Get all 7 Bob Arellano releases available on Bandcamp and save 20%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Calaveras \ Fill My Mirrors, Havanarama \ Fish+Crabs, Mr. Lovable, Havanarama \ Havana Club, Beats of Burden, Along the River Runnins, and Last Poems.
1. |
Return of Returns
02:27
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Come in a week
Yes, yes, in the seven-day-week!
for how can I count in your three times three
of the sea-blown week of nine.
Come then, as I say, in a week,
when the planets have given seven nods
"It shall be! It shall be!" assented seven times
by the great seven, by Helios the brightest
and by Artemis the whitest
by Hermes and Aphrodite, flashing white glittering words,
by Ares and Kronos and Zeus,
the seven great ones, who must all say yes.
When the moon from out of the darkness
has come like a thread, like a door just opening
opening, till the round white doorway of delight
is half open.
Come then!
Then, when the door is half open.
In a week!
The ancient river week, the old one.
Come then!
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2. |
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Groan then, groan.
For the sun is dead, and all that is in heaven
is the pyre of blazing gas.
And the moon that went
so queenly, shaking her glistening beams
is dead too, a dead orb wheeled once a month round the park.
And the five others, the travellers
they are all dead!
In the hearse of night you see their tarnished coffins
travelling, travelling still, still travelling
to the end, for they are not yet buried.
Groan then, groan!
Groan then, for even the maiden earth
is dead, we run wheels across her corpse.
Oh groan
groan with mighty groans!
But for all that, and all that
"in the centre of your being, groan not."
In the centre of your being, groan not, do not groan.
For perhaps the greatest of all illusions
is this illusion of the death of the undying.
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3. |
Interlude: Apple Falls
01:42
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4. |
The Ship of Death
01:40
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I
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
II
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
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5. |
Amo Sacrum Vulgus
03:33
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Oh I am of the people!
the people, the people!
Oh I am of the people
and proud of my descent.
And the people always love me,
they love me, they love me,
the people always love me,
in spite of my ascent.
You must admit I've risen
I've risen, I've risen,
you must admit I've risen
above the common run.
The middle classes hate it,
they hate it, they hate it
the middle classes hate it
and want to put me down.
But the people always love me
they love me, they love me,
the people always love me
because I've risen clean.
Therefore I know the people
the people, the people
are still in bud, and eager
to flower free of fear.
And so I sing a democracy
a democracy, a democracy
that puts forth its own aristocracy
like bearded wheat in ear.
Oh golden fields of people
of people, of people,
oh golden field of people
all moving into flowers.
No longer at the mercy
the mercy, the mercy
of middle-class mowing-machines, and
the middle-class money power.
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6. |
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What are the wild waves saying
sister the whole day long?
It seems to me they are saying:
How disgusting, how infinitely sordid this humanity is
that dabbles its body in me
and daubs the sand with its flesh
in myriads, under the hot and hostile sun!
and so drearily "enjoys itself!"
What are the wild waves saying.
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7. |
Ship of Death
01:28
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I sing of autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
Have you built your ship of death, oh, have you?
Build then your ship of death, for you will need it!
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8. |
Ship of Death II
01:24
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Over the sea, over the farthest sea
on the longest journey
past the jutting rocks of shadow
past the lurking, octopus arms of agonized memory
past the strange whirlpools of remembered greed
through the dead weed of a life-time's falsity,
slow, slow my soul, in his little ship
on the most soundless of all seas
taking the longest journey.
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9. |
The Ship of Death II
01:34
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Now in the twilight, sit by the invisible sea
Of peace, and build your little ship
Of death, that will carry the soul
On its last journey, on and on, so still
So beautiful, over the last of seas.
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10. |
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They say the sea is loveless, that in the sea
love cannot live, but only bare, salt splinters
of loveless life.
But from the sea
the dolphins leap round Dionysos' ship
whose masts have purple vines,
and up they come with the purple dark of rainbows
and flip! they go! with the nose-dive of sheer delight;
and the sea is making love to Dionysos
in the bouncing of these small and happy whales.
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11. |
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They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.
All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of the sea!
And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's fathomless body.
And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.
And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of the beginning and the end.
And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!
and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.
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12. |
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13. |
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Sing the song of death, O sing it!
for without the song of death, the song of life
becomes pointless and silly.
Sing then the song of death, and the longest journey
and what the soul takes with him, and what he leaves behind,
and how he enters fold after fold of deepening darkness
for the cosmos even in death is like a dark whorled shell
whose whorls fold round to the core of soundless silence and pivotal oblivion
where the soul comes at last, and has utter peace.
Sing then the core of dark and absolute
oblivion where the soul at last is lost
in utter peace.
Sing the song of death, O sing it!
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14. |
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I have been defeated and dragged down by pain
and worsted by the evil world-soul of to-day.
But still I know that life is for delight
and for bliss
as now when the tiny wavelets of the sea
tip the morning light on edge, and spill it with delight
to show how inexhaustible it is.
And life is for delight, and bliss
like now where the white sun kisses the sea
and plays with the wavelets like a panther playing with its cubs
cuffing them with soft paws,
and blows that are caresses,
kisses of the soft balled paws, where the talons are.
And life is for dread,
for doom that darkens and the Sunderers
that sunder us from each other
that strip us and destroy us and break us down
as the tall fox-gloves and the mulleins and mallows
are torn down by dismembering autumn
till not a vestige is left, and bleak winter has no trace
of any such flowers;
and yet the roots below the blackness are intact:
the Thunderers and the Sunderers have their term
their limit, their thus far and no further.
Life is for kissing and for horrid strife.
Life is for the angels and the Sunderers
Life is for the daimons and the demons
those that put honey on our lips, and those that put salt.
But life is not
for the dead vanity of knowing better, nor the blank
cold superiority, nor silly
conceit of being immune,
nor puerility of contradictions
like saying snow is black, or desire is evil.
Life is for kissing and for horrid strife,
the angels and the Sunderers.
And perhaps in unknown Death we perhaps shall know
Oneness and poised immunity.
But why then should we die while we can live?
And while we live
the kissing and the communing cannot cease
nor yet the striving and the horrid strife.
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15. |
What Then Is Evil?
02:32
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Oh, in the world of the flesh of man
iron gives the deadly wound
and the wheel starts the principle of all evil.
Oh, in the world of things
the wheel is the first principle of evil.
But in the world of the soul of man
there, and there alone lies the pivot of pure evil
only in the soul of man, when it pivots upon the ego.
When the mind makes a wheel which turns on the hub of the ego
and the will, the living dynamo, gives the motion and the speed
and the wheel of the conscious self spins on in absolution, absolute
absolute, absolved from the sun and the earth and the moon,
absolute consciousness, absolved from strife and kisses
absolute self-awareness, absolved from the meddling of creation
absolute freedom, absolved from the greatest necessities of being
then we see evil, pure evil
and we see it only in man
and in his machines.
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16. |
Murder
00:52
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Killing is not evil.
A man may be my enemy to the death,
and that is passion and communion.
But murder is always evil
being an act of one
perpetrated upon the other
without cognisance or communion.
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17. |
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I
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
And it is time to go, to bid farewell
to one's own self, and find an exit
from the fallen self.
II
Have you built your ship of death, O have you?
O build your ship of death, for you will need it.
The grim frost is at hand, when the apples will fall
thick, almost thundrous, on the hardened earth.
And death is on the air like a smell of ashes!
Ah! can't you smell it?
And in the bruised body, the frightened soul
finds itself shrinking, wincing from the cold
that blows upon it through the orifices.
. . .
VII
A little ship, with oars and food
and little dishes, and all accoutrements
fitting and ready for the departing soul.
Now launch the small ship, now as the body dies
and life departs, launch out, the fragile soul
in the fragile ship of courage, the ark of faith
with its store of food and little cooking pans
and change of clothes,
upon the flood's black waste
upon the waters of the end
upon the sea of death, where still we sail
darkly, for we cannot steer, and have no port.
There is no port, there is nowhere to go
only the deepening blackness darkening still
blacker upon the soundless, ungurgling flood
darkness at one with darkness, up and down
and sideways utterly dark, so there is no direction any more
and the little ship is there; yet she is gone.
She is not seen, for there is nothing to see her by.
She is gone! gone! and yet
somewhere she is there.
Nowhere!
VIII
And everything is gone, the body is gone
completely under, gone, entirely gone.
The upper darkness is heavy as the lower,
between them the little ship
is gone
It is the end, it is oblivion.
IX
And yet out of eternity a thread
separates itself on the blackness,
a horizontal thread
that fumes a little with pallor upon the dark.
Is it illusion? or does the pallor fume
A little higher?
Ah wait, wait, for there's the dawn,
the cruel dawn of coming back to life
out of oblivion
Wait, wait, the little ship
drifting, beneath the deathly ashy grey
of a flood-dawn.
Wait, wait! even so, a flush of yellow
and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose.
A flush of rose, and the whole thing starts again.
X
The flood subsides, and the body, like a worn sea-shell
emerges strange and lovely.
And the little ship wings home, faltering and lapsing
on the pink flood,
and the frail soul steps out, into the house again
filling the heart with peace.
Swings the heart renewed with peace
even of oblivion.
Oh build your ship of death. Oh build it!
for you will need it.
For the voyage of oblivion awaits you.
#
Give me a flower on a tall stem, and three dark flames,
For I will go to the wedding, and be wedding-guest
At the marriage of the living dark.
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Bob Arellano Talent, Oregon
90's-band survivor. Lost album FISH+CRABS with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy & the Shelbyville gang available 1st time in >20 years on candy-apple red vinyl & digital; HAVANA CLUB with Jasper Speicher downloadable or just $1 more for factory-pressed rum-label CD; MR. LOVABLE fifteen never-heard solo tracks & LAST POEMS with Bonnie Billy & Jodie Jean Marston now streaming. Follow for blue-moon news blasts! ... more
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