Category: Lyrics

There’s No Need For Us To Be Alone

There’s No Need For Us To Be Alone

I can’t believe she said that
Can’t believe it’s true
Can’t believe she’s faithful,
She is wicked through and through
She’s read too many books
She’s had too many screws
Unfortunately I have fallen don’t know what to do
When Spring turned to Summer, I swapped her for another
She drank herself stupid
Threw herself down the stairs
She put whiskey with her aspirin
My records in the dustbin
She pleaded me to take her back
I knew she would, I knew she would
Want without needing
Love without leaning
Hold without clinging
Don’t suffocate, don’t suffocate
She wore a coat too warm for summer
Socks too short for Winter
Shoes too scuffed for parties
And lipstick far too tarty
She wanted without needing
She loved without leaning
She held without clinging
But she suffocates, she suffocates
There’s no need for us to be alone anymore
There’s no need for us to be alone anymore
She wanted without needing
She loved without leaning
She held without clinging
She suffocates, she suffocates
She wanted without needing
She loved without leaning
She held without clinging
But she suffocates, she suffocates

 

(Lyrics – Darren Hayman)

The Slightest Of Threads

The Slightest Of Threads

She slips out of bed
In the fold of the night
And the temperature drops
With the cry of a fox
It’s the exit of a thief
It’s the falling of a leaf
The dust is disturbed
And her shadow is stirred

She looks back at the lover
But he dreams of another
The violence of his breath
Betrays his gentleness
And their minds have never met
It’s always been just sex :
The finest of chains
The slightest of threads

She navigates the stairs
In the absence of the light
A ghost that’s self-possessed
A soul not laid to rest
And the painting in the hall
Well, it seems to say it all :
Still life, abstract
Worthless, glass cracked

And here, in the fold of the night, she cries
Cos the trains have all left and the ships have passed by
And the seasons, too many, have blurred into one
They seem to have stopped before they’ve begun

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

The Tollbooth Martyrs

The Tollbooth Martyrs

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

 

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

The Unwritten Law

The Unwritten Law

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

 

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson

(The Way We Treat) The Animals

(The Way We Treat) The Animals

The way we treat the animals
Will govern how we’re judged
And if you slay the animals
Your soul, it will be dust
But no, the bloodless hunter
Makes light of precious words
He clears the land of wondrous beast
He decimates the birds

He pays no heed to august plume
He cares not for its grace
He cocks and shoots with disregard
He lays the swan to waste
The way we treat the animals
Will govern how we’re judged
And if you slay the animals
Your soul, it will be dust

I’ve tried to comprehend the type
That must annihilate
That cannot leave a life to live
That must obliterate
But come the fateful morning
When silence rules the world
We wiped it clean of every beast
We wiped it clean of every bird
The way we treat the animals

Will govern how we’re judged
And if you slay the animals
Your soul, it will be dust

 

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

This Heart Machinery

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

 

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

This Life Is A Slow Death

This Life Is A Slow Death

Well, I’m not socially redundant
I’ll raise a glass to anything
But get me started on the hard stuff
And I will let the Trojans in

I am the toil of Solzenhitsyn
I am the beast that beauty mocks
I am the soul of Kasper Hauser
I am Pandora in the box

Well, I’m not allowed to say
But I’ll say it anyway :
This life is a slow death

I carry letters from the frontline,
Quilled in blood and sealed in wax
And I have orders from the generals
Who chink their glasses at the back

So do not ask me for my politics
Or I will pull you like a plug
My tongue’s a razor in the bath soap
I do not march to any drum

Well, I’m not allowed to say
But I’ll say it anyway :
This life is a slow death

Well, my song it is not dulcet
And this guitar, I cannot play
But I have friends in lower places
And they will clap just when I say

I’ve left my skeleton to science
For I am spineless and naive
I leave my heart pressed like a flower
For it did nothing but deceive

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

To Be Swished

To Be Swished

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)

 

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

Vacancies

Vacancies

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

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

When I’m Done, This Night Will Fear Me

When I’m Done, This Night Will Fear Me

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

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)

 

 

 

(Lyrics – GA Johnson)