THE BLACK SHEEP BACK GARDENER’S SONG

Sings.-

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

sowing hard to get things to grow.

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

I thought you really ought to know.

Almost spoken word.-

Got this handsome white Arum Lily

wrapped in pink edged cellophane

specially, especially, purely for you.

Muttered.-

Oh, Beauty in the hands of The Beast.

Sings.-

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

but there is something to straighten out in my head,

I am your black sheep back gardener, lady,

although I am not ever going to get you into my bed.

(Fade out). The girls in the band sing a version of the old, old song, in mocking tones.-

Oh, his heartbone’s connected to his backbone.

His backbone’s connected to his headbone.

His headbone’s connected to his jawbone

and that’s what it’s all about....

Conversation.-

....jawbone that, girls, just another lily-livered fucking bonehead....

The girls in the band crack up into fits of laughter! The song ends on a fading note of feedback.

THE BLACK SHEEP BACK GARDENER’S SONG ©  JONE JOHNSON & THE BLUE ROADSTERS, 2008

SPACE TRAVEL, NINTEEN FIFTIES VINTAGE

Black and white nineteen fifties detective movies playing every night on late night television, on black and white valve televisions from memories before the age of the transistor.

The heavy rain, the street corner light illuminating a shadowy figure, coat collar turned up.

Voices are faintly heard in the factory of words, whispers in the cathedral of language and language burns, flaming, with its need to reproduce.

Footsteps are heard leading into that strange world of pre-sleep, pre-nightmare, of falling away, slipping away, that old fragmented historic sepia memory sound and sights of footsteps on damp October concrete, the scraping of gravel underfoot, in grit or green kerb mush in wet gullies, in long ago travelled alleyways, paths and roadways.

When the slow spaceship valves turn off, the picture fast finds distance as white watchface moon shimmering silver seconds in darkness and you travel into space, the deep space inside. It’s the peephole, and as you step on through the back door there, you might be looking at your final credits, but you are, in fact, really being welcomed by your past, by long before your past, by universal silver static dancing gaily diamond flashes at the front door of your spring.

Static. Background radiation. It’s the end of the film, the end of words.

Baby Belladonna waddles through the backdoor into the garden, nineteen fifties vintage spaceship in hand, into golden reds and yellows, autumn leaves fall on cool stilled air.

Two golden orange autumn leaves dance in the wind, find an eye to watch their ballet in someone’s daydream, find a home in a corner of another unknown eye.

Actually, a root dreamt of them and soon they will live in a velvet green corner of some new bud’s dream of golden sails set to sail on to the sunset where death dances gaily by the back door of autumn at The End of the Film.

The End of the Film.

The End of Words.

Rake them up, pile them on the bonfire, they don’t hurt anyone anymore.