I have a serious rock star crush on Nick Cave. He's #1 on my list of people I'd love to be stranded on a desert island with. I love him, his songs, his poetry, his brain and his books & novels, "King Ink (lyrics and plays)", "King Ink II (lyrics, poems and an essay)", "And the Ass Saw the Angel", and "The Death of Bunny Munro" which I have on CD of him reading the story. It's beyond amazing. He loves words perhaps more than I do and it shows in his writing and his songs.
The lyrics below are from my favorite song of his, "We Call Upon the Author to Explain" which is the first I ever heard his sing. He had me at "...he writes like wet paper mache". Swoon and double swoon... I highly recommend watching the live version on YouTube. I can't get enough of it. Who ever said poetry had to be boring? Not Nick Cave, for sure. xoxoxo
We Call Upon the Author to Explain
By Nick Cave
What we once thought we had we didn't, and what we have now will never be that way again
So we call upon the author to explain
Our myxomatoid kids spraddle the streets, we've shunned them from the greasy-grind
The poor little things, they look so sad and old as they mount us from behind
I ask them to desist and to refrain
And then we call upon the author to explain
Rosary clutched in his hand, he died with tubes up his nose
And a cabal of angels with finger cymbals chanted his name in code
We shook our fists at the punishing rain
And we call upon the author to explain
He said everything is messed up around here, everything is banal and jejune.
There is a planetary conspiracy against the likes of you and me in this idiot constituency of the moon.
Well, he knew exactly who to blame
And we call upon the author to explain
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!
Prolix! Prolix! Nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!
Well, I go guru-ing down the street, young people gather round my feet
Ask me things, but I don't know where to start
They ignite the powder-trail straight to my father's heart
And once again I call upon the author to explain
We call upon the author to explain
Who is this great burdensome slavering dog-thing that mediocres my every thought?
I feel like a vacuum cleaner, a complete sucker, it's fucked up and he is a fucker
But what an enormous and encyclopaedic brain
I call upon the author to explain
Oh rampant discrimination, mass poverty, third world debt, infectious disease
Global inequality and deepening socio-economic divisions
Well, it does in your brain
And we call upon the author to explain
Now hang on, my friend Doug is tapping on the window (Hey Doug, how you been?)
Brings me back a book on holocaust poetry complete with pictures
Then tells me to get ready for the rain
And we call upon the author to explain
I say Prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix.
Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!
He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way weirdly on wings and with maximum pain
We call upon the author to explain
Down in my bolthole I see they've published another volume of unreconstructed rubbish
"The waves, the waves were soldiers moving". Well, thank you, thank you, thank you
And again I call upon the author to explain
Yeah, we call upon the author to explain
Prolix! Prolix! There's nothing a pair of scissors can't fix!
