I've always liked (without understanding) Amy's pipe image in Back to Black:

I love you much
It's not enough
You love blow and I love puff
And life is like a pipe
And I'm a tiny penny rolling up the walls inside

Hi Roger,

Yeah, nice! I guess googling can see how much there may be drug imagery (blow...), but the tiny penny is pretty compelling.

Cheers,
John

Update: the first drug image I remember sailing over my head in rock music was The Eagles, "Life in the Fast Lane": "There were lines on the mirror, lines on her face." I had no idea what lines on the mirror were. I was probably about fifteen, and in boarding school in the UK. Not a lot of blow there to my knowledge.

Aaron, it also reminds me, in its humour and surreal juxtaposition, of Dylan's image in 'Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat' of the way the hat balances on the woman's head

"like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine".

But that's more wry, whereas yours is more desperate, contextually.

I'll try to think of something more current ha...

I've always liked this moment from Nick Cave's 'The Curse of Milhaven', where the little girl is revealed to be a monster/murderer:

"Like, my eyes ain't green and my hair ain't yellow
It's more like the other way around"

The whole song is a masterpiece of black jokes and grand guignol narrative.

https://youtu.be/bWym2YoiiWk

Danny might have been playing 'drawception' in his misspent youth...

https://drawception.com/game/teHbXLH...-straitjacket/

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For pure poetic imagery, I think it's hard to match Antony and the Johnsons’ "Epilepsy Is Dancing" (she got quite a bit of flack for the song). I don't know that I agree with it, but it is powerful -- albeit bizarrely visualized. I saw her do it on stage and the ending was as close to a dream state as I've ever heard.

She (now known as Anohni) is a gentle soul who has written some pretty potent poetically charged stuff. Not everyone’s cup of tea, mind you, but I like mine to alter my thinking.

Aaron, the "Octopus In A Straitjacket" piece you hold up as being the best poetic imagery of this young century just doesn’t do it for me. Maybe I’m misinterpreting what it is you are using to gauge poetic imagery. Would you tell me why you think it is a paragon of 21st century poetic imagery?

John, Amy Winehouse is/was a beautiful singer, writer and soul, no doubt about it. One of the best. The Arctic Monkeys, not so much to my ear. Nick Cave definitely.
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Jim, I don't have much more to say than what I've already said in the thread. The whole song ("Ain't it Funny") is about using his pain for the entertainment of others, and that image packs so much pain and so much humor into so small a space, it's like the whole song in miniature. Of course I understand if you disagree.

Hi Jim,

Just to say that Anthony and the Johnsons are unique in music. I'm afraid I have just one album of theirs, the debut I believe, but it is superb.

Thanks for reminding me,
John

Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys does write brilliant lyrics, Jim. They're a great band.

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John, I too like ATJ's early work. Now she has gone solo and has become musically/sonically experimental to the edge and that loses me for the most part. But the early work is striking stuff.

I can't help but think someday I will finally find myself having stumbled into the music of the Arctic Monkeys (and Alex Turner's lyrics) and be sent. Maybe tonight. I've got nothing else to do.
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