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Skin & Bones (with Mavis Vermaak)

by WALKIE TALKIE

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lyrics

lyrics: mavis vermaak, jaco van der merwe, toast coetzer, hemelbesem

SKIN & BONES
Walkie Talkie with Mavis Vermaak

my name is a secret, I live in this place
of skin and bones
and class and race
my name is my secret, I live in a place
moments and minutes and seconds and hours
death & flowers & prisons & towers
another day another year
our mysteries
our histories
our voices
& our victories

from the tower we surveyed
the way time and man had woven
the spotlit crater-dotted power-plotted land
into maps by hand -
minute hands holding hands of bone -
age of iron, age of stone
gathered from the deep and the peaks and hunted in homes,
nomads on ever-changing grids
the lines wavered as the people did
the unspeakable follies of the repetitive narrative embarrassed us –
the watchers in the tower –
we shook and screamed and hurled books and things into space
and begged for it to end, but also
bent our backs and strained our throats crying out for more,
and when our moment came
the only thing we could think of
was to whisper our names
onto everything that we saw

& the birds and the trees and the fish and the bees
& the soil and the air and the ice & the seas & the oil

and when parliament opens like a circus tent
and the shadows drain away as crows to their nests
all hail the cloakless king, all hail the svengali’s retweeted tweet,
the most liked like will be drowned in a hail of teenager-thrown
stones and half-bricks in a suburb where the newspaper
has stopped putting out newspapers and the dogs have licked
the stony earth dry so all you can hear
is a mother and a grandmother’s cry
at the crossroads, the new crossroads
where a boy left to be a man
and the rest of us
left it at that

my name is a secret, I live in this place

An ice drop turning sun hungry comet
I commit to that hungry stomach
A reckless man. Food for thought is cashing sand.
All this dust I muster is just a flash in a pan
Man; a drop in a bucket.
Instead of kicking it, my hand’s just dropping the bucket
A beggar’s vessel, with which I nestle
Crocked, but cup’s buckled
Drop a buck in my bucket?
Or...drop it...please?
Oh how a brave Theokoles can crave mediocrity.
But statute’s my cup. Sip truth and move from being subdued under the seasoned flock
Coz statues get stuck, like glue to the poo some of these pigeons drop.

my name is my secret, I live in this place
of skin and bones and breath and grace
on a speck in a moment
in time and space

credits

released June 18, 2014
composed & produced by: Mavis Vermaak www.soundcloud.com/mavis-vermaak
mixed & mastered by Fletcher Beadon www.mynameisfletcher.com
artwork: Mavis Vermaak www.mavisvermaak.com

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WALKIE TALKIE South Africa

A collective of spoken word artists from South Africa, including Toast Coetzer (Buckfever Underground); Jaco van der Merwe (Bittereinder); HemelBesem; Hunter Kennedy (Fokof/Heuwels); Henry Cloete (Skynmaagde), YOMA & MOUTHOFWOLF, collaborating across mediums and languages to make WALKIE TALKIE tracks. Stywe lyne Suid-Afrika. ... more

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