Paul J Penton – Songwriter

He wrapped his fingers around the swirling grooves of the handle, feeling the divots between the splines of leather. Becoming one with the weave, letting the whip become an extension of his arm. He had the vision, but the reality was just not there yet, he tried to recall what the instructor had said – it sent him into a mild shiver at the fear of failure.

The smell of newly minted leather briefly caught in his nose as he brought it up to head height before levering his arm down again with a flicking wrist. The end of the bullwhip stroked out before him like an electricity cable severed in a storm – its untrammeled energy sweeping through the air in a frenzy – but once again he had not been able to snick the air with that familiar sound.

The tail now sat on the ground like a dormant snake – he knew he could make it come alive and bite the air with a venomous snap! Concentration kept his eyes starting at some far off spot as he ran thorugh it again in his mind. His mouth was dry through uninterrupted effort, the hand drawn back, the flick of the wrist and YES! The roll of thunder that roared from the whip sprang around the quadrangle, echoes seemed to come leaping back off walls to applaud his success….

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Tiny fingers begin wrestling with the sweet as presented by the well meaning grandparent. Pudgy fingers grapple with the cellophane protector, it crinkles and crackles as it disrobes from the shining naked paddle, soon to be doing table tennis in his mouth. He guides it in with no thought other than the sweet sucking pleasure that will soon erupt. There’s no finesse here, no aircraft being guided into a docking bay , just a rough thrust into his mouth where the bulb of taste now sits flat like a manta ray across the four taste divisions of his tongue.

Saliva begins to engulf the paddle of pleasure that is now a dolphin gliding along on the shallows of his lagoon tongue, the paddle pointing out of his mouth ready to fire at anyone who dares invade this territory. His face now illuminated in a fire of pleasure, chubby little cheeks puffed out with a tinge of red. All seems good with the world. He moves the paddle around and it seems to have dissolved into a a web of stickiness, a limpet attached to his tongue he pulls it out of his mouth and looks at its shining gooiness and pokes a finger in its middle. The finger drags away from the surface, as if he’s popped his paw into a jar of honey. This thick molasses of sugary strings now lift off from the traffic light red raspberry confection he is converting to a river of runny sugar.

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He stands on the edge of a huge rocky outcropping with the sun setting behind him holding a pencilled cigarette in hand, a few whisps of smoke diffuse into the air. He’s a ‘real’ man, with those tight faded Levis and that faux leather jacket, just him and the wilderness. He’s a real man. That’s how it used to be once anyway, these days, that advert would be shot down in flames, especially the cigarette. Smoking is definitely not ‘in’ anymore – I seem to remember that was for Marlboro’s. I tried them one time and thought they tasted odd and never did again. I think they might have had the theme from the magnificent seven playing behind the ad, he might even have galloped off on a horse.

Levi’s this was always the aspiration in high school and formative years. Lee jeans didn’t make it . Wrangler were second best- but Levis, Levis meant donning a face mask and robbing a bank. I didn’t want to face the problem of years of jail or having to breath through a nylon stockinged veil. While other brands were say $20 Levi’s would be sixty, neatly arranged in pancakes at ‘Just Jeans’ or the Myer mens dept. They look so crisp, fresh and new , babies just arrived from the production line – were they still made in the U.S.A. in those days? I used to feel threatened when I walked into those stores like just jeans or Jeans west – was I on the right side of the store?: The boys or the girls sides – and what was fashion anyway to me. All this for a pair of blue scissors that would dangle from lumpy hips. Sure I appreciate shapely bottoms and shapely legs but that wasn’t what I had to fit into these tubes of swelling fabric with zippers that would zip with golden brassy locking teeth. These days there’s so many styles, then it was one or two – hell they even come ‘pre -ripped’ these days. I prefer to see those cobwebs of fabric start to shred through real use….

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March 29

metaphor and object – a relationship – how is a relationship like a carpet or a car or a red motorcycle…

bringing the unconscious into the process. the possibility is there to serve us at all times and we just have to instruct or command it what to do…..

Upton street a milk bar with faded ink-jet ads in the window once loved, there’s graffiti on the wall nobody cares much about this place it’s going to the dogs…

A realisation:

thinking a bout a house I used to live in
fifteen years ago
thinking of the things we used to do,
why does it seem like yesterday?
who came and stole that time away

If I could just reach back
and stroke one of those memories
and let the sensations come to me
like it was yesterday

how did all those years just dissolve away
and where am I today?
and where do I want to be?
what’s important to me?
Have I really got anything to say?

There’s those weekend cyclists with their constrictive Lycra they ride to work all week so they can be heroes here along the boulevard the race down the bay the informal one on Sunday

Standing on the bridge that spans the esplanade at St.Kilda
with the palm trees waving
and traffic screaming
and out ahead of me
the sand spit’s a pointing finger,
the marina and the pier,
and a lot of sails punching through the air,
a light breeze,
a lot of shipping containers on the horizon.
The wind over my ears reminds me of a jet aircraft passing over head at quite a height.

Jellyfish propelling themselves with their bulbous heads, jelly fishes of light shimmer under the water when the waves come in, the sand blows up in a bloom and settles again, pulses and chains of light like square cyclone fencing. The waves coming in remind me of the embrace of a lover the waves seem to wrap around the body of the water fencing

Hundreds of finger sized fish moving moving in synchronous turns where someone has cast a line and the bait is calling.

overheard: “Young doctors these days just rely on tests, rather than examinations”

An A.M. radio scratches out a tune at the end of the pier and some people who frequent the salvos mission are there

some of their conversation…….

“you got anything to eat”

“no, I ate it all last night when I was ‘Bongin’ [smoking marijuana]”

A casting incident as one of them throws back the rod without looking almost collecting a roughish passerby, a threat of violence in the air

The girl says ” A guy dropped his wallet, I was gonna have it, I reached down to pocket it and he turned, I said here you are Misterr”

“who’s coming to sacred heart for lunch?”

The one with the plaid cap nods…

What’s the story here… why are they in this position…. misfortune, alcoholism, abuse? what’s going on?

The pier and fishing is there a bigger story is this a metaphor for something? What are they fishing for – a better life what exists here for them

he’s slipping now between radio station the static is stabbed with opera and hip hop and a tinny tiny voice from the football

he says the “radios’s had it – like me.”

The sailboats large foresail’s made of wood quite angular sails.

Getting to the mountains is not hard -it s getting free of the spaghetti chains fo the city, the roads that loop and coil like annacondas squeezing the life out of you..

Spaghetti loop roads
and lorry loads
of consumer goods that come from China
that make our lives much finer

are we just living in a created need
something born of a marketing seed

A boat being pulled along by another – is its motor broken – it’s good to have friends around when your motor’s broken.

Who’s top of the class all these years later I wonder?
who’s doing well as expected
was it the one who got all the girls
or the brainy kid quiet in the corner

arranging music by colour

is Kick drum Black/deep blue?
is a guitar yellow or green if it’s distorted is it bright Red/ crimson red
is a string wash lime green
a snare light blue
are toms purple
cymbals gold
piano green
a snare drum yellow

Passing a reeking garbage bin the smell of orange peels

Tile son the wall of a pub reflect the road back in shattered curly pieces

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Even though there’s nothing obvious there seems to be a shimmering force field separating the painting on the wall from the observer, an unspoken rule about not getting to close and definitely ‘don’t touch’ screaming from every corner of the frame. The room is full of Victorian era paintings. Reflected sounds of hushed whispers and squeaky gym shoes ascend into a dome of heaven above, light drips down through small square slits of glass adorned with a swell of over head lamps that sizzle with a high voltage electricity pylon frisson about them, much like the unseen shimmer in front of the paintings.

They all seem to be clothed in ornamental or hunting dress, a crimson red jacket with a black helmet pitted into his crotch and off white riding jodhpurs. The varnish has long since begun to wither and yellow and it needs restoration, cracks mottle the surface like a dry river bed, but once this undergrowth was a moist fresh delta of oil and linseed, the air reeking with the pungent smell and taste of creation. The artists dined on palette of brushes, spatulas and scrapers to bring this one to fruition. Hands by the end of each day would be a claggy mass of mixed pigments that would not wash out in water – perhaps distilled whale oil might have worked. The varnish mixed up as a combination of linseed and egg white, a gloopy mass that hung off the brush in thick spiderwebs , engulfing the glowing colours beneath now yellowed with nicotine stained age.

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“Yes thanks I WILL have cream with that”, the bowl hovers over the remaining pieces of the steaming pie that fills the air with the magic of apple, cinnamon and fresh baked crust. The bundle of cream arrives and I cup it from below and above it reminds me of a concrete pouring funnel from a building site… I tip it sideway while scooping through with the large metal spoon. That’s it, a beautiful pile of fresh cream to cement the meal in place. Already my mouth tingles with anticipation, little rockets of pleasure are already exploding on my taste buds. As the spoon slices the pie and cream into a manageable segment the pleasure bells begin to ring, cascading coloured lights seem to ignite behind eyeballs as the fatal combination of crusty pie base, sweetly sugared apple and arresting cream all mingle in my mouth.

The cream, seems to be the sensible one of the lot, almost like the smartest kid in class, the other two components are goofing off around my mouth making paper aeroplanes and passing notes to each other. The cream is stern and serious and just wants to get on with the job and ‘tone down’ those unruly boys. I let my little finger run round the edge of the spoon removing some last remnants of slimy cream before I plunge the pick up device again. I have a real Himalaya of cream going on here, it’s white tufted peaks aspire to the sky-light which filters down dimming evening light. The glowing warmth of the kitchen pot belly makes it all seem somewhat surreal….

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A sergeant major mustering the troops before inspection, aligning the volunteers, the pages falling into line beneath the salute he gives. Shiny disciplined polished directions perfect in angular semaphore The glove of discipline falls easily over a coddling of warm fresh photocopy paper, it’s edges curling like autumn leaves, the print drying like rain that’s tumbled from a thundery summer squall.

Falling on the desk after being picked up its a small percussion section, a triangle amongst the side drum of the pen holder and the Bass drum monotone of the computer monitor. It’s a silver bullet to solve the problem of unruly pages, that werewolf is dead in its tracks. The pages bump and grind against this ‘59 Buick bumper bar of chromium order. A race track around which the light dances, the reflected world changes shape as it moves through the air, the under side only reflecting the blank world of page 1…

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In summer the sun gets up a long time before you want to and being in a tent you have no choice other than to wrap a towel around your head – it leaks in through the slipping green vinyl weave, a fog of light, and, being in the middle of the bush you can’t help but be disturbed by the chorus of birds and crows and Kookaburras that cackle and chortle and welcome in the new day. After a tennis match of indecision about whether to continue lying there awake or to get up and do something there’s the unzippering to do.. it’s almost as complex as unwrapping a Christmas present, the way the tiny leaves that pass for zippers are hidden away somewhere – you ruffle away in your polycarbonate sleeping bag which scrunches against the li-lo that’s half deflated during the night… Camping is it worth it?

When you do get the flap open you crawl through the entry tunnel it makes you remember why you’re here – it’s just you and a mountain and the rising sun and the long shadows that are casting arms around the hills. The air is serene, the smell of fresh vegetation bites at you in a new born sort of way. Droplets of dew sit upon the veins of hopeful leaves, and the ground crackles underfoot as you make your way to the gas cooker. It thumps its way to life for that first cup of tea. The pot cracking and groaning in the transition to heat as the earth cracks and groans with each ray of sunlight that rejuvenates its sleepy surface.

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They used to pre-cook them in the shop I grew up in, so it was quicker to serve them. They sat in a lardy pile on a silvered sandwhich of steel, waiting for the scoops that would scrape dull along the bottom edge, then the chips were plunged to their death in boiling oil, the air would crackle with a thousand kisses as the super heated oil did its job. Wriggling squirming chips, bobbing about in the bubbling ferment, like swimmers across the English Channel until they were sufficiently browned. The air getting thick with the smell of burning oil if the fan wasn’t left on, sometimes it would catch on the back of your throat as if you’d accidentally swallowed a fly.

I had everything with chips, bacon egg and chips , beans and chips, fish and chips – I didn’t even know what a fry was then – and maybe it’s only those shoelace thin strings they serve at a famous establishment. But these ones occasionally would meet my high standards – crispy brown on the outside and fluffy clouds of taste on the inside, steaming like steam rising from a pond on a chilled winter morning when the sun hits the water. Soggy ones are a complete turn off, it’s like trying to write on wet paper eating a soggy chip, or ones that have been in the bag too long, they’re like withered flowers you forgot to send to your girlfriend that you feel guilty about. Yes the best chip in the world at the moment comes from Nandos – Portuguese chicken specialists- I don’t know how they do it but the crispness has a unique consistency across the stores and the special ’salt’ they use keeps me returning like a dog to a bone….I am considering an application to be their chief store tester- where I would randomly go and assess the quality of their fries… and feed back to HQ which stores need to lift their- game- but why I wonder after all those years of…..

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Like water swirling into a plug hole the galaxy whips stars into a central position, a million specks of star dust seem to glitter and twinkle and beckon as if they’re just in the next neighbourhood, but they’re miles away, light years. What we say right now would not even begin to impact on a remote galaxy until hundreds of years hence. Our words and radio transmissions that are seeping through space right now, carrying our communications and culture to distant worlds and cosmi. What would another intelligent life form make of it all? These rises and falls in the electromagnetic spectrum? While they stand/float/swim? on their own planetoid with twin moons in neon green glow – what would they think.

Surely out their in these ever expanding galactic arms there’s some other life form that wants to embrace us, letting us know we are not alone. That’s one thing about a galaxy in all its beauty and poise from enhanced NASA photographs , the stillness and aloneness. It seems to scream silently from each photograph. Imagine if you were on a spaceship somehow transported all those billions of miles form earth – would you go loco? Would you think you were god? All around you nothing but the crushing black contrasted by the diamond beauty of beckoning lights, circling planets that are dark lifeless and alone. Moons that have more impact craters than a teenagers acne riddled face. Breathing in recycled air that seems to taste of plastic, drinking your own recycled urine. That’s the only way it could be done – with current technology, but, maybe soon we’ll invent and ‘ion’ drive to propel us across galaxies at the speed of light, then it’s just a matter of time – Alpha Centauri – just a couple of years of travel – easy….

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