The Death Of A Certain Kind Of Life

So, so is this learning?
A way to stop hallucination, make sense of the world
But why when it’s burning?
I could sit for hours and contemplate

There’s a testing room to figure out your traits
Where being alone is clinical
To work out how it’s all going to go until the crematory curtain stalls
This is how it is now but it’s just like it was before
How could anyone ever think to know that this was the haze?
That this was the haze

Angel of the slow death, making me think
Is this a test? Simulation? Someone has to take the brunt but am I now a figure of
my own imagination?
We sit and talk America again
Thinking of our endangered friends
I can taste the church and their words refracting in the air
as I cling onto pushing on without them
They’ve hooked and readied themselves to reel in
But I’m a dog with a stare so strong that I can’t take away focus from the birdbath
All that’s left to do is sit and laugh

Let me watch your mouth as I Iay on your bed
Make Auburn colour tears as I cry through your hair
And pretend that all my worries and my cares, they’re like a snare, will fade away
Call it an endeavour, the shaping of a head
The sweat of an existence that's pulled apart and needs a friend
Soaked into your linen and stains what once was fresh but still you stay

Somedays I want to leave you behind
Sitting cold in a chamber away from the light
But others I’m glad to have you by my side
The death of a certain kind of life
Over my shoulder you’re there while I write
Her on the other in the middle a war child
But you take me to the harvest darling you’re my honeyguide
So thank you for the end of that kind of life

Head

Walking the street that takes my name
The touch of slur and insult covering up rain
I could live forever under indigo light
The chemical in my heart that makes it hurt says otherwise
Lay me in the bardo

The pang now the mirror shows a different face  
Only gets louder when I try to change your ways
The furtive operator tells me the best that I can do
Is to let you be a ghost and not to misconstrue

Lay me in the bardo
Lay me in the bardo
Lay me in the bardo
Lay me in the bardo

Yes Love, Forever

Oh lady Paris girl to be the other hand, well could it ever be
The flow undoubting flow, maybe one day if I could still and make it clear
But I lie, a crystalline veil upon my face that hides, that hides, that hides
Will this never change?

Yes Love, Forever
Yes Love, Forever

Tell my sleeping legs that one day there’ll be so much more
Are you running round in love?
I’ll play Dillinger to thieve and take it all
One moment takes the day away, the Delphic kiss, the faulting of the floor
The pirouette - I wouldn’t ask for much
But it’s a fallacy, a romantic dream
Yesterday brought some veracity
There’s a thorn in the stride of this beautiful mind
Is this how it’s going to be?

Yes love, forever
Yes love, forever

It’s late again
Is it wrong to think of one so much and for so long?
I’m no good with words you see
I’m no good with anything when it comes to sealing deals like you
I want to live the truth of everything is beautiful and nothing hurts

Oh lady Paris girl

Clean

I know I’m clean  
But it’s so warm in here why would I leave, why would I leave? 

Staring off the edge of a bed of another 
One that isn’t you, I’m alone, cold sweat ruins slumber 
It’s not that it’s love just a passing of addiction  
The snake in a garden but real and unpredictable   
And I’m sorry it’s you but the stillness of it all is the like the purest dream  
Something so vacant yet so full, I won’t look anymore    

Anymore at the pictures in my hands that make it so easy to pretend  
That I’m not really solitary inside this bomb site of a head  
Oh to leave this dead dog of a room and move into your clutter  
Be the burning in your mouth or the note that drags you under  

I know I’m clean  
But it’s so warm in here why would I leave, why would I leave?  
Everyone you know has to have a bleeding heart  
Some could call it winter art but it’s just they haven’t realised  
The start of it all for them  

No lying eyes for me tonight 
Take all the pills and pair them with wine 
It's starting to happen all of the time 
I don't even like wine 
And when you're sleeping in your bed 
I wonder if your thoughts are of me instead 
Of dreams and wonders that'll go unread 
Recent rumours, untimely deaths 
Scraping at your heart 
I’m sorry it’s you but the stillness of it all is the like the purest dream  
Something so vacant yet so full, I can’t look anymore  

I know I’m clean  
But it’s so warm in here why would I leave, why would I leave?  
Everyone you know has to have a bleeding heart  
Some could call it winter art but it’s just they haven’t realised  
The start of it all for them

Cheap Wine

It was my time to come back around and stay  
A dream of white surrender, that finally crept in  
A sign of the days, another soul to break  
She rode past the window frame, unaware of everything  
that I was thinking  
the Innocence and empty hopes  
They’re still the same as years ago  
So now I  
I’ll down cheap wine  
Keep her on my mind for the night  
The perfect end?  
Like it was back then?  
Not this time, not ever again   

Then it all changed as her colt kicked my face to the floor  
And we made a life in the back of my car  
One we couldn’t keep but we stayed free on your sertraline 
Hiding the grief and building up fantasies of infamy and bad things  
That could fill the simple hole that we now had to hold  
All the while 
Drinking cheap wine  
Then settling down for the night  
After making plans  
You’d take my hand   
and scream out to the woman upstairs  
Say the pain  
is the perfect stain  
to wipe on the bare wood walls we’d wake to in the morning  
And every time  
swearing that it’s all a lie  
Then turning back to cheap wine  

Sitting in the doorway like runaways I saw  
In the palm of your hand lay a fresh quiet scar  
I think it’s time to save you so let’s move it all   
I’ll buy you all the memories that I can afford

Reprise

Reprise

Smoke

Poetry, The beautiful lies we’re going through

The life and times of me the smoke and you the fire so true

Empty is the house that was never in my mind

Wasted, Yeah you’re gonna lose tonight

The problem is that this all tastes like yesterday

More or less the same, I’m the one to blame

Out here I’m the smoke

The times that we all know

Bringing on the low

They think you’re a joke

They laugh it up

Out here I’m the smoke

Patience, See the grief out on the street

Gold and silver on your breath and one common belief

A mother and a child, they were never in my head

Hatred, But fires don’t regret

Out here I’m the smoke

The times that we all know

Bringing on the low

They think you’re a joke

They laugh it up

Out here I’m the smoke

So I’ll wait, for you to throw

the stone away and stay for me to fold

Diamonds on your fingers

And your daughter home alone and sick

Who’s won tonight? Who’s won?

Out here I’m the smoke

The times that we all know

Bringing on the low

They think you’re a joke

They laugh it up

Out here I’m the smoke

Out here I’m the smoke

The times that we all know

Bringing on the low

They think you’re a joke

They laugh it up

Out here I’m the smoke

Norah

You're on the stereo

And I’m sat there cross legged on the floor

With my ear to the wall

Falling in love

My mother’s in the next room

Yeah she’s putting on a smile

She's putting up her hair

Putting up a fight

I can’t hear the damage when the phone ignites

Hide away the worries keep them out of sight

That’s what you do best

That’s what you do best

Bring all the feeling like you did back then

Norah won’t you stay around again

Bring all the feeling like you did back then

I know that she’ll be leaving soon

And I’ll cry cos I can’t bear for her to go

I’m too young to understand

Not to young to not abide

She says she’ll only be an hour

But to me it’s like the ending of the world

She’s walking out the door

And walking out on me

And I won’t keep it quiet when you say goodnight

standing in the doorway till you change your mind

That’s what I do best

That’s what I do best

So bring all the feeling like you did back then

Norah won’t you stay around again

Bring all the feeling like you did back then

Drown out all of those wrongs and rights

Norah won’t you stay around tonight

Drown out all of those wrongs and rights

I’m lying half awake in bed

It’s past the hour that you said

Don’t take the long way home

And I know I’ll understand

When I’m not a boy and I’m a man

Don't take the long way home, no

So bring all the feeling like you did back then

Norah won’t you stay around again

Bring all the feeling like you did back then

Cover up her crying with your don’t know why’s

Norah won’t you stay around tonight

Cover up her crying with your don’t know why’s

Cover up my crying when she says goodnight

Old Romantics

There laid a Jenga tower romance knocked over by a child

Reasons upon reasons of why she ever changed her mind

Maybe the tabbing on the school run or even that time we tried

Sat there with silver spoons and old cartoons on turned our skin to rind

And served as a distraction to all the help that we could find

Some reconciliation we both endeavoured to decline

I called out for my consort till one day there was was no reply

Now she’s got her t shirt on backwards cos she's rushed home from a friend's

They got up to something you can tell how this one ends

It’s not fair

But in the hours she was gone I was out finding someone

To do all the same things at the same time

So it’s not fair but it’s alright

She’d ask all the hard questions like, 'Could a nihilist see the light,

end up an old postino in the early morning shine?’

I stood, stared and probably dared to share something unwise

On the palms of my hands right there’s a little extra time

For better or for worse I think that it would be unkind

To keep going with the deal we took when we felt so obliged

I never seemed to realise just how much time she’d spend

Checking for my silhouette then off to play pretend

It wasn’t fair

But in the hours she was gone I was out there with someone

Doing all the same things at the same time

And it’s not fair but it’s alright

We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it

We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it

We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it

We used to be old romantics

We never talk about it

You

Hold you back 'I saved your life', went a little far this time

You got clipped, they ran away and let the heat die off

Truth is cruel and you were the pray, carrion when the crowds all faded

Esoteric Monday mornings brought out the worst in them

Now nineteen and five years old is where I seem to be

I lied last time, by you I meant I, some purposeful deceit

Looking through new Polaroids my brother takes of my mistakes

Before I try to sleep it off and breathe, realising who’s to blame

I don’t owe you anything at all

I don’t owe you anything at all

One day that keeps creeping up, is the one where I wish I was drunk

Turned around to find you stood before the big wheel line

My parents laughed as your rents joked, how was I to know they spoke?

A beretta for a smile and blinkers in your pocket to hide their eyes

I don’t owe you anything at all

I don’t owe you anything at all

(Everything is simple is what I used to pretend

A scene each of day of illness, prey and how things always end

A face, a name, something to keep on using, “please take away the ache”

The reasons that I tell myself you used to get along each day

And now sat mute on the sofa with so much left to do

A nearly perfect stillness just past the corner of the room

Is home to all the reason and retort and empty threats

That now if I could catch you I’d stand up for younger self

I can see the picture of the bulldogs in my head

They'd only finished running just to watch my timely death

Death not opposed to living, but the ending of my grit

For that day oh not only, oh for now it just persists

Now even when I’m playing, cooking, drinking, kissing, crying, living you’re still in there

Don’t take that as glory, it’s just faceless imprints on the window, beyond I always stare

If there’s any change, a rearrange, a lease of something new

Usually I’d be first in line to offer out a hand or two

But I feel pretty sober with every other living thing

Degrees of easy going with all the backbone I can wring

So just this once sure I think if the big woman is real

She’ll let me off for not excusing all you had to deal

But what if it’s how it was supposed to go and be

Nah that’s always a lie to me and that statement I made previously

Was just a joke, a hoax, a coax, hysterical affair

One could say the truth is there was never any care

Children only children, could ever get so cruel

Is it all a workout or a testing of the truths?

Either way the dread of ever trying to return, snap back

Retaliate, riposte, attack has all began to fade)

Back there on the left in the smoke of your friend’s cigarette

Looking less Beretta and more bereft, Something changed the wind

Whatever it was, did it happen fast? Or did they make it last?

I’ve seen that face myself before from all those yesterdays

A midnight box of matches, now that might do the trick

Is what you had me thinking then and I might still think at twenty-six

Just got caught across the way, it returned, familiar face

There I was sat hoping, hoping that you’d learned someday so

I don’t owe you anything at all

I don’t owe you anything at all

I don’t owe you anything at all

I don’t owe you anything at all

Waiting In The Wings

Waiting in the wings again, this ain't ever getting old

One more one night stand, another sober drive home

Behind that old piano, looking oh so sweet and cold

Should I turn to you to go into the cut, the one that’s been there for so long

But you’re about to go home

Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights

Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime

Towards the monument in my hometown we could look up to the sky

All the jekylls and Hydes in my head tonight that I could leave behind

But you’ll be heading over the water while I wait in supermarket lines

Make believe you’re on the checkout girl so I can stand there and feel alright

At least for another night

Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights

Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime

Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights

Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime

Turning on your heels as you slip away out of the lights

Telling myself I’ll see you around sometime

DON’T TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME.

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