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Ben Rusch
"highly inventive and intriguing, utterly brilliant and original, deviously good song craft" - Wildy's World music magazine
"amazing, impressive, unique, unforgettable - absolutely wonderful" - Lipstik Indie music magazine

Fissile Isle

I’ve free-lanced for this entity for some time now and my role isn’t small

We spend a lot of time in meetings that just don’t seem to go anywhere at all

My inadvertent full-time job is to keep an eye on where free neutrons are

And the ultimate objective is to stop this nucleus from splitting apart

 
The mass of these amassed debates

Is critical, it radiates

We need to try to touch it and diffuse

Unlock the door, it’s not too late

To go inside and moderate

The fissile chain reaction that ensues

Or else we’re old news

 

This forest can sustain a broad diversity of life forms in its midst

So all the better if we let it breathe and leave it just the way it is

The trees sway back and forth tracing exactly the direction where winds blow

They are objective arbiters when our own visibility is low


I’m trying to slow the slash and burn

I’m fighting fires at every turn

While someone else has felled even more trees

I barely have the chance to wipe

The sawdust off our hands in time

To beat the fire down with my bare feet

I’m in need of reprieve

 
Do we add another item to the list of nightmares that have now come true

I certainly had no designs to out the closet arsonist in you

The bridge between the two of us is soaked in petrol all the way ahead

And if it doesn’t burn you’ll try to bring it down mechanically instead

 
You oscillate from side to side

The amplitude is getting higher

It resonates and it’s starting to crack

To dampen it I try to sway

From side the side the other way

I really want to keep this bridge intact

Once it’s gone there’s no way back

 

Until the coast is clear

For Niall and Glenn

 
The climate here is pretty decent most of the time

It’s tranquil and calm and the sun occasionally shines

So you don’t mind the inevitable icy rain

You roll your eyes and you don’t complain


Cause we have a special place to stay

To weather the storm when cold winds are gushing our way

When it chills our bones a little too cold

We have a safe haven to warm the soul


We make the signal and step in the boat

when the weather on land is rough

We’ve got each other and that’s way more than enough


And it’s hard to know sometimes

Whether to disarm or whether to fight

Whether to come right out or whether to hide

Whether to punch right back or whether to smile

 

And a thousand angry tornados
 
can’t shake or move me at all

not one inch away from your heart

We can’t be torn asunder by a thousand ignorant darts


And you’re my favourite place to lose myself

And you’re my favourite home in which to dwell


Let’s just hide out here in ourselves for a bit

You can shield the chill with your infamous wit

You have your king-size heart and all the things I love you for

And when the coast is clear we’ll sail back to shore


And even drenched in rain you’re the most beautiful sight

my heart’s ever been lucky enough to even see

Nothing around me could make any more sense to me

And you only need to make sense to me


And you’re my favourite place to lose myself

And you’re my favourite home in which to dwell

And you’re the strongest shoulder to lean on

And you’re the best smile in all of St John’s
 
 

The Wicked Witch of the West (or: as good as it gets)

I haven’t known this girl for all that long

But I have to say in principle we sort of get along

Provided I don’t talk too much and we always do whatever she prefers


Our favourite pastimes aren’t always quite the same

I studied law, so clearly I’m no stranger to pain

But I must try to persuade her to stop punching me with quite so much verve


I was hoping we could have a tranquil night in

With a hot bath running and the lights slightly dimmed

With calm music playing in the background and a large glass of wine


And I was hoping while we’re in the bath tub, not to be cliché

But she didn’t quite catch on to the idea that I’d conveyed

Cause what happened then was like the psycho shower scene with her holding the knife


Is this as good as it gets

I’m not complaining, I’m just mildly horrified

Can I occasionally kiss

your lips and not your heels all the time


And recently I’ve learned to watch the drinks that I consume

Not in terms of how much but in terms of not leaving the room

She’s got a pack of ninety roofies in her purse and they’re all meant for me


So lately I’ve got used to waking up at odd times

With little memory of the previous hours in mind

Feeling beaten up and scared that maybe she did something in my sleep


Last week she really put my constitution to the test

I don’t remember most of it, which is really for the best

But I vividly recall the sight that greeted me when I woke up in a haze


She was all dressed in black leather and was brandishing a whip

“Is there a costume party I forgot?” I nervously quipped

And I won’t be too specific about what happened next but I couldn’t sit for days


Is this as good as it gets

Perhaps a cinema simile here is best

I was looking for someone like this Kansas’s Dorothy

And not so much for the Wicked Witch of the West


Is this as good as it gets

I find your brand of crazy hard to resist

But at some point we should talk

Using our mouths this time and not your fists

 
 

Pop diva trajectory

Let’s meet at your office at half past three

To produce a juicy, colourful press pack for me

To finish casting for a baby girl that photographs well

And a relatable group of friends and family as well


My family, although they went to rather posh schools

Will have a go at regional accents too

And let’s make sure that for the next TV interview

My ugly racist uncle will be hidden from view


And someone write me a pop diva ballad real quick

And transpose it to a pitch that I can just about hit

Let’s have a 4-chord max, not too complex

and a chorus with mobile ring tone specs


I should cry now and tell the audience that the show tonight

Is something I’ve been working towards all my life

Even though I admit, I’m a bit hazy with that date

Cause the show’s only been around since 2008


Hike up the hype machine and pull all the stops

produce me like disposable plastic cups

And give me an elaborate back story that looks credible

The way that TV ads can make fast food look semi-edible


And there’s no doubt that people buy whatever we sell

So long as we can keep on packaging it well

When half the country’s now boisterously cheering for more

From a girl they hadn’t heard of until the week before


Follow my trajectory

From talent show celebrity

To dancing with the stars in time

To push my latest clothing line

To being the face of charities

And more-or-less biographies

And once that’s over I can go and

Be a judge on talent shows


So pull the trigger on the hype machine

And shoot in the direction of the average teen

And when they’ve been hit with the latest (s)hit

Reload and shoot me onto that movie screen

 

Ode to your body

So now that you are here I have a few ideas how we can spend our time

To elevate this night from pretty decent to exquisitely divine


So: you wouldn’t stay inside to pay the bills on a warm and sunny day

If you had your own lightsaber you wouldn’t use it as a desk light

And if you open a bottle of wine you drink it instead of letting it go stale

And if you had your own space ship you wouldn’t only use it for domestic flights


So do you really think that nature gave this body to you

Just to get from A to B and to process food

I’m sure that your creator would be rather hurt

If you didn’t think that proposition’s plain absurd


So what better way to have some fun

Than bliss for two for the price of none

Is it really so presumptuous

To optimise your felicific calculus


We can sleep soon enough

And in the meantime platonic can get stuffed


If you master telepathy you probably won’t need to send a fax

So why go get a massage when you have your own devoted volunteer

And if you could turn invisible you may choose not to pay any tax

Sure, Einstein played the violin but you wouldn’t have pushed him to make it a career (that would have been a relatively bad idea)


Should be quite effortless to make yourself at home

Let’s bolt the doors, turn off the phone

Why not practise awesomeness with me tonight

Why watch TV when you can be with me


Why defy your body’s most natural state

Why drive a car when you can levitate

Limiting your body in this crazy way

Is to close the curtains on a sunny day


We can sleep soon enough

And in the meantime platonic can get stuffed


For even a convinced Cartesian dualist

needs his mind and body to coexist

So while you're agile there’s no playground angle steep enough

No pleasure unattainable, no joy too much


We can sleep soon enough

And in the meantime, you know what
 

A small selection of things I would do if your soul got trapped.

(or: why sometimes even an ogre simply won’t do)
 

If your doors are closed and the door bell doesn't work

If the blinds are drawn and the windows are shut

If the landline phone goes straight to the answering machine

If there's no way to call you and even your blackberry's stuffed   


If there's a high voltage fence with a 55-digit code

With a burglar alarm that's incredibly loud

Or a castle with a drawbridge over an acidic moat

With Thick As A Brick walls in which case I “really don't mind if we sit this one out”


If there were Indiana Jones type dark corridors

I'd duck the arrows, solve riddles and leap over trap doors

Or get an ogre to lift me over the wall

Even if finding a suitable ogre ain't easy at all   


I would bribe the security staff with white wine from the Pfalz

Shawshank-Redemption my way through an underground pipeline

Or propel myself past the guards with a catapult

Could use the ogre of course but like i said they're hard to come by


I would distract the guard dogs with the finest meat

Jump on the roof with a massive-ass trampoline

I wouldn't just blast a hole in the wall

Because blasting holes just wouldn't be subtle at all


Might play some music and some piano too

Even though I realise that doesn't directly help you

But it keeps me focussed / in my thinking cap

This is a small selection of things I would do if your soul got trapped.

 
 

Time

I’m checking out, I’m checking out

Mind you, I was never really there

I’ve just been daydreaming out loud

But dreams and I are friends so I don’t care


I’m going home, I’m going home

To that state of charming, calming bliss

Where it’s ok to be alone

Where life means more than merely to exist


And I’m not that disengaged

Not at all, I just found a way

To make time a friend of mine

We just move at different speeds sometimes


I’m going back, I’m going back

To the smooth cocoon of my parallel sphere

I’m taking all the time I need with me

We’ll blast the past and then I’ll come back here


And it’s good-bye, I’m flying high

Into my escapist fantasy

And time might be cruel at times

But when I come back down I can turn it around
 
 

Nocturnal flight

Counting heartbeats, counting sheep

Falling backwards, falling asleep

And fall into dreams


Don’t wake me up just yet, I just defeated gravity

the trick is to jump and not to land

Don’t wake me up just yet, I’m floating weightlessly

I steer through the clouds with the palm of my hand


Ending my nocturnal flight

With the blinding morning light

Stumbling into day


Don’t wake me up just yet, I can make time stand still

I can speak a million languages and read people’s minds,

Don’t wake me up just yet, I can match the speed of light

I can pass through solid walls and shape-shift at will


And there’s no place like my home

Right here in the twilight zone

Stumbling into day
(c) Ben Rusch, 2009 - contact Ben at ben@benrusch.com