The fool

The one who sees it all
The jumping bird in the railway station
The frantic midnight scrawl
The slackened jaw ready to sing

He is the fool
Don’t let him go
‘cause he is here
Singing out the lines we used to know
Don’t let him go
‘cause he is here
Setting all our tired hearts aglow
With a verdure
A new kind of fever
For the sunlight and the sycamore

The passionate believer walking
The streets with his megaphone
And all our angels scream
As we silence our dreams
But we still dance at home

This higher place

The sky shed rays of gold
Over the bleached out city lights
We ran ribbons through the quiet
As we cycled through the night

Out through suburban silence
To a lake all draped in flames
With angels bursting from the bronze
And calling out our names

Singing songs of salvaged innocence
I hung on every line
There was heartache in these words
But it wasn’t mine

My baby takes me to this higher place
My heart it breaks
When I think we were nearly over
So babe let’s play it straight
I want you I’m going crazy
It’s just where my baby takes me

Lost boys on the riverbank
Howling drunken battle cries
Throwing bottles in the water
Make fading rainbows where they lie

You exposed my breaking song tonight
It’s some cosmic lullaby
That climbs up out the window
To the angels and fireflies

And in my private hell
My prison cell of cast iron fear
You’re the moon shining through the bars
Lifts me up to the stratosphere

REASON TO BELIEVE

Got a reason to believe
Just blew the last trick up my sleeve
My pulse a robin’s heartbeat darlin’
I’m loose and loaded at your feet

Stayed up all night
Saw the light of the eternal
Flash across a sparrow’s wing
And now I can see everything

And everything is golden
And my heart is rolling
In the glow of it all
In the glow of it all
Eyes in steady motion
See the depth of the ocean
And I really believe it
‘cause I really believe in my soul
Holding on tight meaning it all

The break of day is deafening
The birds’ dance is shining
Through the colours of my curtains
And as I watch I’m wandering

Through the impotent dreams
Of sunflowers and seeds
While their embryo souls
Run cold down the streams

HEAT OF THE MACHINE

I sunk fast into the red glow
The red glow from the stereo
Holding tight to this rising tune
While my body hangs hollow

A trembling ghost beneath these
Iron skies and ice cold effigies
And drifting to my refuge
Of flesh and melody

And here I am just wilting
In the heat of the machine
I don’t care for my home
And I’ve been left a wandering queen
Dancing my downfall
All across these wooden floors
When I’ve finished this old fashioned
I’ll be gone forever more

Loving you always dying for you always
But blue so blue my love
My love my love my love

Took the wrong way home and
Now I’m tearing up the morning
In amongst the birds while
Their tiny choir is forming

The same ecstatic song
That woke my ancestors
The journey side companion
Of all the lonely time travellers

And I’ll drag this all night fever
Through the rush hour blues
Caught up in the flight
Of my spirit and my shoes

Some damaged love inside me as
I run breathless through the streets
My cowboy mouth spouting my cowboy dreams
At everyone I meet

LADY MATADOR

The moon casting invisible rhymes
The stars stuccoed to forgotten times
The rain flies past in its last helpless jaunt
It’s going to be a long night
The inferno of your spirit
Sparks in deadly release
Our souls fly up like lanterns
And then crash down by our feet

We’re sick and starry eyed
Riding on a high
We just get so low
Lost in paradise
Happens all the time
We just get so low

I’m getting blind drunk with the man I love
While lamplight flickers up above
She’s channelling the dark heart of Spain
In the back of the bar we’re going insane
The room was red lady matador blue
Her bones supplicant to the violin tune
Her chest revealed beneath her suit of lights
Her body twisting long into the night

Now I really can see all we have tonight
Now I really can see all we have tonight

NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROWTH

There are wooden faces
Screaming around the edges of my door
And stubborn roots are twisting
The bed up from the floor
Great nets of weeds have buried my beliefs
We make bouquets of dying flowers
Those carnations of despair
Run wreaths of wilted daffodils
Through your wild black hair
My heart capsized
In your stormy green eyes that stare
And we called for mother nature
But she didn’t seem to care

So come on let your dark side bloom
Into wiry little flowers
Here in the undergrowth
I could sit with you for hours
And I’ll bring the tangled vines
To mend your fragile mind
And as the rosebuds appear
The thorns are nothing to fear
Because here I pulled you from the ground

This big old land just seems
One great tapestry of decay
Give me the limping pigeon
Over the dove any day
My muse flies
With these urchins of the sky
I want to see your disease
In the orchids and water-lilies
And I’ll be at your feet
When you’re brought down to your knees
Prepare the ground for your grief
The soil for your sorrow
While your spirit rides the sky
With the circling swallows

ARMED WITH LOVE

There’s a rattle in the silence
There’s a black out in the building under me
There’s a stairwell somewhere
But I don’t trust where it leads
There’s a river that pummels through me
That connects me to the sea
There’s holes built by those I trusted implicitly

And it’s the only way I will learn
Watching unity sooth this ancient burn
And it’s the only way I will learn

To be armed with love and great hope
And great unfaltering wonder
With great love and great hope
And great unfaltering wonder

There are winners and there are losers
Sufferers and abusers
And the jester’s really scrabbling around for a joke
The fun is taken from the ride
When you have to keep your legs inside
And I’m just flying along by and taking notes

All down the line
The flame’s thrown about
But it won’t go out
I just don’t know how
I’m supposed to live and let live
And forget what it’s all about
Great love
Great hope
And great unfaltering wonder

BRIGHT TIGER EYES

I find my lover lay down in my room
A sallow figure face of darkest blue
My face has fallen in the same way too
You’re quick to leave and I don’t blame you

And you won’t come back
And you don’t come back
You know I really could
Use the company sometimes

Do you remember those divine nights
Used to linger like sweet smoke
Into the morning light
We have them still
I feel them stronger these days
We do it night after night
And any doubt falls away

‘cause you always come back
You never really go
But every second apart
Feels just like a fatal blow
That’s just how it goes

There’s nothing rotten
When the mind commits
Joy on her dark pilgrimage
Has found somewhere to sit
And as it all shifts
Like it can’t help but do
Our resting ground becomes our alter
When the love is true

And I look at you now
With your bright tiger eyes
School boy smile that’s all mine
To watch move as I like to do

SOMEBODY LIKE YOU

Riding my bike
To the heart of the night
Hard to believe
I nearly gave up on life
The doing or dying
Not the moping and crying
Endless conversation
Between the floored and the flying

Really it’s love that pulls you through
Oh I was just waiting for somebody like you

Run down the moon
In an old saloon car
Passing adverts wishing
Death would come to you sooner
From our x-rated heavens
To the lords of the skyway
Criminal kings
Tearing down the highway

It’s centrifugal
It’s fast and brutal
But still the bird song carries on
A car backfires
And shatters the symphony
Dive to the underworld
And take the birds with me

Really it’s love that pulls you through
Oh I was just waiting for somebody like you
Just looking for someone to talk to
But I really no I really can’t take
All the noise that we make

I’LL DO ANYTHING

A head full of violent excitement
So I head out for some fresh air
My sound mind’s dismantled inside
And I’m leaving it there
Step out just as the fireworks die
Watch the smoke dance across the sky
And the day’s debris full of a vacant energy
Revellers that are ready to cry

On an abandoned carousel
Where I was waiting for you
One moment’s rest on my decent to hell
Where I was waiting

Baby baby I’ll do right by you
Baby baby I’ll do anything
‘cause you keep me out of the cross fire
And off the high wire yes you do
So I’ll do anything
Anything to keep you on side
I’ll do anything to keep you onside

See heavenly forms revealed to me
In the movement of the crowds
Stare through eyes that cook up wild fantasies
And while I was silently twisting around
A cloud came down from beyond the stars
Clung like a leach to the skin of the street
And as the crowds float into bars
I’m left scrambling around for a retreat

Or a seat
While all the woes of the world
Crash down around me
Look set to drown me
I’ll wait it out
Until you’ve found me

DOWN BY THE WATERSIDE

To the right
I’ve got the ships light burning all night
And I was staring straight into the sunrise
To my left
The docking bay’s just out of sight
Just up from these stones
I’ve got the doctors that won’t leave me alone
I’ve got the tears at the end of the telephone
An institution that’s meant to be my home

I lay drunk in the galley
I was drenched with matted hair
Didn’t think anybody would find me there
My friends were dying I didn’t even care
‘cause we were wasted
And our families were waiting couldn’t face it
Formed a habit proved difficult to shake it
We knew none of us were going to make it

Oh ah oh ey
Why don’t you leave me to pass by the days
Strung out by the waterside by the waterside

To the right
There’s a cruise line running all night
An old deck hand is losing his sight
Local boys are getting in to fights
I hear a call
The ward guard is climbing over the wall
My time’s up there’s nothing I can do at all
But crawl back inside

Is it really that hard
When you think about it
Spending your life on your own
Except when you’re lost
And you need someone to call behind you
Don’t go don’t go don’t go don’t go
Don’t go go go away
Why don’t you leave me to pass by the days
Strung out by the waterside
‘cause it’s alright to feel lonely sometimes

Ravens and angels

The electric sky
Broke up the coast line in flashes of light
And it’s all burning and waving
Like the blue centre of a flame
Heard a dying moan
Sat by the water alone
Some yearnings, well
There’s some desire’s you never can tame
Like all the others
It feels my whole life I’ve been under cover

It’s always been so hard to decide
Between the ravens and angels at his side
He was always a lover of all things
Now he walks with the mother of all things
To leave the rest of mankind
With their runways
And their rivers
And their suicides
He was always a lover of all things
Now he walks with the mother of all things

The wild doves all dip their wings
In mercury and meet
With the believers who’ve been brought
Down to their knees
And talk of Jesus and politics and trickery
And the breaking down
The brutal bludgeoning of beauty

To uncover what we were born to discover.