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| A BOOK I SHOULD NOT READ All armies bear their losses, yet still they rally on. The fanfare may be muted, the spirit may be gone. And Troy was devastated by an accident of greed. I knew that you were taken; a book I should not read. But the sun danced in your shadow like the mocking of a bird. And I was dragged down to your depth. And I clung to every word. You’re a statue in my past. You are stone amongst the grass. Byzantine and cold but never growing old. And the clouds pass over Europe as the night, it battens down. I am drinking in the backroom of a bar of some renown. And I’m thinking how I lost you, how I let go of your hand. Your last words wore a sadness. You were drowned out by the band. A FOND FAREWELL Oh lord
In travel, there are traps, when I'm writing in the back, beneath the rain, between the maps/My diary bears this out but memory has it wrong - I loved you when you loved me and then we were done/There's a silence on the railway, there's a bad curse on the land and this season writes a rainstorm like a poem in the sand/You told me I depressed you, that I withered in your hand and that sentence cut my loveline when you left me as you planned/In travel, there are traps when I'm writing in the back, beneath the rain, between the maps/My diary bears this out but memory has it wrong - I loved you when you loved me and then we were gone/In travel, there are traps when I'm writing in the back
Amongst the books, an angel I've not met and time hasn't touched her yet/From A to M to Z she swans, as if avoiding bed/Pigtails instead of wings/I strung her harp with my heart strings/And I would ask this Spring for her if I knew what the right words were
There's angel pie in the oven and everything is ok, it's alright/The point at which the seasons pass each other on the way out, way in/'A Confederate General From Big Sur' sat in my lap like a happy cat/I can sleep and read at the same time and day and night are just words/I can live in the hills with my simple thrills, racing clouds into town, if I like
We sail on the bad tide, we sail on the bad sea, from your heart to my heart with sails cut from mercy/From your heart to my heart, from Summer to Spring, we row through the Dead Sea to the deader within
1914 - 1918/I've got your letter here, I've got your memories/Young men, as us - broken soldiers/I've got your telegram, I've got your souvenirs/1914 - 1918/I've got your photograph, I've got your poetry/Young men, as us - Artists' Rifles/Young men, as us - Artists' Rifles
BAD
PATIENT
She said, "It's ok - you'll feel better every day and all memory of this will fade away"/And that's the biggest lie and I just wonder why when love dissolves we don't all just die/I sat by the lake when everyone had gone home, nothing on my body but the sadness I had on/I felt death's elbow nudging at my ribs, telling me to let go - I don't deserve to live/ She said, "It's ok - you'll feel better every day and all memory of this will fade away"/And that's the biggest lie and I just wonder why when love dissolves we don't all just die/Liar
The clouds, they go their way
The Canadian brought us snow and Lucky Strikes for John to smoke/A Thursday night with powercuts, in mountain socks, burning books/We watched the Jetsons for too long -saw robots in our sleep/Naval lights from Amsterdam through the kettle steam/The Jesus glow of Calor Gas illuminates the frosted glass/The windowsill, a battle scene of Airfix kits and Disney Queens/Born too early, wake up too late/Minds of Chomsky but low birth weight/Sleeping beside, treat us like eggs/Box-jellyfish light; tinsel legs
There are more people alive now than have ever lived - I read that somewhere and instantly thought it impossible but if it were to be true, I wonder that, if we keep living this fast, no-one will have time to die/I've met people whose lovers died in war and I've wondered what this helplessness could be like - one minute there's a whole life entwined with yours and the next, just a space and scattered clues/When I watch old films in which animals appear, I get sad because those animals are certainly dead now - and that certainty prompts my private epitaph and I have to say it out loud : "That dog is dead, that cat is dead, that horse is dead..."
CITIES &
FACTORIES Came to London to find myself but in ten million people, where do you start?/Drunk at a party, you asked me if I was someone else and I say, "Yeah, if it helps you, I won't be myself"/Like Japanese poets who capture a Summer in only three lines, with just one kiss, I want to tell you but it takes all night/You just can't wait for the right time because like comets, it could be the last time/You should always tell them you love them in case you never see them again CROWN
ESTATE Look at that rich girl twitch - like me she can't sit still/How would you want it seen?/Just like when you were ill?/When you hear the way they talk - the rosy cheeks of the ruling classes/You can argue all you like - they swear by early nights/Never meant to be like this - a lot colder but the people were warm/If anyone was coming to get you - armed only with a sugar bowl/Used to leave your back doors/Used to leave your back doors open/Used to leave your back doors/Used to leave your back doors open/All the houses on the Crown Estate all look the same/That nut from four doors down wandered in by mistake again and said to your old mum, "I think it's best that you sit down/I'll make a cup of tea and you can show me what a woman looks like with her head turned inside out"/Used to leave the backdoors, etc
CROWN OF THE LOST The night settles down on the water/The feathers of sun gather/The trees wave their way to the morning/The birds think about what they'll sing/I have dreams in which you're a nightmare/I have dreams in which you're unfair/But angels still dance in your garden and flowers still grow in your hair/My tears leave a skull on the pillow/My tooth leaves my blood on the sheet/My heart sways the way of the willow/My heart sways the way of the wheat/But you are the queen of the lowlands/You have the crown of the lost/I found you broke up like a shipwreck/I found you broke up on the rocks/The horses come in from the cliff tops, their shadows upsetting the sea/The waves swim their way to the bottom and stay there until they're forgotten/And you know about birds when they're dying/How they know that they're going to die/How they hide in the heart of the forest and sleep until death chances by/You know that/You know that
DARK AGES
None of us are what we were/I know you've heard this all before/I
know you've heard this all before but none of us are what we were/But
it's a dark age, a dangerous time/I'm on the last page, the end
of the line/But it's a dark age, a dangerous time/I'm on the last
train, the end of the line/Outside the bar on the road to the Madrid,
a curious frost settled down on my ribs/These were the badlands,
the sad lands/I wanted to leave but I wanted to give/Whispered in
song in the tops of the trees, "Tears are the only rain that
we see"/Whispered in song in the tops of the trees, "Tears
are the only rain that we see"/I get up too late to wave off
the night/
When you’re preoccupied, like a moth with the light, we are ‘sacking your life; we are bleeding your pipes. When you’re hooked by the line, by the crook of your spine, we are sparking the knives; we are Frankenstein.
Get me an ugly wife - no man will look twice/I can fall asleep at night and dream of someone else/I found an ugly wife and she'd led an ugly life/Take my hand, this ray of hope, crawl out of this hole/She weaved her spell on me and I fell hopelessly/I swore to put it right - I blessed her every night/Tried to put the truth away - cruel water finds it's line/Cruel mouths are open wide, dark secrets look for light/I ran back to the flat and found her hanging there - silk nightdress, fallen chair, I found her hanging there/Wait til the end turns white/I closed my eyelids tight/Here comes the blinding light/This light will guide my life (Words
– GA Johnson)
DISAFFECTED
Anything can happen in life - especially nothing, mainly nothing. Once you know that, you’re fine. Once you know that, you can retire. Set your clock by your heart. Work’s over-rated and it will kill you. Finish nothing you start and start nothing you think you’ll continue. I’m disaffected now. I’m disaffected now. And to this model I’ve kept. I surface at 3 in the clothes that I slept in. And though I’m drowning in debt, I’m richer through all the things I’m rejecting. And in a rare, certain light, I have a strange charm, I think you’d like me. And the rain brings me out. The rain makes me happy. I’m disaffected now. I’m disaffected now. Set your clock by your heart. Work’s over-rated and it will kill you.
THE
DROWNING OF ST CHRISTOPHER There's no heart in the men who run these mountain bars/All love extinguished by location and cold fronts/Dogs in the parking lot surround the car for scraps of affection, for eyes not glazed over like black ice/Thousands of kilometres of roughage and terracotta roofs/Horizons replaced by horizons/We run the belly of rainclouds between Madrid and Valencia, with the radio tuned into the weather we don't have/St Christopher drowns crossing the river/Firs blown onto the windscreen disperse like a pack of tiny black birds/Service stations are watched over from the hills by shepherds who spend all their days flooded by thought - a deafening meditation/The cowbells, like bloody church alarms, smashing the silence of grass, of the air/I am interviewed in a sleepy bar by a girl who wants me to explain "the warmth of nostalgia," incensed that I "glamourise sadness"/And after seven hours on the road, I have lost all defences - they are roadkill, torn up, gutted/At night, tiny red beacons crown lonely antennas/Everywhere is shepherded in the absence of gods/Cities spoil everything : that there is somewhere to go and something to do, when the partition between sleep and awake in the back of the van features such happy accidents - hazed dreams in an unfocused Super 8mm/On rainy nights, we are docked in the harbour of circular ballrooms playing to the shadows, playing to revolving mirrorballs/Our harbours are in brandy glasses/Our music is swilled/In hostels, fourth floor, bare rooms but for a bed and a sink, we stare vacant at sleeping guitars, wondering how many fucks and violence and drugs have intervalled us staring at sleeping guitars/And the taps can't be turned off/And there's suspect movement on the stairwell/Small pictures of boats in storms/ Watches and money in our shoes/We wake up and the building is still there and we're still in it, like miserable captains
ECHOES ON ICE I have letters from you that you wrote in your sleep/A map of your heart and a plan of your street/And echoes on ice on a blue Winter night from the spokes of your bike in sub-farenheit/The fox makes a sound like my heart on the backs where they’ve laid out the traps/Planes filter back through the night, making light work of constellations and maps/My opencast heart rewinds back to the start and plays us again, should we ever part
THE END OF A DARK, TIRED YEAR The end of a dark, tired year/I slept bad, in bad dreams, on bad beer/I tried to get on but you nagged in my ear/And London is fucked - a busted bike with rusted gears/I walk around with a knife in the cuff but that's not gonna be enough/The end of a dark, tired year/I slept bad, in bad dreams, on bad beer/I tried to get on but you nagged in my ear/And London is fucked - a busted bike with rusted gears/It makes me dark, dead in the eyes, a shark
Maybe it's time to get out?
In youth, we think too little
England's dreaming, Winter absent/I take my books back, change my accent/First in the library/You queue up behind me, frost-bitten in French mittens/Take care on the corner/Sliding on white grass/I catch up with your shadow but you're walking too fast
Could it be that you drove me into your fleet of hand-melt candy?/Could it be that you sent me falling off the roof backwards, gently?/Do not let my words depress you - I'm here to uplift you now (I'm here to uplift you now)/Her eyes have gone south - terrible lies she denies/Could it be that you broke me into a sheet of rain swept sideways?/Could it be that you wrote me a dead attempt?/It just plain scares me/Do not let my words distract you from all the fun you demand - from the fun of the century/No more glistening wet poems in your honour, captain of alienation, New York, money, compassion
HALFWAY
THROUGH
I'm in my Halloween boat with a hole in my heart the size of a girl/Pacific postman, 30 West by 50 East on a black sea that joins up countries/My life is one second slow ' says here on my watch ' that's how I know/I'm a map-pin on a dead sea marking out 30 West by 50 East on the off-chance that anyone should wish to know. A trail of letters waltz on the tide back to Maritime Plaza from my Halloween boat/And it's so cold, you can hear the moon/My life is one second slow ' says here on my watch ' that's how I know/There's a hole in my heart the size of a girl ' 30 by 50/in my pocket, a letter ' a "let's make it better" note but I'm all out at sea, asking the harbour to come this way, closer, to swallow me/And there's a hole in this boat the size of a star that I plug with the letter, the "let's make it better." A peep show for Jesus. He looks through the stars
Outside, the fairground in snow, revolves like a waltz, funeral slow/And summer has gone, collapsed like a chair/Like the heart of a bird, a bell on the air/Inside, the wireless in snow/The orchestra drowns, funeral slow/And autumn has gone and with it the bloom - the harvest of stars, like moths to the moon/Help me warm this frozen heart
I am the sub-librarian, come in on the council bus - Chalk Farm to Highgate Woods, sportsbag of borrowed books/A steady diet of Brautigan, 'Tapestry' on the walkman/Paranormal ill-health from dusting off the top shelf/I am the sub-librarian, counter girl, tea-maker/I am the sub-librarian, swan feeder, spectacle breaker/I am the sub-librarian
Started mailroom, moved up through Clerical, now Obituaries/I am the teacher's son/I am the teacher's son/I am the teacher's son/I'm the teacher's son/Never seen a sky so big, like it's been saving up for years/Clouds from Russia press-ganged in, until the dateline disappears/I have loved and lost like the river's lost and found but I've never fought the tide and I've never fucked around/I'm the teacher's son/My favourite sound is churchbells and my greatest love's the sea though I never learnt to swim - never trusted it with me/I wrote a novel in my twenties though it never left my head -aA thousand words a sitting 'til all the characters were dead/I'm the teacher's son/My father was a poet though he never got the chance 'cos his words looked like another's if you took them at a glance/But he met a girl so pretty that he asked her to a dance/And there his words they died liked flowers/There his words, they lost all power/I've been told I have his ways/I've been told I have his grace but he left me on my birthday and the only thing remains : I'm the teacher's son
I
CAME TO YOUR PARTY DRESSED AS A SHADOW I came to your party dressed as a shadow and you never knew, you never knew/I rolled through the halls like a velvet wave, as quiet as an empty stage/I blackened your eyes and stole the light from your glass/But in the cold calm of the morning, lay like a death-kite on your lawn/I came to your party dressed as a shadow, without invitation, without a motive/I parked three streets from the moonlight - the soft walk to your house on a silver string/You were dancing in the backyard to a biscuit-tin beat/I slunk between the notes, posting them off to the night/This is symptomatic of you and me : I have jars full of your breath/I have shelves of your words but you have nothing of me but a space where I would be
I DIDN’T GET WHERE I AM TODAY I didn’t get where I am today/I stayed home, snowed in/I didn’t get where I am today/I cried off, I phoned in/Some days the faith eludes you/Some days the reason why is silent on the riverbed/Hangs deathly in the sky/My dreams are tortured silhouettes/My hands are ribbon sliced/The only light’s a cigarette/The bed feels cold as ice
The night is closing in/The clouds are frozen still/ The birds are feathered down/The churches ring the hour/Where once there was a cheer now stands a sorry crowd/Across the frozen lake/Beneath the tattered flags, a carnival of skates/The scissors scratch their names/Where once I held your hand I cannot bear to stand/This city is a cauldron of blackened snow and strangers/I moved here from the country/I didn’t know the danger/I’m haunted by the bottle/I’m haunted by the angels/In letters from my sister, she asks me how I’m feeling/I say that I am better but I lie in every letter/I have moved into the margin/I have moved into the shadow/Move closer to the fire or else you’ll meet the ghost/I loved you like a brother/I loved you more than most/But still you left me vacant/ Still you left me cold
I
MUST LEAVE LONDON I must leave London. It is bad for my soul. It’s making a hole that will erode me. I cannot subscribe. I cannot tow the line. And Robert Elms, you’re selectively blind. She shall not miss me and I care not ‘cos she’s doing me in and she’s wearing me thin. A last goodbye to the Boundary Estate - you stole my heart in Summer rain. A last goodbye to the Boundary Estate - you stole my nerve but never again. She shall not miss me and I care not ‘cos she’s doing me in and she’s wearing me thin. Where the Queen makes way for the Burger King. Goodbye to the stench. Goodbye to the din.
The doctors shake their heads/They chain around the bed/They’re looking for a reason to why I’m still not dead/The medicine’s not working/I haven’t sleep for days/The light is shone right through me/The skeleton is weighed/Incurable, I’m helpless - the mind and body weak/I have so much to tell you but I can’t seem to speak/Incurable, I’m lonely/The city empties out/I live inside the shadow - the shadow of a doubt/The cannons fire across me/I cannot make the trial/The seasons crash around me/The bones are in denial/My temper is a tower/The church will not provide/You closed the drawer upon me/I am unclassified/The romance of the season is wasted on the weak/I stayed in bed through snowfall/I tried to get some sleep/Invisible and broken/The spirit has moved out/Words that were unspoken, I cannot live without/A strange light beckons me this way/A strange life beckons me this way
INCURABLE (REPRISE)
I have thought about you in your Summer abode/In your lunatic smock, in chronicle mode/The typewriter smack as you nail in the words/and the turntable's drunk reflection occurs/I have thought about you in your grasshopper pose and the cigarette smoke carving trails through your clothes/Your Spanish guitar pins your bed to the floor so your dreams can't escape and they're yours evermore/Paris, she bleeds night into her cup as you index the birds and you label them up
It's the same dream that lasts all night but I can only keep this : it's Halloween and I'm chasing you round the other kids on a moonlit lawn in a skull mask and a ghost cape/And you are sometimes and sometimes you are just a shadow
JACKNIFED
I am jacknifed in your diary. I may be home alone, I’m not lonely. And I’ll be stronger when I’m stronger. I’m at my bleakest, at my weakest. I am worn out and I’m frustrated I tried to work you out but you’re a stranger. I’ve got the rulebook - it’s missing pages. And I could guess but that’s so dangerous. Turn around when you get to the coast - there’s nothing there to see but sea. Leave those mountains left unclimbed. And put a line right through me.
THE JOURNAL OF A DISAPPOINTED MAN I slip and slide through my life, trying to get a grip on the rail. I’m grasping in the dark for a switch that’ll turn on some almighty bright white light and thus, illuminate the way, the path, make everything clear as day. And every breath I take seems to be quickly rolled up behind me and filed away in memory. Only a particular scent or dose of weather can pinprick the past and even then, the drawer opens flirtatiously for just a moment. I have lost touch with everyone I went to school with, everyone in the village where I spent most of my formulative years, everyone I went to college with, everyone I ever worked with. They too, are filed away, often angrily slamming the drawer behind them, over something I said or something I didn’t say. I began my autobiography at 23 years old, with the intention that I wouldn’t live 'til 25. But I’d done nothing, loved no-one, said nothing of any great importance by that time. The journal of a disappointed man. Lonely, penniless, paralysed by the guilt of never having told my father I loved him, I wander hospital corridors, posing as a visitor. I have wept, enjoyed, struggled and overcome but I remain disappointed.
THE KING CANNOT
BE FOUND THE LAST
ENGINEER
Well, I am a young man and I believe in God/And I button my shirt right up to the top/And I read when I can, in the shade of the trees/And I buckle up good/And I always say please/But the wolf is at the gate and I’m reflected in his eyes/And his teeth are broken glass/His mercy is a lie/And when it snows, all the details disappear/And the days are long and grey/And the lights come on at 3/And the road down to the pharmacy - well, it may be beautiful but it’s a trap
Well, I left home when I was 16. I had no reason, had no rhyme.
I did not know where I was going. It did not matter at that time.
And there were people on the street, people on the street - the
strangest people that you’d ever meet. There were people on
the street, people on the street - the strangest people that you’d
ever meet. I got a job down in the factory. I broke my back, I swept
the floor. I met a girl who said she loved me. I hadn’t heard
those words before. And all I knew was love and music. Love and
music got me by. And all I need is love and music - love and music
‘til I die. All I need is love and music. Love and music gets
me by. All I need is love and music - love and music ‘til
I die.
LUXEMBOURG
GARDENS Tonight, I can't sleep, the heart's all wires/The moon is widowed, the stars, retired/I'll never travel and I'm always tired but I still love you and I can't lie/Don't you ever go home?
Well I can accept that you have your faith
He lived a boy's life/He loved his "Camp Mohawk" on Viele`s Creek and he loved to work on problems, drifting in his canoe/Lightning days/He hated formalities in dressing/He would welcome also god himself, in his red bathing suit/Lightning days/The doors of his house were usually electrified
Music won't save you from anything but silence - not from heartbreak, not from violence
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