Lyrics

Here is the evidence of human existence
A splitting bin bag next to two damp boxes
And I cannot find a name for them
They hardly show that I have lived
And the dust it settles on these things, displays my age again
Like a new skin made from old skin that has barely been lived in

I didn't need these things I didn't need them
Pointless artefacts from a mediocre past
So I shed my clothes, I shed my flesh down to the bone and burned the rest
I didn't need these things I didn't need them
Took them all to bits, turned them outside in
And I left them on the floor and ran for dear life through the door

The useless objects, the gathered a storm of shit
A dim and silent shedful of your life's supplies
When all you need's a coffin and your Sunday best to smarten up the end
At the front gate, what a reward awaits?
One bite of loaf from a holy ghost
An eternity of suffering the company of all those Christian men

I didn't need these things I didn't need them
Pointless artefacts from a mediocre past
So I shed my clothes, I shed my flesh down to the bone and burned the rest
I didn't need these things I didn't need them
Took them all to bits, turned them outside in
And I left them on the floor and ran for dear life through the door

I’ll never need these things, never need them
It's just you I need
You, my human heat
For the things are only things and nothing brings me like you bring me
I'll never need these things I'll never need them
Never going back
So we can drop the past
And we'll leave it on the floor and run for dear life through the door

A salute at the threshold of the North Sea, of my mind
And a nod to the boredom that drove me here to face the tide and swim

Dip a toe in the ocean oh how it hardens and it numbs
The rest of me is a version of man built to collapse and crumb
If I hadn't come now to the coast to disappear
I may have died in the landslide of rocks and hopes and fears

Swim until you can't see land
Are you a man, are you a bag of sand?

Up to my knees now, do I wade? Do I dive?
The sea has seen my like before though, it's my first and perhaps last time
Let's call me a baptist, call this a drowning of the past
She is there on the shoreline throwing stones at my back

Swim until you can't see land
Are you a man, are you a bag of sand?

Now the water is taller than me and the land is a marker line
All I am is a body adrift in water, salt and sky

Swim until you can't see land
Are you a man, are you a bag of sand?

Can you hear the road from this place?
Can you hear footsteps, voices?
Can you see the blood on my sleeve?
I have fallen in the forest, did you hear me?

In the loneliness
oh, the loneliness
and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist

In the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to bring
the blood to the front of my face again

Am I here? of course I am, yes
All I need is your hand to drag me out again
It wasn't me, I didn't dig this ditch
I was walking for weeks before I fell in

to the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to prove to everyone that I exist
in the loneliness
Oh, the loneliness
and the scream to fill a thousand black balloons with air

We fall down, find God just to lose it again
Glue the community together we were hammering it
I fell down, found love, I can lose it again
but now our communal heart beats miles from here

The crumpled ocean is no boat trip
The dark water stole my clothing

A shape stirs beneath me
A pulse pounds along bloodstreams
The first bite marks the beginning of
The clotheless wrestle with the clotheless animal

Bare those teeth to me please, man eater
You can see all of me, naked with fear

This is the test I left land for
To grip flesh and pull muscle in
The vice clinch of the struggle
I can't give in to the weight of
The clotheless wrestle with the clotheless animal

My enemy, please stay close to me
I've no breath left, you cold breath thief

The last gasp from a burst lung
The fight fathers a weak son
The last taste of salt in my mouth
Skin breaks, with no sound
I am torn limb from limb
There is bone, there is gristle, and spit
In the clotheless wrestle
The clotheless animal

I've been digging that hole tonight
On my knees beneath the moon
All I need is a place to lie
Guess a grave will have to do
Won't you give me two minutes please?
Just let me cover my eyes
All the hammer and scrape has been chipping away
At the lustre of life

(Move! Move!)
I would but I am so tired
(Move! Move!)
If I can't shake myself I can't dance with you

Though my body is far from old
I'm bound to useless youth
And I can't fake a fist to throw
Through the crust of the Earth
If you find me, don't wake me
I can't be shaken awake
If you don't stare at the dark, if you never feel bleak
Life starts to lose its taste

(Move! Move!)
I would but I am so tired
(Move! Move!)
If I can't shake myself
I can't dance with you

(I hear drums!)
The worn-out beat of a tired heart
(You are young!)
If this is the prime of life I wish I could skip the blasted youth

Skip the youth, it's ageing me too much

This is a story and you are not in it, uh-huh
Flock of pages torn out
Here is a bedroom that you've never been in and
Here’s your shovel, there's the ground
Look, two lovers covered in covers, uh-huh
I can put us to bed tonight
I am bruised but she is dressing my wounds
Night nursing a broken man

She was not the cure for cancer
And all of my questions still ask for answers
But there is nothing like someone new
And this girl, she was nothing like you

After waking up post-operation I found
I had come in a dream again
All the pain almost as painful as ever but
Something in me was not the same
At night during dreams of submission I could
Claw back my heart and soul
As the size of the tumour diminishes
So we fill that black hole

She was not the cure for cancer
And all of my questions still ask for answers
But there is nothing like someone new
And this girl, she was nothing like you

The booze in my blood runs fast and loud
and my brain shouts down to my mouth
“Say whatever I think. Say it at him.”
When the dam bursts open and you're drowned out, boy
better go outside, sit in your boat and wait
'til you get washed away

Hold onto your thumbs
Tighten your eyelids
Lock up your ears, my dear, I'm verbal when I am loaded
Duck under that desk
Cover your neck
Thicken your skin as I begin to shoot myself in the foot again

As the body succumbs and my mouth goes numb
I limp out to the sound of the breaking of broken toes
A vandal spoke
In the stark and the sobering dry sunlight
I will blink my eyes and hope the blink can erase
all the shit that I said and did

Hold onto your thumbs
Tighten your eyelids
Lock up your ears, my dear, I'm verbal when I am loaded
Duck under that desk
Cover your neck
Thicken your skin as I begin to shoot myself in the foot again

If I shoot at you, you should shoot at me, too
and we can drown in pools of the thick dark words we threw
As my face turns white, I apologise
I am sorry
it's not your fault
its mine

Hold onto your thumbs
Tighten your eyelids
Lock up your ears, my dear, I'm verbal when I am loaded
Duck under that desk
Cover your neck
Thicken your skin as I begin to shoot myself in the foot again

This is easier now
I have found all the pieces that I lost in the flood
It wasn't that much
And though it's easier now
I will always remember the night that I almost drowned
all alone in a house

And the love that I lost
With all of the shit that came out in the wash
Just a pocket of fluff
I'm not put upon
I am free of from disease no greys, no liver-spots
Most of the misery's gone
gone, gone to the bone

I'm not miserable now
And no one knows
No one knows
I'm not miserable

So the hymns that I’ve sung
Prayers for the fucked from a bitter forked tongue
Sing of history now
Though the corners are lit
The dark can return with the flick of a switch
It hasn't turned on me yet

I'm not miserable now
And no one knows
No one knows
I'm not miserable

Living in colour
I can see the paint on your toes
Living in colour
Even in the blackout, I know

I am floating
with my eyes closed, with no sails
I am soaking
I am weathered by the winter of mixed drinks
Am I dancing?
Or am I simply spinning in my own grave?
You are asking
and with two steps, I'm saved

Living in colour
I can see the paint on your toes
Living in colour
Even in the blackout, I know

Weeks gone by I was weak
I was paler than a pine box that holds bones
She poked the iris
then she pierced a hole and watched the colour rush forth
Modern Madonna
held my head in warm hands with pink nails
Mopped the mouth
And whispered that the sickness will go away

Living in colour
I can see the paint on your toes
Living in colour
Even in the blackout, I know
Living in colour
I can see the paint on your toes
Living in colour
Even as I blackout, I know

And though I dreamt with a rapid eye
By day I hoped to rapidly die
And have my organs laid on ice
Wait for somebody that would treat them right
As the night started swallowing
You pulled the blood to my blue lip
Forced the life through still veins
Filled my heart with red again

Living in colour
I can see the paint on your toes
Living in colour
Even in the blackout, I know
Living in colour
I can see the paint on your toes
Living in colour
Even as I blackout, I know
Yes, I Would

My cry for a fistful of sand
Breeds silence
Hold me, I'm folding, I can't see land
The world just blinks
Lead me, I'm stupid from a lesson learned
You've learned nothing
You told me to get lost to find myself

First it bleeds then it scabs
I feel like a haemophiliac
Would I change if you carried me back?
Yes I would
Believe me now, yes I would
I can't sink now
Yes I would

What if I am never thrown that rope?
And what if this tear in my side just pours and pours and pours?
I wonder if they'd notice that I'm not around
The loss of a lonely man never makes much of a sound

First it bleeds then it scabs
I feel like a haemophiliac
Would I change if you carried me back?
Yes I would
Believe me now, yes I would
I just can't sink now
Yes I would

What's the blues, when you've got the greys?
I think I've given up, my body's given in
In a building I lie still
then I turn back over again
In a building that has heating
Sweat sweat sweat sweat dried-on stains

I'm sick of feeling sick and not throwing up
you sit in my stomach and you seem to be stuck
it won't work its way through my guts and just go away
I woke up this afternoon thought maybe today
the world might be a more colourful place
but there's no luck, it's still just grey
come back here

What's the blues, when you've got the greys?
Much less productive than hardship and pain
In a building I lie still
just before I turn over again
In a building that has heating
Sweat sweat sweat sweat dried-on stains

I'm sick of feeling sick and not throwing up
you sit in my stomach and you seem to be stuck
it won't work its way through my guts and just go away
I woke up this afternoon thought maybe today
the world might be a more colourful place
but there's no luck, it's still just grey
What's the blues here when you've got the greys?
I don't have much of a story to say
I just sit around at night and avoid day
If I do anything it at all it would be to get up
and avoid conversation and human contact
cause you can't touch the world if you can't even feel pain
You should come back here

Music now is quite amazing
musicians unite against the enemy
writing is a job
making someone look dumb is not
So if this song falls on deaf ears
I'll lip-sych it so you can hear
I can hum for days and weeks and years
I won't shout nor will I scream
will I scream
So love me London love me
or don't love me I don't mind
you can take it or leave
and you'll ignore us
by kissing us on both cheeks
oh know how you work
I'll blush you red on your back
remember me this one time, cause I'll never be back
I do not hate this, music
I only hate the fucks that
cling on then give it up

You are all wasting your time here
You've got no right to waste mine as well my dear
Make your music, make it so loud, and so trite
Make your music, make music that some cunt might like

Make music now
This is music now

That infectious wind we breathe
fills up the bored hole that lust leaves

He yawns
she yawns as well
She yawns because she's bored
he yawns because he can't sleep anymore

They go out fill their mouths with drink and food
so they don't have to speak
Then in between courses they are gasping for air
so they yawn and look at their feet

He yawns
she yawns as well
She yawns because she's bored
he yawns because he can't sleep anymore

He yawns because he's tired
the girl that he slept with sleeps too soon at night
When she yawns she tells the truth
that the boy she adored is just man she's contracted to
Girl what of you and me?
Admit that you're bored, you need more electricity
I’ve had enough of love
it just ends with two yawns in unison

Oh this is what we need
a line in the sand
I would cross to here
before the tide comes in

You should be less rude
you don't know what it might do for you
I'd be less rude to you
and we might just get along, too

You sit on your high horse
spouting high horse SHITE
I'm afraid you've been misled
your high horse, in fact, is a pony

You should be less rude
you don't know what it might do for you
I'd be less rude to you
and we might just get along too

Take that back now take that back
you should take that back, back, back

You should be less rude
you don't know what it might do for you
I'd be less rude to you
and we might just get along too

I’d think about light, I’d think about lifting
that brick off your mind, it's making you ill.
I know it's not quite the custom in this country
but if you never try then you'll never know, no you won't.

Therefore insert a pipe somewhere in your forearm
bleed the vein dry, fill up your bowl.
Head out in a hearse, set up like the circus
seems sinister at first, but there's dancing girls

It's just me and my brother giving blood on the street tonight
We are not messiahs, ours is not the blood of Christ
Don't wait for a second what you want might never arrive.

So, so, don't be scared, don't be too shy, to give out your good blood
Drive round town give it out, spilling your guts love
And you know tous les choses that you wanted in the first place
Might just come your way in a shape you could not expect.

It's just me and my brother giving blood on the street tonight
We are not messiahs, ours is not the blood of Christ
Don't wait for a second what you want might never arrive.

It's just me and my brother giving blood on the streets
go go girls in the back seat yeah they're drinking it neat
Are you thirsty like a murderer who's just been released?
You should paint your face red ‘cause you're this close to death
So if it's running in your veins and there's people in need
Tonight

Okay stab, okay stab
Please me I don't care how
Stab me and please me now
with your mouth

A big bad, big bad
ape in a prison room
He's just itching to telephone you
with his mouth

Behave! Behave!
I don't know quite how to behave

Patience, patience
Leaves me with dross to bear
Leaves me, I don't know where
Then it leaves me out

Distance, distance
leaves me, I'm ashamed to say
where I’ll make a mess on the stairs
with my mouth

Behave! Behave!
I don't know quite how to behave
Behave!
I don't have a clue how to behave when I'm around you
Behave around you

My good big deeds
I'd say are more like plans than concrete
By day we'll colonise
by night, we'll bring peace

Heap all your hopes
compile a crooner's woes
work out how to, how to complete these

You can peel those eyes
'cause it's important that they see
my hopeful smile
Then you stub out fear
there's something I like about this year
Square 9 is here

So calm, please stay calm
right there behind your ribs and grab my hand
Stages are just stages for us to pass

You should peel those ears
'cause it's important that they hear
my hopeful words
Stub out fear
there's something I like about this year
Square 9 is here

It'll be like square one
where we fell in love
Forget about square two
It was not me and you
Just like square one
where we fell in love, under the tree
Forget about square three
oh that wasn't me
Like square one
where we fell in love
Forget about square five
I was only half alive

Me and Snake talk about you every day
I can't wait to see your face
he tells me he feels the same

We lie awake, we’re tired but we can't get to sleep
I'm tired 'cause I've scraped through the day
he's tired because he's been out late, again

And there he lies, staring up with his big gay eyes
he whispers to me 'Aren't you tired?'
'I'm tired of missing B'

I’ll wake with Snake
He's soft inside but not as soft as you
I love that Snake but I love you more
and he's no substitute
I'll wake, I'll wake with you soon

Yesterday Snake told me about the time when he
came to meet you off the plane
and we all drove home in Wheels
He was proud and awfully glad that I took him out
I said 'How does New York sound?'
He said 'It sounds quite loud'

So pack your pipes
pack your chapstick and your tights
and one shoe for going out at night
We're going to visit B

We'll take a camera
and go to the zoo
and take pictures of other snake with you
and hope one of ‘em turns out to be gay

I'll wake with Snake
He's soft inside but not as soft as you
I love that Snake but I love you more
and he's no substitute
I'll wake, I'll wake with you soon

I am that dickhead in the kitchen
Giving wine to your best girl's glass
I am the amateur pornographer
Unpleasant publisher by hand
Not here, not here
Heroic acts of man
See the stumbling pinstripe trouser
The flecks of sick on an office shoe
Part of the fatty British average
That lives in the houses around you
Not here, not here
Heroic acts of man
Letís all crowd round the cowering body
Throw stocky fingers, sticks and stones
Letís promise every girl we marry
Weíll always love them, though we probably wonít
While a knight in shitty armour
Rips a drunk out of her dress
One man tears into another
Hides a cowardís heart in a lionís chest
Man, he breeds although he shouldnít
Breeding just because he comes
Acts the father for a minute
Until the worst instincts return
Not here, not here
Heroic acts of man
I have never wanted more to be your man
And build a house around you
But I am just like all the rest of them
Sorry, selfish, trying to improve
Iím here, Iím here
Not heroic but I try

All our secrets are smothered by dirt
Underneath paving stones
Lying, waiting to be told
Some remain hidden, some get found
Like a long lost soul
Like a skull beneath the ground
Backyard skulls
Deep beneath the ground
Those backyard skulls
Are not deep enough to never be found
Here lies the first time that I was wrong
And yet there’s still no sign
No exes mark the spot
Of the ancient encounters
With foreign skin, all but perished by now
But you can’t erase the grin from those
Backyard skulls
Deep beneath the ground
Those backyard skulls
Are not deep enough to never be found
Through patio doors
Lies century upon century
Of skulls untold
Hushed as suburban adultery
Below our homes
Underneath the lawns we keep
White silent skulls
Are smiling at the hypocrisy
Backyard skulls
Deep beneath the ground
Those backyard skulls
Are not deep enough to never be found

You read to me from the riot act
Way on high
Clutching a crisp new testament
Breathing fire
Spare me the fake benevolence
I don’t have time
I’m too far gone for a telling
I’ve lost my pride
I don’t mind being lonely
Leave me alone
You’re acting all holy
Me, I’m just full of holes
I could dip my head in the river
Cleanse my soul
I’d still have the stomach of a sinner
Face like an un-holy ghost
Spare me all the soliloquies
I’ve paid my fines
And I’ll be gone before my deliverance
So preach what you like
I don’t mind being lonely
Leave me alone
You’re acting all holy
Me, I’m just full of holes
Don’t mind being lonely
Spare me the brimstone
Acting all holy
When you know I’m full of holes
Don’t mind being lonely
Don’t need to be told
Stop acting so holy
I know I’m full of holes
I don’t mind being lonely
Leave me alone
You’re oh so holy
And I’ll never be good enough
Don’t care if I’m lonely
It feels like home
And I’ll never be holy
Thank God I’m full of holes

Far from the electric floor
Removed from the red meat market
I look for a fire door
An escape from the drums and barking
Bereft of all social charms
Struck dumb by the hand of fear
I fall into the corner’s arms
The same way that I’ve done for years
I’m trapped in a collapsing building
Come find me now, where I hide and
We’ll speak in our secret tongues
So will you come back to my corner?
Spent too long alone tonight
Would you come brighten my corner?
A lit torch to the woodpile
Dead wood waits to ignite
There’s no spark on a dampened floor
A snapped limb in an unlit pyre
Won’t you come and break down this door?
I’m trapped in an abandoned building
Come find me now, where I hide and
We’ll speak in our secret tongues
So will you come back to my corner?
Spent too long alone tonight
Would you come brighten my corner?
A lit torch to the woodpile
Come find me now, where I hide and
We’ll speak in our secret tongues

I cursed in church again and the handclaps all fell quiet
I watched a statue of you cry
A candle is blown, we start the black march home
Through a stale and silent night
There's a funeral in your eyes, and a drunk priest at your side
Staggering sermons never wash
No reproach from a lit touch paper, both
Got stubborn marrow in bastard bones
Can we just get home, sleep this off?
Throw some 'sorry's and then do it all again?
Folded arms clutch homocide
The bridge is out and the river's high
This is a March death march
March, Death! March!
There isn't a God so I'll save my breath
Pray silence for the road ahead
In this March death march
March, Death! March!
I went too far
And as we walk through an hour long pregnant pause
No grain of truce can be born
My bridge is burned and perhaps we'll shortly learn
It was arson all along
Can we just get home, sleep this off?
Throw some 'sorry's and then do it all again?
Live Bulver said, less heart and more head
So un-furrow that brow, un-plant those seeds of doubt
Folded arms clutch homicide
The bridge is out and the river's high
This is a March death march
March, Death! March!
There isn't a God so I'll save my breath
Pray silence for the road ahead
In this March death march
March, Death! March!
Dead balloons and withered flowers
Sorry cannot save me now
In this March death march
March, Death! March!
I went too far

December’s traditions
Suck the last of summer from our cheeks
Draw the curtains, strip the trees
In so-called living rooms
Scottish pastimes come to roost
Love’s labour stains a linen sheet
The ghostly body
Who makes his bed beside you
Is slowly losing teeth
The boy needs sunlight
And a shot of modesty
He needs to get some sleep
It’s not the answer
A sticking plaster on a shattered bone
What do you need?
What do you need from me?
It’s not the answer
Keep treating cancer like a cold
What do you need?
What do you need from me?
After months of grieving
Fuck the grief, I’m leaving
Will you leave with me?
The bloodloss, the towering cost
Of mouth to mouth and tongue to tongue
One lick brings warm metallic taste
I may correct myself
Convince you that there’s no-one else
In volumes of new leaves
If you want a saint you don’t want me
It’s not the answer
A sticking plaster on a shattered bone
What do you need?
What do you need from me?
It’s not the answer
Keep treating cancer like a cold
What do you need?
What do you need from me?
It’s not the answer
I’m just begging to be told
What you need
What you need from me
If I had the answer
I’d write a book on what I know
What do you need?
What do you need from me?

Hear the dull drum roll
Of the Great North Eastern line’s
Coupled carriage ticking like
My metronome
And see that housing glow
A skyline of cheap gold
And crooked teeth I will call home
For a day or so
You can’t carry me away now
Please don’t steal me from my house
You can’t carry me away now
I have just laid my head down
You can’t carry me away now
Please don’t steal me from my house
You can’t carry me don’t steal me from my house
Inside that housing glow
I stiffen my tired shoes
With the starch of family food
Oh I’ve missed you so
You can’t carry me away now
Please don’t steal me from my house
You can’t carry me away now
I have just laid my head down
You can’t carry me away now

Please don’t steal me from my house
You can’t carry me don’t steal me from my house

I am not myself I am
A broken boxer stuffed with glass and sand
This is now how health should feel
Songs sung from the lungs of the elderly
I'm dead now, check my chest and you'll see
The light has been mined from me, burned for the heat
I'm dead now can you hear the relief
As life's belligerent symphonies finally cease
I put my heart where my mouth is
Now I can't thumb it down again
I've gone devilled my kidneys
Now he's living inside of me
So if we can't bring an exorcist
I'll settle for one of your stiffest drinks
And we'll scream hell towards heaven's door
And I will piss on your front porch
I'm dead now, check my chest you'll see
The light has been mined from me, burned for the heat
I'm dead now can you hear the relief
As life's belligerent symphonies finally cease
We're all dead now, join hands and we'll sing
To the glory of hell and the virtue of sin
There's something wrong with me
There's something wrong with me
And it reads nothing like poetry
So will you love me spite of these
Ties and inconsistencies
There is something wrong with me

The half-backflip conception
State hospital birth
The most threadbare, tall story
The country has ever heard
Brought home to breath smoke
In the arms of her mother
The blunt kitchen knife
Who just lays in a submissive position
Beneath a national weight
And the slow arc of a fist
Her heart beats like a breezeblock

Thrown down the stairs
Her blood is thicker than concrete
Forced to be brave, she was
Born into a grave
And in the limp through years of bored schooling
She’s accustomed to hearing that she could never run far
A slipped disc in the spine of community
A bloody curse word in a pedestrian verse
Spirits in graveyards and fingers in car parks
She cries on the high street just to be heard.
A screaming anchor for nothing in particular
At the foot of the fuck of it
Dragging her heels in the dirt
Her heart beats like a breezeblock
Thrown down the stairs
Her blood is thicker than concrete
Forced to be brave, she was
Born into a grave
The cheek of youth flashed red and turned grey
Now she lies on the pavement she is helped to her feet
All thighs, hair and magpie handbags
Saturday’s uniform for the ‘fuck me’ parade
Brought home to keep warm
In the arms of a plumber, ruddy and balding
Who just needs a spine to dig in to
A chest for the head and a hand for the holding
Her heart beats like a breezeblock

Thrown down the stairs
Her skin is thicker than concrete
Forced to be brave, she was
A broken elevator anthem
Held between floors
But if blood is thicker than concrete
All is not lost.
All is not lost.

Shut down the gospel singers
Turn up the old heartbreakers
I’m dying to tell you that I’m dying here
Throw up the sickly joy and I’ll
Swallow the sweet self-loathing I’m
Just dying to be unhappy again
Oh where love won’t grow
I’ll build my home
And if happiness won’t come to me
Hand me the nitrous gas
Leave the acute warm heartedness
Go where the joyless bastard lives
He’s dying to bring you down with him
Suck in the bright red major key
Spit out the blue minor misery
I’m dying to bring you down with me
If happiness won’t come to me
Hand me the nitrous gas
You can keep all of your oxygen
Hand me the nitrous gas
If happiness won’t live with me
I know I can live with that
Keep all of your oxygen
Hand me the nitrous gas

I’ve been taken again
Kidnapped before dawn
Stolen by these songs
Oh damn them all
Beyond the housing glow
Looking back will lose its point
So stare forward into the void
Of the endless road
You can’t carry me away now
Please don’t steal me from my house
You can’t carry me away now
I have just laid my head down
You can’t carry me away now
Please don’t steal me from my house
You can’t carry me don’t steal me from my house

I went looking for a song for you
Something soft and patient to reflect its muse
I took a walk will all my brightest thoughts
But the weather soon turned and they all ran off
Took to the ocean, in a boat this time
Only an idiot would swim through the shit I write
How can I talk of light and warmth?
I’ve got a voice like a gutter in a toxic storm
All the dark words pouring from my throat
Sound like an oil slick coating the wings we’ve grown
There goes a love song drifting out to sea
Id sing along if I could here over the oil slick
So it came to pass and I came home
With four worn out limbs and not one love song
How predictable this is all you got
Yet another selfish signpost to my ruin of faults
All the dark words pouring from my throat
Sound like an oil slick coating the wings we’ve grown
There goes a love song drifting out to sea
I’d sing along if I could hear
Over the dark words pissing from my throat
Sounds like an oil slick coating the wings we’ve grown
There goes a love song drifting out my reach
I’d sing along if I could see past the oil slick
There is light but there’s a tunnel to crawl through
There is love but its misery loves you
There’s still hope so I think we’ll be fine
In these disastrous times, disastrous times
There is light but there’s a tunnel to crawl through
There is love but misery loves you
We’ve still got
Hope so I think we’ll be fine
In these disastrous times, disastrous times

Time passes, I accept the blame
And I accept that you might never care to see me again
At least I can shake some shame
Still I quiver like a dying leaf in a violent wind
I don’t wish to be excused for this
My disguise and my excuses they had worn so thin
But may I ask and answer honestly
What would you have done if you were me?
How could it go wrong so quickly?
What would you do if you were me?
Don’t assume that I found this easy
How would you feel if you were me?
Time passes and kills everything
In its path and then it buries us in history
But some bits, some bits seem to stick
Oh I thought that you and I could be a timeless thing
I have to ask, please answer honestly
What would you have done if you were me?
How could it go so wrong so quickly?
What would you do if you were me?
Don’t assume that I found this easy
How would you feel if you were me?

We’re ruled by a governing frost
It melts beneath alcohol briefly
And then bites back
We breathe on panes of glass
A circle appears before freezing again
And it’s taking its time
Degree by reluctant degree
And night by night
The snow is still melting and doesn’t it take its time?
We live under a governing frost
As thin as a wedding veil
Too heavy to lift for a kiss
And a kiss brings warmth
But not nearly enough to finish the thaw
And call spring from six months in clothes
This calls for bold, naked honesty
Petrol, a match and a torch
The snow is still melting and doesn’t it take its time?
To have lost almost all feeling, Jesus, didn’t that take a while?
Well the snow may have melted but it covered all kinds of dirt
We can take one brush each, start sweeping and we’ll clear this up.
Well the snow may have melted but it covered all kinds of hurt
We can take one brush each, start sweeping and we’ll clear this up.
Clear this up.

His first kicking came on January 1st
They said, “Welcome to the club,
we’ll take your shoes and your shirt.”
He wore his nosebleed like a red rosette
And it was a prize he would win again and again and again.
He had to find an escape route.
It was a rumour, but it soon became true
When he was drunk in the suburbs
with a boy from a different school.
All his good friends soon left him for dead
Now he stands staring down at the Clyde from a bridge
And then he saw an escape route
From the dogs of West Renfrew
From the bitches and bruises
He chose Ohio to run to
The name came to him just as he perched
On the amber lit bridge, his whole face pursed
It had a ring to it in American songs
Like a glittering release from a crippling curse
He dreamt of the place of a cinematic space
And all the pointing fingers they just melted away
Who knows, maybe he’ll never take flight
But he swears Ohio pulled him from the bridge that night
It became an escape route
From the dogs of West Renfrew
From the bitches and beatings
Midwestern chest to fall into
Some are saved by the good arms
Some are saved by the church
Some get saved by the skin of their teeth
By the thought that it couldn’t get much worse
Some are saved by professors
Some are saved by police
Some get saved by a distant place
By an impossible American dream
We all need an escape route
From the punches and kicks
The fingernails and the pricks
All the sharp little knives
In the dark pockets of life
From the bitches and bruises
From the burden of youth
The public hangings and stonings
Save us from fellow humans
Just give us an escape route

A melting of morals
A solder of souls
As sexy as lace
But with just as much holes
Doubts were debated
And Questions were raised
All the stags and the hens
Were stunned and amazed
The portents and omens rang as loud as the bells
With you at the altar
And me in the cells
Are you still breathing?
Are you holding it in?
Was it you I heard sniffing
when you were stooped at the sink?
Are we still breathing?
Or are we holding it in?
After all of this swimming
are we beginning to sink?
The Dress will decay
But be in no doubt
You can scrub you can soak
But you can’t wash me it
You can call it perversion
You can call it a kink
But no one could see us
There’s no need to think
Are you still breathing?
Are you holding it in?
Was it you I heard sniffing
When you were stooped at the sink?
Are we still breathing?
Or are we holding it in?
After all of this swimming
Are we beginning to sink?
All of these old stains.
All of them ours.
Anniversary fingerprints
Scattered all through the house.
Do you even remember
What we said in the vows?
God was watching one Saturday
But he is not with us now.
Turn away from me darling.
Face to the wall.
Turn the big light out
I've locked the front door.
Squeeze on the wedding gloves.
Hands to the wall.
It's the only posterity
you will grant me at all.
Grip me in your wedding glove.
Fake silk touch to my face.
Tens of years of giddy love
come rushing back again.

We’ll have no telephones here
Just a gentle mouth to a smitten ear
No technology here
Such heady chemistry can’t be engineered
We’ll use no binary code
No pixellate template to contain us both
Ignore the scurrying roads
We will stay right here and want for nothing more
And as the earth eats itself
Swallows us whole
We will sever ourselves
Switch everything off
No machinery here
No chain-smoking factories with their monotone sneer
No technology here
No damning indictments or digital sin
So can’t we both disappear?
Run away and play dead like I did last year
We’ll need nobody else at all
Sheltered and happy in our candlelit home
And as the earth eats itself
Swallows us whole
We can lie here hidden
Pull the wires from the wall
And as the earth eats itself
Swallows us whole
We will sever ourselves
Switch everything off

Here I stand like a soldier, home from war
With nothing to do but remember the shudder of bombs
I’m sure it never quite goes away
Never quite goes away
Here I sit like a beginner, beginning again
All those fuck-ups counted for nothing, ‘cause nothing makes sense
And I am never quite fully awake
And never completely asleep
I’m walking around like a soldier home from war
Lost in a foreign landscape I used to know
And will I ever feel like I belong?
Will I ever feel like I belong anywhere?
Here I lie like a lover who isn’t in love
Who stares at cracks in the ceiling 6 feet above

And he knows just how it feels
The buckle beneath the weight
There is only so much he can take
Only so much he can take
And I might never be normal again
He might never be normal again
But who cares?
Now I’m standing, dishevelled, at your door
Covered in dust and dirt, but filled with hope
And we might never be normal again
We might never be normal again
But who cares?
I ask, who cares?

Boxing night
I celebrate in style
In boxer shorts and spirits
Floor littered with ghosts of bottles past
There’s a naked hush
Clothed only in breath and the pulse
Of a heart that is kicking
As though it is desperate to be born
I am hostage blind
Deaf to the din outside
Good Glasgow could burn to it’s timber tonight
I’d barely blink an eye
Well the clock just stopped
You can cut that into my headstone
Won’t something move so I stop
Staring a hole into the phone
You can get me at home
With a drink to ill health
Just me and these walls
And a beaten up chair
On Boxing Day
This is boxing night
Someone lost an eye
I fear I’ve lost the last drop
Of whatever kept me awake, alive
I fell in the fourth from a heavy right hook
To a blushed and swollen face
In a single blow it’s murdered
Then it takes years to waste away
I can’t call you all mine anymore
I can’t call you full stop
But you know you can call me up anytime
Call me whatever the fuck you want
You can get me at home
With a drink to ill health
Just me and these walls
And a beaten up chair
On Boxing Day

The half-backflip conception
State hospital birth
The most threadbare, tall story
The country has ever heard
Brought home to breath smoke
In the arms of her mother
The blunt kitchen knife
Who just lays in a submissive position
Beneath a national weight
And the slow arc of a fist
Her heart beats like a breezeblock
Thrown down the stairs
Her blood is thicker than concrete

Forced to be brave, she was
Born into a grave
And in the limp through years of bored schooling
She’s accustomed to hearing that she could never run far
A slipped disc in the spine of community
A bloody curse word in a pedestrian verse
Spirits in graveyards and fingers in car parks
She cries on the high street just to be heard.
A screaming anchor for nothing in particular
At the foot of the fuck of it
Dragging her heels in the dirt
Her heart beats like a breezeblock
Thrown down the stairs
Her blood is thicker than concrete
Forced to be brave, she was
Born into a grave
The cheek of youth flashed red and turned grey
Now she lies on the pavement she is helped to her feet
All thighs, hair and magpie handbags
Saturday’s uniform for the ‘fuck me’ parade
Brought home to keep warm
In the arms of a plumber, ruddy and balding
Who just needs a spine to dig in to
A chest for the head and a hand for the holding
Her heart beats like a breezeblock
Thrown down the stairs
Her skin is thicker than concrete
Forced to be brave, she was
A broken elevator anthem
Held between floors
But if blood is thicker than concrete
All is not lost.
All is not lost.