Touching From a Distance - Дебора Кертис

Perverse reactions, the failings of mankind. What is your disability? What cross do you bear? Will your crucifiction leave a better place for your children, your children’s children. Can you expect so much as terrors of the modern age loom over distant hills, in violent cities, quiet towns and settled homes. Ignorance, a poor man’s friend. Avenues lined with trees and bitter memories. Technology and the ghosts of Christmas past. A family that haunts even in your more friendly dreams, Father can I go out now... Father can I go, Father...Who are you? Where am I? What am I?

***

Nothing seems real anymore. Even the flames from the fire seem to beckon to me, drawing me into some great past life buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, if only I could find the key..if only..if only. Ever since my illness, my condition, I’ve been trying to find some logical way of passing my time, of justifying a means to an end.

***

Someone called her name...Taking her children by the hand she walked over to the other side of the room and glanced sideways out of the window, straightening the mirror on her way. Nothing. Someone called her name... Children are crying in their bedrooms. Don’t you know it takes something more to cope with these problems, this stress. This I can take but the way some people look at me, the way some people talk, really gets me down. This is all I want. This is all I came for. This is my life.

Someone called her name. A noise outside breaks the afternoon silence. ‘Aren’t you glad I came. I need someone to realise my dreams. I can take you away from all this. I’ve already seen your daughter. I picked her up in my car on her way to school this morning. She’s beautiful. Don’t you think you need a change too.’ Someone called her name. Sound of children crying.

***

Cold wind moving in from afar — death in the park, another senseless murder, child mutilated, red sky calling, inserts deep inside, warm glow from the feet up — this could be Hell.

Twelve noon lined up against the wall — about face, load fire. Ten shot echo in a faraway African town. CIA reports ‘No cause to worry — everything under control.’

On the beach looking for old friends — cities springing up all around — metallic glow reflecting a coldness felt only once in childhood. Money for this, money for that, money for nothing. I guess they died some time ago. Walking on water — Moses crosses the red sea — world peace intact, with a deep sigh he turns to face the wall, hand in hand they disappear into the night.

***

Pictures, brown round the edges, occupying places on half empty walls. As the dust gathers so do the memories of a child’s past. Healing wounds opened again and letters in strictest confidence for the world to see. Follow me down the garden path, I’ll show you where it all happened, oh so many years ago. Follow me down the path. Tears of a brother lost before birth, sentenced to no life at all. Tears of a mother who knew she had lost everything.

‘We left her playing here besides the flowers and then...It was horrible. I just can’t bear to think about it.’ The clock strikes six, everyone eats and then sleeps. A deep uneasy sleep. I can’t understand why. Pacing the floor I stare out into the night. What’s left for me?

***

A wider alliance that leads to new roads beyond the limits, holding hands, jumping off walls into dark seclusion, cut off from the mainstream of most intimate yearnings, I left my heart somewhere on the other side, I left all desire for good.

Clinging to naked thought, impossible tactics worked out for impossible means. This is the final moment of respite. The final page in the book. A bitter challenge between old and new, with one last warning.

Черновики песен

Out of Touch (1977)

On the wasteline,

Heartbreak, mainline,

In a hurry to get somewhere.

Divorced from what’s real so early.

All a waste of nothing really.

Arrive too late — don’t you know you’re out of touch?

Pass the dateline,

All on your time.

In a hurry to get something.

Staring at your own two faces,

Feeding off your private crazes.

You’re out on you’re own — out — out of touch.

Nervous feeling,

No scene stealing,

Can you reach the outer limits?

Stuck inside your pen too long,

Forgotten moves where you went wrong.

You’ve lost the feeling, now you’re out of touch.

Empty station,

Too long waiting,

In a hurry to get somewhere,

Divorced from everything so early,

All a waste of nothing really,

You were never there always out of touch.

Deadline (1979)

Destinations always change,

It could be hours,

It seems like days,

Wait around as though nothing’s wrong,

But heaven knows we’ve tried so long,

To do the final breakthrough.

A choice of gifts,

With cards to deal,

A narrow table,

Legs of steel,

A window seat with views the same,

All down the line we play the game,

For two, now we are two.

Destinations never change,

It seems as though we’re days away,

And all the points that lead us to,

We never stop, just pass on thru’ again,

Do it again.

Driftwood (1979)

Moving on out in a new line,

Setting our course by the sun,

Leaving the shoreline behind us,

We’re drifting apart while we run.

Wheels are in motion above us,

Metal and power in disguise,

Scared of the danger around us,

We’re drowning in our paradise.

Wreckage and gold on the sea bed,

Souls we could never reclaim,

Grey are the skies that surround us,

Forcing us farther away.

Moving on out in a new line,

Setting our course by the sun,

Leaving it all way behind us,

We’re drifting apart as we run.

Conditioned

(Незаписанная песня ранних Warsaw. Часть текста переработана для Exercise One)

Sure I’11 see you drown,

You do for me, I did for you,

You’re on the rim of wheels that turn

In ignorance, no way to learn.

Cure just takes you down,

Not down for good, that’s understood,

Lights on green, borrowed times,

It’s just the same, a different name.

Conditioned — you,

Conditioned — me,

No way out that I can see,

Conditioned — you,

Conditioned — me,

Who selects your destiny?

Just who’s in the chair,

To think for me to make me care —

Turn down the TV,

Turn down my pulse,

Control my heart,

The sound’s too much.

Неозаглавленное

lust watchin’ you -

Tearing strips off just for fun to get a better fit.

All eyes on you — sex induced, the labour proves,

Just watching every drip,

Waiting for you — bought us out to close all doors with broken laws — your laws don’t fit.

It’s all so coldly logical without a trace of fear,

Intentions, mask indifference, built up throughout the years.

Not televised, conceals the motives,

Not waiting for ease,

Till the cancer grows,

Replacing hope and you are the disease.

Just watchin’ you -

Some minor incident -

An instant eyes turn blind,

All eyes in you -

Just some kind of accident,

In God’s name, left behind,

Waiting for you -

Detroying gains,

All lost in vain, but kept in mind — you’re way behind.

Some stranger atrocity commit in silence now,

Not in these times, another world, but it’s so close somehow,

A shattered nerve, for those who serve, the reason lost its way.

In streets of fear and all those here, the internees of hate.

Just watchin’ you — tearing strips off just for fun to get a better fit,

All eyes on you — broken causes, no one knows the real cause, you’re it.

Waiting for you — ultimatum, change it soon don’t eling to every bit — it just won’t fit.

Secret (1978)

He desires love, in some special way,

Against all perversion,

Fed with fruits of decay.

He remembers,

How the guilty have seen,

All the pure but selfish,

Buried deep in his dreams.

He sees a vision in the sky,

Looking down at him,

Calling him by name.

Yeah he sees faces from yesterday,

Of what might have been,

But the past must still remain.

He desires love,

Not some perfect affair,

In hotels of steel and glass,

Just to cross on the stairs,

But he can still see,

All the angels in time,

As his dreams of ecstasy,

Turned to nightmares of crime.

He sees a vision in the sky,

Looking down at him,

How the past will still remain.

Yeah he sees a vision in the sky,

Staring down at him,

He’ll always see the same.

Sure I’ll see you down,

You do for me I did for you,

Cure just takes you down,

We’re down for good that’s understood.

Неозаглавленное (1978)

I can see a thousand wills just bending in the night.

And all the pretty faces painted grey to match the sky,

From a distance seeing friends just washed up on the shore

A picture in my mind of what’s to come before the storm.

In time, we don’t belong in our own lifetime.

I can hear the voices lost in echoes as they build,

New homes to hide the sadness that the search for more had killed,

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