Crawl into my shell of jagged faith, it’s a place of the perfect memories and constant growth. Come join me won’t you, before I slip away and this deep burden crashing about my very heart sinks ships of all the trying and all the caring.
I’m holding on to the smallest of things that fill my battles with joy. Cause if I fall into the whipsnap wake up of reality, listen close to how forced my voice feels reaching for change, movement, direction, in all the stormy truth it’s a long slog to work this one out.. why I may just walk away from all the world which I held in my two hands. Broken and scarred, starting over starting over. (what matters to me is as everchanging as the very seasons I breathe upon my skin)
(lay down now, lay down with your songs and stories, dream snug in the blissful knowing you will always dream, as I fight full to come back and join you)
watch me breathe deep
in blind faith
footsteps trace
through once bloody battlefields
forcing pride
in you
I hear guns cry out with siren raids
all the movies spin inside my head
though this heart can’t understand
What were you fighting for?
the graveyard pulls me deep
with a fragrance of lost loves
wakes bitter truth
to endless daydreams of glory
muddled memories
rows of declarations
blurring from focus
helmets and hard boots
rifles and rations
mechanical routine
I feel tiny fists of dedication
clawing at my instinct
that this was all wrong
were you different
one in millions, disguised in beautiful promise
to come home to us, come home to us
with stories bittersweet
values strengthened
in what you always had
for you I climbed in playground trenches
talked ideas with childlike colour
of bringing daddy down from the clouds
where back into his arms I would safely go
picking at grass, sitting alone from playmates
watching planes cut smoke patterns in the sky
my voice danced through trees
I was lost in singsongs of war
just like your men
I whisper across your gentle letters
written in haste
make me a part of your death
so I can understand this life
This video really created tons of strong images and ideas, and the song is truly be-autiful so the below visual/writing are (if loosely) linked. I’m not happy with some parts and may edit as I seriously want to do this justice.
Home Roots.
Beside manner, all huffs and wheezes. Old man, deep in your movement to watch sun blend with bird’s shadows and white clouds shift steadily from the closed window, rests the heave of regret and chances ran. Your only child grew trapped under a weighty blanket of drunken scrapes and mental bruises, fighting talk of what makes your manly stature and cold eyes mean business in this business. Drowned now with weary dependence you crawl into your existence with cigarette slumber. A day-to-day beck and call on the ones you scarred root deep.
I’m still here for you, daddy. I will close the curtains so all beauty of that world outside will no longer haunt you, I will hate your brandy bottles and blank wrinkled stares as I cover you up at night. The numb feel of your eyes on mine, inject me in that fear as I mask stormy resentment by keeping you alive.
I am older now. I see your photoframed picture of the perfect smiles we never gave, I see your navy jacket hung all lonely looking by the door, war movie silence stripped pride tattered values Just where do you go in your head when the night comes round?
It was a glacial winter’s storm that night. Dangerously a father, a husband, wrenched the tapestry of family in blizzardous fury, unkempt words and movements ripped through the floorboards and swirled against passing snowflakes like bullets to our memory. Do you keep the image of your wife cowering in a corner with flailed fists and cracked promises she could change and so many angry threats and my favourite toys flung from my grasp? Time to play with my own two hands you said, said I’d toughen up with your bastard tales of gotta’s and need ta’s. Ain’t no time for discovery child, it’s a wicked world so stay away with me. Stay away.
I will still love you, daddy. God may sing praises on my compassion but I will simply bow my head and grit grit the days with scents of impossible ties. Because I am your golden haired princess gone grey and you once told me I would make something of our family name in words painted across my eyes. Promise kills (worlds and wishes, dreams and pride).. promise kills.
She cowers aside the bed by night, an angel with her demon. Awaiting the grunted apology that never comes.
Tuck in the sheets of our little memories and wrap each experience up good, candlelit and stars break through safe (with me, be with me) windows, shine shine that simple right across my daring stupidity, let me sit still with you and feel mountains of our future move.
In your faith lies my ‘farewell kid!’, there are jagged pieces of growing old together waiting to slide into place like your voice against mine. Ease into, ease into. Never let the lost choices, cutthroat mistakes, wash that true colour out of my bursting intentions. Barren roads of trapped history, the people slip and slide away from my grasp and for every lost face that pours woes into my hands, I let their words touch like sand that escapes in an instant whilst your very image burns against my skin, with such suffocating beauty.
We’ll build a city in the fabric of our heart, littered with our own ways to make it through, oh I could write it in cliché’ and sing like I mean it but the words spill like mere amber traffic lights, pausing that risk, as shaking with focus I move on and close in on our thousand dreams.
Grab that drink of choice, slump against my skin and slip into something a little more all-night-long.
Tussle our dreams in a bedroom and link your scars through my own cause there’s no tomorrow, tonight. I’m gonna let you in on a secret, your pain is my candy to a baby. Take my eyes as that symbol of safe, unravel the dress from your figure and slide into place beside me on the floor, for desire is in desire, after all.
I’ll kick cheap trainers over gravel path, just 7 years young and the world’s already making me wanna be a part of something more.
Swings chained up, stolen screams of joy! challenged by lonely roundabouts, graffiti spin, faded pain. Rusty slides ain’t no fun. Raise my tiny hands like adventure arrows, to rainy sky, mother holds me tighter to let innocence fall in playmobile paradise, colours and stories, dancing in the street together. Scruffy shorts, spotty socks and blonde strands of purity. Heaven in childish eyes..
Sneakers red, scraggy shorts, skin flushed white. Raw signposts fed of where he’s gonna (gotta) go. Pristine schooling perfect University pattering family ties, with a touch of excitement, along the way. (just a little, yeah, just enough to give him the indescribable smell of a seashore at night or the sweat of hidden emotion in morning coffee table convo)
He feels but a tiny spec in a sea of satchels and school playground adventure. Though he spots the lightning strike of innocence in marble games and the girls crafts, he’ll find an empty classroom and turn away pensive, feeling something more in all that unspoken. Teacher eyes him careful behind her rigid glasses and textbook bindings, masked with the reality, yet she sees his potential.
Parents sit in their evenings sprawled on sofa’s catching news headlines, eyes averting to their little solider creating plastic toy tracks and dialogues of his hopes on carpet safety. They’ll tussle his hair for the problems he has yet to dig up, he’ll laugh at that friendly sky watching through this canyon of love.
He is surrounded in sweetie rewards and another morning breakfast with nothing to fear.
‘Tucked up with your bear, rushing to the letterbox for post never yours, birthday hats and candle rush, paddling pools and something magic in knowing you are ours. Son all that we ask, make sure, we just know where you are….’
Sweet Jesus there’s a run for the night, soak in slick and gritty girls avert your eyes for fear of a shared thrill. Streets all sun barren dust in day come up and breathe through neon lights, smash apart what’s expected as your daily prayer lingers in the distance of that fag ash you coolly shake off, gotta keep it dangerously sexy after all.
They’ll not know I’m the sultry queen if I move under this moonlight show.
Jazz colour is kicking the club to a frenzy and the d.j is mixing your dreams tonight so rest behind shadowed veils if you dare. This party is eye contact and possibility, this place is a safehouse of desire, come a little closer and tread the dancefloor in bare feet won’t you princess cause your wear is far too thought-out for these easy hours.
I’m out for a fix of rebellion so watch me sparkle with free as Arabian city streets bleed with my true colours.
Tear at your religious garments and blink those eyes of your history, thrown to the wolves, oh the way you mingle with the lads of shades and v.i.p gloss.
Pretty lady, oh pretty lady, these parts are not so nice. Yet you always loved most those places in which you did not belong.
There goes that child grazing his scraggy knees on chalked footpaths, beaming through grotty wrecks of fence splinter, graffiti hurt.
Tunnel’s no place for the youth, as midnight cuts into his bedroom storytimes and father’s chuckle. A hoodie braves a nod his way; leaning on a wall, fag ash spiraling in the cold wind. This night giggles in pale white skin and innocence divine as those little feet dance over cracks and the shadows split with his singsong carefree.
A couple of slimy dealers hands clenched in the fume of packets and places to be, fumble over small talk and notes, check a glance here and there, desolate eyes meet alive love in a brave little soldier moving their way..
Holding an angel’s movement
like the grace of a dove against supple ocean waves
feel her smoke fill empty skies of streaming blue
with a towering ease
You’ll find no train tracks here
nor carved direction, metallic pulse
departure times and platform strain
washed away by a peace in her steady shuffle
She comes when she comes
does the sky train
Just name your fantasy city
let go the dreary map you hold tight
find love in impossible
‘can she really take us to the places they say heaven was built on?’
whispers a young child
brazen with dragons and canyons
eyes glazed in possibility
Up here the day and night merge
endless journeys of sleepy snugness
catching flickers of a sun’s rays first forming so high up, so close
starlight rapture and purple swirl
flying on a freight train’s weightless glide
You wait by the station, even without a ticket
just to feel her coming in the misty black of night
stillness of silent sunrises
always the same peaceful greeting
Arriving from the northbound mountain peaks
rising, twisting, turning
as though wings sweep her ascent
She slows herself as your bare feet
tickle safety in fluffy clouds
breathing gentle fumes of rich magic
the engine caress of a silent mouse
gazing at her dreamy greeting
silver carriages
effortless flight
