The Folk Music

We killed it when we put it on the stage, made a museum of a golden age, we collected, protected, countrymen and kin, it was all about preservation, fast changing times, warded off modernity in favour of the past, authorities of the workers.

Some of you are going to be inspired, some of you I'm going to terrify, people like me we polarise, the lovers and the haters they can take their sides.

We filled the museum in the morning, sang through the rooms in the afternoon, studied late on into the evening, our politics and song.

But you always reach an end with a collection, that's why I was always an inventor, and the first time ever I kissed your mouth, we took off like Bonnie and Clyde.

And I made rules, you were the fools, that took them on, as I broke them.

Who found the folk music, who sang the folk music, who made the folk music? It was obviously me.

I am the ships carpenter as many a one knows and it's cold out here if you don't have the clothes, If anything is broken I am the one, one hundred and seventy, makes me the richest man.

Never stepped foot in a museum but I knew the sawdust floor and I'm four parts fiction, one part mogadore. I was never printed on paper, sold from door to door, just an adaptation, for this project here.

Who found the folk music, who sang the folk music, who made the folk music? It was obviously me.

In and out of the catalogue, free for interpretation, pass me from person to person, that's the way that I go.



Early Riser

Two o'clock is time for bed, six AM I'm up again and the red bricks are wet with rain, right close, observe the everyday, so I feel connected to each and every one of you. All day, walk through the streets, talk, to everyone I meet, take you home behind my eyes, and paint under electric light.

I call studio workshop, don't just paint but amateur I ain't, burn candles both ends, stories long my closest know they're put on. The medium's not of import, sometimes I paint and others I draw, what I take in to my delight, cripples, fights, industrial sites.

Exaggerate, I surely do, it's a composite of lies and truth, something here something there, deviate from the ordinary. Early Riser I'm a late starter and I spent my days thinking about it, and you won't see me around your street, I died nineteen six seventy, Salford ain't a place you wannna be, but I heard they got a new gallery.



Faster than a Train

Alexis is my name,
And I was running faster than a train today.
You might have seen me,
Running in the street,
Extremely fast,
Yeah that was me,
I run to find a name.

Some say I'm a simpleton,
But I'm so horse when I take you on.
And when I entertain you,
It's all for free,
Voluntary,
I do it for the name.

At a hundred yards I can take a horse,
And a car's no sweat for me of course.
And when I ran a hundred miles,
The story spread through the isles,
And those miles,
Made a name to last.

Superhorse is faster than,
Just about all you can bet upon.
But now I am a simple man,
Make my way with my hands,
Through land,
Where you've all heard of me.

On the 12th of January,
A train it took revenge on me.
But if my name lasts a hundred years,
All your laughs are equal to your tears,
As I steer,
Past the finish post.



Copyright Seamus Cater, 2011.