Love; noun/adjective :

Listen to this word, and forget for a moment how fucking ridiculous it is.

Listen to this word, how they speak it, how they spit it,

And still they tremble where they lie.

They tremble, but they don’t know why.

Love, in your throat,

Like an egg rolling down your tongue, clipped by a bit lip.

Love…

A hesitation, and no one knows the last part, no one dares…

And that word of eagerness, when violence is done and the world doesn’t give a shit?

What will we call that?

That is not our word.

Ours is a frightful thing, and bright.

Ours is liquid and sharp, hidden truth in brazen lies,

Lonely dots in shining eyes.

Life wearing Death’s robes

Death robed in Life’s.

Listen, to this word, which is a confession.

Listen. This is happening now.

You’ve broken through the ice, the lake is full of oil

And you’re drowning.

And sure we’re crass,

But we’ve come to the heart of the matter.

This love, this heavy love,

These hands and the great plains of the dead.

Speak the word, and become a lover,

And a lover is but a barren thing,

And two lovers are but two barren things.

In each other’s arms, still, they turn away.

As the coach pulled out of Copenhagen

Human thing of laughing hollows, conspiracy and murder.

Your flesh colludes and separates, holds partisan to the air.

You killed that child who was a child of moments and no killer.

You killed that man who would have turned

And walked the other way.

You lay waste to that path.

And in place of spotless maybes and that silken evermore,

You leave the ravaged past to be a corpse and ring of heartache,

You forge the timid future that waits in anguish for your rape.

And in those cobbled streets you build, you leave both friends and enemies.

They freeze where you left them, in the futility of their conflict.

And we call out still for riot and we run in all directions.

We call out for fire and stampede and the sacrament of tear gas,

The transubstantiation that turns this artificial irritant

To the tears of all our honoured dead, the children who we were.

The parents that we will not be, the freedom that mocks us.

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.