No, I have never smoked in my entire life and I have no intention to, but I am trying to forget a suffocating situation, that felt as if I was having to breathe inside a smoker's den, you know, one of those aquariums where these people are purposely locked up.


Don't Forget to Breathe

This is to myself
While I'm trying to forget
That I must be a machine
That can't erase its mind
By cramming it with
Aptitude to better 
Times and light

This is to myself
While I'm trying to ignore
The biting on my tongue
To elevate a sore
Comparing what is worse
The moment or the matter
After the fight

Don't forget to breathe
Don't forget to breathe

This is to myself
While I'm trying to grey out
The picture of a cityscape
The sky of which has left
Its ever fading white
Its badly written text
Will bleed onto the next

This is to myself
I'm hoping to repair
The stitches in the canvas
The colour of the grass
That must return its green
The all removing eye
Will feed the dye

Don't Forget To Breathe (2021 remaster)

This might apply to any so called 'service' that I've been pestered by lately. Are they really so stupid to think it is doing any good?

Job Interview

He said ‘Please take a seat
We have modern equipment
The top of the bill
Of modern recruitment

Right there on the screen
Is our beautiful bot
[welcome]
She will manage your talk
Tell me, isn’t she hot?

People have sex
Using pictures and deepfakes
And we have Vanessa
Who can do so much more.

I’m here for the job
[Can you specify the question]
I’m here for the job
[Can you specify the question]
I’m here for the job
[What do you mean exactly?]
I’m here for the job
[Please choose a topic

[What do you mean I'm a bot? Could you rephrase that question?]
[We are a great business with satisfied customers]

Soon I quit the attempt
Feeling oddly undone
By the answers I got
From this xml hon

Who’s a stiff digit Lady 
So annoyingly pretty, 
That I almost forgot
Her dimwitted speech

So I asked about life
And tomato sauce
And her favourite tune
To tease out the dross

And if she had a boyfriend
To be warm to her privates
But she kept on repeating
[I do not understand]

Job Interview

A description of a moment anyone would have wanted to be somewhere else, especially considering the place this lyric sprang to mind.

Cold Shoulder

I felt his eyes across the room
I'm sure he wasn't reading
But scouring through his magazine
And hoping to accost me

At least that's what it felt like
It was pent-up premonition
Of a man dying to speak

So I just looked away
To read of dental illness
Postered on the wall

What if I'm too polite
What if I understand
What if I fear the risk
Of a cold shoulder?

This is when I wish
I could sabotage the train
And squeeze out all the pus
That's been spat into my ear
This is when I wish
I could open up that skull
And plunge this dulling mind in
My pic of rotting teeth.

Sense came in a rumble
Like chunks of Stuka'd words 
Dropping fractured algebra
Like sleet on tarmac

With other things to mind
Than Europe, greed or profiteers
The backdrops of today

I nodded back indifference
Humming back to please
A splendid piece of roleplay.

Cold Shoulder (This is when I wish) (2022 remaster)

words and music © Pleudoniem 2021

The idea was based on the Hitchcock movie, and what I described in the lyric really happened, except what I made of it. But that is the essence of the movie, isn't it?

Rear Window

It possibly happened
When the door of the car
Was slammed with a bang. 
In our chock-a-block street.

An ill-tempered dame
As this thunderstuck guy
Rose his hands in the air
What was he to do?

I guess he was right
To get lost by her pique
Her merciless tantrum

My rear window view
Hitchcocked reel
A dreamt up ordeal
Killing my time.
   As traffic goes by

I fathomed the tale
He’d got into his wheels
Put the gears in reverse
And rushed into her heels

And if that’s what he’d done
It’d be a far degree murder
Or a close-to attempt
To make her shut up.

He would have been right
To have booted her guts
On the tongue of his car
Licking her up.

What if the story
Ends up bloody and gory
Really
I could still hear them shouting
And nobody cared
Nobody cared
Except me in the window
Moving a cactus
To clear up my view.
Secretly hoping
For a ravaging end
To cheer up my day.

Rear Window

Music & Lyrics by Pleudoniem ©2022

Kafka’s Green Beans

It may be an idea
To have a grooming dick
Tattooed on my cheeks
Like a permanent sideburn
To show I’m a man
And I’m also the guy
Who cares for the arts
As much as I can.

A ready double remedy
A point to my community
To paint me - please - as one of them
Or never again.

Tell me the news
I’ll believe anything
Red is blue is green
Red is blue is green

If that’s what I need
To be respected by all
I’ll purchase a Tee
Made of womanskin
To show that I know
There’s too many of us
And I care for recycling
As much as I can

A double ready remedy
Soft and warm against the cold
The fashion of the bold
Or never again.

Kafka's Green Beans

©2022 by Pleudoniem. 

Fruit (ground my feet)

For decades in a row
I’ve been Withering the ground
My skin is badly scarred
And grass is all around
As many leaves have grown
But some were downed for plains
Razed to make some room
For ardent growing pains

For all tomorrow’s parties
Who rolled to pregnant ground,
Sing anthems to the crowds
That make a world go round

Here is what I wish
On my solid gravel bed
Ground my feet, please
Here is what I wish
For impervious contempt
Ground my feet
Somewhere else

I’m waiting for the day that
Somebody comes along
To boot me in the skin
And my inevitable spin
Might land on tender clay
Fifty feet away
Indifferent of the bruises
For he who lingers loses

To be tomorrow’s party
With roots in willing ground
Opportunities abound
And make a world go round

The Fruit (Ground My Feet)

A feeble and helpless protest against Big Data. They knew this song was going to be written before I knew it. 

In-Undate

I don't know why I'm writing this
If it's on a giant plate
And carved into the slate
Of everything

Then I guess you will have guessed
My helpless opposition
To soulless calculation
By yet another app.

I know you hear my words before I speak
I know you eat me faster than I feed

I know you read me quicker than I write
I know you dig up more than I can bury

One day you will have enough
To mould my perfect clone
You can sell it all you want
But will you leave me alone?
When you have enough
Will you leave me alone?

I don't know why I'm writing this
You started sifting years ago
You already know the answers 
To everything

I bet you've known this song for years
Predicted its conception
I wonder if you'll sell the rights
Before it comes to life

In-Undata (Leave Me Alone)(2019 re-edit)

Better beware and shut up, before the artist who really isn't polishes her stripes and makes you lose it. 
.
.
The Empress’ Student

The pitcher’s on its way
You can have some of the water
But notice it’s an urn
That I lacquered myself
The image of Athena 
In a cinnabar stroke
She will smile at my gift
This appreciative dame.

They were my steady slabs
Took her out of reverse
Out of black without shape
Like a diligent dam.

The Empress loves me
The judge and the judge
I was set to align
But I’ll kindly redraw her
The Empress needs me
The gods do not know
The sword eats the stone
I will kindly redraw them

My liver’s still unharmed
Much unlike this divine who
Stole a flame from the mount
Mine’s been honestly echoed
As I’d learnt how to paint
From the greatest of masters
So I sketched all the flint
That could spark all the lights.

Look at my work and beware
My smile has been captured
In the smiles of personnel
They will feed from my hand

The Empress' Student

© Pleudoniem 2024

You become sensitive to what may be lurking when you've seen enough that happened before it. 

All it really took

A princess on a pea
My skin is quite thin
Quickly daunted by the air
If there’s spinning within

To the innocent soul
Such a splendid finesse
May blindfold a tale
Of a papered offence

As I’d smelt too many rats
To still trust the cat
I’d seen too many flies
Proving shit in the water

So all it really took
Was an incoming breeze
And leaves that bristled up
That was all it really took

Ants legs in a whispered rain
On the march on the veins
Dreaded blood on my wings
So I took to the blue

To an unwitting soul
Such a challenging move
Looking patent and plain
Might seem natural

But
If it wasn’t for the soot
I’d still live in the woods
If it wasn’t for the pea
I’d still be sleeping

All It Really Took

all instruments and vocals by Pleudoniem ©2006, remaster 2024

This song was recorded almost 20 years ago, but I thought I'd see if I could remaster it well enough for SoundCloud with the tools I now have at my disposal. I think the result has been quite satisfactory. Please note that it was part of an entire CD about the fact that really, in all honesty, the Internet is a darn lonely place fishing for likes if you can also see people for real. 

Silver Strike

Dropped another line
In the diligent waves
Hoping for a fish
to lively up the dish
I was hoping one would bite
If anyone just might
take notice of my 
waving and my floundring

There were so many eyes
Spellbound by the movement
There were so many moves
There were so many flounderers
And just so many lines
Drop me one
And I will drop another 
in return

A small fish for a greater
A greater for a larger
A larger for a titan
A titan for a silver strike
silver strike
silver strike

Some scholars will maintain
That it tires out your brain
If you tear at the float for
Hours on end
As I clicked about in circles
The vacuum ate my head
A blackboard with a single line 
was wiped out.

Another 20 faces
20 more fill follow
They talk to me but 
many words stay hollow

The fish in the pool
Flashing away
Sprinkling smiles 
with nothing to say

A small fish for a greater
A greater for a larger
A larger for a titan
A titan for a silver strike
silver strike
silver strike

Silver Strike (2024 Remaster)

'Simple Things' started as a request from Dan Lockhart to add a bassline to a track that he wanted to pepper up in a more funky way. The original sounded quite country & western, especially because of Kellie, who had sung the lyrics in her own beautiful way. The result is quite remarkable, I'd say. 

Music and arrangement:  ProgRockDan1
Lyrics and melody:  Kellie Rowley
Guitar and bass:  Eric Puister (Pleudoniem)

Simple Things

I’ll keep a fire going for a bonfires sake 
Just to usher in the wind
I’ll build a table to retrieve your love 
Over coffee and a chocolate cake
I’ll keep a candle lit to light your way
To the place we begin again
You bring me flowers, I reciprocate
It’s the crazy dance of love and friend

Oh I wanna take your hand 
And kiss your face, 
It’s the simple things you know
The world is wild and I need to know 
That you're ok in the jungle there

If it were just the snakes, 
I wouldn't worry 
So but I need your heart to bare
Oh, wanna take your hand and kiss your face, 
It’s the simple things you know

So growing like a trumpet vine 
With orange fire to proclaim
Let me still be your lady love 
And the love be our flame.

Simple Things - Collab ProgrockDan1 with Pleudoniem and Kellie Rowley

Recorded at Pleudoniem Studios, Amersfoort

Elephant Road

Seven to eleven
in a pretty state
winter wind is blowing
but we'll navigate

pointing out the polar
stick a shadow here
it's a kind of knowing
that we could do without

Pacing down 
the elephant road
catching songs, 
for elephant moods

If your name was Martin
you could raise the price
Sipping from your shizzle
Sailing up to Paradise

Clouding up my window, it's
Hard to sleep at night
Their buzzing wakes me up
-... so does the city light

Mosquitos keep on bugging
our welfare state 
impossible to crush
Let alone exterminate

Wave at the clouds
And make them rain for you
Look at the birds
Their wings should be yours
Even from your sofa
Where you sit to blind the sun
The trampling of the bulls
Fades away the news


Elephant Road (collab with Oorlab)

On the Line

To fatten up the mind and the buttocks. King Tedius is the upper-lord of the modern universe.

Music and words by Pleudoniem @2017

All Around the Clock

Smile at me Lady
Boast your white fangs 
On the pale screen
Of the magic machine
And make me happy
'Cos nobody else will

There's bubbly brown fatty
For a steak in a wok
Where a man in pyjamas
Gives us proof he can cook
He sails from a rope
From the chopper to the roof
Where the kids are being held
They're going to be free soon

And I'm slowly getting bored
When all around the clock
I feed from the world
Like a bag of crisps
And I'm slowly getting bored
When all around the clock
I feed from the world
Like a bag of crisps

So what's on the news
That I still haven't heard
So what's on the news
That I can click on

He's got the right answer
And another precious point
And if he does it one more time
He will take the brass
But I like the baby better
She's got tits, ooh...

She raises the sash
Blocking the mike
She's got nothing to add
That hasn't been said yet
And cigarette prices
Have been upped by a third
Let's sniff at the old hag
And tweet about it

Rain drip drip
Voices voices
Melotunes
And noises

All Around The Clock (2023 remaster)

I Think... (2024 remaster)

This is a song about travelling home at night by bike. I can understand why the romantic movement must have been overpowered by whatever they noticed. You feel mighty small, especially when you're travelling alongside the main road with other traffic. In the song you see tiny eyewinks to William Wordsworth, Gregory Corso, and Theodore Roethke. 

Close To Home

A soul comes to life 
when the city starts drowsing
Teasing the tar
Watching my wheel spin
The road has no will
But the need to go on
And it’s pressing me on
Pressing me on

It was 200 years 
On a road without bikes
That a poet decided that
The moon was a ship
It was 50 odd years
On a road full of rocks
That a poet decided
On a rest

Close to home

Mazed broken ground
Like rain in my face
When the light flares it up
From the surface
But the drizzle is soft
Like a diligent mood
That knows how to keep
pressing me on

I think in the 90s
Not owning a car
One poet decided to steal one
And knock people down 
I’ve only a bike 
And I've nothing to cure, so 
This poet decided
To go lonely roads

Close To Home (2024 remaster)

The song below was recorded with an electric standup bass. It's the first time I've ever posted anything recorded with such an instrument, and it was a bit of a challenge to get it all right, because I am still learning to play it. I hope you like the song. 

Mural

Blades for a thought
Like a flickering flame
As the wall is a canvas
In an uncertain frame
Sweating colours and shapes
Indecisively made
Squeezing oil 

The tale
As it’s now being told
The result of a broil
that is there to unfold

A turpentine flows
From repetitive strokes
Like a meroles feet
in the unbearable heat
As it runs for the shades
And colours the tracks
In impatient paroles
To the sun.

Talk to me ghosts
From the words that I wrote
On the faces of tiles
They’re like tags quickly sprayed
And their ink hasn’t dried

Talk to me ghosts
Talk to me ghosts

I’m hoping to find
Just that touch of the kind
That I might recognise
As a picture I’m in
Or somebody I know 
Inconclusively so
Like a whispering foil

The shades 
Make perpetual moves
They go where they please
In an absurdist show
 
The mural insists
That I now brush some shapes
Like a Peringuey’s swings
As the current she brings
To the dead sand
Adds a life to the bricks
In impatient paroles
To the sun

Mural (2022 remaster)

Change is a song that had been pending for a long time. When you know that somebody can sing, and you compose music, then doors are always open. So here it is then. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Music: Pleudoniem
Lyrics: Pleudoniem & @fabienne-verreydt
Vocals: @fabienne-verreydt

Change

When we used to meet
I had a desperate need to hold you
And everything felt great
Until the chord broke

My mind is at a loss, so
Please, give me a connection
I’d try to make you love me
The way I’d like to love you

Change
O please change!
Will you change?
Why can’t breathe when I speak of you
Why can’t I think when in need of you.

Thinking of you 
makes the clock keep ticking slowly
I wonder how you’re feeling

And if you might return
And if you’d feel the same
About the way we used to be
And the way we used to do

Change (collab with Fabienne Verreydt)

This is my contribution to the Songwriter's Kitchen about the Magic Words Challenge. The idea was to use minimally 5 words from a list that was published by @martimedia. If I counted well, I used 23. That should be more than enough to save me from any witchcraft. 

I just couldn't help it. The lyric was inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Wordsworth, a bit by Robert Frost, and Coleridge, as they all spoke to me from the knots and the naughts in the planks in my studio. But admittedly, the magic words have a romantic flavour. 

The silence of the Crow

A song so quite mellifluous
(I was) dozing in the petrichor
A lilting morning dew
Horizoning my view

I loved this blissful reverie
That quintessential calm
The languor of seclusion

The dazzling daylight water 
She spoke to me so sonorant
So redolent and pure
So honest and demure

As if she meant to say
Just hear this little lullaby
And sleep to it for evermore

And suddenly that crow
Caught my unsuspecting eye
Sudden like a phoenix
Ubiquitous but sly

Are you a secret harbinger
A ripple or some ogre
A gateway into Hades


Alluring as it was
It landed on the sand
And revelled in a snail
Cruelly finishing its tale

It looked so lithe and black
But eyes so strangely elegant,
A gossamer between us.

For want of an epiphany
Or furtive serendipity
I murmured at the critter
-  It didn’t seem to bother

Tell me beast, is that your toy
The end of me, without a noise?
I’d been hoping for some more

The Silence Of The Crow

Music and lyrics Pleudoniem ©2020.

A lyric like a Modernist poem, the meaning of which is to be determined by the phantom of fathom.

The 14th Parade

We came in
Second place
Of the last thirty first
Who were fifth in a row
Of the 13th parade 

That was held on the 
15th of May 
Closely ranked seventeen
On a limitless list

With another nineteen
That we’d watched in the day
From eleven o’clock
To close to two.
And a million more raindrops
Rang in thousands of voices

I just reckon
It all figures
I just reckon
It all figures
The numbers add up
The odds are even

The root of the matter is
If you look at it squarely
Minus four all for one
For the 14th parade, that

Will be held on the 
16th of June, and
That will hand twenty-one
To aid the addition   

For another umpteen
To be watched, quite remote
For 24-7, and 366
And a million more specks
Wetting thousands of voices

The 14th Parade

©Pleudoniem, 2020

A song about one of the necessary precautions. Let's hope the week will start again tomorrow. I tried to use only acoustic instruments. 

Every Day's Like Sunday (Twenty Cars)

I think today is Tuesday
But I’ve started to forget
Now that days have turned to flies
In erratic interaction
Hollow like the light that
Fractures tunes upon the tiles
Of matches played in bygone years
Oozing memories

Every day’s like Sunday
There’s proof in twenty cars 
Queued up along the bricks
The same as they were yesterday
When it was Sunday
When it was Sunday
Empty like the day before
Yesterday.

Those people at my door
They’ve left another box 
They’re always clad in brown, they
Ring the bell and speed away
And never say goodbye
Or even say a word
Their business like unusual
Feeding cattle on a food chain
Savoury online

Every Day's Like Sunday

Good Ole Mobius, but with Regulo on the drums. He liked the song, I liked his drumming, so that's how Mobius got a 3rd ring.

About that little thing that you just can't seem to leave alone. Whatever you do, and wherever you go, the trap awaits you and you're in it before you realise it.

Mobius' Wedding Ring

The ground below my feet
Was changing into strips
Ready to roll on
Moved them with my fingertips

I'd see my hands in motion
To melt into the next
Like endless lines of coke
Ready to inhale.

Please, tell me if I travelled
And what I might have seen
I'm locked inside Pandora's box
Drawn in by the sirens

I've minds in every pocket, 
And thoughts in every bag
If batteries run low
I don't know where to go
I carry them around
Like a wedding ring

Inside this ring of Mobius
Temptation feels ridiculous
When every turn turns old
And every turn turns new

And time and time again
Only little things will change
And all will stay the same
But goes unnoticed

I think I must have travelled
With all the lot I've seen
Here inside Pandora's box
Miracle of science

Mobius' Wedding Ring (Régulo Tortolero "The Plugs" on Drums, Collab)

Song written in 5-beat. Lyrics and music ©2020 Pleudoniem

It All Depends

I changed the tune before the call
Thought that I’d respect the wall
Telling me to caution
Emotional abrasion
Would this be a craven act?

Dazzled by a reckless sky
Scary words in lullabies
If stars obscured the earth
Might my feet be taking chances
Like balance beam dances?

The way that this may end
May evermore depend on
Whatever cares to show
Whatever cares to stick

Fearful of erratic sways 
Spurred on indecisive days
Giving threes and fours and fives
Images of different lives
To beat or to be beaten

It’s always been this way of course
Steady like a moving horse
Fixed onto a carousel
Offering escaping rides
Returning apparitions 
Returning apparitions

It All Depends (2023 remaster)

Performed and composed by Pleudoniem & Oorlab, © 2021

Before the Uniform Days

I must be getting old 
When I think I remember
How we’d love to play
Just a few feet away

The glass in-between just
Compulsory eyewear
And nothing more

This was before the time
Of now familiar ways
This was before the time
Of uniform days

The last time we met
The chords that we heard
Still led synchronous lives

The room in-between now takes
A sleeping half second
Playback was better

Before The Uniform Days (collab with Oorlab)(2023 remaster)

words & music by Pleudoniem ©2021

A jazzy song that started with a drum pattern I liked to try out. 

Marigolds

I caught the kid off guard 
Picking flowers from our lawn 
And was ambushed by the pique 
That was echoed in my tone

Still canvassing myself 
As I frenzied for a way 
To find my mood a shelf 
For the incident

It felt best to insist
That the boy was but a thief 
For that couldn’t be a lie 
Obscured by make-believe

Tell me that is right
Tell it right into my face 
Whisper it and double down 
I’d like me to believe it

Back inside our house 
There’s a whiff of frying ham 
I sliced a sheath of leak
And thought about the jam

A boy who pilfers marigolds
For love or joy or play
To please his mom or bashful friend 
Now would that be the same?

If ham and facts or daisies 
For possiblies and maybies 
Decide what’s on my mind 
Then what’s on his?

Marigolds

I am a multi-instrumentalist who plays the bass guitar, standup-bass, drums, the guitar, a tap guitar, keys, and I sing. I know that we're increasingly entering a world in which nothing may be real, but I believe in authentic play. So, I play all the instruments myself, and in the case of collabs I prefer people who also do this. Don't be a fake.

I usually take great care of the lyrics, because I feel a song is more than just a set of sounds, it also conveys an idea. As a linguist, I have been inspired by a great number of poets that I've come across, and I sometimes wink at them in my own work. Thank you, all you great carriers of moods and ideas, I take a deep respectful bow to you. It's great that the English language has got quite a number of you.

I have been influenced by many artists, but when I ask listeners who they think frequently return, they mostly mention Steely Dan, Talking Heads, King Crimson, Weather Report, Incubus, Duran Duran, Jimi Hendrix, Roxy Music, Japan & David Sylvian, Tower of Power, James Brown, Wishbone Ash, Iron and Wine, Ian Dury - how is that for a salad? That is not to say that I try to mimic them, their influences just ambush me when I am not paying attention.  

I am quite open for collaborations. Quite a number of them have been done with @Oorlab already, @Kellie-Rowley.

Pleudoniem

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