Recorded Live at the Flying Duck , Glasgow (Sat 10th Feb 2018)


One of the wandering tribe, open. The moon had been waxing in the dirt as he smiling, as one day they were walking the sun just as often, when they’d stop at…

AS OFTEN, WHEN THEY’D STOP AT…

The buzz of the transformers had trailed children, forced their mouths to form and daub from time to time. Others had atrophied, stutter and fray. It bring about the couldn’t be true. Rubble with eye tribe, set these abominations alight.

WITH EYE TRIBE, SET THESE ABOMINATIONS ALIGHT.

Night, there noticed the end, for a carnival time. Were large creature before them. It had been a financial hub, were shrunken and time, they blundered into areas still split open.

INTO AREAS STILL SPLIT OPEN.

The heads remind you of a time in it would be going too far banished, but language clouds of small be, hairless, like an elephant, but unfortunate with seepage of centre days through a region of derelict days for some.

A REGION OF DERELICT DAYS FOR SOME.

So eyes starting from her head of the hunters, creature wept till the creek ran infants in the womb, lain old hard to of the spirochaetes of language in in, gulping it down. Young woman with blonde blackened rubble, whined.

BLONDE BLACKENED RUBBLE, WHINED.

From mere desiccated husks to and tiny iridescent up, twigs put to slice the growth universe for an eternity, then the lights dimmed, of the sun, then quickened, whim of gusts. The creatures away. To from its tangled wires.

AWAY. TO FROM ITS TANGLED WIRES.

Which great beast they daubed with ochre happening the tribe would approach chary. One of the but their bodies were withered and pit they’d dug half the air, then scampered ate our minds and hatched.

SCAMPERED ATE OUR MINDS AND HATCHED.

It thing they’d cut from the side clad in foliage. Fruit hung from the had been virulent and soon spread pylons. They’d razed had sprouted up these had sunk to oak, its leaves turning, its acorns that place, wander seeking.

THAT PLACE, WANDER SEEKING.

In humanity, these to flickering trees. The first even while champing, fallen, fallen in with the fell slack on their trunk. Its eyes were opaque, burden had been lifted. As could the sternum, where they gibbered and blunder near.

THE STERNUM, WHERE THEY GIBBERED AND BLUNDER NEAR.

Told a story of clear importance pulsing under the skin. When heads. ‘You’ve planted a seed,’ they blood. Leaning close, whispering to off, across a waste of spam or sprats, bones, the to see a it bile. The worms.

IT BILE. THE WORMS.

Another organism was coming, a bear, rubbed out his designs and it lifted its muzzle to knee deep in their own rolled their eyes at him.

THEIR OWN ROLLED THEIR EYES AT HIM.

Was the smoke might be seen like hares them travelling the perhaps an axolotl. The girl began its did not know. So newspaper, soused with lurid to him. It seemed away. Strangely, there was no was chaos and cacophony.

STRANGLEY, THERE WAS NO WAS CHAOS AND CACOPHONY.

Thrum and twitter, and hinges. Yet site of what a time our antibodies bellies of and woman who’d been a surgeon the tongues, worked free at they were its rooting. The tribe had thronged at night. Of the burning.

THRONGED AT NIGHT. OF THE BURNING.

To say to the girl stood again, old nursery the shallow bounding the low dark clouds as from a cone of rest, he would use it words. The first.

USE IT WORDS. THE FIRST.

Generation of was sightless, its eyes blank they passed in this senseless din, man, carried about with of a dried-up creek rough vestigial lumps nodding beast. The tribe on something to eat and dead.

ON SOMETHING TO EAT AND DEAD.

Weight. Finally, the tribe crossed the uneven ground, that once, before he’d place all scorched no one childhood when you a berries drizzling spittle. The far off yowling, the dream, the ruined tribe and the second. A few urged.

THE SECOND. A FEW URGED.

Buildings, had been pigeon. A lover, were livers and they ran with and were gashed and bleeding. And they’d interred the horizon, the tribe emerged forced air mind, was a willow forest of barbed there before, whatever fine.

FOREST OF BARBED THERE BEFORE, WHATEVER FINE.

Towering tech, on the chattered on. Their him a short spur he’d from open square. At its if whatever had been he’d come. Two days organism that would enter the tribe with one as of folk and seeped.

WITH ONE AS OF FOLK AND SEEPED.

Red brick of hopped, slithered, splashed, belched. Then the Great Synchronicity. None of the tribe’s salt. The horse’s. The tribe’s spoor. Tears welled that had been walking for a frolic. But then animals that came then a few of us.

THAT CAME THEN A FEW OF US.

Yammering. How long to resemble a developing foetus or all over the blasted land? You can’t remember anything about the slowly, but inexorably making slush of the…

BUT INEXORABLY MAKING SLUSH OF THE…

Stories tell of the junked. There’s only save when it happened vision of night to sated, would fall into deeper mind in peaceful symbiosis. This thing as stinking they set jaws tribe drew closer, they saw get back to.

THEY SAW GET BACK TO.

Her feet. A contraptions and jabbering away, yattering for wights born of the a faint, her, but she was a find a lump growing from her had sharp a fist. It of the girl’s head the ill-tempered, finding the days.

HEAD THE ILL-TEMPERED, FINDING THE DAYS.

It swelled till it parasites had seen a dream of kinder times. Gibbous. At the new moon, it eating insects, greenish tubers, before the after, the swollen Word wracked these borrowed a keen blade from one tainted by with the…

TAINTED BY WITH THE…

Language virus, defeat its they were proud of struggling on. Still had mouths. Through a world was the grew its paws and snout, digging laid waste, the root or gnawed through been fighting.

GNAWED THROUGH BEEN FIGHTING.

Through then, and could within the and wandering tribe, a hunched old from a mouth was air above, the only sounds, the tribe, he’d been walking through its poison, there was a friend feared all gone. Gone. It was.

GONE. GONE. IT WAS.

With stood staring at the all over, animals that looked and charred. The ran down infected, words. Most often minds. One by one smear at blood, just a little was leading the tribe fought back, and language began to…

LANGUAGE BEGAN TO…

The haughty glare of sturdy died with her one they too a dull town. Had been granted a vivid dream, before the vinegar and sprinkled with a sufferer’s concrete, they saw another band of this wasted their sockets. The old bones.

THIS WASTED THEIR SOCKETS. THE OLD BONES.

Before the agonised skittering of cockroaches half-crushed by brains of strove bodily to lift. Suggestive of a distance, for even when it the stories do not frigid tendrils over.

DO NOT FRIGID TENDRILS OVER.

Their skin. The galls of mute third was a few circuits folk. Dormant a left temple. Over the next few. A glimpse of a warm saffron and was as different from the of blood or brine and off, so…

OF BLOOD OR BRINE AND OFF, SO…

They ate by pounding. The taste of all. The gooseflesh, crumbling bricks and rotting these monsters behind false hope. Baby gurgling contentedly. And grind it with large dark voids. Word burst, and its grubs. Tribefolk had long since shrivelled.

ITS GRUBS. TRIBEFOLK HAD LONG SINCE SHRIVELLED.

The excrescence, but stood cheeks. The tribe too began snuffled creature would suck it in fleeing a mob of a cat. The swimming pools, all half filled with the cloying perfume of Earth. Forth chip, eaten their folk, riddled.

UPON EARTH. FORTH CHIP, EATEN THEIR FOLK, RIDDLED.

The tribe shambled on, wandering. It was buried. Some shook their to moan and whimper. Then, in by the beasts. So sapling. The buds its green wood and off the way the tribe had the on a…

TRIBE HAD THE ON A…

Stone before shovelling finally slumped down in huddle, refused a carillon spiring time to time. The spirochaetes corkscrew through after whichever flank infected filth. The tribe canker of the Word by one sinews snapped and jaws to stay hidden, keep at.

TO STAY HIDDEN, KEEP AT.

Swollen and seeping black. The fourth biting flies hanging in the ear, for it. It was pink, felt quite carefree. A galled and from time wandering band, tracked the beast, wary came out into a large scent of burning.

A LARGE SCENT OF BURNING.

Leaves in whited bed trammels of time, and to planet. Clawed its way out of turned roughly inside out. Bleary greenish went out, and the machines gulfs of the far reaches would free humanity from the till boiled signed in.

THE TILL BOILED SIGNED IN.

Of the old world, drawn sheeny carapaces would gasped. Hearing this sound, the creature an uneven rent. Were four you, ‘From the small dirt, pictograms that still they but machines flashing off on scraggy necks, at unmoving, seemingly curious.’

‘SCRAGGY NECKS, AT UNMOVING, SEEMINGLY CURIOUS.’
But on thin and brittle legs, mud or dust, and to scratch designs in a sights, antennas of the thicket much of the these others it soft coo of a wood by the lights heap of books. Blackened, they’d worked.

HEAP OF BOOKS. BLACKENED, THEY’D WORKED.

Their way into the heads of one of these cavities, and the across the waste, keen to leave they were watching, odd hunk of putrid meat. Land. The fat lobes of a brain, red and into buzzing wasps, giant leeches.

BRAIN, RED AND INTO BUZZING WASPS, GIANT LEECHES.

One morning, had lain yellow filth, bloated slugs. One of hers tried to haul her size of the limbs. Sometimes you wake from the blight. It’s a morsel, gulped it down.

IT’S A MORSEL, GULPED IT DOWN.

Spleens dripping tell us. The grubs of the others were like woman whose lips were plump and full, insects with papery wings and then trudged on, the blaze at leaden elytra and of the cosmos, of bellowed.

THE COSMOS, OF BELLOWED.

Hungry, enraged. But exposed would be began to things the language, and some would get out of the brakes slept, it would only drowse. They, an awry grin, woke to old man had seen that hair in matted clumps.

HAIR IN MATTED CLUMPS.

And to weep. They all, at first these folk had just clamour. They went over. The others the skulls of folk and war for tubers, old tins, holiday villas, and backyard sniffed the air, scented lower their backs sending spindle-shanked.

THEIR BACKS SENDING SPINDLE-SHANKED.

And fitful world, went on claws. It’s your not speak again, must go from and stirrup, can be fashioned if they’d been great beast padded. Wrested from a wrecked machine. With sparse tangles of hair. It turned up soil.

IT TURNED UP SOIL.

And all were dinned a gnarled yew, writhen branchings, it seems a celestial light wandering without fear, as yet not alike. They’d thought was though for what one morning, early, scrawny.

ONE MORNING, EARLY, SCRAWNY.

Stood, droning, gabbling, prating, to this pile to sleep and sludge, where slimy man had lain down next its slack was a healthy young pear tree, thrumming and sloughs of yellow fat be swept autumn, which always believed the across.

SWEPT AUTUMN, WHICH ALWAYS BELIEVED THE ACROSS.

They rolled in. Or so speakers had been shunned, then, some way perfect host, so. When bone that set your pineal gland pink and lacking lungs or the air, caked with boiled.

LACKING LUNGS OR THE AIR, CAKED WITH BOILED.

Descended on the slumbers. Then of transistors and headed old man’s dream. The good-natured food to a pulp that goaded and maddened. All the birth and happened, the rest would brain by gnashing teeth, dropped from mouths, up, and used.

FROM MOUTHS, UP, AND USED.

Later the girl began singing. Lay in the from the lungs of the only from that side the beast would the folk fell silent, knew as they were all over.

KNEW AS THEY WERE ALL OVER.

Words: Timothy J. Jarvis
Sounds: Steven Shade