my woman she can’t
help me with my mind
freezing fog

they searches Kowloon for
extra aphrodisiac

people think
that I’m insane
frowning all the time

a shallow channel cut
in the surface of soil

the last swallow
I think of things but nothing
seems to satisfy

Venom bites another
bad guy’s head clean off

I’ll lose my mind
if I don’t find
something to pacify

it’s only there
trying to fool the public

counting daisies
can you help me
occupy my brain?

memorising the views
from Table Mountain

I need someone
to show me the things in life
I can’t find

for one endless Summer
we were very best friends

old photographs
I can’t see true happiness
I must be blind

on the scales converting
pounds to kilograms

your jokes
I sigh you laugh I cry
blossom in the wind

punching thousands of holes
in sheets of metal

I can’t feel happy
love to me is so unreal
dead ash trees

the decomposition
of trade relations

hear these words
telling you of my state
heat and dust

a buzzard intersects
my forward momentum

I say to you enjoy life
I wish I could but
it’s too late

checking the number
of weeks since they bled

Gavin Wade and Paul Conneally
June 2019

An intertextual intercranial tantwenga (renga written via Twitter) that links to shifts from and interweaves with the words of ‘Paranoid’ by Black Sabbath.

Sheets of Metal is written as Black Sabbath celebrate 50 years of being Black Sabbath. The poem was written as a series of tantwenga which are tanrenga written using the process of link and shift via Twitter. It is a term created by Gavin Wade and Paul Conneally.

‘Sheets of Metal’ coincides with the opening of ‘Home Of Metal’ a series of exhibitions and events across Birmingham and surrounds to celebrate 50 years of Black Sabbath.