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| NEVER IT WILL BE THE SAME AGAIN What I came to miss has no name. I can only try to describe. As a young man it felt as though I perfectly mirrored the sky. When it rained, I rained. When it was grey, I was grey. And when the sun came out, I came out of myself as if I were shedding a skin and stepping into a new beautiful world : my whole chemistry, seasonally affective. And I paid much more attention to the sky than I do these days. There just seemed to be more sky. And its clouds passed through me and its rain was absorbed deep into my skin. And its snow settled on my heart. What I came to miss has no name. I can only try to describe. When a boy, I ran home over fields as it turned dark; my heart beating in my mouth after some almighty adventure. And the sky ran after me. And its clouds, like grey eagles, wings outstretched, clawed. And this was my fear of the impending night: what I felt within, turned inside out and mirrored in the sky. And mirrored in the sky. Turned inside out and mirrored in the sky. Turned inside out and mirrored in the sky. Turned inside out and mirrored in the sky. NIGHT
OF THE HUNTER
It’s the night of the hunter. It’s the night of the
long knives. It’s the night of the hunter and you can justify
all that you like. Sleep tight, this snowy night, for Spring, you
will never see again. Say goodbye to your awful wives. Bid farewell
to your awful friends. I’m twenty steps from the jugular.
I’m twenty steps from the death. I’m twenty steps from
the funeral. I’m twenty steps from your last breath. The shadow
falls on the abbatoir gates as you leave with the stench on your
hands. I am here with a cigarette bait. I am here to asphyxiate.
It’s the night of the hunter. It’s the night of the
long knives. It’s the night of the hunter and you can justify
all you like. The laugh you spew on the landscape as you erase it
of the gentle hare will be your last on this landscape, will be
your last anywhere. Matador, bear baiter, butcher, hare courser,
value your life while you can. THE NIGHTMARE GOES ON I cannot shake this notion
On the forecourts of French libraries from Reignac to Marseilles/the rain rattles small cars, clouds drape over backseats/I am a photograph in your satchel, between a paperback and cigarettes/I am the dead bird on the gravel, neck snapped from last night's Northwesterly/But no peace, no closure/But no peace, no closure/Beside these roads that halt like jetties, beneath circling murders are leafless trees, drowning at the knees; some burnt to the fingertips/And here my tracks sink, end, return as I walked in and out of you/And here my tracks sink, end, return as I walked in and out of you/But no peace, no closure/But no peace, no closure/Driving back through the town/The road map-pinned by Pharmacie signs winking up-road/The cars slice the afternoon with a guillotine slush as it bleeds into a night peppered by stars and planes to Japan/And the changing of gears jilts the cats from the walls/The truth lives with you/The truth lives with you/But no peace, no closure/But no peace, no closure/But no peace, no closure/But no peace, no closure
I've got the snow on my side - I've got no doubts about that/And though this city grows wider, I always know where I'm at/I got your letter this morning/I know you mean what you say/And though the stations are closed down, I've got to get away/I'm somewhere off the compass/I'm somewhere lower than hell/And when you say you're beyond this, I say, "I've been there as well" I can’t get on.
I can’t get on. Because I live in the past and it’s
too strong. I can’t get on. I can’t get on. Because
I live in the past and it’s too strong. And the present is
imperfect. And the future, well, it’s conditional. And the
past’s a foreign land that I’m trying to understand.
And all the girls are framed in the order that they came. And the
best friends do their worst to remind me that I’m cursed.
And I’d just like to say that I’m sorry to everyone
that just wants to get on, that just wants to get on but I... Run away when you see me coming and I can only say, "Not fair - this is not fair"/Miles away, reading, writing books/Look outside with imagination - I'm here and I'm sad/I' here and I'm sad This life winds me up too much
My password is a dead aunt's name - a monument, a testament/My password is a dead aunt's name - a cenotaph, a shallow grave/I'm thirty one and fading fast/Forget the past, repeat the past/I'm thirty two and fading fast/I started last and I finished last
I was a postal worker from May until July/I left because of allergies - the letters made me cry/ 8am on Fridays, 6am the rest/Postal for the two months/Coastal for the rest/I kept the last day's letters
Is it the shadow in my voice?
Out of season, out of heart, I cross you off beneath the stars/Autumn leaves a nasty scar and with the leaves, the heart departs/You're off the map, you've left the book/I'm off my head and treading luck/And it's too late to call you up/The heart migrates, it comes unstuck/I light a candle for Saint Marie, in the hope she never brings you back to me/I light a candle for Saint Marie, in the hope she never brings you back to me
SAINTS PRESERVE US The season is long and I've got the chills/The city steps back, replaced by the hills/There's snow on my heart and snow on my pills/The season is long and this season kills/Don't you ever think that you might love me?/The season is long and I'm coming home /I captured your ghost in the throat of the phone/There's snow on my heart and snow on my pills/The season is long and this season kills/Don't you ever think that you might love me?
It's just out of reach/Can't think of nothing else/Gathering the nerve/Something's in the air/It's just out of reach and I'm on the ground/I have energy/Talking to myself
Breaking Winter up by shooting numbers from the clock/The cat sleeps on the atlas in Alsace Lorraine, dreaming long grass and birds on the wire/I have memories no deeper than this glass and some besides that stretch history twice/In a super 8 film colour haze, a scratched nostalgia that runs through my cogs - shot through the fog; time taking care of whatever I cared about/ So you are lost somewhere in here - your body, a raft,spinning towards the falls/Your death claimed me too - there were two throats in the noose but mine now swallows whiskey, mine is not now bruised/The black mouth of this month, bruised lips, black ice, forms a sickly smile across London's sky
Joanne comes around with a radio and absinthe/We start the afternoon with Polish Xmas songs on shortwave/She laughs as we burn the first shot, the green flame/I love Joanne/We've been friends for 12 years/We used to be lovers but now a hug can be just a hug/I followed her from Derbyshire to London/She's the sub-librarian, the swan feeder, spectacle breaker/I wanted to buy her a bicycle this Xmas but she said it was too much/She can close me down like I let no-one else do/We watch the green flame in the window and it somehow makes me think of Amsterdam or Paris - rain beneath canal bridges in neon cafe light/The phone rings but it's not for me/The answering machine catches it and holds it and holds it and holds it
Three on the backseat as we drive home from rehearsal/There's snow on the drums/The snare shudders like a cold ghost between my mittens/in the trunk, guitars slide like dead over dead/It's stopped snowing/We think we see foxes/I breathe a canvas on the window to write your name on the landscape/The sky is a grey flint from coast to coast with birds frozen in/Magic Trees share the dashboard with a Playdoh Jesus/Grapelli and Reinhardt lock horns on the radio/I draw a black skull on my jeans, not thinking, through to the skin/the headlamps come on at five/I miss you bad
Rain
starts on you as your goodbye runs me through/goodbye is nothing
new but it's last breath when said by you/And this world shrinks
to a room - weather inside snowfall soon/No bookcase can rescue
a man - only a letter of sorry can/Handle with care if only you
dare/I'm sensitive, touch sensitive/Handle with care if only you
are/I'm sensitive, touch sensitive/I have a photograph - mid-heaven,
post-laughter/Eyes shine ridiculous - illuminate the both of us/In
the fold of a camera's eye, in the time it takes to sigh, I open
up an ashen heart, pour out a thousand whys/Handle with care if
only you dare, etc/Write or I'll die/Handle with care, etc SOLDIER
SONG SPEED
THE ROAD, RUSH THE LIGHTS Geography, be kind to me, for the miles apart are killing me/Tonight I would die to be by her side so speed the road, rush the lights/Speed the road, rush the lights/Even bad girls sleep tonight/Even bad girls sleep tonight - their aspirin white legs, scarred by young lust's overbite/Even bad girls sleep tonight/Even bad girls dream tonight - their aspirin white legs, scarred by young lust's overbite/The snapped Ratner's chain glints cold in the night/The snapped ankle chain glints cold in the night/Caution is thrown to the wind and it does not blow back/Caution is thrown to the wind and it does not blow back/Geography, please be kind to me for the miles apart are killing me/Tonight I would die to be by her side so speed the road, rush the lights/Speed the road, rush the lights I don’t know why, the lights, they never change. Been stood here far too long. It’s time to disengage. I don’t know why we’re better when it rains. I’m cold to your design. You’re cold to my embrace. I don’t know why I gravitate to loss. I feel too much inside. I cannot shake it off. I don’t know why you never hold a kiss. You snap it at the heart. It freezes on your lips. We’re stations, disconnected at the heart. Our rails are rusted veins; our switches, torn apart.
THEORY
OF GHOSTS I’ve a theory of ghosts and I’m a monster to girls - I stick in their heart like a rusty spur. But I’ve a theory of ghosts : they’re alive and we’re all dead; that they’re trying to tell us that it’s this way around. And I’ve a theory of girls : they always seem to leave in the Spring, as if they know that it hurts more to carry a heartbreak through the Summer. In the calendar storm, I circled a day and tried to hold on. And in the last powercut, I whispered her name ‘til the lights came on. Smoked my Indian pipe. Listened to static, the snow on the wire. Smoked my Indian pipe. Listened to static, the snow on the wire. I have one photograph that captures her smile but I don’t have a tape of her laugh. Watercolours can’t help me.
I
can't believe she said that
THIS HEART MACHINERY Outside your house, 1993, I think I left some essential part of me/I try to trace my steps back/I try to play the playback/But when I see your face, I cannot breathe/And I can’t figure out this heart machinery/Sometimes it stops for days and really worries me/And I can’t form the words and often I can’t speak/And when I hear your voice, I have to leave/And there’s an actress in a film who looks like you/And I can’t watch that film the whole way through/I’d like to call you up/I’d like to get me straight but 10 years on, it’s just too late/The saddest photograph, a splinter in my heart, is one of you and me, right at the very start/And I can’t recognise the person next to you/The mirror fogs/It breaks in two
Your poetry is all blanks to me/Your words pass through courteously/I wish to be swept up, to be swished/I wish to be swept up, to be swished/Your delivery is all wrong/It freezes me/You are no poet/Go home and have a bonfire/Go home and have a bonfire/(Bonfire)
The tollbooth martyrs, 21 - 56, leave their lives at the gate and beneath the standard issue crucifix, push their summers to the side of the plate/Live their lives through diaries, can't get jobs in libraries/Live their lives through diaries, can't get jobs in libraries/The calendar model, long-retired, expecting her third, joined a choir/The saucer of coins marks off the years from college to dole to tollbooth cashier/Live their lives through diaries, can't get jobs in libraries/Live their lives through diaries, can't get jobs in libraries
Heading South so I can go North/Guided by birds but drifting off-course/Read the tide-table before starting out but 30 years old with chapters torn out/You, waking up from a dream of the sea, safe in the harbour from sailors like me/You, in the kitchen, waiting on tea, whilst I lose the compass to a trick of the sea/Bearing East so I can blow West/Guided by wreckage of the Marie Celeste/(Read) Sombrero Fallout whilst waiting for calm/Carved chapter 13 in script on my arm/You, waking up from a dream of the sea, safe in the harbour from sailors like me/You, in the kitchen, waiting on tea, whilst I lose the compass to a trick of the sea
You turn on your side like you have to face North or else you can't sleep : the unwritten law/But how can you sleep with my heart so loud?/Like a scream in a jar, like the sound of a crowd/And way out at sea, the waves and the masts know that they've lost, that they're heading for rocks/But the captain's adrift in dreams of dry land, of the view from the lighthouse, of my name in the sand
Well, you never asked me, so I never said. Though I tattooed the answer so I wouldn’t forget. Oh, there’s much I can offer if you’d open your eyes. The night is young but life is short, so come inside. On a council bench, on the Park Estate, I have carved our names with a carpetblade. “They came here often and they loved it so...” The view is bleak so what’s to love, we’ll never know. Well, phone me if you feel the need. My days are vacancies; my heart, it tends to bleed. But I know a place where they’re kinder to our kind. Tonight, it rains a sorry drum. Come inside. If love would be so blind, the rest of us might blossom.
What does not destroy me can only make me stronger
When I'm done, this night will fear me/Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts will hear me/Black just got blacker/Attacked became attacker/When I'm done, this night will fear me/The silent movie extra, left for trash on the set, asserts his revenge, calls in the debt/And when I'm done, this night will fear me/Ghosts of ghosts of ghosts will hear me/Black just got blacker/Attacked became attacker/And when I'm done, this night will fear me/Black star in a white night, like a blue wave in a black sea
A Charlie Brown snowstorm for 2.49/Snoopy drops dead in the snow/This is all that I can show for my time with someone I don't really know/I met you in mittens beneath London Bridge, killing your skateboard, angry like sea/I loved you in minutes, like people love Lucy/We spat in the snow, black coffee/A rollerskate waitress in Littlewoods cafe/A Raleigh bike builder, Pro-Plus and Park Drives/We kissed once - it was like e minor/Things could, I think not, be finer
And there were those films, made in the Seventies where dolls ran through fields, late at night, after men/His shirt is my dress/I lost my knees and hands/He drowned my make-up in the white sand/And I'm too tiny for a heart this big/It swells like an ocean/It's breaking the jail of ribs/And he said it won't hurt/And he said it won't hurt/And he said it won't hurt - a lie the size of the sky/And this hotel is dusty and he's locked the door and the sea's gone so far out I can't see it anymore/I was baking when he kissed me/I put flour in his hair/He rolled me like a bottle, whispering wrong French in my ear
You and John are birds/You and John are ghosts/You and John are genies, guarding my coast/And in my address book, you're depicted as birds/Drawn in, no words
You can hear the room on these long, Winter nights if you’d
just… if you’d just… if you’d just be quiet.
Beneath the word, there’s the whisper of pipes. There’s
the stretch of the wood. There’s the chink of the light. And
the wires conduct. And the water runs down to the sea. But stay
away from the drink. Stay away from the diaries. It doesn’t
matter. It does not matter.
I know nothing of tides and I’m confused by the stars but you can never get lost when you’ve nowhere to go. And I’ve got space in my heart for the next twenty years so don’t think there’s a rush - just come on over sometime. And I will haunt myself blind, only sleep when I’m bored. And I will talk into space. And I will worry this house. And I’ve got space in my heart for the next twenty years so don’t think there’s a rush - just come on over sometime. (Come on over sometime).
Make haste, the light is fading
Your ghost, a white candle in this night - smile broken, though eyes bright as carnival rides. You wander these streets, punch-drunk on the stars as the lights are stubbed out in the neighbourhood bars. Your voice, thin as smoke, barely exits your mouth. There’s blood in your hair and a fire to the south. Your skeleton moves in a waltz with the stairs and the well of your heart, full of no-one who cares. Your words, a white wreath at the cusp of the hill, to mark off the kill, where the blood was spilled. You’re the back of the mirror, you’re the ghost of the tide and I would die twice, if you stayed tonight (Don’t stay tonight).
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