HEAD

Walking the street that takes my name
The touch of slur and insult covering up rain
I could live forever under indigo light
The chemical in my heart that makes it hurt says otherwise
Lay me in the bardo

The pang now the mirror shows a different face  
Only gets louder when I try to change your ways
The furtive operator tells me the best that I can do
Is to let you be a ghost and not to misconstrue

Lay me in the bardo
Lay me in the bardo
Lay me in the bardo
Lay me in the bardo

The Death Of A Certain

Kind Of Life

So, so is this learning?
A way to stop hallucination, make sense of the world
But why when it’s burning?
I could sit for hours and contemplate

There’s a testing room to figure out your traits
Where being alone is clinical
To work out how it’s all going to go until the crematory curtain stalls
This is how it is now but it’s just like it was before
How could anyone ever think to know that this was the haze?

That this was the haze

Angel of the slow death, making me think
Is this a test? Simulation? Someone has to take the brunt but am I now a figure of
my own imagination?
We sit and talk America again
Thinking of our endangered friends
I can taste the church and their words refracting in the air
as I cling onto pushing on without them
They’ve hooked and readied themselves to reel in
But I’m a dog with a stare so strong that I can’t take away focus from the birdbath
All that’s left to do is sit and laugh

Let me watch your mouth as I Iay on your bed
Make Auburn colour tears as I cry through your hair
And pretend that all my worries and my cares, they’re like a snare, will fade away
Call it an endeavour, the shaping of a head
The sweat of an existence that's pulled apart and needs a friend
Soaked into your linen and stains what once was fresh but still you stay

Somedays I want to leave you behind
Sitting cold in a chamber away from the light
But others I’m glad to have you by my side
The death of a certain kind of life
Over my shoulder you’re there while I write
Her on the other in the middle a war child
But you take me to the harvest darling you’re my honeyguide
So thank you for the end of that kind of life

Smoke

Poetry, The beautiful lies we’re going through
The life and times of me the smoke and you the fire so true
Empty is the house that was never in my mind
Wasted, Yeah you’re gonna lose tonight
The problem is that this all tastes like yesterday
More or less the same, I’m the one to blame
Out here I’m the smoke
The times that we all know
Bringing on the low
They think you’re a joke
They laugh it up
Out here I’m the smoke
Patience, See the grief out on the street
Gold and silver on your breath and one common belief
A mother and a child, they were never in my head
Hatred, But fires don’t regret
Out here I’m the smoke
The times that we all know
Bringing on the low
They think you’re a joke
They laugh it up
Out here I’m the smoke
So I’ll wait, for you to throw
the stone away and stay for me to fold
Diamonds on your fingers
And your daughter home alone and sick
Who’s won tonight? Who’s won?
Out here I’m the smoke
The times that we all know
Bringing on the low
They think you’re a joke
They laugh it up
Out here I’m the smoke
Out here I’m the smoke
The times that we all know
Bringing on the low
They think you’re a joke
They laugh it up
Out here I’m the smoke

Norah

You're on the stereo
And I’m sat there cross legged on the floor
With my ear to the wall
Falling in love
My mother’s in the next room
Yeah she’s putting on a smile
She's putting up her hair
Putting up a fight
I can’t hear the damage when the phone ignites
Hide away the worries keep them out of sight 
That’s what you do best
That’s what you do best
Bring all the feeling like you did back then
Norah won’t you stay around again
Bring all the feeling like you did back then
I know that she’ll be leaving soon
And I’ll cry cos I can’t bear for her to go
I’m too young to understand
Not to young to not abide
She says she’ll only be an hour
But to me it’s like the ending of the world
She’s walking out the door
And walking out on me
And I won’t keep it quiet when you say goodnight
standing in the doorway till you change your mind
That’s what I do best
That’s what I do best
So bring all the feeling like you did back then
Norah won’t you stay around again
Bring all the feeling like you did back then
Drown out all of those wrongs and rights
Norah won’t you stay around tonight
Drown out all of those wrongs and rights
I’m lying half awake in bed
It’s past the hour that you said
Don’t take the long way home
And I know I’ll understand
When I’m not a boy and I’m a man
Don't take the long way home, no
So bring all the feeling like you did back then
Norah won’t you stay around again
Bring all the feeling like you did back then
Cover up her crying with your don’t know why’s
Norah won’t you stay around tonight
Cover up her crying with your don’t know why’s 
Cover up my crying when she says goodnight

OLD ROMANTICS

There laid a Jenga tower romance knocked over by a child
Reasons upon reasons of why she ever changed her mind
Maybe the tabbing on the school run or even that time we tried
Sat there with silver spoons and old cartoons on turned our skin to rind
And served as a distraction to all the help that we could find
Some reconciliation we both endeavoured to decline
I called out for my consort till one day there was was no reply
Now she’s got her t shirt on backwards cos she's rushed home from a friend's
They got up to something you can tell how this one ends 
It’s not fair
But in the hours she was gone I was out finding someone
To do all the same things at the same time
So it’s not fair but it’s alright
She’d ask all the hard questions like, 'Could a nihilist see the light, 
end up an old postino in the early morning shine?’
I stood, stared and probably dared to share something unwise
On the palms of my hands right there’s a little extra time
For better or for worse I think that it would be unkind
To keep going with the deal we took when we felt so obliged
I never seemed to realise just how much time she’d spend
Checking for my silhouette then off to play pretend
It wasn’t fair
But in the hours she was gone I was out there with someone
Doing all the same things at the same time
And it’s not fair but it’s alright
We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it
We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it
We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it
We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it

YOU

Hold you back 'I saved your life', went a little far this time
You got clipped, they ran away and let the heat die off 
Truth is cruel and you were the pray, carrion when the crowds all faded
Esoteric Monday mornings brought out the worst in them
Now nineteen and five years old is where I seem to be
I lied last time, by you I meant I, some purposeful deceit
Looking through new Polaroids my brother takes of my mistakes  
Before I try to sleep it off and breathe, realising who’s to blame
I don’t owe you anything at all
I don’t owe you anything at all
One day that keeps creeping up, is the one where I wish I was drunk
Turned around to find you stood before the big wheel line
My parents laughed as your rents joked, how was I to know they spoke?
A beretta for a smile and blinkers in your pocket to hide their eyes
I don’t owe you anything at all
I don’t owe you anything at all
(Everything is simple is what I used to pretend
A scene each of day of illness, prey and how things always end
A face, a name, something to keep on using, “please take away the ache”
The reasons that I tell myself you used to get along each day
And now sat mute on the sofa with so much left to do
A nearly perfect stillness just past the corner of the room
Is home to all the reason and retort and empty threats
That now if I could catch you I’d stand up for younger self
I can see the picture of the bulldogs in my head
They'd only finished running just to watch my timely death
Death not opposed to living, but the ending of my grit
For that day oh not only, oh for now it just persists
Now even when I’m playing, cooking, drinking, kissing, crying, living you’re still in there 
Don’t take that as glory, it’s just faceless imprints on the window, beyond I always stare
If there’s any change, a rearrange, a lease of something new
Usually I’d be first in line to offer out a hand or two
But I feel pretty sober with every other living thing
Degrees of easy going with all the backbone I can wring
So just this once sure I think if the big woman is real
She’ll let me off for not excusing all you had to deal
But what if it’s how it was supposed to go and be
Nah that’s always a lie to me and that statement I made previously 
Was just a joke, a hoax, a coax, hysterical affair
One could say the truth is there was never any care
Children only children, could ever get so cruel
Is it all a workout or a testing of the truths?
Either way the dread of ever trying to return, snap back 
Retaliate, riposte, attack has all began to fade)
Back there on the left in the smoke of your friend’s cigarette
Looking less Beretta and more bereft, Something changed the wind
Whatever it was, did it happen fast? Or did they make it last?
I’ve seen that face myself before from all those yesterdays
A midnight box of matches, now that might do the trick
Is what you had me thinking then and I might still think at twenty-six
Just got caught across the way, it returned, familiar face
There I was sat hoping, hoping that you’d learned someday so
I don’t owe you anything at all
I don’t owe you anything at all
I don’t owe you anything at all
I don’t owe you anything at all

WAITING IN THE WINGS

Waiting in the wings again, this ain't ever getting old
One more one night stand, another sober drive home
Behind that old piano, looking oh so sweet and cold
Should I turn to you to go into the cut, the one that’s been there for so long
But you’re about to go home
Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights
Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime
Towards the monument in my hometown we could look up to the sky
All the jekylls and Hydes in my head tonight that I could leave behind
But you’ll be heading over the water while I wait in supermarket lines
Make believe you’re on the checkout girl so I can stand there and feel alright
At least for another night
Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights
Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime
Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights
Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime
Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights
Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime
DON’T TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME.
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