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Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness
Lyrics by Eugene Robinson
www.theoxbow.com

Eugene Robinson (vocals/lyrics) + Hervé Vincenti ((guitars / samplers / keys) + Sarah Elze (double bass) + Andy Diagram (trumpet / electronics) + Nicolas Dick (guitar) + Perceval Bellone (saxophone) + Raphaelle Rinaudo (electric harp) + Philippe Petit (laptop)

I wiped all of the bullets down by hand. Well, not by hand really. By hand would have defeated the purpose all of which was to conceal their birthplace and origin or leastways their connection to me. And so the wiping and concealing starts when I pull out the red bullet box, about the size of a brick, and put on white kid gloves. Grabbing each bullet is as hard as grabbing each bullet with gloved hands might be. But like everything else there's a rhythm and a measure to it that I soon fall into.

And they slide, bunkbedded in their slots.
One after another and another, their brass asses staring back at me unblinking as they disappear one on top of the other, into a clip that I then place into a gun that I then place under my jacket.

I wish I could say this was a defensive mission.
I wish I could.
But I can't and so I won't.

I wish this was not a mission of aggression that I was on.
But it is.
And I am.

Of course there are things that you tell yourself while you're telling yourself all kinds of things..some might say it was the money, or the pride, or the love and its eventual befouling that was justification enough.

I would never say that.

I would say, knowing that it was not true, that I was taking it just to scare him. But even that couldn't explain why I wiped the bullets down. Or why it was midnight. Or why my eyes were stinging.

Sometimes some things just needed to be done and I couldn't be convinced either now or then that this was not one of them.

There was treachery. And there was lechery. And then there was remorseless activity.

And when I climbed through his window it was 5 in the morning.
And when I climbed through his window he was not alone.
And when I climbed through his window and he was not alone and he called my name and the people he was not alone with looked up and saw me, I knew that he had been saved.

I mean I hated accidents. He would have been no accident. They, thems that done nothing to nobody, would have been.

I shifted. The clock had gotten away from me. It was what I said. And I backed out of the window that I had come in through. While he looked and looked and managed to not know how close friendship had come to dire end.

And on the way back I, full of promethean fire, fired on a dog that had been standing there barking stupidly at the slowly changing sky.

And I noticed I still had the gloves on. White. Clean. Clean.