Months and Moments
Love is a wound and we were the salt,
People always assumed there was someone at fault,
But when months outweigh their moments
You’ve got to cash up and run.
We’re too old to begin
But too young to give up,
Our romance was the skin
Spreading over the top
Of a once fine moonshine
Soured by time in the sun.
Now I long to no longer belong to our love.
We were asleep in a vertical world
Like an ammonite curled
Around a kernel of private twilight.
But when months outrun their moments
You’ve got to pack up and fly.
You buttoned your coat right up to the throat,
Took all of your things
But left me a note
Saying a kiss won’t do,
I miss missing you
And though I hate goodbyes
How I long to no longer belong to our love.
Our song shouldn’t last
It belongs to the past
But if I rewrote my life
You’d remain in the cast.
When months triumph
Over moments
The fire is the first thing to go.
The ship of romance
Went down with all hands
But I’m glad that the band
Played on ’til the end.
It doesn’t take two
To see when something is through,
I think the world of you
But this world just won’t do
Because I long to no longer belong to our love.
When the myths between maps
Become marks on our graphs,
When the colossal collapse
And crawl away through the cracks,
When months outnumber moments
You’ve got to learn a new line.
We could die with our love
Or we could die of it,
Call each other’s bluff
Or try to rise above it.
But L’Amour isn’t the score,
It’s merely the scene of the crime:
Where the victims were us
And the weapon was Time.
I long to no longer belong to our love
I long to no longer belong.
***
Love At A Price
I may not be the best but I’m the best you’ll get.
I don’t care what Jesus said, if I die I’m staying dead.
As the first lovers sank down into the mud:
That’s when the blueprints of utopia were drawn out in blood.
Hi-Dee-Hi-Ho
You promised a lot but no,
The road to bliss is best walked alone.
I stole your heart but I threw it away
Because Hey,
You said crime don’t pay.
Well I may be your top shelf,
I may be your bottom drawer,
But you’ve been holding my hand
And now you’re telling folk it’s yours.
When you got on your knees and begged me to stay
I heard the footsteps of fidelity walking away.
Hi-Dee-Ho-Hi
It’s alright for you but I
Am through with love and I’m through with love’s lies.
I stole your heart then I threw it away
Because Hey,
You said crime don’t pay.
So long, get a move on
Before all our wrongs turn all too right.
I could have killed for you darling
But I’d never risk my life
For love at that price.
You held the hem of my heart as you worked your way in,
I felt the blame in your tears like glass under my skin.
Grimy with the grease from your face and your fingers,
There was love between us once but you know it never lingered.
Hi-Dee-Hi
Who would want me to want to too?
There’s an answer but it sure ain’t “I do.”
I stole your heart then I threw it away
Because Hey,
You said crime don’t pay.
So long, get a move on
Before all our wrongs turn all too right.
I could have killed for you darling
But I’d never risk my life
For love at that price.
***
Save Me
I’m not vengeful tonight,
I’ve got idols to mould.
But I’m nothing without my secrets
And one by one they’re getting told.
I’ve had debts and duets,
I’ve been charged and cleared;
I’ve seen animal regrets
Hidden running through human tears.
But I won’t cling to this clique,
Because I can’t make up my mind
If I can still stomach living with my own rotten kind.
So I built a temple out of beer cans and bottles,
I saw God and the Devil
(so much for role models).
Oh I fell down on my knees,
Oh I smelt the sulphur and bleach,
I realise you can’t save my beliefs
But please try
To save me.
Babe, it ain’t too late.
You say Judgement Day is coming
But they still haven’t set a date.
You know about forever,
You know it never comes free
But if you make one mistake
Please let it be me.
When we we counted our sorrows
Were you keeping score?
Do you worry about tomorrow?
Do you wonder what it’s for?
Because I’m dreading that dream
Of being caught in its claws.
I don’t want to die in my sleep
(But I don’t mind dying in yours).
Oh why do I fear what’s beneath
Those closed eyes promising me relief?
I realise you can’t save my beliefs
But please try to save me.
Babe, it ain’t too late.
You say Judgement Day is coming
But they still haven’t set a date.
You know about forever,
You know it never comes free
But if you make one mistake
Please let it be me.
I heard most obituaries are written well in advance.
If you stumbled upon yours would you dare take a glance?
It’s so long since I was tempted
(Or even enraged),
Well I guess maybe the Devil
Is going a little soft in his old age.
Oh I took the robe between my teeth,
White lies trickled out from the sleeves,
I realised you can’t save my beliefs
But please try to save me.
Babe, it ain’t too late.
You say Judgement Day is coming
But they still haven’t set a date.
You know about forever,
You know it never comes free
But if you make one mistake
Please let it be me.
***
The Light
Midnight.
Have you got a light?
There there, it’s alright.
That old flame found me again
And in her I swear
I saw Heaven silhouetted by the light of Hellfire.
There was nothing I regretted more than that desire,
Walking the high wire,
Trading the net for the noose.
Hey darling why are you always looking down?
If you’re dreaming of the Devil
He will surely come around,
Trip your treasons up
Then tease them out.
These treacheries are easier the truths.
Sirens always sing the same sad songs,
Don’t you worry though,
We’ll only hear them once.
Leaving love to chance
Was the worst way we could ever go.
Slow…
Fade that moon’s glow.
Stay close,
Stay close.
Let me be the card up your sleeve:
I don’t want to play,
I just want to be played.
Because I’ve seen Heaven silhouetted by the light of Hellfire,
There’s been nothing I’ve regretted more than that desire,
Love’s idle empire,
Cheering all the cherubs on to war.
Hey darling why you looking so mean?
You know I haven’t sought a single soul
Since I was seventeen,
Just a string of magazines
That suckled all the sickly and the sore.
Sirens always sing the same sad songs,
Don’t you worry though,
We’ll only hear them once.
Leaving love to chance
Was the worst way we could ever go.
Heaven silhouetted by the light of Hellfire
There was nothing we regretted more than that desire,
Love’s Final Empire,
Chasing all the cherubs on to war…
Torn.
Stay until dawn.
Sanctus,
Sanctus.
You’ll be
A strange memory
But tonight
Won’t you give me a light?
***
When Matilda Came Of Age
When Matilda came of age
(or perhaps the day before)
She grew as fashionable as consumption
In the lungs of your most cherished whores.
But weary of suburbia,
Of society and of sense,
She knew if she didn’t get clear there
She’d die from all that pestilence.
There was a clamor in her mind
Just like God’s own drum roll,
So she screened her eyes from the sunshine
With a black parasol
And strolled out all alone
And said “I’m never going home,
I won’t be driven, flown or ferried.
No, not even to be buried.”
I’m tired of people
Wasting my time with feeble
Rules they all dreamed up
Since we crawled out of the sea.
They don’t know where we go
When we’re flung down below
And they don’t know one tiny little thing about me.
Five days down the road
(or maybe six or seven)
She met a man all mixed up
In the politics of Heaven.
He could have been a tragic hero
But he didn’t quite have the height,
There were dark clouds all around him
That he thought Matilda could paint white.
She said “Buddy move along,
If you think I’m an angel then you’re wrong.
Go cure the crippled and crooked
Cos I’m happy being wicked”
He said “Maddy give me your hand
And you’ll inherit all my land.”
She said “Alright I’ll come and see it
But on your own head be it.”
Well the man liked to save orphans
And help the ailing back to health.
He threw his fortune into philanthropy
And let Matilda amuse herself.
She mostly sat outside beheading all his flowers,
She’d be out there in the garden for hours and hours.
She loathed the life of leisure and thought inactivity obscene,
She felt the tedium creeping over her like invisible gangrene
So she served him up a skillet of deadly berries from his privet
And when she threw the remainder to the birds
His body went out with it.
Matilda found in widowhood
Life’s bitter pill much sweetened.
She had charmed her husband from the embrace of God
Then sent the poor man up to meet Him.
But while our good deeds are buried with us
The bad tend to survive
And Matilda was soon to learn that men
Can be more trouble dead than alive
Because a pair of cats picked from the scraps
Two hands (one left one right),
They dragged them down to the police chief’s house
In the middle of the night.
Matilda was given a date
With a magistrate
Who’d known her when she was small,
He said
“You were an evil coquette who mistreated her pets
And I’ve no pity for you at all.”
The trial was in all the papers
And the periodicals of law,
The dead man’s finger prints
Made Matilda wince
And the cats pointed with their paws.
They purred a charge of murder
As Matilda was dragged away.
The town cried out
“You’ve been found out
Do you have anything left to say?”
She said
I’m tired of people
Wasting my time with feeble
Rules they all dreamed up
Since we crawled out of the sea.
You can lock me away
But I’ll be out some day
This world ain’t seen or heard the last of little old me.
***
Hold On To Me
There’s no such thing as free love Honey
But I’ve tried every brand of cheap
And I caught a brief glimpse of machinery
Beneath those morals we keep
I may have outlived my optimism
And laid it in a pauper’s plot
But I’ve realised
As we age we don’t find
Who we are
We only see who we’re not.
Hold on to me
Girl you’ve got nobody else
Don’t tease me with your passions
Just burden me with love
It’s too warm for all these fashions
And too cold for what I’ve been thinking of
This receding tide of vitality
Has made the remainder all the more dear
We can tame any one of their tiny toy gods
With a little dose of human fear
Hold on to me
Boy you’ve got nobody else
Love is filling my heart
The same way water fills a lung
Our immortality won’t last forever
So let’s enjoy it while we’re still young
Baby you’re my purgatory
You’re in every single flame that tickles me
We ain’t heading for a happy ending
But we’re primed for eternity
Hold on to me
We’ve got nobody else
(SPOKEN)
We sniffed each other like two old dogs,
The sweat diluted by nothing but bath water
And the segmented corolla of that devastated bouquet
Lay crushed beneath our steaming footprints.
There I began to see love as a thing not to be cherished
But scorned as sweets from a stranger,
Weighed in the palm,
Seldom tasted.
And yet I threw myself out to meet you,
Like Noah’s Raven in the winds,
And witnessed that ugly contemporary landscape
Dwarfed by sad and noble ruins.
Lost in that aggressive calm
We explored one another:
Yours was a beauty that did not shine
But rather sunk all others into shadow.
Mine was a desire to be remembered
Though only on my own terms.
And yet my fears remained unforgivably vague,
With few dreams fit enough to survive my education.
Cursed was that layered and temporary soul
Growing fat on the terror of keyhole observations.
So now I have resolved to wrestle with this false eternity
Until it becomes a different kind of fact
And though I may feel the tug of other currents,
Hold onto me.
You’ve got nobody else.
