Michael McGuire Signs And Symbols
ELECTRIC BABYLON
PREFACE
Some when (perhaps the present has already planned its future), We
step into the life of a young man who is perplexed at what he sees as a
world fashioned for the art of self destruction. There are rumors, there
is death predominantly in the guise of what has become known as the
chirp because of the high pitched wheezing that accompanies the
illness. No one knows. Authority declines comment. Meanwhile most of
the populous carries on business as usual although there are sporadic
protests and riots in which the participants call for the immediate shut
down of all industry and transportation and anything else deemed
harmful to the environment. The people who take part in these riots
have come to be called poets because of their seemingly quixotic
ideals. Another group (unofficially led by a radio personality named
Russ Lawler) called the red church is militantly opposed to any
interference with what seems to be happening because they see it as
god’s will. Pulled this way and that by gravity and thought we watch
the world’s will bend our hero’s will into the grotesque shape of guilt,
fear and doubt as he struggles to find the sense in living a life that is
killing us.
The last song is taken from the pages of a scientist’s journal who was
working to help solve the environmental problems man has created.
SIGNS AND SYMBOLS
Blood red moon two headed goat, my haunted head it’s happening I
know, the confusion of day and night, the transposition of wrong and
right.
Fish are drowning sky is deaf, we copyright every prayer that’s left, that
couple that just stepped out of that Jaguar, just gave birth to a full
grown lawyer.
Here I am my hand is a sign, I drew a life in the sand then I crossed
that line, the circle complete the circled they hide. now they postulate
theories on how the truth has lied.
Time is running backwards yet age flies past the clock, I saw a red
church member pass his hand thru solid rock, I know it’s happening
now seems everybody has the chirp, life began with a big bang it’s
gonna end with a big burp, our god the machine is hungry and it’s
eating us alive, created and destroyed equally not even money will
survive, lovers on dead mornings coffins sculpted from the dark, I lie
awake all night to get a good shot at the lark.
My body shits illusions my mind dreams up new worlds, anybody is
nobody since I lost my girl, now my story is the silence of the space
between the words, the difference of my flight that of airplanes and
birds, ancient bone weaved in rock and root and sky and grave, a free
man is his own victim a free man is slave, but the stuff that dreams are
made of is only found in dreams, the real is blood and numbers the
birth of the unreal.
july 93