I try, I just don't understand,
I talk, you just don't understand
The Book
The Liquidator
5:26 minutes (6.25 MB)
I read the news in a paper:
no flowers, please, donations to charity
like the N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G. -
yeh, send the money
to Guy and Hugh and David and me.
It's a joke,
there is no hope left,
oh, whoever might disagree.
Tell me juicy rumours,
dish me the dirt,
go on and rip the back right off my shirt.
Tell me how I hate Hugh Banton,
tell us that the bank account is zero
and that anyway there's non-one left to play to...
oh, well, there you go.
Are we ever going to get this act together on time?
Jon Kirkman -PH Interview
Nightman
6:17 minutes (5.76 MB)
At the dead of night, I woke
with the sense that my dreams were escaping,
all uncannily unspoken
like words at the tip of a foreign tongue....
As for language, I have none
to express quite what strangeness overwhelms me:
something's changed and something tells me
to be still in the roar of the distant stars.
The night's full of fire, ice and water;
by day I'll have clay in my hands.
The book is open at a well-thumbed mark
the odds are stacked that I'm facing.
Eyes grown accustomed to light and dark
Over the Hill
Let's recount our history,
our tale of boom and bust.
We could talk a good fight on our day
but when we got a hand to play we bit the dust.
Now in our threadbare suits we do our duty,
still sold on the pursuit of a common cause.
Now let us call to memory such witness as we dare.
We built our bridges, burned them down as well,
maybe all we have to tell is off the square.
We tried our instant remedies - they didn't clear the air.
Who could foresee how it was bound to end,
in a break or in a bend?
We intended well enough....
Oh, but the clock was always counting,
The Liquidator
I read the news in a paper:
no flowers, please, donations to charity
like the N.S.P.C.V.d.G.G. -
yeh, send the money
to Guy and Hugh and David and me.
It's a joke,
there is no hope left,
oh, whoever might disagree.
Tell me juicy rumours,
dish me the dirt,
go on and rip the back right off my shirt.
Tell me how I hate Hugh Banton,
tell us that the bank account is zero
This Book
Away from the past, this chance is the last,
we are changing completely,
we are moving the feast, we are motion.
I've seen you become the bride of the sun,
you surrender so sweetly,
sacrificing yourself to devotion.
This book is ended and I put it down,
this book is ended and I put it down,
I'm saved, I'm saving for the future.
This book is ended and I put it down,
find I'm befriended in a foreign town,
I'm saved, I'm sailing for the future.
But only yesterday night
I stood in the pouring rain, shouting at the thunder:
Nightman
At the dead of night, I woke
with the sense that my dreams were escaping,
all uncannily unspoken
like words at the tip of a foreign tongue....
As for language, I have none
to express quite what strangeness overwhelms me:
something's changed and something tells me
to be still in the roar of the distant stars.
The night's full of fire, ice and water;
by day I'll have clay in my hands.
The book is open at a well-thumbed mark
the odds are stacked that I'm facing.
Eyes grown accustomed to light and dark
Falling Open
I see
what isn't there and what might be:
all the pages falling open.
Out of my grasp
the future floods my fingers:
the blood that binds the bone
for us a given, unforgiving known.
(All I've known unknowing)
Although I'm stumbling onward on the words
The script is always clasped
within my hand, encrypted. (Now I see)
A loosening grip,
a palm asweat from clenching...
the binding's ripped, leaves fluttering to the floor.
The book slips through my fingers,
all the pages falling open.
Your Tall Ship
Far, so far away...
surely you remember
log book pages frayed
that fanned the flames of long ago,
guttered in the grate,
shadows in the embers....
look away, look for home.
Voices on the air,
running with the current;
wind and tide set fair,
ship to shore the message goes,
all in love is fair -
across the raging torrent,
sail away, sail for home;
look away, look for home.
Land-locked lovers, landlub friends, in procession:
all rites of passage have an end.
Look away, sail away,
sail your tall ship home.
We are ocean-borne,
In the End
I promise you, I won't leave a clue:
no tell-tale remark, no print from my shoe.
Still, a steady trail to the water's edge...
I will keep my pledge to the end:
I intend to go free.
No more rushing around, no more travelling chess;
I guess I'd better sit down, you know I do need the rest....
Yes, it's time to resign with equanimity and placidity
from the game.
I can't explain;
I can't relate....
Have I done it all too late?
Now is the time for the commission to report;
till lately, I thought I'd been planted.
Trying hard to make it all come real,
