Sunday Painter

Smoke - Rain

I’m a rent collector

Walking down a dead-end street

I’m a Sunday painter

Painting seven days a week

When my mother is sleeping

Dum dum dum dum dum dum

I’m a rain collector

Walking down a sunny street

My umbrella is upside down

No pennies and pounds for me

(only the rain)

A crowd of matchstick men

Is walking down the street

Like a dark river

When my mother is sleeping

Like the ghost of Pendlebury

I am painting every night

1984 - I keep the aspidistra flying 

The clocks in my room

They all have different times

I don’t wanna know the real time

Ticking ticking ticking ticking

I am painting the sea

 The Ghost Ranch  

(New Mexico)

16 acres of  dust and rocks

Without a highway

Without a river, running through it

I am building a home in the desert

My adobe house

With a sycamore and a cactus tree  

With a pink flower

I am wearing my OK brooch and  my gaucho hat

(New York)

I look down at the East River and Queens  

from the highest floor of  the Shelton hotel it seems

The bricks in the Radiator Building are burning

Like my heart is burning 

My heart is lonely 

(New Mexico)

Joni is coming from her canyon to my valley, today

The sky above the clouds outside her airplane window

Pines are whispering

When we are listening to my radio 

(New York City)

Looking down from my window 

On the darkness of New York City 

The lights in the buildings are pretty

Like candles in a tall tree 

Do you miss me…….

My heart is lonely

Like a snowflake

Spoken

I get used to the city

The smoke and the chimneys

The men in the factories

Leaving the buildings of stone 

I get used to the sound of the clocks in my room

The clocks are ticking 

I’m walking alone 

Home

I like the Rosseti drawing, Proserpine

The Lucian Freud

The Tompion clocks

Never had a woman

In 88 years

Isn’t she here

In time

I get used to living alone

In a house full of clocks

A painting of stone

I get used to the city

The smoke and the chimneys

The men in the factories

Leaving the buildings 

Beromünster

Looking through my green eye

Inside your living room

I was handsome

You were beautiful

Sending my love

To you        

Beromünster

Looking through my green eye

Inside your living room

Sending my love

To you        

Beromünster

I was handsome

You were beautiful

Peninsula

Almost an island in this city

On this peninsula 

I am almost an island in this city, almost, I am

So I come back to fall in love with you

You’re a french bonbon

You’re like marzipan  

So I come back to fall in love with you

Almost an island in this city 

I am almost

 

Lina Bo Bardi    

Take a short look in the mirror

I am older, not a young girl anymore

I am sleeping in the Corbusier chair

On the blue floor    

In the glass house that we build 

When we were strong and full of life

On the green hill

Lina Bo Bardi

Through the windows I see

The blue parrot and me and your reflection 

Through the window I see

A tree, your face and my eyes

You were my man

 I was your wife

Where are we? 

In your eyes       Lina Bo Bardi

In my eyes.        Lina Bo Bardi

The remote control in my hand

The kodachromes in a carousel

Turning round like the years 

And the days go by

In the glass house we’ll die

Tremolo

A polaroid

With a black balloon

Let’s wave to the future 

She said  to the camera

A shadow 

And a car horn blows

We never looked young

We are frightened of this world

Now we look older

Tremolo

In my heart

A porcelain bowl

With the inside painted

Water drops in a dark stream

Let’s wave to the future

We never looked young

Now we look older

Shadow Letter 

A shadow letter fell like a leaf from a word tree

Cat on a sofa said why are you looking at me

Animals cannot speak

Somebody said  they can

I hope you remember when 

You said : ‘my name is Telefunken’ 

There a hole in my pocket, there’s a hole in my head

The fortune teller said I see nothing but red 

Animals are poor

They don’t have any money

Do you remember me

My name is Telefunken   Normende  Gründig     (Blaupunkt)

A shadow letter fell like a leaf from a word tree

Cat on a sofa said why are you looking at me

Animals cannot speak

Somebody said  they can

I hope you remember when 

You said : ‘my name is Telefunken’ 

On the last train to A

Shadow letter

 

Peugeot 504 

I am walking down from my pillow to the ground

I am almost naked, almost breaking

I am sitting down by the river in the town

The ice is breaking my heart is breaking

 

Down down down down 

……unclear voices…..

I’am falling down on my knees in the Rosary Chapel

Blue blue blue blue

Windows are breaking 

4 girls are sleeping

In a green Peugeot 5 0 4

Mantelpiece

Mantelpiece

Walking through an empty house

Mantelpiece

A young marble giant

Tumbleweed 

Rolling down a dusty street

Tumbleweed 

life is full of good things

The eyebrows of Laurel and Hardy

 

Young marble giant

Mantelpiece

Standing in an empty room

Tumbleweed

Rolling down a dusty street

Choose a moment in your life

My nonchalance is fading like a handkerchief

On a leaving ship

Don’t leave me

Handkerchief    

waving  waving waving

Mantelpiece

It’s a possibility

To walk with me

I’m walking slow

My careful eye is looking at your knees

I was waiting for you

You were waiting for me

Have you heard 

the birds forget their song

When a Tree

When a tree walks in  

One foot in the dirt of my soul

The other in the ordinary

She said : control

There’s a button on my head

Red

In my lover’s search 

The calendar 

Time is walking into  spaces

I know I had daisies in my head

Sad love is walking

Hear me talking

Waste  days

I walk on velvet highways

Walk on rubber sole

In my days

When I was young

No good comes to this picture in my head

Aha aha aha  aha

And when boys imitate songs

‘Fuck’  said the rain

I am falling in the hard days

In the innocent days

On places in my eyes

When the soldiers came to my heartbreak hotel 

When the soldiers came to your heartbreak hotel 

And machines…. 

The weaver  

Long ago when I was born

In a house along the long canal

Boats were almost standing still 

The smoke of factories

In the November rain

A red balloon is dancing in a street 

How can you change from a man  into a child

Going down the hill

On my bike into the neighbourhood

I swallowed a marble of glass

Like a crystal ball inside my head

And I was looking at all my coming years  

How long does it take to make a tapestry

Horizontal threads are years 

The verticals my life 

In another time

The workers of the factory

Are coming home in the November rain

Love has gone away

Fading almost everyday  

Threads are grey

How long does it take the weaver of my life 

To make a tapestry