1. |
Spectators
04:49
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It’s unnaturally still,
The sky is clear but I’m sure I caught the ghost of a chill.
I’m breathing very slowly as I watch the airplane hit the ground.
The smoke is just a black flower blooming.
There is no violence.
Only flames that flicker
For the seconds of their lifetime then they’re gone.
Do you remember this?
You dropped your walkman in between the platform and the train.
I held on to your arm,
You almost cried when I hopped onto the rails.
And waiting for the train, you lay back into me,
There is nothing to say.
It feels like we were tourists,
Spectators of some fictional scenes.
* * * *
I think I’m in a film,
The day’s corrupted by the lighting.
I collect the stills
And blankly watch the credits rolling.
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2. |
Bury the dead
03:38
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Down by the canal
I saw a page ripped from a book
Bury the dead was all it said
I couldn’t walk away, I had to look.
There’s a story arc
That can only end here.
There’s a homely melancholy.
I was the actor there in the reeds.
There was no-one listening.
The city’s only privacy is morning.
It was probably a sign, but I don’t believe
Things could ever be aligned, or I won’t believe.
I took a photograph
Because a photograph makes it more real.
The moment can’t exist without me.
The girl on the bike,
The chance of rain,
Now I know what I should’ve seen.
Knowing what the city knows about me.
It was probably a sign, but I don’t believe
Things could ever be aligned, or I won’t believe.
It was probably a sign, but I don’t believe
We could be so intertwined, or I won’t believe.
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3. |
Orphans
06:07
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Don't you miss the silence, the pioneering poet
Stands up to proclaim what he knows,
The last one to volunteer stood where you're standing
Blinked once in the spotlight, “Here goes.”
Those lazy beatniks whose traumas were politics,
Sea shanties dressed up in prose,
Songs for the travellers, sounds of the underground
Threadbare lines, thoughts bespoke
Scanning the gutters for divas or diamonds
Turning up orphans and coal
Angels who, heedless, misread the directions
Would give it all up for some soul
Blindly those armies whose battlefield humour
Puts most of our comics to shame.
No-one remembers that joke in the graveyard,
These crosses all look just the same.
Those were the hungry years, clothed in rags,
But oh, to touch the hem of those robes.
All of us tongue-tied, no-one to decipher
The secret that everyone knows.
Scanning the gutters for divas or diamonds
Turning up orphans and coal
Angels who, heedless, misread the directions
Would give it all up for some soul
Sometimes I forget when I'm drinking down south,
The roar of the bar's all I hear,
God might be listening, I bite my own tongue
And whisper in nobody's ear.
Idiots read the news, geniuses sand to lose
Everything that they hold dear,
The notion that God's never listening at all
And a conscience that used to be clear.
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4. |
Mary, it's hardly right
03:15
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I’ll tell you something Mary,
It’s hardly right growing old
In all these years that we’ve been working
I never knew the nights so cold.
I bought an hour at the window
From a waitress with a tepid stare.
Was there steam around the coffee
Or was I ever really there?
And your friends will say it’s foolish
And tell you it’s a waste of time.
But it’s more than just a document
The devil’s in the ledger lines.
There was music in the basement,
I don’t know how anyone could sleep.
It’s not like one more drink would kill me,
I’m all out of digits counting sheep.
I think it’s time to tell the family,
This book will never write itself.
And I’m still on chapter one,
I think the publisher is gonna give me hell.
There's a monster on the pulpit
And circus people in the pews,
And all the lines that they’re reciting
Mean nothing much to me and you.
Here’s the flowers that I promised.
They’re not so plentiful this year.
I’ll tell you something Mary,
I liked it more when you were here.
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5. |
Rope
07:08
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It’s another language written on the wall
On the streets in the middle of town.
It’s a long way walking by yourself.
But they tell me it’s a long way down.
There’s a tree that I never learned to climb
In the back yard of your house.
And in all these years there’s not much time.
It’s a flash and a flicker and it’s out.
I spent all my money on these books
That I bought from some old fool.
So it’s fair to say I lost my shirt again,
And the fire needs more fuel.
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6. |
Angles
04:10
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Torn curtain I
feel strange
close the window, please I'm
losing my page.
Too many details but I've
been saved
Strike the scenery, shoot the lights out
We're into this race,
Old movies the
heart aches
broad endings
...and narrow escapes
Too awful to mention
too much to occupy
these vagrant attentions
~Thanks so much for your mixed blessings
miracles, miracles~
~Torn curtains, crushed palms
bright futures, in your arms, in my arms ~
There's just no sense in falling into these angles
all these places know you
keep your anger. Hide
all the gifts that came to us when we landed
All the present has is
one-word answers.
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7. |
Summertime void
05:25
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Over in your favourite country
Somebody’s sitting outside now.
Drinking with the boys in the summertime void
And the girls are coming around.
Back among the east coast cities
Waiting for something to bite
Dreaming in the haze of the summer’s long days
‘Til you light up the night.
And all the other lives that we’ve left behind
Are with Carpathia on the ocean floor.
We never talk about it anymore.
We never realised that the rising tide
Would lift us higher than we were before.
Drenched and slightly wiser
On the shore.
Nothing’s gonna make us ready
To draw the curtains on your eyes.
Drowning out the noise
Of the silver voices
And the rockets in the sky.
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8. |
||||
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I want the snow to fall and cover me
So I might melt away
And when they ask if you remember
How deep it was last year we’ll say
No, not really.
I want the moon to disappear
And free us from its light.
And let my shadow fade
Into the blessed night.
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Crushed Palms Dublin, Ireland
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