- 1
Peter Hammill - A Louse Is Not A Home
- 2
Peter Hammill - The Institute Of Mental Health, Burning
- 3
Peter Hammill - A Better Time
- 4
Peter Hammill - Been Alone So Long
- 5
Peter Hammill - Forsaken Gardens
- 6
Peter Hammill - Modern
- 7
Peter Hammill - Nadir's Big Chance
- 8
Peter Hammill - Nobody's Business
- 9
Peter Hammill - Open your Eyes (The Locarno Song)
- 10
Peter Hammill - Pushing Thirty
- 11
Peter Hammill - The Birds
- 12
Peter Hammill - The Future Now
- 13
Peter Hammill - This Book
- 14
Peter Hammill - Time Heals
- 15
Peter Hammill - Wilhelmina
- 16
Peter Hammill - (No More) The Submariner
- 17
Peter Hammill - (On Tuesday She Used To Do) Yoga
- 18
Peter Hammill - A Forest Of Pronouns
- 19
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: i. Up Ahead
- 20
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: ii. Continental Drift
- 21
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: iii. The Twelve
- 22
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: iv. Long Light
- 23
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: v. Backwards Man
- 24
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: vi. As You Were
- 25
Peter Hammill - A Headlong Stretch: vii. Or So I Said
- 26
Peter Hammill - Again
- 27
Peter Hammill - Candle
- 28
Peter Hammill - Child
- 29
Peter Hammill - Comfortable
- 30
Peter Hammill - Crying Wolf
- 31
Peter Hammill - Faint-Heart and the Sermon
- 32
Peter Hammill - Ferret And Featherbird
- 33
Peter Hammill - Fight
- 34
Peter Hammill - Four Pails
- 35
Peter Hammill - Gog
- 36
Peter Hammill - Happy
- 37
Peter Hammill - I Once Wrote Some Poems
- 38
Peter Hammill - Imperial Zeppelin
- 39
Peter Hammill - Just Good Friends
- 40
Peter Hammill - Lost And Found
- 41
Peter Hammill - Magog (In Bromine Chambers)
- 42
Peter Hammill - Man-Erg
- 43
Peter Hammill - Material Possession
- 44
Peter Hammill - Mediaevil
- 45
Peter Hammill - Mirror Images
- 46
Peter Hammill - Mr. X (Gets Tense)
- 47
Peter Hammill - My Experience
- 48
Peter Hammill - My Favourite
- 49
Peter Hammill - Narcissus (Bar & Grill)
- 50
Peter Hammill - Nightman
- 51
Peter Hammill - No Moon In The Water
- 52
Peter Hammill - None Of The Above
- 53
Peter Hammill - Not For Keith
- 54
Peter Hammill - Not The Man
- 55
Peter Hammill - Nothing Comes
- 56
Peter Hammill - Now Lover
- 57
Peter Hammill - Now More Than Ever
- 58
Peter Hammill - Oasis
- 59
Peter Hammill - On The Surface
- 60
Peter Hammill - Ophelia
- 61
Peter Hammill - Other Old Clichés
- 62
Peter Hammill - Our Oyster
- 63
Peter Hammill - Painting By Numbers
- 64
Peter Hammill - Palinurus (Castaway)
- 65
Peter Hammill - Paradox Drive
- 66
Peter Hammill - Patient
- 67
Peter Hammill - People You Were Going To
- 68
Peter Hammill - Personality
- 69
Peter Hammill - Phosphorescence
- 70
Peter Hammill - Planet Coventry
- 71
Peter Hammill - Pompeii
- 72
Peter Hammill - Porton Down
- 73
Peter Hammill - Power Of Speech
- 74
Peter Hammill - Primo on the Parapet
- 75
Peter Hammill - Rain, 3 a.m.
- 76
Peter Hammill - Ram Origami
- 77
Peter Hammill - Re-Awakening
- 78
Peter Hammill - Red Shift
- 79
Peter Hammill - Reprise
- 80
Peter Hammill - Rock and Rôle
- 81
Peter Hammill - Rubicon
- 82
Peter Hammill - Sci-Finance
- 83
Peter Hammill - Seven Wonders
- 84
Peter Hammill - Sharply Unclear
- 85
Peter Hammill - She Wraps It Up
- 86
Peter Hammill - Shell
- 87
Peter Hammill - Shingle Song
- 88
Peter Hammill - Sign
- 89
Peter Hammill - Silver
- 90
Peter Hammill - Since The Kids
- 91
Peter Hammill - Sitting Targets
- 92
Peter Hammill - Skin
- 93
Peter Hammill - Sleep Now
- 94
Peter Hammill - Slender Threads
- 95
Peter Hammill - Smile
- 96
Peter Hammill - Solitude
- 97
Peter Hammill - Something About Ysabel's Dance
- 98
Peter Hammill - Still In The Dark
- 99
Peter Hammill - Still Life
- 100
Peter Hammill - Stranger Still
- 101
Peter Hammill - Stupid
- 102
Peter Hammill - Summer Song (In the Autumn)
- 103
Peter Hammill - Sun City Nightlife
- 104
Peter Hammill - Sunshine
- 105
Peter Hammill - Tapeworm
- 106
Peter Hammill - Tenderness
- 107
Peter Hammill - The Comet, The Course, The Tail
- 108
Peter Hammill - The Cut
- 109
Peter Hammill - The Gift of Fire (Talk Turkey)
- 110
Peter Hammill - The Great European Department Store
- 111
Peter Hammill - The Great Experiment
- 112
Peter Hammill - The Jargon King
- 113
Peter Hammill - The Lie (Bernini's St. Theresa)
- 114
Peter Hammill - The Light Continent
- 115
Peter Hammill - The Meanings Changed
- 116
Peter Hammill - The Moebius Loop
- 117
Peter Hammill - The Mousetrap (Caught In)
- 118
Peter Hammill - The Noise
- 119
Peter Hammill - The Old School Tie
- 120
Peter Hammill - The Play's The Thing
- 121
Peter Hammill - The Polaroid
- 122
Peter Hammill - The Second Hand
- 123
Peter Hammill - The Spirit
- 124
Peter Hammill - The Tower
- 125
Peter Hammill - The Unconscious Life
- 126
Peter Hammill - This Side Of The Looking Glass
- 127
Peter Hammill - Time For A Change
- 128
Peter Hammill - Time To Burn
- 129
Peter Hammill - Too Many Of My Yesterdays
- 130
Peter Hammill - Traintime
- 131
Peter Hammill - Trappings
- 132
Peter Hammill - Two Or Three Spectres
- 133
Peter Hammill - Under Cover Names
- 134
Peter Hammill - Unrehearshed
- 135
Peter Hammill - Viking
- 136
Peter Hammill - Vision
- 137
Peter Hammill - Vote Brand X
- 138
Peter Hammill - What I Did
- 139
Peter Hammill - What's it Worth?
- 140
Peter Hammill - When Language Corrodes
- 141
Peter Hammill - Where The Mouth Is
- 142
Peter Hammill - You Can't Want What You Always Get...
- 143
Peter Hammill - You Hit Me Where I Live
- 144
Peter Hammill - Your Word
A Louse Is Not A Home
Peter Hammill
sometimes I think I'll disappear; betimes I think I have.
There's a line snaking down my mirror :
splintered glass distorts my face,
and though the light is strong and strange
it can't illuminate the musty corners of this place.
There is a lofty, lonely, Lohengrenic castle in the clouds --
Yes, I draw my murky meanings there,
but seven years' dark luck is just around the corner
and in the shadows lurks the spectre of Despair.
A cracked mirror mid the drapes of the landing :
split image, labored understanding ----
I'm only trying to find a place to hide my home ....
I've lived in houses composed of glass
where every movement is charted,
but now the monitor screens are dark
and I can't tell if silent eyes are there.
My words are spiders upon the page,
they spin out faith, hope and reason ----
but are they meet and just, or only dust
gathering about my chair?
Sometimes I get the feeling that there's
someone else there :
The faceless watcher makes me uneasy,
I can feel him through the floorboards,
and His presence is creepy ----
He informs me that I shall be expelled ....
What is that but out of and into :
I don't know the nature of the door that I'd go through,
I don't know the nature of the nature
that I am inside ....
I've lived in houses of brick and lead
where all emotion is sacred,
and if you want to devour the fruit
you must first sniff at the fragrance
and lay your body before the shrine
with poems and posies and papers ----
or, if you catch the ruse, you'll have to choose
to stay, a monk, or leave, a vagrant.
What is this place you call home?
Is it a sermon or a confession?
Is it the chalice that you use for protection?
Is it really only somewhere you can stay?
Is it a rule-book or a lecture?
Is it a beating at the hands of your Protector?
Does the idol have feet of clay?
Home is what you make it, so my friends all say,
but I rarely see their homes in these dark days.
Some of them are snails and carry houses
on their backs;
others live in monuments which, one day,
will be racks --
I keep my home in place with sellotape
and tin-tacks,
but I still feel there's some other Force here :
He who cracks the mirrors and moves the walls
keeps staring through the eye-slits of the portraits
in my hall;
He ravages my library and taps the telephone --
I've never actually seen Him,
but I know He's in my home
and if he goes away,
I can't stay here either.
I believe -- er -- I think --
well, I don't know ......
I only live in one room at a time,
but all of the walls are ears, all the windows, eyes :
Everything else is foreign,
'Home' is my wordless chant :
mmmmmaah!
Give it a chance!
I am surrounded by flesh and bone,
I am a temple of living,
I am a hermit, I am a drone,
and I am boning out a place to be.
With secret garlands about my head
unearthly silence is broken :
the room is growing dark, and in the stark light
I can see a face I know ----
could this be the guy who never shows
the cracked mirror what he's feeling,
merely mumbles prayers to the ground where
he's kneeling :
"Home is home is home is home is home is home is me!"
All you people looking for your houses,
don't throw your weight around, you might
break your glasses
and if you do, you know you just can't see
and then how are you to find the dawning
of the day?
--- Day is just a word I use to keep the dark
at bay,
and people are imaginary, nothing else exists
except the room I'm sitting in,
and, of course, the all-pervading mist ---
sometimes I wonder if even that's real ....
Maybe I should de-louse this place;
Maybe I should de-place this louse;
Maybe I'll maybe my life away
in the confines of this silent house.
Sometimes it's very scary here; sometimes it's very sad;
sometimes I think I'll disappear; sometimes I think .....