The Country Bizarre is a wonderful publication from the early 70s, including poetry and gardening tips. It has been scanned by the fine folk at Caught by the River. Check it out...
image by dan ryan, tech polaroid doyen/environmental champion
Cease to Participate
by Daniel Crockett
There was a moment there, between the
Stopped clock and the stopcock drop
Silence
Golden like that gargantuan Buddha
A reminder that we shoulda
Violently
Flown the coop, bust the nest
Climbed the shelves
We coulda been, golden
Ourselves
Bathed on dawntouched roadsides
In gutters, candlelit youth
But the truth - out there, rubbed in faces with
a vandal's
lack of care
Evaporates like promises, to the four corners of the air
Is it enough just to trust
Blindly
In the burdens we all bear?
In ambition
Or scream a question to the earth
Why Will You Not Love Me?
Reality found;
A vision
Administered like a sticking plaster
Bound
A wrapped, rapt
ballgag for the mouth
To support this sagging flesh
The light bright gets doused
Until
(this a guess)
Saul rubs his hands, the fire takes,
Then roars
You will not contain me!
The flames howl in their lick
It kicks like a mule
This reality slick
Framed in a bastard square
Like
The guts of
any
good
flick
The streets whisper like a lunatic in the dawn
Suddenly awake
It beats on the bars
And shakes
No concession to a yawn, or a stretch
Just the steady and sick momentum
Of cars
Declaring their hate
There is nowhere to hide in the cold morning light
Get out get out before the night
That's it
I'm done
I will not wait
It's over
We're through
Don't shut the gate
Believe it
It's nigh
I cease to participate
Good morning, from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra
The battle of water and land
Under darkling moon the dayblack sea
Extended an arm to silence the sun
Gold the residual glow and hiss
As that disc, extinguished, fell
Then the water jumped up to roar;
I am leviathan, the sea is within me
I declare war on this, mother land
Then the peagreen water commands
To drown the lichened rocks, the sand
To smother
To strangle all in a yawn of ice
Rigor Mortis brung with dawn
I am leviathan, the sea is within me
Nothing but birds remain, pinwheeling
Keening for their loss of perch
Angry at the sea come stealing
Tired beneath the church of sky
Until at last, exhausted they fall
And go under, evermore
go under, evermore
*From the 'Battles' series
