Countertruism

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

A Sociologist's Paradise

Far from crazy pavements -
the taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
on a dirty afternoon
Where the fæcal germs of Mr Freud
are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
In the case of Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
- a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men's overcoats
You can't see their feet
A riff joint shuts - opens up
Right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash
disaster movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There's a dead canary on a swivel seat
There's a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
an inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
impregnates the walls
the rats have all got rickets
they spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing La-di-dah
OAP, mother to be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shit-stoppered drains
and crocodile skis
are seen on Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
a one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
the doorbells do not ring
A lightbulb bursts like a blister
the only form of heat
here a fellow sells his sister
down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
that they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin,
Sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the aging savage
Betrays no kind of life
but the smell of yesterday's cabbage
and the ghost of last year's wife
through a constant haze
of deodorant sprays
he says retreat
Alsatians dog the dirty days
down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
every time they kiss.
It's a sociologist's paradise
each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
beastly Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
on a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street

 — John Cooper Clarke 'Beasley Street'

An Inspector Calls

We often talk about the word closure.
From my experience … there is no absolute closure.
It's more a transcendence from one stage to another.
 — Detective Inspector Peter Cotter, Head Of The Homicide Squad

Fellers

If trees gushed blood
When they were felled
By meddling man,
And crimson welled

From every gash
His axe can give,
Would he forbear,
And let them live?

  — Mervyn Peake 'If Trees Gushed Blood'

Now And Then

There's something in your soul that makes me feel so old
In fact I think I've died about six hundred times
There's less of me now and more of me then

 — The Human League 'Almost Mediæval'

Unplaced

And I was green, greener than the hill
Where flowers grew and sun shone still
Now I’m darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be

 — Nick Drake 'Place To Be'

Another Place

I've got to leave I can't stay another day
There's an emptiness inside of me
I can't bear the loneliness out here
There's another place I've got to be
 — Floyd Red Crow Westerman 'Quiet Desperation'

Aviation Anagram

Use

Use-by dates — they come and go.
When it's yours, you're bound to know;
Life and love return anew
As everyone stops using you.
— Michæl Leunig

BYO Anagram

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Identity–Theft Anagram

Unruly Anagram

Reference Anagram

Absolutely Worthless

I don't give a damn anymore – 

I've only wound up betrayed. 

It's all been absolutely worthless – 

all the efforts I've made 

to be gentle and kind 

are repaid with contempt, 

degraded by sympathy 

and worthless kindness 

and love that isn't meant. 

I'm through with joy and company, 

I've done with pretty words, 

betrayed – there's no hiding-place 

anywhere in the world.

 — Peter Hammill 'Betrayed'

Stern und Dang!

Somewhere

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.
"I don't much care where — " said Alice.
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.
" — so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
 — Lewis Carroll 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'

The Cheshire Cat In The Moon

Unwanted: Dead or Alive

no future
no home
 — Peter Hammill 'This Side Of The Looking-Glass'

Old Zebra Proverb

No gnus is good gnus.

Clarification

Gnus don't kill people — guns do.

Beyond Dire Straights

The Fish Of The Imagination

As I see it, life is an effort to grip,
before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion,
the startling, the ghastly
or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination
before they whip away on the endless current
and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.
— Mervyn Peake

New Enfranchised Noises

We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.
— Mervyn Peake 'Titus Groan'

The Thrusting Of Senses

Each day I live in a glass room
unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses
and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.
 — Mervyn Peake

Our Armies

The Germanic Goddess 'Easter'

Old English Ēostre (also Ēastre) and Old High German Ôstarâ are the names of a putative Germanic goddess whose Anglo-Saxon month, Ēostur-monath (Old English "Ēostre month"), has given its name to the festival of Easter.

Having Outconsumed Schopenhauer and Hegel …

Always Look On The Bright Side Of Death

Passover

This is a crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I'd kept.
Doubting, unsettling and turning around,
Wondering what will come next.
Is this the role that you wanted to live?
I was foolish to ask for so much.
Without the protection and infancy's guard,
It all falls apart at first touch.

Watching the reel as it comes to a close,
Brutally taking its time,
People who change for no reason at all,
It's happening all of the time.
Can I go on with this train of events?
Disturbing and purging my mind,
Back out of my duties, when all's said and done,
I know that I'll lose every time.

Moving along in our God given ways,
Safety is sat by the fire,
Sanctuary from these feverish smiles,
Left with a mark on the door,
Is this the gift that I wanted to give?
Forgive and forget's what they teach,
Or pass through the deserts and wastelands once more,
And watch as they drop by the beach.

This is the crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I'd kept,
Turning around to the next set of lives,
Wondering what will come next.

 — Ian Curtis 'Passover'

See No Mediæval