Get all 7 Josefus Haze releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of A Complex Multitude Of Happenings And Memories, Bough EP, If we make it through this one, we can all go dancing, Progressions in Learning EP, The Corridor (Tracy's garage), Battle between sea and air, and Bhopal 1984.
1. |
On A Walk in Winter
04:04
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Cold grows in pacing feet
Encircling earnest embers
Fable’s fire fast fading
for want of fresh fuel made in
bracing one’s face to tornado’s embrace
That everyday chaos wind
bellowing through my branches
Tearing off dead leaves
Making way for new growth
Such a change as cannot come
when walling out that wild whip
to hold September’s foliage
on February’s trees
Such a change as cannot come
in perpetual springtime
with a sacrosanct and sanctioned unease
Such a change as cannot come
for deniers of life’s savagery, who
uncut by its indifferent blade
cannot know being whittled, let go
by capricious Geppetto named Trauma
The storm that never stops
Violent velocity levelling cities with raindrops blown
from Poseidon’s throne
in eye of my own
insightful cyclone
Birch on the backbone of my understanding, sending
prevailing wind filling sails of those
who refuse to let it sink the ship
O’ bullying gale bellowing “Fail!”
at your every step
every breath
every misdeed and every masterwork
Banshee’s scream, only drowned out it seems
by a thousand pummelling decibels wringing streams
of tears from your soul
that you may cry no more
That you can fly and soar
can claw that blade from trauma’s hand
Carve yourself from stone and stand
Warmed
by encircling earnest embers’ glow
holding back the cold that grows
slowly
in pacing feet
of my tomorrow’s
past
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2. |
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3. |
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73:40
That’s what the metre says.
Dust lays on the windscreen in a thin, ochre film, gathering around the wiper arms in tiny dunes. My eyes itch.
A piece of green card shaped like a fur tree swings from the rear-view mirror, tapping gently against the driver’s ID card.
I wince as the clock flicks to seventy-four, then wince again at my unnecessary reaction to its arbitrary LED readout; who the fuck would I pay for this journey anyway? The driver bailed out miles ago, and I’ve been freewheeling ever since.
He was a nice guy too, I really kind of liked him. Not to be friends with or even really to see again, but I sort of wish he had stayed awhile longer. Family man at heart. No kids, but definitely a family man, you can always tell. They work crumby jobs and have long-suffering partners who are too good for them but love them so much they’re cool to hang around for a few years while the guy gets his shit together.
But he never does.
She aspires. So does he, but he enjoys driving taxis and the freedom it brings. He wants peace. She wants security.
He starts working more nightshifts; just to earn and save, ya know. Ten-hour shifts become fifteen. Lovers once moored together in a sleepy port, soon just two distant vessels on a devouring ocean.
Eventually they will have no contact at all with each other, but this only ever comes after a turning point.
I glance at the ID card.
Ralph Gordon.
Yeah, Ralph sure had his turning point, several miles ago.
“Where too, mate”, he had asked as I piled hastily into his car to escape freshly opened heavens.
Not really an original introductory line, but he seemed decent enough, so I went along with it anyway.
“A bit of a long journey, if that’s ok with you?”
“Journey’s a journey, mate. Whatever the customer wants, right?”
Sounded exactly right to me.
“OK, so I want you to head towards Norwich. The place I’m going is just on the outskirts; I’ll direct when we get nearby”
“As you like, mate. Music?”
“Not usually, no”
“Suit yourself”
Silence hugged us like twins in the womb and I hung there afloat in its dense waters. Dusk had become dark and the streets were dressed in evening attire; that iridescent orange setting the rain aflame. I saw those little droplets turn to embers and descend upon us, safe in our strong German car.
“Are you a family man, Ralph?”
He hadn’t given me his name and I hadn’t asked. ID cards negate the need for such niceties and in any case, I enjoy the very English discomfort my directness usually invokes. Today your name is Ralph.
Tomorrow you may decide to change that. But if I meet you tomorrow instead of today, you’ll still be more or less the same person.
...I thought
"Are you a family man, Ralphi?", I said.
“Eh?”
He fell from his daydream to consider my question; a sentimental crease appearing around kind eyes.
“Ah, no. No, not yet. Someday, sure, but it’s just not been the right time, ya know”
“Well, it’s never the right time to have kids, Ralph”
“Is that so?”
“I’ve no idea, but I’ve heard it said. I have no children, but apparently there’s never a good time. Makes you wonder why anyone bothers”
I cracked the passenger window and pushed my face outwards to greet the fine mist sweeping in, perhaps as an Edwardian lady would have braced before her atomiser; eyes softly closed, loose lids, lips pursed in petite pomme.
“We’ve talked about it, like, me and the missus” Ralph clearly seemed to know why people bothered. “But it ain’t the right time. She doesn’t want her kids to have an absent dad, and if there’s one thing a taxi driver is its absent”.
His head twitched to the left and down, like he’d heard chatter in an earpiece I wasn’t aware of, then gazed a moment at his ringless hand clutching the gearstick.
“You’re not sure she loves you?”, I asked, already knowing.
“Well, I mean…” Ralph looked everywhere at once. “I mean, I’m sure she does, it’s just…”
Something caught his eye up and to the right, though I saw nothing.
“…she definitely used to. But then, we hardly see each other these days and... It’s difficult to know…”
His mouth stopped, as if to suck back this half-formed sentence, and he glanced across at me.
“Ah but what am I on about, you don’t know me, you don’t need to know my worries; you’re a stranger to me, I shouldn’t bother you…”
“Ralph”, I said his name as I felt perhaps his mother used to; soft, comforting; I might as well have added ‘deary’ at the end.
“Ralph, were you to seek the services of a psychotherapist, that person would also be a stranger to you”
I breathed in that sweet, cooling rain and held it a moment in my lungs. Then turning to face Ralph, I told him straight.
“Sometimes a stranger is just what you need, mate”
That was several miles ago, back in the darkness of yesterday’s slumber. Today was awaking to exalt me with its warmth and I embraced it with a familiar melancholy; the fabled prodigal and his tearful father.
Here I was, freewheeling again. Ralph was gone and that was sad, but now it’s just me, a strong German car and a mostly vacant motorway.
I look at the family man’s face, immortalised on the rectangle of plastic swinging before me like a convict at the gallows.
Reaching over, I slide the card from its case and slip it into my bag in the passenger footwell.
You’re with the others now, Ralph.
And you’ll be safe there.
Safe, content,
and away from the sadness.
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4. |
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There’s a bear on the landing
Plastic hands and face and feet
Fuzzy body matted with
shock and shame at
damage done by done deed
Protecting the crops meant
damaging a seed
But the bear was not to know
When a fox is at
the chicken coup
digging beneath wire
A shot in the air
alone will suffice
and away he scampers
When the fox breaches, enters
is revealed as something more
Then fox and body and blood within
must be put beneath the floor
Door opens onto whimsical war
and the bear makes such plans as he can
to prevent a second attempt
at predation on his wards
Bears are not known to stealthily stalk
but stalk the bear did
for adaptation is of necessity borne
and survival of your seed is your survival too
So skilful bear went silent, swift
through skinless night with sharpest gift
Sinful paws on a gutter’s wrist
embracing fox in deadliest tryst
and back and away into mist he went
covered in blood, covering footprints
There’s a bear on the landing, leaning
Forty-five degrees diagonal between in
slumping beneath weight of disbelief
and stood in triumphant relief
aglow with crimson justice
and I at my doorway
but the bear doesn’t notice
Until now
Forgetting how he appears
steers himself towards me
Outstretched arms still awash
I am drenched in stench
of sweating bear’s tension
and blood of the slaughtered fox
There’s a bear on the landing
A bear who taught me well
to gather up these twisted guts
and surge into the swell
A bear who taught that
fear is a force
who can cast no spell
other than inertia
inexperience
and a life unlived or worse a
long lived life of longing to be alive
A bear who taught me
you only survive
through legacy and legend
There’s a bear on the landing
That’s all
The end
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Josefus Haze Leeds, UK
Josefus Haze is a multidisciplinary artist living in Leeds, UK.
Primarily a
vocalist in hardcore punk and psych rock bands, Joe began producing music in December 2019.
Informed by his musical roots, Joe prefers a DIY approach, spending hours sampling old films and obscure music, as well as designing his own artwork.
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