Still in love with you

The dogs have driven us from the fields
The shakes spears waggle
Their gaggle of geese
The dome is revelaed
By a cloud of grace
And I'm still in love with you

The tunes are coloured by a cornered brow
Which furrows in the fields
As a new born cow
And telephones ring but don't pull ploughs
And i'm still in love with you

The shoes are worn by police dogs shorn
Of all their vows and the holy thorn
Which draw and bow along stately lawns
And I'm still in love with you

Don't give me excuses, I can't bear lies
My shoulders are broad but no Yorkshire ties
I would loosen my tongue with a barrel of Whys
And I'm still in love with you

The fires keep burning down in New Orleans
The shops are looted, the bars are clean
And I drank you down but you were mean
And I'm still in love with you

The demon in cider

Here's one
The men walk into the bar
They drink all day
Then one vomits

The south African is a sports fan
He says listen I can drink you under the table
He drinks
The other copies,
Pint for pint of fosters
Or is it cider
Then after ten pints the other vomits

He walks out sick of Sport
And bullish South African rhetoric
Walks home
But he falls off the road
Sideways
Like Benny Hill
Into the ditch

He comes to in a stinging nettle patch
Disorientated
He falls over a barbed wired fence
Into more nettles
Loses his coat
Remembers what he saw in a survival film
About being lost in the jungle (well, it is dark afterall)
So Walks in a semi circle through
A large hemisphere of
You guessed it...
More nettles
To reach the same barbed wire fence
10 metres down the road
He falls over it again (in reverse)
And climbs back onto the road coatless
In the dark
He walks back home
Only the home he thinks
He is walking to turns out to be the
Same pub he vomitted in
about an hour ago

The South African has gone home
He meets a bee keeper
Sitting at a picnic table
Who offers him
Another cider
They drink.
Then a lift home
He goes to another pub
Has one more drink
Then arrives home
To find he can't find his door key
(because he hid it in the wheel arch of his car)
Luckily a side door is open
Which leads up
Some stairs and to the airing cupboard where there
Is a boiler
Which he hugs
To keep warm and falls asleep
Then wakes up near dawn
When he remembers where
he
Hid
his
Keys
or his kidneys

Everyday beauty

Its an equanimity of
beauty and the beast
Its the dividing line
Of Snow white
And her release
Its the pin prick
The seamtresses' needle
Its the sweet surrender
Of the poisoned apple
Its everyday beauty that walks the same line
Everyday beauty has me dying all the time

Its the porridge cooling in the bears' bowls
Its the beanstalk falling out of control
Its a giant falling onto the land
And everybody going about their business
Like before
Like they understand
Its the estate agent who
Sold the witch her cottage
In the forgotten wood
Where feminine beauty was besotted
With the everyday sweetness
Of kindness misunderstood
Like the disguise of the wolf
In red riding hood
Its the everyday that gets swept under the carpet
Where the woodworm crawl
And cinderella finds it
Its her own image
In a crystal chandellier
That gets reflected around the ball room
When the prince appears
Its the everyday that some how fits
In every single soul through the fog
That slips

And the moon was riding high

Would you please God
I am shaking
Would you
Please turn that racket off
Its noises, dear God
The moon is breaking
Like an egg
The metallic clouds
Are shimmering
Like Alsatians in the wind
And I am bristling
With the thoughts of you
Rattling underneath my skin
And the nerves of this place
To be full of grace
Yet it is so hard to sin
It is you in the mirror
The distant glimmer
Of History stepping in

Oh Would you,
Could you not forgive
Could you not join in
The dance with me
This time
For one last spin
Oh could you, would you
Could you, would you
Not join in the dance with
me

What do you hold me to?

What is it you hold me to?
The bars on your windows
The colours of your room
What is that you hold me to?
But the shadows of the moon


You leave me here in Winter
In the summer of control
You give me burgundy
And tell me it will fill a hole
But when I look around
There's no one there for to patrol
Oh what is it that you hold me to?
But the shifting quick sands of my soul

I come and go, like an alien wind
Like a hermit on the tide
Like a jellyfish rolling in the wobbling ocean
There are no feelings worth the squabbling over
So what do you hold me to?

Ask me no questions

Ask me no questions
And I'll tell you no lies
About the parts of inflexion
That I see in your eyes
Like shards of broken glass
That shatter the sunrise
When you ask it no questions
It tells you no lies

Oh truth is always at first light
The falsehoods are enemies, but friends of the night
And you ask to remember me
When you close your eyes
Well ask me no questions
And I'll tell you no lies

The devil's in the detail
The fish are in the sea
The control towers are watching us
In circumspect sanity
And there are no curtain poles
Can pull the wool over our eyes
So ask me no questions and I'll tell you
No lies

You play to lose

Until you live my life
And I live yours
You'll never know what it is like
To walk in my shoes
So don't you try to tell me
When to jump or how to choose
Until you live my life
Well you play to lose

Don't you try to fit your world around my conception
Your ideas hold no water they
Are figments of imagination
And if they work for you
Horay! Then you should employ them
As you choose
Because until you live my life
Well you play to lose

I have had the steam rolled out
I had the dirt kicked in my face
I have had to scream and shout
Just to keep my place
And unless you have suffered
Or felt my hurt or abuse
Until you live my life
Well you play to lose

The fanfares and the agents
Of the night persue
The candlemas of a caress
But cinderella shoes
Have been locked in a museum
Full of art's misuse
So until you live my life
Well you play to lose