Paul J Penton – Songwriter

The space station hanging in nothingness, a fly caught in the ointment of the unending, forever falling black. A clutter of junk blocking pricks of light fallen from distant suns. Looking out the observation windows The subterranean cold outside pressing in on the toughened glass -cool to touch.

The air presses down, the recycled air with a tang of humanity in it, here you know you are breathing in what everyone else has breathed out, it’s been filtrated and emasculated and reconstituted once again to become air, the carbon di-oxide sucked out and spat out made rare, and then your breathing it here. It’s being cycled around by the pump, one of a hundred humming buzzing clanking machines that add to a background drone notched out after a while. You notice it when you arrive for your tour of duty, as you float in weightless slow motion into the main capsule area. The almost permanent sea sickness but you get used to, ears adjust and pop.

For breakfast lunch and dinner it’s those tubes, like toothpaste containers, all the nutrients you need, Soilent green in space. Can’t have those food particles flying off everywhere like separate orbiting satellites causing unknown damage where it can’t be seen, so, this slodgy mush of ‘roast beef and vegetables’ or ‘Hawaiian chicken’ is condensed and mashed and freeze dried – not even heated how dull’s that? Outside the earth glows in celestial beauty, a Greek goddess calling …..

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Like a mask of death it rested on her face, the dials of glass lighting up her eyes but not showing the full rate of her heart, catapulting to and fro in her rib cage. Panic was the only certainty at this moment as sirens wailed and shells hailed down on this quarter of the city.

The radio broadcast and warning that the enemy might use some form of chemical weapon had been as direct as an express train from Brighton – and when the bombardment began, she had reached for the rubbery face beneath the desk and ran for the safety of the shelter. At first the reassuring trunk leading to the canister of life had made her move with certain steps, but now as the city was pounded with random burst after burst of shellfire her hopes began to disintegrtae. She felt trapped in a cage, and the mask seemed to enclose all her phobias, her breathing rasped in the recycled air, tasting slightly metallic and smelling of year old rubber.

When the shelling ceased she retained the mask as she had been instructed to do. Emerging from the bunker, another round of desolation spread like a child’s sand pit adventure before her and the air was filled with clouds of rambling dust and random fires that….

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His argument seemed to be riding along the rails of logic quite well, a few squeaks as he rounded some hairy corners. His line seemed to be beginning to creak and rattle though, and then it was if a freight train had just blown its whistle at a crossing. The bells began clanging people were tooting on their horns of indifference as he delivered a class A, alpha contradiction – without even realising it. Perhaps he felt the wave of disbelief wash in from the auditorium or something because, for a moment – his river of speech hit a dam wall, but then he just kept going, as if what he had just come out with was a ‘fact’, a ‘reality’ that could not be challenged.

He was emboldened with a juggernaut of confidence, and I wondered how his debating opponent was going to make use of his sore thumb of a point he had unknowingly made. His bumble bee thoughts continued to hover impossibly in the cavern for another minute before he relented the podium.

His opponent calmly strode to the lecturn and began throwing the contradictees’ argument against the back of the hall, but she was saving up his smelly inconsistency for the end. Her acidic barbs were waiting to hatch until the last possible moment – surely this was going to bring home the debate for the home side. The imagined victory smelled as sweet as a pineapple, unlike the rotten sewer of words he had released by so obviously violating the ‘facts’ and yes, she turned to look him in the eye with the arrow of her intellect just before releasing the bowstring of words that plunged the shaft straight into the depths of his now illuminated and sharply failing unconscious mind…..

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His argument seemed to be riding along the rails of logic quite well, a few squeaks as he rounded some hairy corners. His line seemed to be beginning to creak and rattle though, and then it was if a freight train had just blown its whistle at a crossing. The bells began clanging people were tooting on their horns of indifference as he delivered a class A, alpha contradiction – without even realising it. Perhaps he felt the wave of disbelief wash in from the auditorium or something because, for a moment – his river of speech hit a dam wall, but then he just kept going, as if what he had just come out with was a ‘fact’, a ‘reality’ that could not be challenged.

He was emboldened with a juggernaut of confidence, and I wondered how his debating opponent was going to make use of his sore thumb of a point he had unknowingly made. His bumble bee thoughts continued to hover impossibly in the cavern for another minute before he relented the podium.

His opponent calmly strode to the lecturn and began throwing the contradictees’ argument against the back of the hall, but she was saving up his smelly inconsistency for the end. Her acidic barbs were waiting to hatch until the last possible moment – surely this was going to bring home the debate for the home side. The imagined victory smelled as sweet as a pineapple, unlike the rotten sewer of words he had released by so obviously violating the ‘facts’ and yes, she turned to look him in the eye with the arrow of her intellect just before releasing the bowstring of words that plunged the shaft straight into the depths of his now illuminated and sharply failing unconscious mind…..

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March 22

shipping containers on the bay, windsurfers, white caps and windsurfers- some 14 year old female lifesavers reminding me of how I failed at swimming – some young girls with skirts pulled up screaming like they’re on a roller coaster ride as waves wash in and over their feet – thoughts on doing voluntary work like life saving or a fire fighter- what can I do – I have done church related activities- but then I didn’t feel the love…

the smell of seaweed along with salty water
the tunneling of the wind across my ears
tasting the tang of soft drink I just had
seeing the water in different shades of green capped with white beards
ships hanging on the horizon
wind stroking my skin
the wind comes in gusts and bowls us over
do we need a gust of love?
waves roll slowly and then turns and their life is over
Couple sitting on rocks twisting their hands getting to know each other
City in the distance shrouded in closing clouds while water flashing grey with sunlight brilliance

Mansions on the edge of the beach- that would be great – but what if you had no-one to share them with- they look empty and unfriendly wouldn’t you be on a different planet

“better to live on a beach in a tent with someone you love than to live in a mansion alone” – so says Jim Rohn

Giant poodles looking ungainly with those tufted boots

There’s a lot of things hidden in her
a lot of secret chambers
she’s a pyramid of Egypt
waiting to be discovered
showing only surface layers

on ‘perfection’ in a partner

I’m no longer looking for perfection
don’t believe it exists
or that it lasts
like love it twists and turns
cools and burns
not looking for perfection

At the supermarket – a man at the headache tablet section looking like he’s getting a headache choosing which tablet to get…

The supermarket is the modern savanna for the hunter gatherer our dollars are our spears shopping bags the skins of the captured beasts.

Someone at the checkout frantically searching through her bag- she’s left her wallet at home, she negotiates with the checkout operator to remove items down to a value of 50 bucks… she’s not poor but is made to feel it maybe?

On the road – it’s a black universe and the cars are planets and each person is traveling along on their own particular planet with their own particular thoughts on their own particular universe, an older couple to my left at the lights with BIlly Joel; pumping out the speakers a younger one to my left checking her makeup in the mirror could be an important date? Saturday night.

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That old dialogue has gone on for years between fat and muscle. Fat comes to visit easily it’s the waddling salesman with the cigar hanging out the corner of his mouth who mentions the word ‘easy’ one too many times. Muscle is the Sergeant Major who makes you walk around the parade ground six thousand times, until your feet are ready to drop off, they actually feel as if someone is down there with an axe taking country sideshow swings in a wood chopping competiton and your ankles are the blocks!

The clanking of weights and panting and puffing at the gym as you press it just a little further than usual. On your back, the seat pressing in like a friendly dolphin, your arms splayed wide pulling down on the lat machine and watching that pile of compressed steel lift above your eyeline. Your arms are as tight as a farm fence, pulsing with energy until they become withered flowers in the heat of a summer sun. Time for resting.

That night you stand in front of the mirror and try to assay any difference. Forearm and bicep are levered over to produce a triangle with a hump that is your growing muscle. The belly does not reflect this yet – but, that’s the plan, the target, the goal to lose weight & gain muscle runs over on the treadmill in your mind. Low carb , no carb throwing out all that pasta and beer, and rice and anything that’s going to leave you with a choice to add more pounds. Get some henchmen in to stand guard at the doorway of the pantry- employ the hired ‘muscle’ of your conscience.

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Such a chore to do this every day – the ritual, almost comforting. The paraphernalia; the tube, the paste the bowl, the taps twisted and water gurgling down the hole. The squeezing of the tube as if it’s a pimple ready to burst, the pussy slug of paste escaping and lying prostrate ready for sacrifice on the jagged bristles. The momentary passage of the wash beneath the tap. Arms flying into egg whisk mode, the arms pumping up and down like a frenzied sewing machine, welding the fluoride into the enamel, pumping it in double barrel shotgun bursts of fluoride, sweet tasting fiery biting on the suckers of the tongue fluoride. A river is flowing a strange sensation as the arm flips the brush over and begins to mine-sweep the other side of the canyon of my mouth like a street cleaning cart going by.

Teeth are being sand-papered into a glossy white ray of sunshine, and when the brush has done it’s last circular buzz-cuts, a flem of paste and blood and spit shatters the virgin white peace of the bowl. The faucet’s silvery handles are ripped on full and an oasis forms between cupped hands to quench the burning fluoride forest fire in the cave of my mouth. How safe is that – really? The brush is rinsed too, then sat like a beheaded chicken on the stand that has leached itself to the otherwise drab wall of the steamy bathroom. Ready now, safe fresh breath confidence – for a couple of hours ate least……I swear there’s a ring or halo emanating from my mouth…..or perhaps that’s the power of advertising!

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He tasted determination as he moved from one end of the deck to the other – funnily it tasted quite similar to saliva and the inside of a bloody bitten lip. He was determined to get to the other end of the deck to adjust the sheet and pull down the foresail, the automatic motor had packed it in and the elements of nature seemed to all be gathered against him in a tumultuous assault. He was tethered to the deck in case of a random wash, the multi-meter swells the vessel was traversing suggested this was a good idea. Fiery pricks of driven spray on the corrugated wind kept pushing him back and making his eyes turn into post box slits but he kept persisting.

His sea legs had been forged in the swells of the Cape of Good Hope, so the tiny inconveniences of these lesser depths were of no concern. He understood that for some people such a swell would leave them walking on legs of watery rubber, melting on the deck and buckling over in paroxysms of heaving vomit, but he doggedly maintained a fix on the target while his stomach remained as well cast as a steel girder in a skyscraper. His mind swung forward to a few minutes hence where he would clamber back through the rear hatchway, check the auto pilot was set and would clang through the metal hatchway to the ………

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On final approach it looked like dawn was about to fill the sky, a glowing orange band thickened in the distance, but I realised this was not the dawn but rather the glow of the city. The way the clouds had arranged themselves made it all seem quite natural, this artificial glow, being driven by whirling generators hundreds of miles to the west, burning dirty black coal to ignite the miracle of the city.

Our plane fared no better in the greenhouse stakes, despite my ticking of the box for an ‘emission free’ flight. At 40,000 we’d been laying a trail of oil scented crystals across the once pristine clouds, and now as we descended into the indistinct orange haze some big fat lugs of rubber were dropping from the wheel house. As we filtered through the clouds hydraulics ground away in the middle and front of the plane until a crack announced the locking in place of the wheels. Occasional tufts of turbulence sent us into momentary helter skelters but all was going well. Beneath the plane the undercarriage snaked and laddered its way from the fuselage like an inverted petrochemical plant or a flower blooming with the badgered black rubbery lollipops that very soon would bite into the apron just past the zebra crossing announcing the beginning of the runway….

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Newspapers feeding on them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The main course whenever they find one, gluttonously consuming all, putting it on the front page in big skyscraper blocky capitals ‘ SCANDAL’. Unmissable, unmistakable. Klaxons, fire alarms and air raid sirens scream from the paragraphs. Quickly researched backgrounds also stand in skyscraper columns of print. The story smells of rotten seaweed laid out on a beach for weeks and beaten down by a tough sun.

Over the next few days the scandal wears people down with and angle grinding relentlessness, until we’re numb with submission and we believe all that’s been laid on the plate and the story goes cold or is put on hold while the angling journos fish for another scoop. They dangle their rods off the top of skyscrapers looking for another victim, another body to assassinate.

There’s those ‘current affairs’ shows on at 6.30 pm, now they’ve long since ceased to be about ‘current’ affairs rather about consumer affairs. The presenters sit in front of the safe facades of the set while the pack of hunting hounds go bout haranguing those who’v done wrong, a lynching by television. The reactions – predictable – make great television, punching of cameras, fusillades of abuse, hopeless knocks at doors that won’t open. Questions about the whereabouts of monies long since gone….

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