In 1990 I was living in Toronto and one day I was minding my business at the urinal at Union Station when a voice beside me says, "We playing Birds are us." It was my friend Christopher Piniero who was artistic director at Shadowland Theatre. They traditionally sent a team to Trinidad each year at Carnival time to make mas with Peter Minshall and would also present a band in Caribbana, the T and T inspired Toronto festival.
I realised I had in my possession a dark grey Royal Canadian Airforce jumpsuit and a gas mask the same colour and it occurred to me that these could form the basis of a vulture costume. As I was working on putting it together I kept having to put down tools and write down these lyrics that were coming to me. By the time I had done I recognised that I had the beginnings of a Midnight Robber speech. I did some research and found an old Caribbean Quarterly out of Jamaica with an article on Robber Talk.
I conceived this character as representing the military industrial complex who like to see themselves as raptors. From my perspective they are scavengers.
"I ain't no hawk, I is King Cobo.
As the dust of dawn on that glorious morn
has long since illuminated my oriental
horizon,
I, the notorious King Cobo, have again made
my daring appearance, in awful style,
within the grand march of evolution,
between man, beast and reptile.
Today I am back on the warpath, dressed in
battle array,
ready still to be immortalized and stay,
to suffer wrongs and endure pain
if
even death should be my gain.
For I am heartless, careless, fearless,
reckless and daring.
The next time I give my devastating call
the very pyramids of Egypt shall crumble
and fall.
The Bengal tiger shall cease to illuminate
the jungle,
the Lion of in his lair shall quake,
tremble and bawl,
the very dead shall come to life again,
as over them, I, the Mystic Scavanger, the mighty King Cobo
shall always reign.
As I wheel about high up in the
stratosphere
I gaze down through the ages
to the fourth millennium before the
Christian era.
Invoking my crimes of the past
I hear the cries of children, wimmen and
last,
but not least, men
begging me to be merciful unto them.
But I am the tyrant’s security, with
penetrating sight
I patrol the streets by day and terrorize
the nation by night.
I, with my peerless, fearless character
have built an empire of crimes.
With no more and probably a lot less than
half a million
armed and trained outlaws under the
influence of my super power,
governments of every country receive large
rewards of aid money to keep me alive.
For whilst I am beyond death, poor people,
in vain, will struggle and strive.
Circling above the crosses on the crags of
Golgotha,
away down from the high class regions,
the phantom graveyards, in the uplands of
hell come I.
The indomitable son of the indefatigable,
impregnable, incredible.
At the age of one my reknowned compound was
too strong for mortal constitution.
My liver bile potency having the efficacy
to eliminate all contagion,
they locked me away in a barracks for
ninety-nine years quarantine.
It is there I study crime words and
punishment for all mock man as you.
My father’s name was Uranus; I castrated
him at the age of two.
My mother is Rhea, by the age of three
I had covered her over with plantations of
sugar, cacao, tea and coffee.
I am King Cobo.
My shadow covers the Sun, Moon and Stars,
I feed on red ants, as did my ancestors
from Mars.
I tear flesh with my ivory beak and
swallow,
alter the seasons and cause generations to
tremble in fear for tomorrow.
My hairless red neck slides deep into the
crevasses of carcasses,
brought down by the Jackal under cover of
night,
devoured by the big cats,
gone over by the dogs,
in the first stages of putrefaction
I pluck the last strings of flesh.
I am King Cobo, turkey vulture, buzzard
I am the carrion crow.
I am the scavenger, the last link in the
food chain,
to protect and serve the status quo.
I am metaphor, the congressional,
military/media industrial complex.
The great simplifier. The five star
generals,
The banks and insurance corps. in general
The IMF and World Bank in particular.
I am general Dynamics
I am general Electric
I am general Motors
I am general Foods, purveyor of shelf life
and that unwholy trinity:
Enriched flour; homogenized milk;
granulated sugar.
White death.
I am the un-security council, manifest
destiny,
The red, white and blue blood.
Before history, to the Hindu, I am Maha
Kali Mai,
the virgin, mother, crone trinity.
With my root in amen, to the Hebrew, I am
Binah,
the great one of the night of time: this
Dark Age of scientific materialism.
I am your worst nightmare. My nest lined
with the entrails of the autochthons
I perch hunched atop the pillar of severity
in the temple of Solomon.
I am the right hand.
I come before the gods who made the gods,
to the Greeks I am Chronos.
I devour my children at birth
so that the prophecies of my mother, the
Earth,
that I should be superceded by them
should not be fulfilled.
Celebrated at the winter solstice to the
Romans I am gray haired Saturn,
quiet as a stone.
I am Caesar’s system; the monetary system,
Baby land; the ten horns of the beast:
the currencies of the nation states:
Japan (honorarily), Germany, the US, the
UK, France, Italy, Canada,
Russia, Israel and South Africa.
The gang of seven and my client states.
I am the allies and the axis.
I am NATO, NORAD and the Warsaw Pact.
I am the unsanctioned coalition forces, pox
americana.
I am the liberal, the conservative, the
fundamentalist,
the aryan skinhead supremacist.
I am the hierarchy.
I am the patriarchy.
I am the oligarchy: the old boy network
ruling by force of arms.
I am Satan, that force in the world which
arrogates all power to the present,
which denies the future generations their
inheritance:
the industrial polluter, the child
molester, the dealer in debt.
Yes, I am Lucifer, the lightbringer, in the
winter of my life
I am the harbinger of the golden age:
The Age of Aquarius, the Age of Flowers,
the Age of Truth,
Sat Yug, the Saturnaliaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh"
