Song #3

When we get old we’ll have to choose,

The right to win, the need to lose.

When we get old, when this is done and done,

Life under bridges.

And when death has died and we undying

Can no more choke on what we’re buying,

When tongues are one like in Babylon,

Our life under bridges.

Forget this “down and out”

Condemn this “pins and needles”

We not in a time

We all in this, all ours, canned laughter.

When we get old, we’ll not be old,

When we get old, we’ll still be cold.

When we get old, no fear, they’ll ban indecision.

And it’s life under bridges, above, below, human traffic.

Song #2

I’ve never seen a sky like this,

Never again for these eyes.

We know it ends like this.

I am an old beast all tusk and tooth,

All done with childbirth,

And on the plains I’ve shed my youth.

These ears lie ragged, sounds of thunder,

Echoes of brushfires, blood stained fur.

This sun's setting on all my wonders.

I come to die, to empty this leather skin,

And if there’s a God of violent skies

He’ll be me and I’ll be Him.

Fools call this Africa, but this is my flesh.

When you find me hold my bones and think of tall grass,

And the twenty mothers of your twenty mothers.

Fools call this Africa, but this is my flesh.

When you find me hold my bones and think of tall grass,

And the twenty mothers of your twenty mothers.

The twenty mothers of your twenty mothers.

The twenty mothers of your twenty mothers.

I’ve never seen a sky like this,

Never again for these eyes.

Never again for these eyes.

Precious Stones

Shine for me, my raw diamond,

Light’s cradle and first breath.

Monstrous, our symphonic breathing.

Sit within the hollow

Of this vulgar palm.

Dance for me my graceless angel,

My offbeat love,

Standing clothed in tattered sheets

And rags of human skin,

But your dancing socks darned with gold thread.

You are the plaything of warlords

My diamond whore.

Witness to the transaction, exchanged between the two deaths,

Oblivion and the gap left by a forgotten face.

I bring nothing to this table.

I take nothing from this table.

I sit before an empty plate.

You are not at all as you appear, a lump of broken glass,

But a raw diamond, torn from the mountains, oft traded and now misshapen,

And such horrors are reflected when you catch the light of this morning’s sun.

Four strangers and a shared fantasy in the Blue Cafe

The coward counts his sugar cubes,

Takes one, then two,

And then his spoon.

A gentle sip, and then another.

A soft and inoffensive light

Reflects in his coffee.

Outside it’s cold.

Outside it’s raining.

Rain on the windows of the Blue Café.

Mother tends her children.

Growing son, growing daughter,

Growing needs, growing wings.

Mother growing old.

A cup of tea, and shelter from the cold.

The faded shades of the Blue Café.

Brother sits and waits for me.

Or maybe you.

Or maybe someone else’s brother.

His cup is empty.

Maybe he will have another.

The crone writes birthday cards.

The birthdays of lovers long dead.

Not a word is shared.

No tip and no change spared.

Through the windows of the Blue Café,

They glance a dream, and share a fantasy.

A world.

A different lens.

Blood flowing,

Down gutters in gold paved streets.

Trees growing through the cracks,

Bearing ripe and poisoned fruit.

Fire eaters and harlequins.

There are dancers in the spires,

And knives write their scripture

In willing flesh.

This night of fire fades to day.

All eyes return to the blue café.

Mother turns away.

Brother simply waits.

The coward is unmoved and unsurprised,

Though a flame is dancing in his eyes.

The crone writes birthday cards

To lovers long dead,

And she shall write forevermore.

Rooms

Here this room, like an unwanted gift,

Here this here, here a finding, here a musty breathing,

In another’s architecture, another mind’s eye.

Don’t tell Gran that her hand knitted jumper is too small,

Hangs threadbare round your throat,

And she’s built me such stern walls for my home.

Still, the furniture’s mine and mine and mine,

Furniture’s mine and life’s still only half given.

In the café with a fashionable drink, dreaming of salt water

And my father’s house.

Here this pulse, here they piled up rooms on the seabed,

Here they made me an island home,

Tumbledown chambers so crudely scattered

Where I climb like a child over rocks by the waves.

And here the room where I keep all the dead,

And here all the things I robbed from their bodies,

And here is the light of world on a shelf,

And here are the leaves of all of my autumns,

Here where I stood in the light by the window,

Waving my arms at the girl next door,

Spelling in semaphore “hello” and “I love you”,

All words housed in language and only our furniture,

Tied to the paper and chained to the air.

And I wandered back down through this house I was given,

These rooms piled up in the sea.

Illness

Welcome Mr Seymour; if you would be seated beneath the twilight please

I have your test results here,

And you will recall that they were extensive,

Conducted to the highest clinical standards and with a grotesque innocence.

Blood and bone marrow, the sifting of your dreams

And our tired scrutiny; your capacity to recognise your loved ones was also in doubt.

My condolences sir, you have Coping, a disease of the spine,

From which it follows that the wishes of your skin have withdrawn to your spirit,

Your flesh left derelict,

And from there, your spirit inverted and cast upon a world you cannot touch,

Painted in weighty and abandoned lusts and pregnant with the forsaken.

The prognosis is quite grim Jim!

You shall be married in the summer,

In a padded church, Our Lady of the Concrete Jaw.

You will forget the sound of peeling bark.

And you shall die in some other summer,

Your own season gliding on the grease between the years,

Die unknown by your lovely bride,

And another Mr Seymour shall raise your children.

And for each new Mr Seymour and child of Seymour

Will there be the sickness of Coping.

Endemic to your race, and certainly beyond my meagre medicines.

But wait!

A pilgrimage to the springs of Saint Seymour?

Would you bathe in those waters of Seymour Mr Seymour child of Seymour?

Miracle cures are a possibility, and these books you see behind me

Contain only stamps and discontinued currencies.

Astounding samples! Yes!

Wear the faces of those dead men called Seymour,

Take their waters as your own, a fluid mantle,

And once again, my condolences to you, your wife,

And to all your thousand children.

The nurse will see you out.

Song #1

Been awake a long time.

Been awake been a birdsong in my chambers.

Seen a broken pattern,

Seen a broken world swimming round this place.

Been a broken man seen him in his place.

And there’s no plan here, just a disconnected elegance.

And only tired lungs can laugh like mine.

And only tired lungs can laugh like mine.

But the day is done, and tired eyes must die.

Too tired for my bed,

Too tired for my bed and the things that ring,

In such a tired head,

In a place like this there’s beauty to find,

But it’s not a thing for your wakeful eyes.

It’s not a thing for your childish hands or your roughshod love

And only tired lungs can laugh like mine.

And only tired lungs can laugh like mine.

But the day is done, and tired eyes must die.

But still I’ll sleep

But still I’ll sleep and this day dies with me.

Full of silence,

Full of light and this age I’ll leave behind,

And I’ll see stars I’ll breath fire and snowflakes,

And there’s no joy in sleeping hands and dreaming heartbeats