Skin shakes, clouds break
Day snakes into view
Throw my head out as a litmus
The tears of a witness wet my face
Find me, unwind me, bind me into you
Your perfume permeates me deeply
We fit together neatly
In this tangle we've made
What if every day was the first day, every word was the first word
Every touch was the real and only sense?
What if every sigh was the right one, every moon was a full one
And every sky was just as far away as the sky that came before?
Before I learned to walk, before I learned to kneel
Before I learned to speak, before I learned to see
That you were just the same
Just the same as me
Night falls, four walls, choose me as their witness
Your perfume tails me into dreaming
I float upon the ceiling
Waiting for the fading of the moon
What if every day was the first day, every word was the first word
Every touch was the real and only sense?
What if every sigh was the right one, every moon was a full one
And every sky was just as far away as the sky that came before?
Before I learned to run, before I learned to bleed
Before I learned to kiss, before I learned to see
That you were just the same
Just the same as me
Skin flakes and earthquakes
Heartbreaks and bonebreaks and mistakes
Found me, bound me, wound me
Around their thumbs
What if every day was the first day, every word was the first word,
Every touch was the real and only sense?
What if every sigh was the right one, every moon was a full one
And every sky was just as far away as the sky that came before?
I have seen the photographs
The cauliflower scans
And tried to understand
The names of the proteins and the acids
And the color-coded calendar of dosages
And the red-pen notes of episodes
In muzak-quiet consulting rooms
Science has a story of the mind
I like his desk-clock at right angles
With the smooth imitation timber framed portrait
Of his daughter and his wife
And their smiling Labrador
And the way his driveway made a sound
Beneath our tyres like cracking rice bubbles
With a rolling pin through a paper bag
I have seen the cauliflower scans
And those mysterious holes
Like deep deep pools in the forest
Where no-one really knows how deep
And kids pushed in stolen shopping trolleys
And their brothers' bicycles tied to trees
And I still don't understand
On Tuesday I was Uncle Dave
With flowers for your wedding day and
Why did I not bring Kate?
Don't believe those things they say -
People can be so cruel -
I know that she's okay
I have seen the photographs of Uncle Dave on time
A bearded man stood in wait before the clinker brick
And blurred children running through the frame
And this is all we know of Uncle Dave
In labyrinthine corridors
Science has a story of the mind
And sat here in this safety room
With a tray of things you removed
From your pockets and your wrists
Here's a scuffed and faded face of a queen
A hairpin and a necklace
Sprawled around in the shape of an island I know
I've seen in an atlas but I didn't note its name
And in thirty years the sea
Will have reclaimed
And the sign upon the glass
Says "Please Wait"
I had a dream of our city
All taken back by the weeds
Vines were pushing past the turnstiles
And crowds of dandelion bursting through
The parliament stairs
The fish were feeding on each other
Down in the City Circle line
A sobriety of seagulls had each night club
And every mall was colonised
By a murder of crows
We are buried
Misfits arm in arm
By the swollen river and the sludge
And in one thousand years
From this time
The shovels come to find us
And think we were
King and Queen of this town
I heard the silence in the statues
Coated all in moss like a disease
Unsexed, unnamed and overcome now
Their bodies bound in blooms
Just deformations in the hills
And I have heard that the mountains
Have such long long memories
That they can remember the oceans
And the touch of fins against their trees
We are buried
Misfits arm in arm
By the swollen river and the sludge
And in one thousand years
From this time
The shovels come to find us
And think we were
King and Queen of this town
I have a memory of the sunshine
Crouched down in the sky to push the trees
Like a trawler's net through our window
To pin me to this bed with you
Clinging to the sound
Of our breathing
We are buried
Misfits arm in arm
By the swollen river and the sludge
And in one thousand years
From this time
The shovels come to find us
And think we were
King and Queen of this town
Sort me like a letter
Penned in such a rush
Of passion and abandon
And marked return to sender
And in limbo
She was not inclined
To wash away the dirt
She liked its weight upon her skin
Her own piece of the earth
She said I don't do sex
And I don't do conversation
When you come to see me
Leave your body at the door
A human's such a brittle thing
I don't know what I did
In a past life to be one
Well she wants to be the only song
You've ever ever sung
All those words like bees
On your tongue
Dangerous, unsung
And our love is like a collar
Let us slip it from the neck
Of this creature and then banish it
And see what happens next
She said I don't do sex
And I don't do conversation
When you come to see me
Leave your body at the door
A human's such a brittle thing
I don't know what I did
In a past life to be one
And they say that love is falling
But I never fell in love
I was stone cold still
And it just tangled round me
And everybody told me it was weeds
But I guess that was enough
They say that love is falling
But I never fell in love
I was stone cold still
And it just tangled round me
And everybody told me it was weeds
So sort me like a letter
Penned in such a rush
Of passion and abandon
And mark return to sender
And in limbo
I followed you like a scuffed and bent piano
A little more de-tuned with every move
And I never really did thank you
For I am so hard to love
The piano found the songs
That felt good in its timbers
A devotion worn like toe-prints
In a handful of keys
And my fingers never really did fit them
For I am so slow to learn
And if you must forget me
Can you do it slowly
So that I may linger
In that longest fade?
The piano followed me
Like a symphony of sparrows
The frenzied etudes plastering all the walls
With their plumes
And I never really could ground them
For the heart is such a fine thing to lose
Could you ever follow me
Under the cups half-full and news
Papers never pealed beyond
Their pages ones?
I never really could ask you
For I am so hard to love
And if you must forget me
Can you do it slowly
So that I may linger
In that longest fade?
And if you must forget me
Please can you do it slowly
So that I may linger
In that longest fade?
Though the floor plans have changed
I still feel you emerging
From the crowded laughter rooms
Into the soft piano music
Am I equal strange to you
With an added century of devices
Or just an outline sketch of a nude
Barely warm against the canvas?
If I could paint my breaths unread
I'd string them round like paper dolls
And hold a sea shell to my eyes
To witness the drowning
Who are these wafer figurines
Solid as a weave and yet so brittle
Joined so hand in hand
You can't tell where it began
Anyone who's in the line
Is in the middle
No, our floor plans are not the same
But I still can feel you breathing
And are the rooms you nightly tread
Those that were, or the ones
I'm yet to be in?
If I could paint my breaths unread
I'd string them round like paper dolls
And hold a sea shell to my eyes
To witness the drowning
How We Go
B Side of the Suns
Two Suns Once
Static of Crows
The Lodger
Favourite Dinosaur
Silence in the Library
Iso Haircut
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
Party Songs
You Are Here