The King in the Tree - Shriekback

There’s the Huns at the gate

They don’t look like they’re messing

Why don’t you turn your face to the wall

If you find it distressing?

You can shiver in fear:

Feel the heat of the moment

Then go ratchet it up in the sun

As a kind of atonement

You can howl for the moon

With your feet in the water

You can flatten the corn in the rain

With a clergyman’s daughter

And the schlock of the new?

Let’s not rise to the bait

Why should we work with the kind of old fools

Who can’t recalibrate?

See the King in the Tree!

He’s as mad as a bone

Holy and crazy and horribly sad

Better just leave him alone

-The King in the Tree

Gotta get through the day

But it’s never that simple

An epiphany (so they say) is like lancing a pimple

File it under 'degraded'

Gets you down if you let it

All of that wonderful animal grace-

Don’t let’s live to regret it

It’s a classic mistake

Bringing water to Venice:

Out on the Lido;

down on the lake

There’s an aura of menace

Secret words of the world are Engulf and Devour

(Why is all this tyrannical shit in the soul of a flower?)

See the King in the Tree!

He’s a sign of the times

Screaming away in the dead of the night

With the tales of his crimes

The King in the Tree!

He’s been up there for days

Eating salad and scaring the birds:

See his untenable ways

The King in the Tree!

In the tangled tree

Sits the mad old king

And the night is dark

And the night is cold

And he howls with rage

At the rats and crows

And he won’t come down

…And he won’t come down