Adrian Borland - Running Low on Highs

I know the ground 'round here too well
Every crack and corner of my cell
Seems my world has been reduced in size

And I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

I took my pleasures one by one
Hovered closer to the sun
Until my melting wings fell from the sky

Now I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

I remember how it was
I was like a soldier to the cause
But in the end you pay a heavy price

It leaves you running very low
Running very low on highs

I stumbled through the day
Floated through the nights
Where life is measured by
The brightness of the light
But it is gone before you even finished
Saying your goodbyes

I won't take back the things I did
I am not ashamed of how I lived
I've never needed any alibis

But I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

So if you think that life is cruel
To me it is like a tank of fuel
And I used up mine
By the time I was thirty-five

Yes, I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

The rain has come. Though thirty five degrees still condense the air outside, waterdrops come and cling like the eggs of flies, or fig seeds, to your dry skin. It is now the season of hope, again, though in order to fly one must first lose sight of the nest.

An olden man, ninety years old, has presided over the lunch table today. His eyes, blue-rimmed and resolute like the many pickaxe points he broke as a miner, crucified my softened frame to the pillars of his vinyard, under which we spent many an hour in conversation and dissolution. I wanted to honour this man's patience by being there if by happenchance his last hour came upon us as we spoke.

It has not come, it may never come. He is immortal. As a frail boy of twelve, no taller than the cane he carved from a cherry tree and still uses as a walking stick, he led his donkey, alone and starving, through forty miles of hills and scrubland, until the wolfpack scented their trail. Pray he did and walk he tried, until it seemed that their fate was certain. This ninety year old man has been a miner, a farmer, thrice a husband and still he carries his own weight with a word of power.

These are this man's genes, his heritage, such the will and the legacy, that from blue rimmed eyes and waning bloodlines make it possible for you to read these lines I, another heir, am writing.

The boy saw a wavering light in the distance. It seemed to float erratically in the wee hours. After some time or a few desperate steps the light began to clink.

The boy's mother, alone and barefoot, with the house dog at her heels, had come; she had waded half the county, half the way, with a pitchfork across her back, to find her son sprinting for his life, with the pack beast and their sacks of coal at the large. Still the wolves came on.

I do not know and he told me not to care, never to lose my temper, or my patience, to be like the rock around which the raging river flows. The great old man under his own vine, we both soaked in his own wine, assured me that it is never worth, never ever worth, to outstrip yourself, to transmute into a wild, savage thing you'll regret to be, for any puny matter, even a shitload of puny matters.

The rain is coming, I will drive south tonight. I have seen how freedom pays and the due tribute that the laws of life are sure to deliver if a man, by truth and humility, sticks to the plan.

I will meet this man again before rain and tears become one. For now, these words are written for the sake of freedom and fire, freedom and fire.

for you this one ever again, four five six times

´

Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your bodys metal.
cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.

-Pedro Salinas

Epilogue


Please cherish my memory - he said. I walked for thousand
miles on end without bread and without water, along rocks and through
thorns I walked, to fetch you bread, water and roses.
I was always faithful to beauty. With fair mind I gave out
all my fortune. I did not keep my lot. I am poor. With a tiny lily from
the fields I brightened our harshest nights. Please cherish my memory.
And forgive this last sorrow of mine:
I would like - once again - to reap a ripe corn with the
slender sickle moon. To stand at the threshold, to stare away
and to chew with my front teeth the wheat
admiring and blessing this world that I leave behind,
admiring also Him who climbs up the hill in the
golden rain of a sinking sun. There is a purple square patch in his
left sleeve. It is not easy to see. It was this, more than anything else,
that I wanted to show you.
And probably, more than anything else, it would be worth
remembering me for this.

- Yannis Ritsos

a waste of time

a waste of chance

spare a dime

do the dance

to every road retraced

Homem total naquele sentido que não é só à beira dum penhasco, ao por do sol, com vento norte e cabelos grisalhos, que um gajo se sente a escorregar no tapete. É também quando passa por ti um gajo com uma gaja pendurada nas costas, de cabelos ao vento a cento e oitenta, e tu sentes que os testículos de repente emigraram para latitudes superiores e desejas aquilo, e só aquilo com uma força tamanha que não descansas enquanto não o fizeres a caminho de Oslo.

- from the Nhoquinha Chronicles

do you ever feel the need to be with someone, a partner, a man, who soaks life faster than life can throw itself at him?

i do (for a woman, of course)

and it's a good puzzle.

(from the Nyarlathotep Chronicles)

These Words
(Sullivan)

Through the years of decay we walk like tigers in cages
With each passing turn the smaller and smaller the circles
Every weapon and word legitimate now as protection

But these things should never be spoken
These things should never be spoken

I stand undefeated alone in the ring just pacing
The sweat and the blood dried on my hands all wasted
I'm shouting "come back and fight for I am the king"
But the lights are all out and the people are gone

We always burned brightest when no one was watching
Now I kiss the lines on your beautiful face

But these things should never be spoken

And sometimes your hunger for life seems like desperation
And when I read about the world these days all I can feel is hatred
The fortune teller is closing her doors
She looked into the crystal and saw nothing at all

They're waiting round here for something to happen
They won't really want it when it rolls out to greet them

But these things should never be spoken
These things should never be spoken