I wondered what the trees feel
All strung up with lights
And why no-one ever asks them
If they want to be so tied
It's my festive season
And if I want to I'll cry
And I thought about the sickness
That only wants to live
Trucks designed for frozen peas
To stack the bodies in
My nana told my daddy
There'd be days like this
Picking the stitches
Of a year that was
To wash and dry and thread the eye
Of just because
Some kinda love sets us going
And we gotta know
Where it goes
I wondered about my uncle
If I called him enough
Well, I didn't call him ever
But I thought about it once
Just when I'd needed kinder hands
He'd taught me how to fight
The tinsel round the mountains
Strung red, as red as fire
I wondered how the trees perceive
Our religions and our science
It's my apocalyptic scene
If I want to, I'll deny it
Picking the stitches
Of a year that was
To wash and dry and thread the eye
Of just because
Some kinda love sets us going
And we gotta know
Where it goes
The sunshiny awning birds
Chiming something new
You fix me a little silence
And I share some with you
Our bodies are the hourglass
Toppled in the night
We can't fall any further
The sands between your toes say
We've seen all this before
Keep an ear to the ocean
He's just a shell and nothing more
We're the curving of the hourglass
Resting on its side
We can't fall any further
The echo of a siren
This rowdy city's never far
You hum an a Cappella
Sunken treasure in my ear
Our bodies are the hourglass
Toppled in the night
We can't fall any further
Should this silent sickness lift
And touch return to us
I wonder shall I fear that rush of feeling?
Walking in the cemetery today,
I startled two lovers
Obscured though they were
By an improvised tent,
Coloured scarves, pinned
And draped between headstones
On the plushest patch of grass,
Bare-faced, mostly naked, embraced
Like two genera of graveflower
Escaping their stony bounds
To mingle and tingle and thread
When our six eyes in that moment met
I was a ghost,
A road killed creature
Stunned in the headlights of sex
We all reached for our masks
As if by this new instinct
A-tishoo A-tishoo we all fall down
You learnt it in school
You're remembering now, with a laugh
The sting from the cane of the nuns
If you fell out of time
Out of the round
This story this story's your anchor today
Over and over
I hear it the same as the last
The half hour barely shifts the reflections
Of light on the glass
Between us, and you say:
Take me home
I don't want to be here
Anymore
The clock on the wall says it's
No time at all
Since they put me in
A-tishoo A-tishoo we all fall down
You remember your Rosie
How she nearly drowned by the school
Old Sister Mary threw off her habit
And dived in
Oh the whipping and the grounding
You got for it all
I promise I promise, I'll ask them again
When we can go walking
And I'll book in time for your hair
You saw me for your birthday, yes,
It has already been
I'm sorry for the time and I'm sorry no hugs
And you say
Take me home
I don't want to be here
Anymore
The clock on the wall says it's
No time at all
Since I was just a girl
For human beings
I think we were the best we'll ever be
That night
They say things like the stars aligned
But how can it be stars?
A hush of cloud barely above us
We made our own light
We shimmers epidermal
We smoke that tends the fire
Hold me, I am water, we had cried.
A human being,
You drowned my little lonely next to me
That night
I watched them sink, tied to my grief
A tumbling shiny shard
Love will fill the sea with holes
We have to shed our selves
We shimmers so ephemeral
We smoke that keeps the fire
Hold me, I am water, we must cry.
For human beings
I think we were the best we'll ever be
That night
They say things like we bear the scars
But how can they be scars?
The knotted tree was tendril once
Just making for the light
We shimmers circumstantial
We smoke that spread the fire
Hold me, I am water, we all cry.
Don't ever say you didn't mean those things
I prefer the arrow to the poisoned drink
I don't sleep so well with you inside my dreams
But I can't sleep at all when they're without
I don't know when I will see you
Maybe I'll never ever see you
These years just want to eat us alive
But please you know what to do
Survive, survive, just survive.
I see the numbers laid grim in the news
And they can't be you, no they can't be you
I know that archer, who draws the nock in sleep
To tell how it will be, but we've yet to meet
I don't know when I will see you
Maybe I'll never ever see you
These years seem intent on us to die
But please you know what to do
Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive.
I don't really want to hear you changed your mind
They'd never let you on the train, the desperate state, their angry lines
I prefer to think somewhere your quiver blooms
And you have gone, gone straight and true.
I don't know when I will see you
Maybe I'll never ever see you
These years seem intent on our demise
But please you know what to do
Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive.
A Gathering of Cats in a Lane
How We Go
B Side of the Suns
Two Suns Once
Static of Crows
The Lodger
Favourite Dinosaur
Silence in the Library
The Orbit of Your Breathing
I Don't Remember the Future
Specks on a Map
Oddities
The Gravestone Carvers
Imaginary Lines
Falling Asleep with the Moon Still On
Lovers' River
Prayers in Glass Houses
The Sea Will Take it From Here
Land
What Kind of Yes?
Long Tall Shadow
Once Was Water
The Sky that Came Before
Party Songs
You Are Here