Los Campesinos! <Romance Is Boring> 全碟歌词
01 In Medias Res
But let's talk about you for a minute,
With the vomit in your gullet,
From a half bottle of vodka that we'd stolen from the optic.
On the back seat in your car because it wasn't safe to start it,
You were "far too fucked to drive" were the words that you imparted.
And the woolen dress that clung so tight,
To the contours of your body.
And the dead grass stuck to fibers from us rolling in the layby,
Were passed to dog-haired blankets that protected the back seat covers,
And a crucifix was hung from rear-view mirror by your mother.
I'm leaving my body to science;
Not medical but physics.
Drag my corpse through the airport and lay me limp on the left wing.
Drop me at the highest point and trace a line around the dent I leave in the ground:
That'll be the initial of the one you will marry now I'm not around.
I flew for seven hours.
The sky didn't once turn black.
I wake from sleep my head and shoulders wet against the window.
A frost had formed and melted,
Soaked me right through to my collar bone.
If you were given the option of dying painlessly in peace at forty-five,
But with a lover at your side,
After a full and happy life.
Is this something that would interest you?
Would this interest you at all?
02 There are Listed Buildings
You glug and you glug,
Salt water from sandcastle bucket.
You glug and you glug and the tide turns in your stomach,
Splash your shoes.
You complain the tap-water runs solid white,
You dangle fishing line for crabs,
But they're not interested,
I'm your only bite.
I watched your face move in a compact mirror;
How the powder settles in - premature crows feet,
Caused by worry.
You say I circle you unwanted,
Like a seagull swoops and feeds from bin.
There Are Listed Buildings and woe betide your listed heart.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
Comewhat midnight,
You commandeer a fishing boat,
Decree to drift further than we could swim.
Comewhat midnight,
The neon signs,
Have been unplugged and fade,
You danced a jig down at the harbour,
Create your own flash show with security lights.
I remember being naked to my waist though not in which direction.
"And oh, I am a glutton for love, can you give me some romance?
I'm a glutton for sin".
We are but two atheists in lust,
You know,
We gotta make our own luck.
There Are Listed Buildings and woe betide your listed heart.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
03 Romance is Boring
Darling,
I'm with St Bernards and we are scouring the Alps and the Andes.
If they die then it is on my head.
They followed paw prints in the snow to my throne,
To my bed.
You're pouting in your sleep,
I'm waking still yawning,
We're proving to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Sure there are things I could do if I was half prepared to
Prove to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Start as you mean to continue;
Complacent and self involved.
You're trying not to be nervous,
If you are trying at all.
I will wait,
i will bake phallic cake,
Take your diffidence make it my club house.
But my strength's within lies,
Ventricle cauterised,
It's the way of living that I espouse.
You're pouting in your sleep,
I'm waking still yawning,
We're proving to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Sure there are things I could do if I was half prepared to
Prove to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
We are two ships that pass in the night;
You and I,
We are nothing alike.
I am a pleasure cruise,
You are gone out to trawl.
Return nets empty,
Nothing there at all.
You're pouting in your sleep,
I'm waking still yawning,
We're proving to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Sure there are things I could do if I was half prepared to
Prove to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
04 We've Got Your Back (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2)
On the dashboard assembled in Descending height order,
Half a decade of father's day gifts her mother bought for;
Never passed on.
Puffy eyes,
Nasty reaction;
Doe eyes,
You're kidding yourself.
I learned remedial Spanish from a toddler.
Passenger seat of father's taxi,
Cussing in unison.
Clutching receipts and deceased handwriting,
Filled with a sense of great disappointment;
Doe eyes,
You're kidding yourself.
And so fucking on and so fucking forth:
We've got your back,
Whatever that's worth.
If your hero told you to go huff a sharpie,
What would you do?
(I do not know).
Every girl I ever kissed I was thinking of a pro-footballer
(THOUGHT. YOU. SHOULD. KNOW).
I've learnt more from toilet walls,
Than I've learnt from these words of yours.
Your feelings are buried in scriptures and fictions,
It's all in the words but I'm here for the pictures.
I'm sweating off the cheap notes on my thighs,
They were for your benefit not mine.
And so fucking on and so fucking forth:
We've got your back, whatever that's worth.
If we didn't know the shape was for functionality, what would we do?
(I do not know).
If it wasn't for the corrupt US Pharmacy,
What would we do?
Sometimes only you'll know.
We're cementing old friends,
Dismissing old foes.
We're throwing punches,
And ducking blows.
05 Plan A
Just like when we were seventeen we said we'd move to Malta,
Claim Nationality,
And now that we are twenty three - days tethered to the running track,
Evenings chained to the dishrack.
I'm called up to the Maltese national team,
My vision is impeccable, my first touch is obscene.
A world cup qualifier finds me fifty, forty, thirty yards from goal, A late sub on in an off the striker role.
Was it wind? Did it take a bad deflection?
A decade spent nursing a fear that you might never make it?
The crowd draws breathe at once,
It swerves to the top corner,
The Sunday Tabloid press declares me the new king of Malta.
With my name on shirts, your face on the cash that every week just piles inside our bank account,
We'd rule the roost and we could start a family I think we'd make about a hundred million bucks.
I head down to the mint and tell them:
Pound every coin deep into the ground,
Burn every note in circulation
There's a new face on the currency of our nation.
I hand them a photograph of you,
The most beautiful thing they'd ever seen.
The press starts a rolling, your image on Euros,
The workforce retires to the bathroom.
With my name on shirts, your face on the cash that every week just piles inside our bank account,
We'd rule the roost and we could start a family I think we'd make about a hundred million bucks.
06 200-102
07 Straight in at 101
I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock.
Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never get me off.
You pull your dress over your face,
And I stare down towards my chest,
Chastise both our greasy hair,
Wonder whose gut is the softest.
Stand with my ear to the door listening to the landing floorboards,
Working out when will be safe to dash from mattress to your bathroom,
Where I ball my fingers into fists until my knuckles glow bright white,
Press the heels into eye sockets 'til I see the flashing lights.
Stop me when my stories change/
When they have started to repeat,
'Cause last time I was a mess of sleep of icy feet.
So baby;
All apologies.
It was going to happen,
inevitably.
I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock.
Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never touch my cock and what exactly do you mean now,
By "what can you even eat?
And how does that affect how I'll get off this evening?".
I flew down South to Mexico had a minor realization
I understood why kids draw the sun with its rays emanating.
And the beams broke the clouds,
The sky looked like a concertina I'd sat on in my pocket for weeks,
Folded up from a picture.
I've been playing straight chicken with gay girls (it's never enough),
She keeps on pulling the peace sign (and it seems like a taunt),
She licked a glaze on her lips,
They shone like battleship grey.
She never liked the wisdom I gave:
"Some people give themselves to religion,
Some people give themselves to a cause,
Some people give themselves to a lover,
I have to give my self to goals".
So baby;
All apologies.
It was going to happen,
Inevitably.
And if it helps,
I mean,
Even slightly at all,
It's best to dust yourself down and get straight back on the whorse.
I condescend a smile and wink directly at the camera.
I leave you led in both our scents as I tip-toe out the backdoor.
I skid down icy streets and view my face in the reflection of a high street lingerie store,
Though it wasn't my intention.
I phone my friends and family to gather round the television;
The talking heads count down the most heart-wrenching break ups of all time.
Imagine the great sense of waste,
The indignity,
the embarrassment,
When not a single one of that whole century was mine.
08 Who Fell Asleep In
She turned her back on the church and put all her faith in me at the back of the chapel where I taught her to screw and blaspheme.
We turned our backs to the church,
With our trousers around our knees,
While screaming the scriptures she said I was her favourite heresy.
In a note I read:
"If you should go blind and deaf I'll cleanse and I'll bathe you and I'll cook for you daily.
I will take a dry ballpoint pen and trace on your chest all of the same conversations we have now in bed".
I don't mean to be selfish;
But I think I'd sooner just be dead.
Behind the tennis court alongside the river,
Not a single live flower to see.
This is the one girl who woke up from all that and now falls asleep next to me.
But I swear now,
Every time that I kiss her, she feels her god breathe on her shoulder.
It pains me,
But I'm sure she's still yours.
She said she wanted a sea burial,
Not grass and hypodermics to her hips.
I pruned the ivy from your grandmother's tomb,
More tender and careful than the superstitious ripped you from your mothers womb.
In a note I wrote:
"I think too much about the end,
But being around it made me feel like I'm coping.
Now when I view the cemetery I don't see headstones I see rows of engraved milk teeth,
Hungry,
Waiting for me".
And though I am fearful;
I think I just crave the relief.
Behind the tennis court alongside the river,
Paper flower's still beautiful thing.
This is the one girl who woke up from all that and now falls asleep next to me.
But I swear now,
Every time that I kiss her,
She feels her god breathe on her shoulder.
It pains me,
But I'm sure she's still yours.
09 I Warned You Do Not Make An Enemy Of Me
He grows out his stubble just so that he can scratch at the sunburn that coloured my arm.
Civilians read bibles behind glass windows.
Is this what constitutes normal behaviour?
Got soul! Got vision! Got mind to leave here.
You soon made an enemy of me.
I warned you:
Don't make an enemy of me.
I'll take your heart with such little commotion,
By crippling disease or with deadly love potion.
I'll bind you and gag you and all's well that ends,
I suppose.
Got a call,
Are we not interesting?
Fair to say we are not interesting at all.
Broke down laughing and screaming for more,
But if this changed your life,
Did you have one before?
And what have we got that is of any use?
Allegiance to team that we cannot pronounce.
Image seared,
Dermis spread across tiled floor.
A taste on the tongue that you and me both abhor.
Got soul! Got vision! Got mind to leave here.
You soon made an enemy of me.
I warned you:
Don't make an enemy of me.
I'll take your heart with such little commotion,
By crippling disease or with deadly love potion.
I'll bind you and gag you and all's well that ends,
I suppose.
Got a call,
Are we not interesting?
Fair to say we are not interesting at all.
Broke down laughing and screaming for more,
But if this changed your life,
Did you have one before?
10 Heart Swells, 100-1
By now it's just the three of us:
Me.
Your Shadow.
Your Echo.
11 i just sighed. i just sighed, just so you know
First and foremost,
Let it be said,
I am writing this at 7:10am,
On the hard dry tarmac of a vacant forecourt.
Astronomically speaking it's the first day of Autumn,
But the sun is hanging round like summer's hungover.
They'll knock the garage down and build flats where I sit.
The traffic's so persistent it barely registers and it smells like a mix of petrol and dog shit.
Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back.
I just sighed,
The universe replied:
"Let this pass you by".
Sometimes it's just enough to know I keep him on his toes.
Is he as sympathetic as me to the untimely demise of your synthetic clothes?
I've displayed marriage proposals on the Jumbotrons of ballgames you've not been at,
I've written eulogies in guestbooks at galleries in the hope that you might pass.
Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back.
I just sighed,
The universe replied:
"Let this pass you by".
She;
Nervous and barefoot,
Chats to me at the front door.
He;
Boyfriend,
Inside's a saint, becoming a martyr.
Me;
Rolling,
Writhing on the floor,
Stared daggers pulled from my thoracic wall.
When I hold sea shells to my ears I'm pretty sure I can hear you.
He gave a gift of the Faber book of love poems,
Annotated the ones he thought applied the most.
Not gonna win you round with prose;
If anyone should know,
Then it's I should know.
Girl,
There must be the reason you let it slip,
Went to the point of sending the message.
Six months of visceral catherine wheels,
Kissing carnivores to make you seem less of a deal.
Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back.
I just sighed,
The universe replied:
"Let this pass you by".
I promise after this I will pick up the phone book and choose the name that my eyes fall upon on their first look.
Aim all of my poorly composed declarations there in the future.
I'm so sorry to have put you through a lifetime of dedications that you never desired.
...But this one sentence bludgeons me over the head...
I'm a little bit drunk and I mean just a little bit,
No lush in denial,
Only rather coquettish.
I'm fifteen years old and my parents' only son,
Like I barely survived a girls' school education.
Even prettier now that you've grown your hair long,
I'm a slip of a man since I cut mine all off.
12 A Heat Rash In The Shape Of The Show Me State Or, Letters From Me To Charlotte
She'd bruised so black they watched it fade through the full spectrum of colours.
They kept it like a pet,
A private joke;
They told no others.
And how the tissue repaired,
And how it turned to yellow,
And she found it disgusting 'cause it didn't match her clothing.
He said "that's not yellow,
It's golden".
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
They promised they'd be best of friends from now until forever,
But both were far too needy not to fall for the other.
And how the frequent public displays of sisterly affection left her feeling safe,
Left him with an erection.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Her body barely visible as bleach white as the bedsheets.
As stiff as starched,
Only perceptible as the middle was still branded with a heat rash,
In the perfect shape of the Show Me State.
Your come on lines sound disastrous;
Noise more foreboding than volcano or earthquake.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Letter from me to Charlotte;
"They appropriated everything we ever loved and dressed it up in quotations and fluff.
And I had a dream:
[though said with hand in pocket,
I mean it hand on heart]
You held a gun to his head,
Pressed your thumbs to her throat".
In these letters.
Letters from me to Charlotte
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
This will never be the same,
Things will never be the same again.
13 The Sea Is A Good Place To Think O The Future
I grabbed hold of her wrist and my hand closed from tip to tip
I said “you’ve taken the diet too far, you have got to let it slip”
But she’s not eating again, she’s not eating again, she’s not eating again, she’s not eating again.
I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate,
I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant,
She was always far too pretty for me to believe in a single word she said, believe a word she said.
At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation from allergic reaction to a general anaesthetic.
She spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions in a futile attempt to know more than the doctors.
She said one day to leave her, sand up to her shoulders,
Waiting for the tide
To drag her to the ocean, to another sea’s shore.
This thing hurts like hell,
But what did you expect?
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind,
A thousand years in perfect symmetry
Best known left wrist right finger, through all the Southern States,
On every video games machine they call her triple A.
There were racists on the radio trying to give up smoking,
The chat show host, he joked “you have to wait for the government program”.
You talk about your politics, and I wonder if you could be one of them,
But you could never kiss a Tory boy without wanting to cut off your tongue again.
A good place to look to the future is when you are sat at the sea,
With the salt up to your ankles and a view of the end of the pier,
You may look down at your model’s feet and wish that you’d just float away,
And the weather here is overcast and the sea is the same shade of grey,
So the landscape before you looks just like the edge of the world,
But to the left side and the right side, either way is a crazy golf course.
The sea is a good place to think of the future.
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind,
A thousand years in perfect symmetry
A thousand years no getting rid of me
A thousand years in perfect symmetry.
14 This Is a Flag. There Is No Wind.
CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?
An analogy that makes sense to most:
This opportunity had found me unmarked at the far post,
But I blazed it right against the cross bar of the pub that you had worked in since you moved here from Bath Spa.
We agreed we couldn't trust a guy that didn't like a single sport,
But those bow-legged suitors hadn't given me much other thought.
They said it smelt delicious but it smelt of burning flesh,
It's not meant to be malicious but this is the cross we bare.
The story of the winter I forgot how to speak:
My mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak.
How they dragged me to the hospital,
Said I had gone deaf.
But I'd heard everything they said,
It's just I had no interest.
Our friends have put the two of us on suicide watch and every second spent away we spent watching the clock.
There are photos of us holding hands outside of the frame,
I was there but wonder where our fingers were all the same.
It's like our self restraint is the size of the a fingernail.
And yet we chew it down all the same.
Sad eyes for sad goodbyes,
It's a crime,
It's a crime,
It's a crime,
It's a crime.
The story of the winter I forgot how to speak:
My mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak.
How they dragged me to the hospital,
Said I had gone deaf.
But I'd heard everything they said,
It's just I had no interest.
15 Coda A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State
Run the water 'til it scalds you,
Know that I'm listening.
Pitter patter runs the shower,
Hits the bare porcelain.
Watch the dirt run down the plughole,
Hear it echo within.
They described you nude in detail,
I knew everything:
An artist's impression of the Manhattan Skyline
And a soon to be burned scar,
In the perfect shape of the Sooner state.
I fall to my knees,
My piss soaked jeans:
The first time,
The last time,
All the times inbetween.
The first time,
The last time,
All the times I would have liked there to have been.
I can't believe I chose the mountains every time you chose the sea.
But let's talk about you for a minute,
With the vomit in your gullet,
From a half bottle of vodka that we'd stolen from the optic.
On the back seat in your car because it wasn't safe to start it,
You were "far too fucked to drive" were the words that you imparted.
And the woolen dress that clung so tight,
To the contours of your body.
And the dead grass stuck to fibers from us rolling in the layby,
Were passed to dog-haired blankets that protected the back seat covers,
And a crucifix was hung from rear-view mirror by your mother.
I'm leaving my body to science;
Not medical but physics.
Drag my corpse through the airport and lay me limp on the left wing.
Drop me at the highest point and trace a line around the dent I leave in the ground:
That'll be the initial of the one you will marry now I'm not around.
I flew for seven hours.
The sky didn't once turn black.
I wake from sleep my head and shoulders wet against the window.
A frost had formed and melted,
Soaked me right through to my collar bone.
If you were given the option of dying painlessly in peace at forty-five,
But with a lover at your side,
After a full and happy life.
Is this something that would interest you?
Would this interest you at all?
02 There are Listed Buildings
You glug and you glug,
Salt water from sandcastle bucket.
You glug and you glug and the tide turns in your stomach,
Splash your shoes.
You complain the tap-water runs solid white,
You dangle fishing line for crabs,
But they're not interested,
I'm your only bite.
I watched your face move in a compact mirror;
How the powder settles in - premature crows feet,
Caused by worry.
You say I circle you unwanted,
Like a seagull swoops and feeds from bin.
There Are Listed Buildings and woe betide your listed heart.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
Comewhat midnight,
You commandeer a fishing boat,
Decree to drift further than we could swim.
Comewhat midnight,
The neon signs,
Have been unplugged and fade,
You danced a jig down at the harbour,
Create your own flash show with security lights.
I remember being naked to my waist though not in which direction.
"And oh, I am a glutton for love, can you give me some romance?
I'm a glutton for sin".
We are but two atheists in lust,
You know,
We gotta make our own luck.
There Are Listed Buildings and woe betide your listed heart.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
I think I'd do it for love if it were not for the money.
I'll take any scraps that you can give.
03 Romance is Boring
Darling,
I'm with St Bernards and we are scouring the Alps and the Andes.
If they die then it is on my head.
They followed paw prints in the snow to my throne,
To my bed.
You're pouting in your sleep,
I'm waking still yawning,
We're proving to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Sure there are things I could do if I was half prepared to
Prove to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Start as you mean to continue;
Complacent and self involved.
You're trying not to be nervous,
If you are trying at all.
I will wait,
i will bake phallic cake,
Take your diffidence make it my club house.
But my strength's within lies,
Ventricle cauterised,
It's the way of living that I espouse.
You're pouting in your sleep,
I'm waking still yawning,
We're proving to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Sure there are things I could do if I was half prepared to
Prove to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
We are two ships that pass in the night;
You and I,
We are nothing alike.
I am a pleasure cruise,
You are gone out to trawl.
Return nets empty,
Nothing there at all.
You're pouting in your sleep,
I'm waking still yawning,
We're proving to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
Sure there are things I could do if I was half prepared to
Prove to eachother that Romance Is Boring.
04 We've Got Your Back (Documented Minor Emotional Breakdown #2)
On the dashboard assembled in Descending height order,
Half a decade of father's day gifts her mother bought for;
Never passed on.
Puffy eyes,
Nasty reaction;
Doe eyes,
You're kidding yourself.
I learned remedial Spanish from a toddler.
Passenger seat of father's taxi,
Cussing in unison.
Clutching receipts and deceased handwriting,
Filled with a sense of great disappointment;
Doe eyes,
You're kidding yourself.
And so fucking on and so fucking forth:
We've got your back,
Whatever that's worth.
If your hero told you to go huff a sharpie,
What would you do?
(I do not know).
Every girl I ever kissed I was thinking of a pro-footballer
(THOUGHT. YOU. SHOULD. KNOW).
I've learnt more from toilet walls,
Than I've learnt from these words of yours.
Your feelings are buried in scriptures and fictions,
It's all in the words but I'm here for the pictures.
I'm sweating off the cheap notes on my thighs,
They were for your benefit not mine.
And so fucking on and so fucking forth:
We've got your back, whatever that's worth.
If we didn't know the shape was for functionality, what would we do?
(I do not know).
If it wasn't for the corrupt US Pharmacy,
What would we do?
Sometimes only you'll know.
We're cementing old friends,
Dismissing old foes.
We're throwing punches,
And ducking blows.
05 Plan A
Just like when we were seventeen we said we'd move to Malta,
Claim Nationality,
And now that we are twenty three - days tethered to the running track,
Evenings chained to the dishrack.
I'm called up to the Maltese national team,
My vision is impeccable, my first touch is obscene.
A world cup qualifier finds me fifty, forty, thirty yards from goal, A late sub on in an off the striker role.
Was it wind? Did it take a bad deflection?
A decade spent nursing a fear that you might never make it?
The crowd draws breathe at once,
It swerves to the top corner,
The Sunday Tabloid press declares me the new king of Malta.
With my name on shirts, your face on the cash that every week just piles inside our bank account,
We'd rule the roost and we could start a family I think we'd make about a hundred million bucks.
I head down to the mint and tell them:
Pound every coin deep into the ground,
Burn every note in circulation
There's a new face on the currency of our nation.
I hand them a photograph of you,
The most beautiful thing they'd ever seen.
The press starts a rolling, your image on Euros,
The workforce retires to the bathroom.
With my name on shirts, your face on the cash that every week just piles inside our bank account,
We'd rule the roost and we could start a family I think we'd make about a hundred million bucks.
06 200-102
07 Straight in at 101
I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock.
Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never get me off.
You pull your dress over your face,
And I stare down towards my chest,
Chastise both our greasy hair,
Wonder whose gut is the softest.
Stand with my ear to the door listening to the landing floorboards,
Working out when will be safe to dash from mattress to your bathroom,
Where I ball my fingers into fists until my knuckles glow bright white,
Press the heels into eye sockets 'til I see the flashing lights.
Stop me when my stories change/
When they have started to repeat,
'Cause last time I was a mess of sleep of icy feet.
So baby;
All apologies.
It was going to happen,
inevitably.
I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock.
Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never touch my cock and what exactly do you mean now,
By "what can you even eat?
And how does that affect how I'll get off this evening?".
I flew down South to Mexico had a minor realization
I understood why kids draw the sun with its rays emanating.
And the beams broke the clouds,
The sky looked like a concertina I'd sat on in my pocket for weeks,
Folded up from a picture.
I've been playing straight chicken with gay girls (it's never enough),
She keeps on pulling the peace sign (and it seems like a taunt),
She licked a glaze on her lips,
They shone like battleship grey.
She never liked the wisdom I gave:
"Some people give themselves to religion,
Some people give themselves to a cause,
Some people give themselves to a lover,
I have to give my self to goals".
So baby;
All apologies.
It was going to happen,
Inevitably.
And if it helps,
I mean,
Even slightly at all,
It's best to dust yourself down and get straight back on the whorse.
I condescend a smile and wink directly at the camera.
I leave you led in both our scents as I tip-toe out the backdoor.
I skid down icy streets and view my face in the reflection of a high street lingerie store,
Though it wasn't my intention.
I phone my friends and family to gather round the television;
The talking heads count down the most heart-wrenching break ups of all time.
Imagine the great sense of waste,
The indignity,
the embarrassment,
When not a single one of that whole century was mine.
08 Who Fell Asleep In
She turned her back on the church and put all her faith in me at the back of the chapel where I taught her to screw and blaspheme.
We turned our backs to the church,
With our trousers around our knees,
While screaming the scriptures she said I was her favourite heresy.
In a note I read:
"If you should go blind and deaf I'll cleanse and I'll bathe you and I'll cook for you daily.
I will take a dry ballpoint pen and trace on your chest all of the same conversations we have now in bed".
I don't mean to be selfish;
But I think I'd sooner just be dead.
Behind the tennis court alongside the river,
Not a single live flower to see.
This is the one girl who woke up from all that and now falls asleep next to me.
But I swear now,
Every time that I kiss her, she feels her god breathe on her shoulder.
It pains me,
But I'm sure she's still yours.
She said she wanted a sea burial,
Not grass and hypodermics to her hips.
I pruned the ivy from your grandmother's tomb,
More tender and careful than the superstitious ripped you from your mothers womb.
In a note I wrote:
"I think too much about the end,
But being around it made me feel like I'm coping.
Now when I view the cemetery I don't see headstones I see rows of engraved milk teeth,
Hungry,
Waiting for me".
And though I am fearful;
I think I just crave the relief.
Behind the tennis court alongside the river,
Paper flower's still beautiful thing.
This is the one girl who woke up from all that and now falls asleep next to me.
But I swear now,
Every time that I kiss her,
She feels her god breathe on her shoulder.
It pains me,
But I'm sure she's still yours.
09 I Warned You Do Not Make An Enemy Of Me
He grows out his stubble just so that he can scratch at the sunburn that coloured my arm.
Civilians read bibles behind glass windows.
Is this what constitutes normal behaviour?
Got soul! Got vision! Got mind to leave here.
You soon made an enemy of me.
I warned you:
Don't make an enemy of me.
I'll take your heart with such little commotion,
By crippling disease or with deadly love potion.
I'll bind you and gag you and all's well that ends,
I suppose.
Got a call,
Are we not interesting?
Fair to say we are not interesting at all.
Broke down laughing and screaming for more,
But if this changed your life,
Did you have one before?
And what have we got that is of any use?
Allegiance to team that we cannot pronounce.
Image seared,
Dermis spread across tiled floor.
A taste on the tongue that you and me both abhor.
Got soul! Got vision! Got mind to leave here.
You soon made an enemy of me.
I warned you:
Don't make an enemy of me.
I'll take your heart with such little commotion,
By crippling disease or with deadly love potion.
I'll bind you and gag you and all's well that ends,
I suppose.
Got a call,
Are we not interesting?
Fair to say we are not interesting at all.
Broke down laughing and screaming for more,
But if this changed your life,
Did you have one before?
10 Heart Swells, 100-1
By now it's just the three of us:
Me.
Your Shadow.
Your Echo.
11 i just sighed. i just sighed, just so you know
First and foremost,
Let it be said,
I am writing this at 7:10am,
On the hard dry tarmac of a vacant forecourt.
Astronomically speaking it's the first day of Autumn,
But the sun is hanging round like summer's hungover.
They'll knock the garage down and build flats where I sit.
The traffic's so persistent it barely registers and it smells like a mix of petrol and dog shit.
Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back.
I just sighed,
The universe replied:
"Let this pass you by".
Sometimes it's just enough to know I keep him on his toes.
Is he as sympathetic as me to the untimely demise of your synthetic clothes?
I've displayed marriage proposals on the Jumbotrons of ballgames you've not been at,
I've written eulogies in guestbooks at galleries in the hope that you might pass.
Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back.
I just sighed,
The universe replied:
"Let this pass you by".
She;
Nervous and barefoot,
Chats to me at the front door.
He;
Boyfriend,
Inside's a saint, becoming a martyr.
Me;
Rolling,
Writhing on the floor,
Stared daggers pulled from my thoracic wall.
When I hold sea shells to my ears I'm pretty sure I can hear you.
He gave a gift of the Faber book of love poems,
Annotated the ones he thought applied the most.
Not gonna win you round with prose;
If anyone should know,
Then it's I should know.
Girl,
There must be the reason you let it slip,
Went to the point of sending the message.
Six months of visceral catherine wheels,
Kissing carnivores to make you seem less of a deal.
Just let me be the one that keeps track of the moles on your back.
I just sighed,
The universe replied:
"Let this pass you by".
I promise after this I will pick up the phone book and choose the name that my eyes fall upon on their first look.
Aim all of my poorly composed declarations there in the future.
I'm so sorry to have put you through a lifetime of dedications that you never desired.
...But this one sentence bludgeons me over the head...
I'm a little bit drunk and I mean just a little bit,
No lush in denial,
Only rather coquettish.
I'm fifteen years old and my parents' only son,
Like I barely survived a girls' school education.
Even prettier now that you've grown your hair long,
I'm a slip of a man since I cut mine all off.
12 A Heat Rash In The Shape Of The Show Me State Or, Letters From Me To Charlotte
She'd bruised so black they watched it fade through the full spectrum of colours.
They kept it like a pet,
A private joke;
They told no others.
And how the tissue repaired,
And how it turned to yellow,
And she found it disgusting 'cause it didn't match her clothing.
He said "that's not yellow,
It's golden".
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
They promised they'd be best of friends from now until forever,
But both were far too needy not to fall for the other.
And how the frequent public displays of sisterly affection left her feeling safe,
Left him with an erection.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Her body barely visible as bleach white as the bedsheets.
As stiff as starched,
Only perceptible as the middle was still branded with a heat rash,
In the perfect shape of the Show Me State.
Your come on lines sound disastrous;
Noise more foreboding than volcano or earthquake.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Letter from me to Charlotte;
"They appropriated everything we ever loved and dressed it up in quotations and fluff.
And I had a dream:
[though said with hand in pocket,
I mean it hand on heart]
You held a gun to his head,
Pressed your thumbs to her throat".
In these letters.
Letters from me to Charlotte
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
Walk out onto your front lawn and face into the rain,
Shout into the wind this'll never be the same.
This will never be the same,
Things will never be the same again.
13 The Sea Is A Good Place To Think O The Future
I grabbed hold of her wrist and my hand closed from tip to tip
I said “you’ve taken the diet too far, you have got to let it slip”
But she’s not eating again, she’s not eating again, she’s not eating again, she’s not eating again.
I ask her to speak French and then I need her to translate,
I get the feeling she makes the meaning more significant,
She was always far too pretty for me to believe in a single word she said, believe a word she said.
At fourteen her mother died in a routine operation from allergic reaction to a general anaesthetic.
She spent the rest of her teens experimenting with prescriptions in a futile attempt to know more than the doctors.
She said one day to leave her, sand up to her shoulders,
Waiting for the tide
To drag her to the ocean, to another sea’s shore.
This thing hurts like hell,
But what did you expect?
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind,
A thousand years in perfect symmetry
Best known left wrist right finger, through all the Southern States,
On every video games machine they call her triple A.
There were racists on the radio trying to give up smoking,
The chat show host, he joked “you have to wait for the government program”.
You talk about your politics, and I wonder if you could be one of them,
But you could never kiss a Tory boy without wanting to cut off your tongue again.
A good place to look to the future is when you are sat at the sea,
With the salt up to your ankles and a view of the end of the pier,
You may look down at your model’s feet and wish that you’d just float away,
And the weather here is overcast and the sea is the same shade of grey,
So the landscape before you looks just like the edge of the world,
But to the left side and the right side, either way is a crazy golf course.
The sea is a good place to think of the future.
And all you can hear is the sound of your own heart
And all you can feel is your lungs flood and the blood course
But oh I can see five hundred years dead set ahead of me
Five hundred behind,
A thousand years in perfect symmetry
A thousand years no getting rid of me
A thousand years in perfect symmetry.
14 This Is a Flag. There Is No Wind.
CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?
An analogy that makes sense to most:
This opportunity had found me unmarked at the far post,
But I blazed it right against the cross bar of the pub that you had worked in since you moved here from Bath Spa.
We agreed we couldn't trust a guy that didn't like a single sport,
But those bow-legged suitors hadn't given me much other thought.
They said it smelt delicious but it smelt of burning flesh,
It's not meant to be malicious but this is the cross we bare.
The story of the winter I forgot how to speak:
My mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak.
How they dragged me to the hospital,
Said I had gone deaf.
But I'd heard everything they said,
It's just I had no interest.
Our friends have put the two of us on suicide watch and every second spent away we spent watching the clock.
There are photos of us holding hands outside of the frame,
I was there but wonder where our fingers were all the same.
It's like our self restraint is the size of the a fingernail.
And yet we chew it down all the same.
Sad eyes for sad goodbyes,
It's a crime,
It's a crime,
It's a crime,
It's a crime.
The story of the winter I forgot how to speak:
My mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak.
How they dragged me to the hospital,
Said I had gone deaf.
But I'd heard everything they said,
It's just I had no interest.
15 Coda A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State
Run the water 'til it scalds you,
Know that I'm listening.
Pitter patter runs the shower,
Hits the bare porcelain.
Watch the dirt run down the plughole,
Hear it echo within.
They described you nude in detail,
I knew everything:
An artist's impression of the Manhattan Skyline
And a soon to be burned scar,
In the perfect shape of the Sooner state.
I fall to my knees,
My piss soaked jeans:
The first time,
The last time,
All the times inbetween.
The first time,
The last time,
All the times I would have liked there to have been.
I can't believe I chose the mountains every time you chose the sea.
