1. |
Don't Drink the Water
05:39
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Don’t Drink the Water © 2014 Michael Cannon.
From temples on the six, we hear him call
as myriad roosters cry chants of their own.
Kamben’d kin their well worn grins renowned
Declaration of their heritage abound.
Rhythmic rambling, I wonder where they go
Each avoiding the other - spellbinding show
Incalculable writhing serpentine
Intolerant foreigners with skin alabastrine.
‘Don’t drink the water’, he says, ‘just smile and be patient
‘Don’t drink the water’, a glint in his eye.
‘Don’t drink the water though it’s heaven sent.
'Our way is our way, we don’t ask for your consent’.
Her tired market voice urges me ‘come shop here.
'Why not barter my livelihood with your purse of rupiah?’
While a whisper away sad orphans ask my attention.
Homeless urchins - this will be their life’s conviction.
‘Don’t drink the water’, he says, ‘just smile and be patient
‘Don’t drink the water’, a glint in his eye.
‘Don’t drink the water though it’s heaven sent.
'Our way is our way, we don’t ask for your consent’
In the street there’s a mange-ridden mongrel
Tormented eyes tell of a life that must be hell
Drifting miasma of waste my senses agonise
Both homed and the unhomed exist in this flawed paradise
Both homed and the unhomed exist in this flawed paradise.
‘Don’t drink the water’, he says, ‘just smile and be patient
‘Don’t drink the water’, a glint in his eye.
‘Don’t drink the water though it’s heaven sent.
'Our way is our way, we don’t ask for your consent’.
From temples on the six, we hear him call
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2. |
Invisible (acoustic)
04:47
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Invisible © 2012 Michael Cannon.
Where have you gone, silent hunter?
It’s been years since you’ve been seen.
Have you come to an end silent hunter?
I’ll keep looking for your shadow just the same.
Ordained by evolution, silent hunter
This isolated haven your last home.
And such a part of this world, silent hunter,
before the darkness came.
Only if you have become invisible,
choose to remain unseen; survival need.
Unless you really have become invisible,
slowly fade away ...
They came here from another world
and tore the heart from yours.
Through decree, fear and deception you were condemned.
From then your days were few silent hunter.
I’ll keep looking for your shadow just the same.
Only if you have become invisible,
choose to remain unseen from the unrelenting.
Unless you really have become invisible,
slowly pass away to memory.
Your kindred’s desecration borne by greed-bred persecution.
Your pride less than a trophy for the wall.
If you could you would cry mercy for your children.
Through your silence no one heard,
no one cared, no one considered.
Would they have listened anyway?
Only if you have become invisible,
choose to remain unseen, we might let you be.
Only for a pound, you became invisible.
Fading into grey just the same.
Silent hunter has become invisible.
No longer seen: thylacine.
Silent hunter has become invisible.
Through humanity you’re gone, just the same.
Gone.
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3. |
The Graceful Ghost
05:56
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Words escaped me.
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4. |
Duty
05:07
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Duty © 2012 Michael Cannon.
She said, “I’m ending this now, our time is over.
“I’ve changed so much, you’ve stayed the same.
“There’s another,” she said, “now my reason for being.
“... no inclination for apportioning blame.”
How will it end for them?
He said, “If that’s what you need, I cannot fight it.
“You don’t even want me to implore.
“But have you given our kids consideration?
“How can you turn your back and close the door?”
How will it end for them, the sacrificial lambs?
Lives dealt with uncertainty, the young will pay the price.
The confused minds of innocent children,
convinced her leaving’s because of them.
So they go to their dad to tell him they’re sorry.
They all feel so empty and alone.
Look what it’s done to them: these sacrificial lambs.
Lives dealt with uncertainty, the young will pay the price.
Day after day, despite alienation,
kids will wonder what become of their invulnerable world.
So they all make their adjustments, just one more sacrifice.
It all serves to make you wonder - is there no duty any more?
Little wonder children suffer
when a parent takes their leave.
No explanation there to pacify
all the demons they will weave.
To a future there to replicate
through the scars that may not heal
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5. |
100 Miles
03:53
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Hundred Miles © 2012 Michael Cannon.
Our pioneers made tracks to Waratah.
Toil and ordeal, Hellyer and beyond.
Bullock surge and heave through rough terrain.
There and to return to Emu Bay.
The Cooee mill constructed wooden beams.
With leathered hands and straining sinews persevered.
Sweat and sleet and desolation, toil.
To lay a hundred miles of wooden rails.
The hundred miles of endless wooden rails,
brought tin from Waratah to Emu Bay.
Endless rows of heavy wooden rails,
opened Waratah to Emu Bay.
Solid timber rails afforded better transportation.
Rolling horse drawn carriage ‘cross the northwest line.
Marked the onset of the mining boom.
All through endless rows of heavy wooden rails.
A grim environment told on the colonists,
hardships persevered no-one would tell.
But enduring to their limits, menfolk battled on,
all to lay a hundred miles of wooden rails
The hundred miles of endless wooden rails,
brought tin from Waratah to Emu Bay.
Endless rows of heavy wooden rails,
opened Waratah to Emu Bay.
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6. |
Stop The World
04:06
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Stop the World - © 2012 Michael Cannon.
You just can’t make your own decisions.
Not your fault it’s someone else.
Your mum, your dad - head on the TV,
pass the buck just don’t blame (me).
You’re selfish, arrogant and you don’t care.
Stop the world and let me …
Your offspring are so precious you don’t care,
they run amok but do no wrong.
Dare we suggest supervision?
Respect is just a dirty word.
You’re selfish, arrogant and you don’t care.
You hide behind your right to be,
say or do whatever you think’s fine.
Stop the world and let me ...
You drive your car as if it is your road,
no matter what I’m in your way.
Hey I’m not centering round your universe (why’s that?),
- cause I’ve got one of my own.
Yes I have, so bugger off.
We need to change, let’s have a meeting.
Better still we might have three.
Brainstorming think tank? Tabled strategy?
Send out a memo, file it away.
We’re selfish, arrogant and we don’t care,
Friction is tranquility.
We live by inconsideration.
Stop the world and let me ...
(Stop the world and let him off)
Stop the world and let me ...
(Stop the world and let him off)
Stop the world and let me off.
Aces in their places fellow BisDevs,
we need a paradigm shift and operationalise so we can get
everyone out of the box, on to the floor and into the fire.
To best circle the wagons so we can stir fry in an ideas wok,
we need an off-site communal thought shower.
Melbourne? Sydney?
A Shangri-la in Ibiza sounds the go yeah?
Whiteboard the change-agents and leverage
our core competencies? Sure!
We can inventivise, accentivise, componentise,
commoditise, integrationalise, misrepresentivise?
What - there’s an elephant in the room?
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7. |
Tell Us All
05:24
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Tell Us All © 2014 Michael Cannon.
You only get one chance in life why would you give it away?
We always hear there’s so much life to live for.
Your life was so important why would you throw it away?
It seemed you had an awful lot to live for.
I drew a picture of you from what you let us see:
elite self importance that hid your pedigree.
You fought for those who may just want to throw it away,
priority was giving hope to live for.
Devoted to the cause for those who shouldn’t give it away.
A general for all those things you stood for.
You held in your two hands hopes of many frail emotion,
in the belief that life’s worth holding to.
Then so it seems one day what you had was not so perfect.
You cut the life so many would have found ideal.
Those left behind with all their guilt - could they have done better?
Never the chance to make amends - or even say goodbye.
One might have thought the greatest blow was losing yourself,
but not as great as those you’ve left behind.
Why did you do it?
Tell us all, why did you do it?
Tell us Paul, why did you do it?
Why did you do it?
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8. |
Terry and Morrie and Me
05:23
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Terry and Morrie and Me © 2014 Michael Cannon.
We headed from Cynthia on an overcast morning,
There was Terry and Morrie and me,
Scouting St Clair in the fresh morning air,
on the Overland Track - just us three.
Tasmanian spring, cantankerous thing,
gave four seasons in the blink of an eye.
Icy cold hail, or force nineteen gales,
or snow drifts right up to our thighs.
The deluge of rain broke after Pelion Gap.
We’d been picking through quagmire all day.
The track more resembled a plummeting creek,
down our meandering mountainside way.
Transient souls bonded at Pelion:
Dr Steve and his Celtic refrain.
Architect Veto turned Nereda’s packhorse,
Anni laughing the roof off again.
Our friends since moved on, then at noon Wednesday morn,
team-builders took over the place.
Upbeat and corporate, noisy and obstinate,
- can’t wait to get back to wide space.
The rest day behind us we tramped through the snowdrifts,
with Amanda and Andy ahead.
Pine Forest Moor, Frog Flats and much more,
- frozen Windamere Hut for a bed.
Day seven was glorious ‘cross highlands the three of us:
the determined and dogged unshaven.
Bright sun on the snow, duckboard and on stone,
on to Waterfall Valley’s warm haven.
I watched by the window through lengthening shadows,
Holly suddenly opened the door.
with reunion complete in that mountain retreat,
Terry couldn’t have asked for much more.
A crystal clear morning, day eight was just dawning,
we set on our northward affair.
While Nottingham Phil up the Cradle walked still,
as he journeyed back down to St Clair.
Near to the end on the Cradle Mount Cirque,
with Barn Bluff as our constant companion,
Spring in our stride Dove Lake we espied,
from the raptors-eye outlook at Marion.
Here endeth the tale and it surely was hale,
of our Overland trek we agree.
We’ll not disremember that awesome September,
with Terry and Morrie,
Terry and Morrie and me.
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9. |
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Shhh, just listen ...
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10. |
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11. |
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12. |
Cradle Echoes: evocation
04:35
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13. |
The Transit of Venus
05:45
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Transit of Venus © 2014 Michael Cannon.
Look out across the forest, pristine and unturned,
pondering man’s existence. What have we learned?
All we take for granted, what we reap and what we sow,
I fabricate more questions to the answers I don’t know.
An avaricious culture fuelled by rhetoric and lies,
contorting age-old doctrines, lunatics feel justified.
Striving for ascendancy, monopolise and purge,
I shake my head, look skyward, wait for Venus to emerge.
There’s a retrograde rotation pre the continent divide,
this neighbour of Earth’s cradle of mankind.
The heavens keep us mystified, questioning, diversified.
Transit of Venus may be even immortalised.
Celestial aberration, scientific theorists consign.
Only half a dozen Transits since sixteen thirty nine.
Venus flashes like a comet tail of wondrous untaught fears,
I’ll not likely see the next one in two hundred and some years.
What generates awe in human minds like a meteoric shower,
Transit of Venus - come and gone in just a mere few hours.
We’re like any other living thing but the wit to wonder why,
Venus will keep returning past human’s last goodbye.
Just a simple black anomaly causing widespread curiosity.
To some there’ll be no doubt will hook into religiosity.
The Transit of Venus bound to incite contrariety.
Perhaps it’s best I return my gaze to this verdant reality.
The morning star, the northern lights,
the infamous black hole.
Inspiring scenarios from our dot orbiting Sol.
The end.
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14. |
Invisible (extended)
08:49
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Invisible © 2014 Michael Cannon.
Where have you gone, silent hunter?
It’s been years since you’ve been seen.
Have you come to an end silent hunter?
I’ll keep looking for your shadow just the same.
Ordained by evolution, silent hunter.
This isolated haven your last home.
And such a part of this world, silent hunter,
before the darkness came.
Only if you have become invisible,
choose to remain unseen; survival need.
Unless you really have become invisible,
slowly fade away ...
They came here from another world
and tore the heart from yours.
Through decree, fear and deception you were condemned.
From then your days were few silent hunter.
I’ll keep looking for your shadow just the same.
Only if you have become invisible,
choose to remain unseen from the unrelenting.
Unless you really have become invisible,
slowly pass away ("May I continue your Excellency?") to memory.
("This is a useless, smelly creature
with an acid tincture of peculiar savagery and wanton destruction.
The island is best off without them.
Praying his Excellency the Governor will be pleased to recommend the appropriation
of the sum of five hundred pounds for the destruction of tigers,
otherwise known as Tasmanian Dingoes.
For the eyes? Noes?”)
Your kindred’s desecration ("The committee is divided.”)
borne by greed-bred persecution. (“Eyes twelve, noes eleven”)
Your pride less than a trophy for the wall.
(“So it passes in the affirmative.”)
If you could you would cry mercy for your children.
Through your silence no one heard,
no one cared, no one considered.
Would they have listened anyway?
Only if you have become invisible,
choose to remain unseen, we might let you be.
Only for a pound, you became invisible.
Fading into grey just the same.
Only if you have become invisible,
No longer seen: thylacine.
Silent hunter has become invisible.
Through humanity you’re gone, just the same.
“On this day 7th of September 1936:
The last captive thylacine died today in Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart.
Taken from its natural habitat for the enjoyment of the general public,
the unfortunate creature has died from neglect.
And onto other news now, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons categorically denied …”
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Michael Cannon TAS, Australia
Michael’s early works were guitar-based tunes, however his first lyrics can be heard in ‘Drambuie Rock’ from the 2010 CD
Hard to Define.
Michael’s 2014 CD, Invisible, showed a more complex style, with observations of 21st century society.
The Tramp: The Music of Robert Aitken is his third CD, connected to his first Novel, The Tramp: a tale of a troubled musician. A stage script is underway.
... more
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