Who’s been sleeping in my head?

I returned back to the world last night

And someone had stolen my dreams

I’d left them alone with 

my keys and my phone

yes someone has stolen my dreams

 

the truth’s been lined up against the wall again

and honesty’s been shot in the back

she’s been left to die

like a random drive by

yes honesty’s been shot in the back

 

Insanity is rampant and hatred’s in vogue

The future’s been strangled at birth

with no golden days

just the sun’s final rays 

yes future’s been strangled at birth

 

Wisdom’s been banished and empathy vanished

and the yellow brick road has been sold

to a small group of men

who’ll no doubt sell it again

yes the yellow brick road has been sold

 

I switched on a screen and wanted to scream

whilst watching the whole thing implode

but no bang or whimper

there was barely a simper

when watching the whole thing implode

 

A friend slid off the earth today

Hardly anybody noticed he’d gone...

Cºuntrycide

Cºuntrycide is a spoken word piece, initially written to recognise the decision of the British people voting to leave the European Union. However, Post Covid, post Johnson, post Truss and with the country currently in the venal/vicious grasp of the most right wing government the UK has ever had, it is a requiem for my country.

credits

released August 31, 2023 
Cºuntrycide

Words - Andrew Franks
Music - Andrew Franks/Jenny Douglas
Voices - Andrew Franks, Melissa McLeod, Jenny Douglas.
---
Recorded at The Factory Studio, Mona Vale.
Engineered - Ben Johnson
Mixed - Ben Johnson

Click image to download...

Day in the life...

 The Beach Generation

Nobody

else

is

awake 

-

Atlantis

is 

closed

for 

another

two

hours 

-

We

glide

barefoot

to

the

beach 

-

We

are

the

Beach

Generation

...

sprawled

on

the

sand

once

again.

For Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A picture of a long gone world

 
                            Stood at the top of the long world

lighthouse at my feet
            chalk cliffs plummeting into the grasp of the relentless
                                    Aspidochelone in the depths
                        the gorse leaning towards life at 45°
                                    rainbows plucked from other hemispheres

   words shimmer in the refracted/reflected light

                    the steam rises from the Cappuccino machine

 plumes of Marlboro smoke emerge and merge

                            a huddle of young poets sit

        amazed and deranged in the hurly-burly hours of a weekday morning

                                    the haunted shadows of deep night erased by the golden cacophony of sunrise

            the book is held open and the words are shared...

... there are others out there, we are not alone.

                                  

                                

You shall find love

You shall find love (for T.Emin)

In the swirl of oil

the breadth of canvas

a swish of a brush ---

You shall find love.

In the depths of

his warmest embrace.

In the ashtray of 

the last cigarette.

In the bottom of

the final glass.

You shall find love.

In the birdsong,

in the breeze, 

in the howl,

in the silence and 

in the vapours 

that trail behind us...

 

What do all these poems mean?

Who knows... 

They are just hastily composed polaroids that will fade in the glare of the ever brightening sun. They will become bleached and distant until they completely disappear from view. A series of unread suicide notes, football commentaries, record reviews and postcards from the edge of the Tasman Sea. A handful of uncoded Enigma messages, a hidden cache of cassette tapes, badly recorded demos, morse-code transcripts from a ghost ship. They slipped under the radar, got lost in the traffic, flew south for winter and managed to lie low for the duration. 

They mean nothing. 

Unless they mean something to you... 

Day in the life... (September 2020)

Release

-- Being 

in love

with love.

Might just

be better

than being 

in love...

Meanwhile,

A man walks alone

on Curl Curl beach.

---- Modern Mersault

contented, passive

a low flame.

Sanctuary

release. 

Day in the life of a Poet (September 2020)

One day Summer

-- Shingle shards
dig deep into 
tanned back.

Alone with the 
pages browned 
by age and 
the sea mist
that drifts 
along Seaside
into my
open window ----
Moonraker.
--- Time to swim
before the call
and clamour.

I miss the
solitary days
on the beach 
below the 
Holywell Beach Huts.

--- In the quiet days
at the end of 
the affair.

Day in the life of a Poet (August 2020)

Curzon 2

- The review said

it was a film

about why love fails.

-- I don’t think 
I’ve got the

time to spare. But

I like the actors.

--- And it is set in Seaford

so I would love the setting.

A long Sunday walk 

on the shingle.

-- with lots of silent pauses

and looking out to sea.

Very me

very you.

Day in the life of a Poet (August 2020)

West Pier

-- Honestly though,

I’ve seen better days

we all have.

Worn and forlorn.

--- the channel 

salt corrodes and 

public neglect 

is all pervading.

I dream of the 

gold days, bank 

holiday weekends,

sad and beautiful

women walking 

down my spine.

-- I was the pride 

of Sussex. 

---- These 

days I stare at the

distant French coast

and dream of 

Calvados and 

sand at my feet.

Day in the life of a Poet (August 2020)

--Timeframe, years
pursued by Albina
--- Fresh cut grass
heralds spring, lightness
sprinkled into a
dulled mind.
Highlife guitar
shimmering above
the sadness of the day.
---- The piles of pallets
abandoned on the hard shoulder.
Fading shadow of tears
dissolving
    on the cold shoulder.
-- A flurry of poems arrive
too late.

Day in the life of a Poet (August 2020)

Lost
in
the
length
and
breadth
of
a
Summer's
day.

The
butterfly
lands
gently
on
the
back
of
her
hand.

Day in the life of a Poet (August 2020)

Another sunrise, another portal...

the wild shouts of the bikini girls
all Thunderbird wine
and "ain't it fine".
It might be winter over here and summer over there
but I still remember YOU
each precious solstice
fleeing down memory lane
like a California sunset.

Day in the life of a Poet (August 2020)

The Mask

I can see you now
two-way mirror
trying to convince yourself
that all will be well
looking round the room
hoping someone
will catch your
bloodshot eyes
the dull lids
conceal nothing
the hollow words
betray everything

only highlighting

the yawning chasm
between truth and you.

Lockdown - Day #24

A disarray of Seagulls on the sun wounded rooftops behind Leaf Hall, 

early on a Sunday morning. 

 

The crack-clank-rattle of the milk float, chinking up Marine Road. Hungover Mods swaying on lampposts, benign besuited beggar men, drifting towards the damp cradle of the beach.

Frosted kisses burned into the back of the heart. 

She never looked that beautiful, until now.

Darkened back room, sunflower curtains

and half a bottle of oakysmoke, 

easy to remember, 

inevitable she’ll forget.

These streets, eroded by memory, occasionally swept by the council. Blood money loose change, sluiced down the drains… ghost barmen still serving in the Burma Star Club…

A sweet tender suffocation, another cancer, another death.  The afternoon haze collapses beneath the ash swirls, buffeted by the prevailing South-Westerly.

Humour me and pretend we are all free...

Seafront bus shelter poets

Huddled Marlboro warm
Tennents Super soaked
buried winter deep
in the seafront mire

waiting for the number 3
that left Cherry Gardens
a long time ago...


http://www.andrewfranks.com.au

Funeral Blues (aka Muffle all the bells, monitor the internet)

Muffle all the bells, monitor the internet

Prevent the people from protesting with a juicy threat

Silence the Sound-Systems with un-holstered guns

Bring out the corpse, let the celebrities come.

Let police choppers circle observing overhead

Pepper spray protesters with the cry She is dead

Put a quarter mile exclusion zone round the streets of St Pauls,

Let the coppers wear black DM’s for that kick in the balls

 

She was Finchley via Grantham, a bullet-proof vest

Her twenty hour mantra there is no time to rest

The long days, dark nights, her screech and bitter song

I thought her brutal siege would last forever: I was wrong

The Polling booths are not wanted now: shut down everyone

Close the mines that survived not dismantled by The Sun;

Pour away the whiskey and sweep up the barricades

For nothing good will ever come until her legacy fades.

 A. Franks 17th April 2013

After W.H.Auden ‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’

 

Martello Melancholy...

On a Sunday night on the other side of the world, six years into exile. A 10 second news report on a local station and I'm gone... lost. 

I miss you.

Silence

When the buses stop running,
the waves cease pounding,
the rain stops pouring and
the wind stops wrapping itself
around the legs of the pier

we take a short breath and hold it
whilst all around us
the silence of our memories
continues to bury themselves
into the foundations of our future...