

LESSER GODS

Suddenly
Came to see
Everything so differently
Children of lesser gods
Haunt my mind
All the time

Strangers inside of me
All distant memories
Turning another page
In the book of days
Rain falling in the night
Like teardrops from the sky
Falls like my imagery
Falling inside of me
Seemingly endless

Pauses inside of me
Empty of memory
All of the whys and hows
Coming full circle now
Rain falling in the night
Falls from an empty sky
Seemingly

A.S.A.P.

She’s turning away to lie still for a while
Just watching the clouds drifting by on the night sky
The skin of a girl and the face of a child
She touches my hand and suggests that we go out

She’s checking her face in the mirror
Adjusting her hair endlessly
The hard light of the elevator
Follows her out in the street
It’s too hot to sleep

40 VERSIONS OF THE TIME BEFORE

Falling asleep on a long distance flight
The images in the still of the night
A scent of waste
The sight of your face

A flicker of uneasiness
Will I be able to forget now?
Nurses and young girls in a row
How can I ever let you go now?

Like 40 versions of the time before
The ballerinas at my feet
The connoisseurs out in the street
You mean nothing to me

Just try to tell yourself the tale again
You tell yourself it’s all the same again

The city lights that came alive
The stars that fell down from the sky
You turned around within the light
Your skin so frail and lily-white
The centre of the Western world

A glamorous confusion zipped
Upon the parting of your lips
Intangible as every breath
As inescapable as death
It means nothing to me

SEMI

Hey baby
Let’s go out tonight
I don’t want to feel this way

Forget all your troubles
Forget them tonight

MINOR FRAME

Crowded Saturdays
Guest among ghosts
A girl made of shivers
Girls on their own

Rolled down shades
Sweet, harsh sweat
It’s the choked laughter
The unmade bed
All the things you might remember
Things you might forget

Looking young and old
In the same glance
Nervous tenderness
But steady at hand

Curly hair
And vinyl sounds
Guess it’s carved in the faces
Carved and painted down
A cigarette that’s burning
Along the line

I guess that she’s the one you won’t forget

ASH AND LEMON WATER

Ash and lemon water
Shining on your lips
Whatever you do
Don’t try to resist

It’s the kind of understanding that makes you feel uncomfortable
It’s the kind of circumstances that make you feel so old

You’re all immune
To crowded rooms
Your heart’s made of air
It’s easy to share

You’re sliding down
The open sky
A handle that breaks
Excitement’s a rage

TU ES MON IMAGE

Les rails de la nuit noire
Ils brillent comme lumière
Le monde ne dort jamais
Nourrit nos rêves
Mon image de toi
Est tombée du ciel

Les rêves paraissent continuer
Les chants intérieurs
Murmure des mots inouïs
Tu es mon image
Enfourche la lumière comme une vague

Les yeux d’océan, d’amant ne mentent jamais
Détournons nous comme des étrangers

Tout ce que je veux, c’est tout
Tout ce que je veux, c’est toi
Tu es mon image, c’est toi

Les rails de la nuit noire
Ils brillent comme lumière
Le monde ne dort jamais
Nourrit nos rêves
Mon image de toi
Est tombée du ciel

Tombée du ciel
Tu es mon image
Plus bleus que toute raison
Timides comme tout mensonge

Des yeux d’amants jamais secs
Tu es mon image

TOUT LE MONDE

April 4 turning 9.25
Writing words in the air
Lovers left with a cool rainy day
Places no longer there

Cardboard letters and manners that fail
Paris Odéon girls
Doors are closing
Lights still glowing with a weak innocence

PLAZA FLESH

Show me your true desires
Show me your plaza flesh
Pictures of people dying
Seem to have no effect anymore

I don’t really give as much as a toss anymore
I just want to hide away, never beg anymore
I don’t really count the days or the hours anymore
‘Cause she’s gone

Come now
Inject the daylight
Come here
Each little girl
At first
Just want to kiss you
But then I want it all
I want excess
Your plaza flesh

MUTED CRIES

The clouds in her eyes
A whispering need
Shedding her light all over me

Try recall the cities in twilight
The clubbing
The cigarette sky
As you notice the silence
The carvings
The memory lines
The muted cries

A jaded desire
A comforting need
Walls coming down
On callous beliefs

Try recall the cities in twilight
The clubbing
The cigarette sky
As you notice the silence
The carvings
The memory lines
The muted cries

CUE

The cities of light, the mirrors beneath the stars
In all of my life I’ve followed my untamed heart
It burns like a fever in the sleepless nights
Behind closed doors and behind closed eyes

The sea of the sky keeps shining a world of gold
The sweeter the song, the sadder the tale that’s told
Like a secret that I’ll never know
There’s a feeling that will follow me anywhere I go

I’ll walk on the waters
I’ll quiet the storms
With you as my reason
With you as my calm

EMBLEMATIC

I felt a sigh pass your lips
I saw the weight on your eyelids
Yet there you swagger and there you go
The mise-en-scène of your mercy drome

Too many images at play
Too many faces in a day’s work
Your sweet incentive, it’s so relentless
My grief’s been waiting for this day

No easy answers, only hard choices
I guess we came to the end of the road
Your random gender, my desolate needs
The splintered voices of lost beliefs

Trading commodities with no fixed presets
No traces left of a long gone starlet
Pornographers and secondhand consumer rights
All sons and lovers of 70’s delight

EXIT SIGNS

Cheekbones made of light
Somewhere it’s morning
The languid grey of night
Leaving the fragrance of a cry

Guess you’re sliding back into your life
The pressure on your eyelids
Patterns of waiting
Of suffocating
Replaying the same scene
Recalling the same dream

Cover any feeling
Cover any reason now
You’re breathing the same air
The same hysteria

Like a mirrorball that shines
Just another flash of light
Deteriorating
Forgetting the details
Rewriting the scene in your mind

The exit signs of light
She’s lying beside me
She’s hidden in a sigh
In the changes of a room

Guess she’s sliding back into her life
The pressure on her eyelids
The time that it’s taking
Before she awakens
It feels like a lifetime
A memory rewind

SOB STORY

Hide away
With somebody else by my side
It could have been anyone
It could have been you
A moment ago
Whatever you do
Whatever you say
It won’t be the same
Just won’t be the same

For someone like you
It’s all just a game
I guess it’s always the same
Whatever the stakes
It’s a reason to fail
A reason to hate

PANTOMIME

Feeling like Berlin 1929
So many feelings all caught up inside
Falling like cities seen through lovers’ eyes
Shaking with fever as they say goodbye

Each time you look
Somebody hides
All of the world
Up in the clouds

Feeling so stupid in this pantomime
All that I need is a pair of starry eyes

SCHWUND

Metaphysische Diskussionen in einer Bierstube: nichts ist, nichts wird, nichts ist nicht. Wir fassen uns selbst als rationale Wesen auf, die Tatsachen akzeptieren und Argumente respektieren, in Wirklichkeit jedoch glauben wir nur an das, an das zu glauben wir gelernt haben. Unsere Spiritualität ist eine mechanische Konstruktion.

Niemand kann gegen Vermutungen aufbegehren, die nicht formuliert worden sind. Weder sie noch ich. Wir sind an unsere Vermutungen gebunden. Gebunden an das gegenseitige fehlende Verständnis von uns selbst. Mutige Feiglinge sind wir, Gespenster aus dem Spanischen Bürgerkrieg, Fetzen von Erinnerungen an etwas, das einst geschah.

Wir sind das Geschehene. Wir sind Schwund.

METH

Wide eyes, swollen lips
She examines herself like she’s about to fade
Into air
Into all she disbelieves
Skin engraved with burns
Like a jaded belief about to disappear
There’s no need
To enact this line of ways

Trace the fading needs
The ebbing desirability
You’re turning away
Still hiding your face
Don’t you know your name?
Through all of these years it stayed the same
It’s always been you
I just couldn’t choose

Lines
She wets her lips
Leaning back with her arms wrapped around her knees
To adjust
To recalibrate the need
Words in pantomime
Eyes like shimmering marble
Pressure veiled by grace
Once again
Seems to settle for reserves

Don’t you feel the weight?
The slight hesitation, the delay
Aesthetic beliefs
Won’t cover this need
Don’t you know your name?
Through all of these years it stayed the same
Whatever I do
It’s always been you

Try to hold back the dawn
Try to hold back the morning
Hold back the night
If just for a while

MIMIC

The midnight music from a distant room
The morning light, it always comes too soon
Lick your tongue now
Against my desires
Late at night
Even the sounds, they shine

Winter tales that last forever
Summer rites that taste so sweet
Just another chance encounter
Of lines that meet
Of mimic needs

CRADLEMOON

The fire and the water keep mixing in my blood
The sons and the daughters seemed to give it all up
They got too tired of the waiting
Too tired to believe
In the promises that nobody keeps
I’ve seen a generation coming
I’ve seen a generation go
And the more I see, the less I know

I want to go to sleep
I want to drown in the deep of the cradlemoon
I want to touch the sky
I want to lie down and die
In the cradlemoon of the night

So I followed the shadows by the trail of the waste
And it led me into the heart, to the heart of these days
I never wanted to remember
Never wanted to believe
But you don’t ask why when the thunderheart beats
All I wanted was a reason
What I got was so much more
Couldn’t turn my back on the things that I saw

I want to go to sleep
I want to drown in the deep of the cradlemoon
I want to touch the sky
I want to lie down and die
In the cradlemoon of the night

In a world full of stories
There’s a time in the night
When the sky seems to break by the blink of the eye

PERFORMANCE

Fields of living fire
You’ll see me reaching into the air
The shadow of a survivor
I turn around but there’s no one there

I’ve been looking for reason
Some poisons taste like the sweetest wine
But all I ever believed in
Was all the things that I couldn’t find

The fires burn, erasing all the traces
And I spread the ashes all across the sky
Watching it all fall like rain through empty spaces
To the darkest corners of my heart and mind

Hear the cries and the whispers
The touch-and-go of another night
The afterglow of desire
Shines with the flame of a lesser light

A line of nameless faces
Fading away in a sea of time
Another time and place is
The last belief of performing mind

The fires burn, erasing all the traces
And I spread the ashes all across the sky
Watching it all fall like rain through empty spaces
To the darkest corners of my heart and mind

In a room without a view
There’s a story without end
Every time an answer shows
Then another hides away

ANOTHER HEART LAID BARE

Another heart laid bare on the doorstep to my exile
Another pantomime to disbelieve
I see your bended head, always humble in the daylight
Playing the servant’s role to never see

Of all the images that you left for my keeping
The one I like the most is the world outside
I never thought I would but the distance seems so perfect
I can’t deny the fact that I’m pleasantly surprised

Another victim cries, pointing fingers at the heavens
Declaring me the crime of centuries
The traces on my skin, they keep shining in the nighttime
A fingerprint on every memory

CUE

The cities of light, the mirrors beneath the stars
In all of my life I’ve followed my untamed heart
It burns like a fever in the sleepless nights
Behind closed doors and behind closed eyes

The sea of the sky keeps shining a world of gold
The sweeter the song, the sadder the tale that’s told
Like a secret that I’ll never know
There’s a feeling that will follow me anywhere I go

I’ll walk on waters
I’ll quiet the storms
With you as my reason
With you as my calm

SHE’S ETERNAL

I never wanted her to see
The world inside me
The world was turning round and round
Like something running out of time

She whispered “listen to the wind” and her breath burned my skin
I didn’t understand but it made me feel so still
There’s a tale of the night, there’s an unspoken word
And the story that she told couldn’t be explained in words

‘Cause she
She’s eternal
With her the world dies
And she
She’s eternal
With her the world dies
Let it die

A stone that falls into the sea
It falls inside me
These winterlands, they never change
They’re covered in this quiet grey

Voices calling in the night from the corners of my mind
From the desolated worlds I was trying to leave behind
Never thought I’d be returning to the place it all began
To the tainted heart of longing, till she took me by the hand

GOLDEN DAY LONGING

Sweet
Golden day longing
I feel it inside
Each breath that I take

High
High as the empty
It falls on my skin
To cover the burns

Turning silver
See the writing that runs down the wall
Book of reason
I don’t need it anymore

Sweet
Golden day longing
No words can explain
The feelings I have

SKINLINE

Days are burning like the rainbow
In a corner of the world
Your forever is a nevermore
And it turns the sky and the earth

The moon and the stars
The skin and the scars

Keeping your eyes on closing doors
Counting the shadows on the walls
Pieces of eight still fill your mind
Burning your skinline

Break the silence into stories
Tell them like a children’s tale
Always staying at a distance
As you bleed the light of the day

You’re lying awake
You lie there and wait

JANINA KATZ (1939–2013)

Janina Katz er født af polsk-jødiske forældre i Krakow. Det katolske ægtepar Mary og Stephen Priestly fra Dobczyce tog hende til sig, efter at hun som treårig blev smuglet ud af Plaszow koncentrationslejr i Polen i 1943. På det tidspunkt havde hun mistet næsten hele sin familie. Hun blev først klar over, at hun var jøde, da hun som seksårig blev forenet med sin mor, der havde overlevet 2. verdenskrig.

Som voksen studerede Janina Katz polsk litteratur og sociologi ved Universitet Jagielloński i Krakow, hvorefter hun i en årrække arbejdede som assistent ved Institut for sociologi og polsk filologi. Hun forlod Polen i 1969 og flyttede først til Tyskland, men allerede et år efter kom hun til Danmark, hvor hun bl.a. fungerede som litteraturanmelder og oversatte polsk skønlitteratur til dansk. I 13 år var hun ansat på Det Kongelige Bibliotek. Derudover arbejdede hun for polske eksiltidsskrifter, for Radio Free Europe og senere også BBC.

Janina Katz debuterede som forfatter 22 år efter, at hun var kommet til Danmark – som 52-årig – med digtsamlingen Min mors datter. Hun nåede at skabe et omfattende dansk forfatterskab, der især afspejler hendes polsk-jødiske oprindelse og oplevelser under 2. Verdenskrig. Katz har hovedsageligt skrevet på dansk trods hendes polske modersmål.

I 1993 modtog hun Statens Kunstfonds pris for årets bedste roman, Mit liv som barbar. I 1998 fik hun Beatrice Prisen og i 2002 blev hun tildelt Statens Kunstfonds livsvarige ydelse. I 2012 var hun indstillet til Nordisk Råds litteraturpris for digtsamlingen Skrevet på polsk.

Janina Katz døde den 18. oktober 2013.

BIBLIOGRAFI

* Min moders datter, Brøndum 1991.
* I mit drømmeland, Vindrose 1993.
* Mit liv som barbar, Vindrose 1993.
* Heltens tykke kone og andre historier, Vindrose 1994.
* Scener fra det virkelige liv, Vindrose 1995.
* Putska, Vindrose 1997.
* Den glade jødinde og andre historier, Vindrose 1998.
* Varme steder, Vindrose 1999.
* Fortællinger til Abram, Vindrose 2001.
* Mit liv som syfiluter, Vindrose 2001.
* Det syvende barn, Vindrose 2002.
* Landskabet det blev væk, Vindrose 2004.
* Drengen fra dengang, Vindrose 2005.
* Min spaltede tunge, Vindrose 2006.
* Længsel på bestilling, Vindrose 2009.
* Tilbage til æblerne, Vindrose 2010.
* Skrevet på polsk, Rosinante 2011.
* Endnu ikke allerede, Rosinante 2013.

EMBLEMATIC

I felt a sigh pass your lips
I saw the weight on your eyelids
Yet there you swagger and there you go
The mise-en-scène of your mercy drome

Too many images at play
Too many faces in a day’s work
Your sweet incentive, it’s so relentless
My grief’s been waiting for this day

No easy answers, only hard choices
I guess we came to the end of the road
Your random gender, my desolate needs
The splintered voices of lost beliefs

Trading commodities with no fixed presets
No traces left of a long gone starlet
Pornographers and secondhand consumer rights
All sons and lovers of 70’s delight

MUTED CRIES

The clouds in her eyes
A whispering need
Shedding her light all over me

Try recall the cities in twilight
The clubbing
The cigarette sky
As you notice the silence
The carvings
The memory lines
The muted cries

A jaded desire
A comforting need
Walls coming down
On callous beliefs

Try recall the cities in twilight
The clubbing
The cigarette sky
As you notice the silence
The carvings
The memory lines
The muted cries

TIN MUSIC

Tin music
Seeping out into the street
Jasmine scented, stagnant air
Hatching any need
While the summer lingers on you tell the tale

Still hiding
Just a face within the crowd
Running ‘round
Falling down
Guess it’s all the same
So embarrassed by the loss of all this weight

The intimacy of casual ease
It’s no relief

METH

Wide eyes, swollen lips
She examines herself like she’s about to fade
Into air
Into all she disbelieves
Skin engraved with burns
Like a jaded belief about to disappear
There’s no need
To enact this line of ways

Trace the fading needs
The ebbing desirability
You’re turning away
Still hiding your face
Don’t you know your name?
Through all of these years it stayed the same
It’s always been you
I just couldn’t choose

Lines
She wets her lips
Leaning back with her arms wrapped around her knees
To adjust
To recalibrate the need
Words in pantomime
Eyes like shimmering marble
Pressure veiled by grace
Once again
Seems to settle for reserves

Don’t you feel the weight?
The slight hesitation, the delay
Aesthetic beliefs
Won’t cover this need
Don’t you know your name?
Through all of these years it stayed the same
Whatever I do
It’s always been you

Try to hold back the dawn
Try to hold back the morning
Hold back the night
If just for a while

RETROGRADE

Still lying wide awake
Imagining your face
A cool, white offering
Caught in this retrograde

Lips drawn and quivering
Veins faintly shimmering
All pierrots in rags
Spastics and acrobats
Discredit every move
Condolences to prove
The friction and the heat
Your genuine belief

A gravitational pull that never seems to decrease

FORGETTING THE DETAILS

Cheekbones made of light
Somewhere it’s morning
The languid grey of night
Leaving the fragrance of a cry

Guess you’re sliding back into your life
The pressure on your eyelids
Patterns of waiting
Of suffocating
Replaying the same scene
Recalling the same dream

Cover any feeling
Cover any reason now
You’re breathing the same air
The same hysteria
Like a mirrorball that shines
Just another flash of light
Deteriorating
Forgetting the details
Rewriting the scene in your mind

The exit signs of light
She’s lying beside me
She’s hidden in a sigh
In the changes of a room

Guess she’s sliding back into her life
The pressure on her eyelids
The time that it’s taking
Before she wakens
It feels like a lifetime
A memory rewind

RED LIPS, MARBLE EYES

Lights from cars slowly driving by
Her eyes reflecting a desert sky
Lover’s rental
Sentimental child
Guess you’re hiding
Down along the line
Dresses in fields
Shirts on the sea

Imagine yourself then
Imagining yourself now
Red lips and marble eyes
Bourgeois bohemia high

They say nobility grows out of contained emotion
Well she feels a bit bloated right now
Skin like alabaster
Swollen like a plaster
I guess she’d rather look like somebody else
It’s like a seal
A heap of needs

Imagine yourself then
Imagining yourself now
Another poster girl
Fake fur and high-heel spurs

All of these sons of Cain and girls with wings
Still staring at the ceiling
The illegitimate desires never fade

SITE SPECIFIC

Incestuous needs
A tender display on your pillow
Diverging beliefs
Written all over your face
The look in your eyes
A desolate kingdom of reason
The crown that you hide
Revealing a pagan belief

Enemy
Find the key
Anomaly

PHASEWIDE

Look at us now
This is what we’ve become
She can’t recognize anyone
Her arms ‘round her knees
Her eyes closed to see

Don’t expect too much
This is what we’ve got
Let’s just lie here
Watch the lights appear

Cosmetic disapproval
Descending like snow
The residue of daylight
Flickers in the street
Flickers in the heat

Don’t expect too much
This is all we’ve got
Let’s just lie here
Watch the lights appear

DEAD HORSES ON A BEACH

Dead horses on a beach
Red starfish at my feet
This used to be the place
Where we would hide away

The mirrors of the streets
The cafes where we’d meet
All places in the past
Where we would hide away

I used to believe
That there would be a way
I used to believe
That I would find a way
To cure this pain

Dead letters make up words
Scar tissue seals the hurt
This used to be the place
Where we would hide away

I keep running to the shore
I keep calling out for more
Blood-driven to the sand
To see it wash away

Keep running to the shore
To try to see your face
Keep running to the shore
Still trying to find a way
To cure this pain

Life doesn’t cease to amuse just because people die or get crippled
Neither it stops being sad just because someone laughs
Someone sing me a song
Somebody tell me a joke
Make me cry, make me bleed
Make me wake up and see that this dream ain’t for real

All these suicidal wrecks
These aristocrats of death
Keep running to the shore with me
The bodies at my feet
The horses in my dreams
Somebody take them away

Dead horses on a beach
Red starfish at my feet
This used to be the place
Where we would hide away

Keep running to the shore
Keep calling out for more
Blood-driven to the sand
To see it wash away

RATHER QUOTABLE THAN HONEST

Like a beacon in the gutter
Simulation’s your ideal
Rather quotable than honest
Seems to be the way you live

You tell me women fake their orgasms
Men entire relations
Well, I couldn’t really give a damn ‘bout your moral indignation
It’s a sign of constipation
Some Darwinian frustration

You apply divine intention
To your spontaneity
Even add a little reason
To the lack of sanity

You tell me women base their promises
Entirely on emotions
Well, you’re such a great authority
In all your self-indulgence
You’re so stupid it’s insulting
Even your clothing is revolting

Pardon my French
But you’re too lazy to be a nihilist
At best you’ll make a travesty
A tragedy that needs to be unzipped
You’re a male, but you’re a cunt
Second only to no one
Yea right, well take advice
The only thing that alcohol does not preserve for long is the state of dignity

I raise my hand
To swear a sacred oath, to make a toast
For wasted times, for blinded eyes
For tragedies and suicides
Yet the ride was my delight
It’s the story of my life
Oh God, I need advice
Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying streams like a thunderstorm against the wind

MILFS, CUM AND SCHOPENHAUER

What a wonderful mixture of glamour and pain
In a room with the rich and the famous, the useless and vain
People reading each other like price tags, oh what a game
First the artist’s a painter that drinks, then a wino that paints

Give me MILFs and cum and Schopenhauer any day of the week
Give me white bread and dark beer to avoid more of this

Luciferian figures and shemales wherever you go
Plastic spoons on a table that’s covered with traces of snow
Someone lights up a swaggering reefer, look at him choke
Hear the sound of your brain cells go “pop” by the smell of the smoke

Better check the urban dictionary, the guy is out of hand
His excitement and vocabulary need coordinated plans

Remember that song
They used to play everywhere we went
At airports, in homes
From Zurich to Munich
Girls pulling off their panties
Yet they don’t
They leave you all on your own
Begging for mercy at the throne of the poster stand

From barbarity to decadence at incredible speed
Skip the whole state of civilization to suit current needs
Such a marvellous scientific study, it’s such a relief
‘Cause it proves what I’ve known all along:
That everyone – else – is a hypocrite

A GARBOESQUE LEANING

What a Garboesque leaning towards seclusion
What a glorious way to believe in yourself
What an elegant way to uphold your composure
Such erratic behaviour all veiled in a mist

Sliding down rainbows
Pale moons keep rising
Tongue-tired conversing
In Saturn draped autumns

No more kitchen sink dramas or sweet temptations
No more coloured belief in the way that you liked
All this Vaseline might get it on, but it’s filthy
It’s the caricature of a heart made of gold

Sliding down rainbows
Pale moons keep rising
Tongue-tired conversing
In Saturn draped autumns

Good-looking boys on runaway trains
Hiding their hard-ons with the same old phrase
Still cracking cheeks with wildfire smiles
Suggested behaviour in lingerie styles

There were bags and mags and crazy stuff
We drank some wine and we laughed a lot
We talked about all the glamour and pain
First Lana Turner and then Cheryl Crane

What a Garboesque leaning towards seclusion
What a glorious way to believe in yourself
What an elegant way to uphold your composure
Such erratic behaviour all veiled in a mist

Sliding down rainbows
Pale moons keep rising

FEELING LIKE A GOD

What is not worth saying is what you sing about
What is not worth believing is what you rant about
A failed suicide, you can’t get much lower than that
What is revenge but love caught with its trousers down

Can’t say that you love someone
Then rape them all ferociously
Yet that’s what people do all the time
Forgiveness might appear a little too extravagant
Behaving like a pig while feeling like a god
Feeling like a god

Better to be hated for all of the things you are
Than appreciated for what you are not
Oh vanity, it’s the uncertainty of arrogance
All very cultural, ’cause really nothing’s going on

Can’t say that you love someone
Then rape them all ferociously
Yet that’s what people do all the time
Forgiveness might appear a little too extravagant
Behaving like a pig while feeling like a god
Feeling like a god

What is the perfect pleasure?
Exquisite in its nature
Yet it never satisfies you

Scratch in the surface, you’ll only find a little more
Is there a difference – artist, criminal or whore?
A sympathetic worn-out understanding of living
Won’t get you anywhere, not anywhere at all

Yet you’re feeling like a god

THE STENCH OF YOUR PITY

Don’t make me suffer the stench of your pity
Don’t make me suffer the sound of your voice
Don’t make me embarrassed on behalf of your conscience
Don’t make me offer you any way out

You made me feel so obsolete
You made me feel so incomplete
Half socialite, half necrophile
You only desire what you despise

So absent-minded it seems contemplative
So absent-minded it seems all profound
Convincing the public of your noble nature
Taking advantage of naïve rebounds

Dove of delight, pigeon of peace
Relieving yourself on all you meet
All high and dry, up in the sky
The smell of your piss all over me

HOPE IS A LACK OF INFORMATION

Hope is a lack of information
A spirit of temptation
A flicker inside of each heart
Even though you don’t believe it
Still you’re goaded on to seek it
Revolted by all of its claims

Hope is the absence of summation
Disregarded calculations
A whimper inside of your heart
Though you might want to believe it
It will fail you when you need it

Someone is said to have died for the sake of your lies
Well, be my guest – what a feast, what an armoured belief
Bring out your credos and songs, your perverted mischief

All these excessive delights make you cry like a child
I need to see nothing else than the look in your eyes
It’s so pathetic, my God, it makes me puke at the sight

What does it do to you?
Making a fool of you!
Look what it does to you

Where is the love – and the beauty, the truth we all seek?
But in the mind of the stupid, the feeble and weak

It makes me sick to my stomach, my bones and my core
To see you drool in delusion while begging for more
To see you high as a kite on sedated beliefs
Just a sick little junkie in search of relief

Don’t lay your hands on me!
Hope is leprosy!
Stay away from me
Filthy leprosy

Hope is a lack of information
A mere interpretation
A flicker inside of your heart

NOTES ON SELF-DESTRUCTION

Self-destruction remains
The quickest way to regain
Control over your destiny
It’s so blatantly clear

Give me a rule and I’ll break it
Show me a fool and I’ll shake ’im
Erratic censorship rules
An angry ass ridicules
Time to burn off some fuel

Do-re-mi-pla-ce-bo
Baby, mama, girl, ho
Could you please make up your mind?
Your metaphorical ass kicking is going nowhere
It’s surely not as in Santa comes to town

It’s all men imitating women
Women imitating men
People are imitating other people’s lives
Without the caricature of yourself where would you hide?
I’m gonna tear your playhouse down

So whenever in pain
Self-destruction’s the game
You’ll fake your way into history
Though you’re only a parody

It’s all a matter of spleen
Of downright dirt, be obscene
There ain’t no easy way out
You rave and twist and you shout
Gonna go down real loud

Do-re-mi-pla-ce-bo
Baby, mama, girl, ho
Could you please make up your mind?
Your metaphorical ass kicking is going nowhere
It’s surely not as in Santa comes to town

It’s all men imitating women
Women imitating men
People are imitating other people’s lives
Without the caricature of yourself where would you hide?
I’m gonna tear your playhouse down

Let’s turn the light off now
Let’s pass the night on now
In just a little while
We’ll reach the midnight hour

IF POWER ASKS WHY

If power asks why
Then power is weakness
If silence is shy
Then silence is cheap

For so long
I’ve seemed to manage this role
Consider
How do you short-circuit control?

High status women
And narcissistic men
Articulated
They do it all again
Salon des Refusés
Depressingly out of date

If power asks why
Then power is weakness
If power abides
Then power is lost

To conquer
You need to silence the prey
Relentless
There’s nothing left here to betray

A lover’s rental
Don’t get too serious
If sentimental
You’ll get delirious
Salon des Amateurs
Such a despicable waste

A vague embarrassment at play
Profound desires came too late
Cosmetic changes all the way
The comfort zone of silent hate

A female victim once again
Innocence caught by the male gaze
Such an ambiguous display
Enacted by a renegade

She’s nodding tentatively towards you
Recalling how she once adored you
She’s running out of social graces
She’s running out of fitting phrases

A figure carved out by uncertainty
It’s the veneer of jaded hostility
Just an illumined hunger admiring itself
She’s out of breath