The Kingdom Of The Thumb

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The Kingdom Of The Thumb Jesus was a musician He played this double bass It was built by his stepdad Joseph And commissioned in another place The Lord went into His forest Picked his favorite acacia bark And sent some down to Moses To build the Covenant Ark Inside this golden haven Moses placed the tablets of stone And with the bits of wood left over He made a xylophone The Israelites loved Moses On the day the Red Sea parted They were queuing up to wring his neck When the xylophone music started

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Plinky plonky plonky plink It pierced them to the core They endured the mallet serenade Till they could take no more And drowned the sleeping Moses And stole his wooden notes And sold them to some nomads For a pair of pregnant goats And they begat some more goats And the begetting went on and on And the goats will be begetting When all of us are gone And some of the goats went walkabout And came to Bethlehem Where they stayed and waited for Our Lord To show himself to them Over the years the wooden notes Were classified antique And from their connection with the Ark Acquired historical mystique

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Greedy merchants sold them on For the highest price they could get Till they passed to a humble carpenter To settle a family debt Now this man, Joseph, loved his wood And despised commercial gain And he fell in love with the holy notes On account of their colour and grain He buried them in goatskin Safe from fire and rot And swore he’d only dig them up To build his son a cot Joseph was wooing Mary And she was hot to breed But he was a vegetarian And couldn’t do the deed She pumped him with green vegetables Spinach kale and chard But she could not induce her man To become remotely hard

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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She spiked his morning yoghurt With bonemeal, mainly goat Which gave him the staggers, and jaundice And didn’t float his boat She got the angle slightly wrong When making him a splint The seeds of love went in his eye And left him with a squint And Mary did then fall with child Of genesis divine And Joseph wept in sheer relief And said ‘the baby’s mine’ Because of his appearance Joseph now worked only at home But he had to go out once that year To register with Rome

To spare them all from pity He hid his face in a hood And led the mule that carried his wife And also the bundle of wood The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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The innkeepers refused them room Though Mary begged on her knees They all assumed Joseph’s ugliness Was evidence of disease But he managed to find a stable With the door left on the snib And while Mary noisily gave birth He began to build a crib And then the waiting goats appeared Joseph killed them one by one He strung their guts above the crib To entertain his son The baby set to laughing And the innards of the goats Fell in sympathetic resonance With the holy wooden notes And all around the stable Buildings did vibrate The neighbours called the council Who sent three magistrates

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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The baby simply charmed them With his gentle gurgling purr And they left him gifts including gold And frankincense, and myrrh At the door they started discussing names They all thought Jesus was right And the noise started up but much much worse When they were out of sight Mary was right into motherhood And Joseph was out on a limb He’d started to have sexual feelings Which was bad luck for him He’d let her squirm for many months In his weird reluctant dance Now he wished to change his tune She wouldn’t give him the chance He took to drinking cheap palm wine And bad depressive fits While Mary was out with the baby He smashed the crib to bits

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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He fell into a drunken sleep And dreamed he received from God The template for an instrument Both new and extremely odd God said ‘Use the Ark Wood And to ensure the instrument sings Take those goats awaiting my Word And use their guts for strings And Joseph added his own ideas And gave it a friendly face And the curves of a willing woman And he called it the double bass When he was barely eight years old Jesus began to play While his mates were out larking about He practiced through the day He befriended a professor Down at the music school And his young ideas were so advanced That he made him look a fool

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Jesus, at the age of twelve Got his first serious gig Down at the temple, a function, Black tie, and a groovy wig Allegedly music lovers The guests ignored the band Jesus had a tantrum Then things got out of hand He turned their tables over He poured away their wine Lambasted their indifference To the instruments divine He saw the world in black and white And made a very moral point Which made the guests feel even worse And put their noses out of joint They swore he’d never work again At any fashionable address So Jesus took his double bass And walked into the wilderness

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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He lived for forty days and nights On berries grubs and grasses And vowed he’d never play again For people talking through their arses No more gossip in his solos No more meals of curly pitta bread No more little village halls Try the concert stage instead Spread his fame beyond the region No more crappy local bands He could touch and conquer millions With his pudgy little hands God heard Jesus’s hubris And threw him to the floor And filled his face with wind and rain And his mind with dread and awe While in this state of weakness Heightened by his fast Jesus heard the Word of God And found His Way At Last

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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He asked the Lord for guidance On how to ride the storm He said ‘Experience it to the full Sacrifice is the norm You must not gratify yourself Honest music only seek Yea and if the punters knock you back Then turn the other cheek’ He asked the Lord this question ‘Where do my talents lie?’ The Lord said ‘ Men sink to sin When they go low, go high!’ Yea and the weather brightened As he followed the Word of the Lord And set his thumb towards Heaven At the top of the fingerboard Yea and his hubris lifted And his stiff arms did unbend And he released clouds of angels Up at the dusty end

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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And Jesus returned from the wilderness Now certain in his goal To replace the evil in man’s heart With the music in his soul Back at the cottage in Galilee He horrified his Mum His left arm nearly touched the ground And there wasn’t much left of his thumb She ruffled his sand-caked curls And suddenly looked very sad She said ‘You’ve become quite repulsive You’re starting to look like your Dad’ Yet his eyes held calm and beauty Beyond human pain and tears And that night she lay down with Joseph For the first time in twenty three years They lay for a while without touching Strangers in the marriage bed Then his little man, Lazarus, rose To greet her, from the dead

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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And the Lord came down from his Heaven Wishing to lie with Mary again And he found the farmyard deserted But for a solitary hen And Jesus had many successes He managed to make the mute talk With his bass he walked on the water And then he made the lame walk He repopulated the octave He cried ‘I’m chromatic and proud’ And with seven white loaves and five black fishes He nourished a starving crowd And the local divas came to him With facial expressions amok Their antique appoggiatura Emblems of death and bad luck He showed them a new way of being With egos fully suppressed Revealing a higher music Divine, sacred, and blessed

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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He excited the strings of perception Till they played a heavenly chord He sang of the Way of Devotion And this was the Way of the Lord And as the song spread everywhere It changed the people’s lives Mothers left their children Husbands left their wives The knocking shops were empty The fishing nets lay dry The people ran to join the throng Lest Heaven pass them by Pontius Pilate raged in impotence He could see the good times end His subjects no longer went to work They’d forgotten how to spend His bankers said of Jesus ‘His instrument is odd He plays the air on a goat string And calls it the Song of God’

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Pontius fulminated ‘The man’s a traitor, and worse He undermines our power base Which rests upon commerce Bring me the double bass man Set him before his King So he may know from my own lips The song that he must sing’ And he paid the drummer Judas Through a local Mr Big To bring Jesus before him On the pretence of a gig Pontius Pilate started softly Took Jesus’s hand and said ‘I like your double bass, young man, And I like your jolie-laide But the general music-making Must stop completely, now Or the economy will crumble And this I can’t allow’

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Jesus answered humbly Squeezing Pilate’s hand ‘I only play the double bass I do not lead the band’ Pontius said ‘you may be spared Despite your heinous crime If you perform a song I wrote I’ve called it Money Time And the living can be easy And the living can be good Just encourage the people To consume the way they should’ Jesus laid his bass down Carefully on the floor Then overturned some tables And shouted ‘I’m nobody’s whore! Start spreading the news You must remember this Nostalgia is like suicide When on the brink of bliss’ The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Pilate liked his cheeky grin He liked his curly mop But the boy was a subversive And was scheduled for the chop And Pilate wished an example To be set in the way Jesus died He wanted the traitor nailed to his bass He wanted him Bassified He foresaw one problem could This Bassifixion wreck Jesus should have a single arm Or the bass a double neck He ordered this neck from a luthier As though it came off the shelf He said ‘If you’re thinking tomorrow Make a second one for yourself! Jesus doesn’t need Ark Wood He’s finished in the Bass Clef He won’t be playing any more So just use MDF!’ The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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I had the second neck removed By some restoration geezers This wood will always hold its scars Just like the flesh of Jesus For they take him now to meet his death In a high and sacred place He drags his feet behind him And a man called Simon drags the bass Usually by the end of the gig The helpers disappear The town is strange, the hour is late And you’re all alone with your gear Jesus wonders, will Simon be there This loyal helpful friend Then he remembers there’s no later on For this is a gig with no end Now the centurions beat him And the crowd respond with cries And he hums the Girl from Ipanema With a terrible fear in his eyes The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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The pizzamen sell pizzas And the bookies lay off bets And the women sway from side to side With the men they keep as pets Mary takes a swig of drink And yanks her husband’s lead Jesus ducks beneath a sword And now begins to bleed Now he seizes the double bass Prepares for one last finger run Watches Joseph form his lips Around the words “Go on my son” And Jesus played one final phrase Whose beauty sang and shone out from his face And the air did fill with oohs and aahs For then they nailed him to his bass He hung there in the burning sun Perceived by birds as food With the heat the goat strings soon grew slack And the wood joints came unglued The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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And Jesus cried a terrible cry ‘lama sabak thani, eloi? Why have you forsaken me; Do you take me for a goy?’ And in the silence understood The darkest and most pure of all God’s thoughts He must hang here, bassified Pour encourager les autres And Jesus cried and the bass thrummed A music drenched in awe And people cried as the undertones Shook them, up through the floor And later still, this tortured man On Golgotha’s holy field Did leave his mind just slip away And his spirit he did yield And all the people now did breathe again Except for Jesus, who had died Yet he had died, but also lived for them Which left them, strangely, satisfied The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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For now he’d completed the journey He’d started on their behalf They could give up their quest to be artists And return to the fatted calf And the butchers gave up recitals Went back to cutting up chops And the global economy thrived With the people back in the shops To celebrate the Death of Art And Victory for the Commercial Way They created a Holy Shopping Feast And they called it Christmas Day But this came later, as you know So back to Jesus, on the bass A man called Joseph, not his dad Removed him to a secret place And to stop him resurrecting When left there overnight Covered over the entrance With a rock, surprisingly light The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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As Jesus grew colder and paler The night grew clammy and black The rock rocked and rolled free And manifested a crack And suddenly it did burst open And out tumbled three little men Squawking, all with big noses The fruit of god, by a hen They tumbled forth into being Begetting many new lives Some of whom played the bass And the others became housewives They yet have one thing in common A weariness under the grin These nieces and nephews of Jesus Who suffer while we sin Too many dirty toilets Too many piano roots Too many manic drummers Too many dirty boots The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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Too much changing the duvet Too much pouring the tea Too many out of tune saxes Too many changes of key Too much swearing and farting Too much smelling of beer Not enough humping the singer And too much humping the gear There is a kitchen far away Which someone has to sweep There is a form to every song Which someone has to keep So when you meet a martyr Show your friendly face One dies, in service, every day Like Jesus, on this bass Which I found in an Auction House And bought as a worthless wreck And patched the holes and scuffs and cracks And removed the second neck The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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And polished some, but not too much Feeling Perfection to stem from Pride And I also renounced the higher position From which my Uncle Jesus died And so I am condemned to serve My solid roots till Kingdom Come Though in my secret wilderness I crave that Kingdom of the Thumb Where hearts and minds are finally joined And all life’s meanings understood As flesh and goat strings resonate Into the old acacia wood Yet every time I venture there Up towards the willing woman’s curve I feel a stiffness in my soul My hand falls back, I lack the nerve To follow there where Jesus went Yea and past the stiffness of his soul How strange his martyrdom should become Accessory to our self control The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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As though his death upon the bass Our creativity did annul So we might lead obedient lives Grey, and nice, and safe, and dull Or was this just the mechanism Contrived by businessmen and Church? Did Jesus intend to give us the strength Bravely to resume his search? I urge you my friends and companions Take courage from this little talk Especially those with big noses And a predilection to squawk Don’t expect life to be easy Try not to do as you’re told The Thumb Kingdom awaits you The spirit desires to be bold So follow the shape of your thoughts To the difficult extreme Where hearts and minds and soul and flesh Are joined within a dream The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004

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And let them know this dream around the world In many tongues, through many lands. Just remember, if you play the bass You’ll end up with sore hands

FINE

The Kingdom Of The Thumb

© Nick Weldon April 2004