1. |
For Flotsam
03:43
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You say you are an old cassette that has gone and spilt its spool,
you’re far more like a wet cardboard tube on this nightclub toilet floor
As I describe my lonely, you listen very clear:
the last set of goalposts taken down, summer of odd numbered year
She says “if you’re unhappy, then you gotta find the cure”
Well I prescribe me one more beer, beyond that I am unsure
May not be be-all and end-all, in my defence she is the whole
I’ve thrown my goalkeeper forward, she’s catennacio
Flotsam, Jetsam and Spindrift: all the girls I have loved,
dumped to Earth by a spendthrift, gilt angels from above
And I saw God in the bathroom, I baptised him in sick
Embraced him around his cistern “c’est la mort!, enough of this”
Knees knocking and
blood flowing so
I want you to know that I want to
And later she said something that stuck hard in my mind:
“we are their Capel Celyn, they gotta keep their slippers dry,
to empathise with Tory’s to invite upon disease,
a safer bet’s to pack your bags, go holiday in Eyam”
I will take you where the sun shines, cast shadows on your face,
crawl into their deepest recess, ’til I freeze or dehydrate
We’ll live and breathe it in real time, montage is for the dead
and my heart’s still doing Fosburys, nowhere near finished yet
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2. |
What Death Leaves Behind
03:37
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I was the first match struck at the first cremation,
you are my shallow grave, I’ll tend you as a sexton
If you’re the casket door that’s being slammed upon me,
I’ll be a plague cross painted on your naked body
Well summer sighed and summoned up hail
Dirty in dish rack drips the Holy Grail
May be heartslob but I want ‘em to know,
cut and shut us like a portmanteau
We sit around just spitballin’
all the witches cackle round my cauldron
Recognise the lies from my poker tongue
(is it true…?)
They say you and me are tautology
What grows from the seeds,
can you quite believe
through cracks come the weeds?
Long time listener, first time caller
No need to remind me what death leaves behind me
Why must I lie awake from dusk until the morning,
through fear of being impaled upon errant mattress spring?
Within a waking dream I finally made my heel turn,
Lived life as Super 8 when you were promised Hilton
Propose me as a pardon for sins,
led on barbecue I’m burnt offerings
I proof-read the Book of Job for the Lord:
edit one, League Cup 2004
We, delicate as a filligree,
cleared a place for us in the chicory
Colosseum blood will dry in the sun
(is it true…?)
We tread it carefully (we feel around in kid gloves)
What death will leave behind (death will leave behind love)
We will flower again (I have surely seen it)
WE WILL FLOWER AGAIN
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3. |
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Now is time to take recourse, to drag my bones from ‘neath his corpse,
retract the blade within his heart, inscribe our initials in the bark
of every tree in every woods, in ink red blood, can you imagine?
While wearing his head as a hood
I’d take life for a crime of passion
Lies told
Darling, if I had the choice, I’d excavate his throat of voice
and corrugate his vocal cords to play a tune to please the Lord
Make him recite this murder ballad, a sombre tune told by a bore
Pump blood around the limp and pallid, harmonising as you snore
One day when I’m older, I’ll write it all down
A portrait of the trequartista as a young man
We all know we’re gonna die
We’re a speck of dust in a bad God’s eye
He rubs us clean, but love is blind
A balloon artist kisses porcupine
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4. |
Cemetery Gaits
04:52
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We lined up there pale, stiff and cold, like racks of bed and breakfast toast
So high up on the slate quarry, that you swore that you could see the coast
I thought I lost you in the dark, only twenty-four feet apart
More stories tightrope on that stare, than the same white line at Meurig Park
The dirt above, the stars below, I watched your face dry cold amid the afterglow
And when they think of you and me, it’s clear if you’re the doormat, I’m the hickory
Happenstance can wait for tomorrow, ‘cause you got to do it right
Your shoulders flow from neck like a wine bottle’s, bear them broad tonight
You and I, we consecrate, my heart and all resolve might break
You’ll know us by the way we crawl, you’ll know us by our cemetery gaits
Dawn comes, awoken by sheep’s bleat, a fleet of hearses line the street
A widow sobs, more widows weep, while we intrude like a widow’s peak
I shimmy up the cenotaph, regale with my melancholy
“two words upon my headstone, please”, don’t need date or name, just ‘Sad Story’
They boast of poets on their side, but what use will they be if this comes to a fight?
I glance along the length of pew and all that I can think’s I want to undress you
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5. |
Glue Me
05:05
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The clouds salivating, drooling from the sky at the thought of the trouble to wreak
’til lightning breached their bellies. Caesarean section washes pigment from every street
It’s high tide, as the sewers rise, and the drains have become obsolete
Seems there’s no place in this town for something as pure as you seem
I’m diving into headers, put this pretty face where the boots are flying in
Been bobbing rotten apples, water to my waist in a shark-infested bin
People laugh, they will call it folly, but we connected like a Yeboah volley
I’m totting up my worth in stamps, but doing so in second class
Two wrists, two wrist watches, tick-tick-tocking, second hands slightly out of time
A constant subtle reminder, one of us will be gone before bells of the other chime
I requested a room with a view in the middle of a war between me and you
And leave with all the dignity of a missed Panenka penalty
I heard that it hurts, and I said
I’ll be gloomy ’til they glue me in the arms of she who loves me
She smiled at a joke, but I said
I’ll be gloomy ’til they glue me in the arms of she who loves me
’til the rats and worms are all interned at least five feet above we
Draw me like one of your fence, girls, stood erect as a post, head to toe in creosote
We’re blocking out all the lapsed-punks, listen them piss and moan, counting out major notes
Banned from every bar in town, snooker balls a weapon made
Snooker cue held upside down, propelled like helicopter blade
The crowds celebrating, drooling from each side with the thought of the trouble to wreak
And you hear them singing (in every room, from nursery to tomb):
“ex-boyfriend give us a song”.
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6. |
As Lucerne / The Low
04:21
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There is no blues that can sound quite as heartfelt as mine
Lamented at the gorge of the river, I watched it weep its banks dry
I hum the sorriest tune on the bar at these dives,
send all the patrons running home to make up with their first wives
My prose as purple but not as pretty as lucerne
For sweet nothings from the lips of a gargoyle, nobody ever yearned
Perpetually a philistine, but darling I am longing to learn
Been looked at like the rotten grape on the vine, while you and yours are drinking Sauternes
I am the magpie’s solo, the sorrow that makes you salute
Pounding the earth for the early worm, I’m a glutton but it’s good for my glutes
I was solace to the sirens, the bait on the fisherman’s rod,
the hook took me far from my family, but closer to God
(But the low) is what I came for
(And to bask) in a darkness I do adore
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7. |
Avocado, Baby
04:36
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There’s no box to tick for red, so I put down blue instead
‘cause it’s the closest there’s to grey in the categories
And the veins within the whites are a statement of demise,
Doe Eyes you should stay at home licking batteries
I feel like I’m the host of a terrible gameshow
And the guests on today’s quiz are celebrities
Won’t respond to any clues, they’re just cracking jokes for views
but the answers to these questions mean everything
I had a friend who had made a flag day,
blood on their hands from shards of a heartbreak
I have known friends to crack from love’s weight,
blossom in ribcage until their backs break
Oh it won’t get better, that doesn’t mean it’s gonna get any worse
You’re final draft of life-long love letter, signed to the man who will be driving your hearse
Salacia’s in the depths, and if I avoid the nets,
threaten “I’ll cuckold you Neptune” for definite
Meet between the dog and wolf, with the hoar frost underfoot
and I’ll show you every fire in Delphinus
May she who casts the first fist of dirt across the casket
have mourners lick the mud from her fingernails
Between the breadth of your arm span I was a renaissance man,
books of lies stacked either side you were my carrell
A heart of stone, rind so tough it’s crazy,
that’s why they call me the avocado, baby
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8. |
Let It Spill
03:20
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I was born atop a winter’s hill, I took form as a ball in the virgin snow
that started on its slow descent, barely more than 27 years ago
And every ounce my love has grown, I absorbed another flake,
when this avalanche has hit imagine the mess I will make
A tidal wave from the tears. Will you toil in the garden to dig a well
deep to the core of the Earth? They’ll sob enough to douse all the fires of hell
I see you with shovel in hand, your skirt billows above your knees
I envy the soil that fills their pores and this perverted breeze
And I’m full to the brim, pull me up to your mouth let it spill, let it spill
I’m full to the brim, flood the north to the south, let it spill, let it spill all over us two
I take no solace in coastal breezes ‘cause the quay is sea minor without you
Béla Guttmann of love, curse all my exes to a life of celibacy
and then while you freed the doves, I shot them from the sky for taxidermy
An everyday disaster, a bread and butter tragedy
I sunk an oil tanker off the shores of Galilee
You’ll find me upside down in the belfry, ‘cause baby I’m bats it is true
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9. |
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One last meal as one last gesture
Cheapest wine, second best restaurant
Clapperboard made of two pork chops
Credits roll before the scene stops
In the shower,
I heard your housemate on the phone,
Lathered up my padded bones,
from her soap I foam
The shower-head moaned
and I looked down to the tray,
sons and daughters washed away
“Good night, God bless” she’d say
The length of your legs,
half the length of your body
Above you, thinking of she
I knew I should leave
I said this before and I thought that we agreed
The time before the last time
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10. |
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As I swan dive into the estuary, the birds do not flinch at my fall
They perch in the rafters, before, during, after: they do not notice me at all
As I float down into the estuary, wind cases my body in cool
I smell petrol fumes, see the smoke rise in plumes: the Earth is one big fireball
Anecdote, lie. My own alibi
I’ve been telling jokes
Piled notes high. My own alibi
I’ve been selling rope
As I break the film of the estuary, the seaweed submerges my form
No passing cars stop, not a single jaw drops, as my wallet and keys sink before
A splash all I left in the world
Once held a magpie in the palm of my hand and the blood in our veins flowed faster, as I’d planned
Got a heart full of love and a head full of more but a fist full of threads from the seams
and I saw a smile in that beak
Oh I was a bird right then, one day I will be again
I’ve been telling jokes while selling rope to you
There’s no ticker-tape, no pearly gates,
no carnival and no parade
Just one, one for sorrow
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