Shantell

Ahh...

Winter wind...
Blows the trees.
Creatures trapped have to fall.
Hear their howls, claw the sky...
Whispers follow Shantell.

Shantell...
Shantell...
Shantell...

Shantell sleeps, tables creak,
Mirrors start to speak.
Branches scratch, tap the panes...
Whispers follow Shantell.

Shantell...
Shantell...
Shantell...

Talk Without Words

We look up, silently,
Without quiet music.
My face four days old, 
Your look newborn.

There's fear in your frown, like mine
No distance away.
Noticing your hand
Half round my head
And on my face...
Protecting me. Protecting me.
Protecting me. Protecting me.

Afraid of your frown, don't change.
For me expressions.
A button undone,
The earth that's on my back,
And in my hair...
Portraying me. Portraying me.
Portraying me. Portraying me.

You're so clean, untouched.
Like me, experience possessed.
She breathes so tense...

Flexes her hand,
Don't relax.
Projecting me. Projecting me.
Projecting me. Projecting me.

Portraying me. Projecting me.
Portraying me. Protecting me.

Shrine

Material folds
in rough, modest clothes.
Slabs of cold, sacred stone.
The peasant girl kneels.

The peasant girl kneels..
The peasant girl kneels
in strips of feeble watered light.
Slim fingers clasped, warm,
steady, precise.
The unwanted lover for a murderer.
In strips of feeble, watered light.

Echoed sighs,
Soft madonna eyes,
bathe in smooth flickered flame.
The peasant girl kneels.

The peasant girl kneels.
The peasant girl kneels,
crosses herself slowly.
The warmth envelopes; seals.
But stays as quietly as she leaves.

To love a murderer.
To love a murderer.

Midnight Garden

I see it fall, I watch it fall, I let lie.
No anguish just the happiness shows, on the brow.
Look for these hidden angles,
an unknown language prowls.

I disappear, I reapper, I cannot hide.
Standing in this broken view, where you surround.
Dripping from the silence, the tears of an embrace.
These moments I don't understand, have side effects.

I slide, I kick, I turn around, I cannot rest.
The cold of yesterday has warmed, and now I wait.
As swans fly through winter, I kiss upon her face.
But still I feel these climbing plants,
that slide and shake.

Impulse of Man

True or false, the life of man.
Beneath her dress, so soft, so thin.
Not wicked thoughts, explains he shakes.
For God's sake hold the key,
locks in this agony.

Your arms are positioned, but they are not nailed.
You look for the pacifist, but he went, he's lost in the maze.
These winds are cold, and its walls will press his face...
Press his face...press his face...press his face!

True or false, impulse of man.
Hits his girl, she swirls across the floor.
And as she falls, bites out his tongue.
Black strips on the birch, man's eyes bulge and burst.

He shouts, "Oh, pacifist help!" but he cannot hear,
he's lost in the maze.  The rock cuts his back, and 
the wind will press his face...
Press his face...press his face...
Press his face...press his face!

True or false, impulsive man.
Erase the face, from smile to scream.
Oh, he must keep his hands inside his head.
Tear lines in her clothes,
Bruised hands hold the rose.

So now you must wait for the honey to come to your throat.
Your arms are splinters, but they will scrape the disease
from his face...
Press his face...press his face...press his face!

Impulsive man.
Impulsive man.
Impulsive man.

Twilights Pool

Our reflected bodies rise.
We walk like the newborn.
On ploughed earth waves,
She craves.

Transparent babies, we walk like men;
Across the marshes, and back again.
We seek a different view,
A world that's fresh and new.
She craves to swallow you...

We wait together at twilight's pause.
Bodies dance forever, the cool dark pool.
She craves to swallow you...
She craves to swallow you...

Fill your lungs
Fluid pure as morning dew.
She craves to swallow you...
She craves to swallow you...

We wait together at twilight's pause.
Bodies dance forever, the cool dark pool.
She craves to swallow you...
She craves to swallow you...

Fill your lungs
Fluid pure as morning dew.
We seek a different view...
From each hill,
We drip the morning dew.
A world that's fresh and new.

Our reflected bodies rise
and walk like the newborn
On ploughed earth waves
She craves...
Fill your lungs
Fluid pure as morning dew.
She craves to swallow you...

A Room Lives in Lucy

I hear voices from another morning.
And in the sunlight, I feel the room grow.
I feel the room grow.
Windows, white curtains, and the smooth walls
But the night leaves her on the floor.
Of the mansion halls
And the feet on the floors...
I must get up off the floor.
Off the floor...
Off the floor.
Off the floor.
Off the floor.
Off the floor.
In Lucy lives a room inside.

I feel someone's waking in my room again.
Sometimes she's leaving, but she will never go.
Oh, she will never go.
Wilting while waiting in the dark leaves
She's stretching but she cannot reach.
And the pale flowers,
Watch their petals fall.
To the floor.
Like the rain.
How it rains.
Like the rain.
Like the rain.
Like the rain.
Like the rain.
In Lucy lives a room inside.

There are such a lot of nice places that we could go.
There, there are a lot of nice places we could go.
So there's so many beautiful places.
I've seen them somewhere, oh were is it we go?
With the crumbled statues, in the dappled wood.

And the gentle laughter
swirled around the room.
She's not gone.
She's not gone.
On the floor.
How it rains.
She's not gone.
She's not gone.
She's not gone.

In Lucy lives a room, inside.

Scarlet Arch

Lie, in the pale summer heat.
Find a clock as it ticks...
Oh, to never sleep.
But the clock ticks so loud, like the cracking of whips,
Till the sun slowly heaves
From the blood hungry land
To its heaven of blue.

Run, through the dust and the stones
Like a stream as it flows
Through the kingdom of peace.
But a beast roamed his head,
Like the aching of guilt,
As it bakes in the heat...
As its swollen tongue speaks
Robs the old of their breath.

Hang beneath dawn's scarlet arch.
Where the wind ever moans...
Like the slaveship it drifts.

Slow Pulse Boy

Somewhere the blast furnace explodes...
(I'm feeling tired today.  The house
is ...)
plumes of amber in the night sky.
(Where was the air today?)

Each explosion bounces,
from horizon to horizon.
From horizon...to horizon.

And for a while,
The slow pulse boy stood by the window.
And let the fire sink into his skin.
And again all was still...
But for the empty tin, rolling up and down the gutter,
on the breeze.

Then we were standing very close.

I could live in the space between his heartbeats.
Outside, the furnace erupts again,
and dark red rivers filled our veins with frenzy.
We could tear out the floor, and find all the things
we'd ever lost.

The fire burns in our jack boots...
So we chase the explosions,
From horizon, to horizon.
From horizon, to horizon.
Wrap ourselves around the distance, for
as long as we can hold.

Somewhere a girl is singing.

There is calm in the air, 
but there is greater calm than I can bear.
Tomorrow the sun shines. 

Maps in Her Wrists and Arms

In the tent of powder and lace,
Vultures pick at a carcass that feeds by hand,
Longing to decay.
Waits to hear the sound
of their wings slowly heave, as they fly away...
Some will stay for days.

There's maps in her wrists and arms.
And the dust lies like snow around the bed.

Glowing white, a sculpture of bone,
Or a jewel like a crumpled, distorted moon
Shivers in her mind.
If she moves too near, 
It shatters so quickly, leaves nothing behind;
The old lady sighs.

Sometimes when she lifts her eyes,
the room has filled with flowing sheets of silk.
There's maps in her wrists and arms,
and the morphine surges terror, bread and bliss.

In the tent of powder and lace,
She can hear some violins, watches the strings...
Threading through the room.

The Dwelling place

Vincent Craine

It was late afternoon,
She sat watching never come to Vincent Craine.
Under the wet-weather swollen door...
Never came.
She pressed her knee up
Underneath a wooden table.
As in her midriff, dread flutters like the threat of
Love or pain.

There was a bowl of fruit, shrinking on the table
by a rusting spoon.
Over the mist weary distant hills...
Never came.
Through piles of wrecked cars, 
From the stagnant pools of water,
From the abbatoir flies
that swarm, leech and crawl in Clamour lane.

She walked towards the door,
Pushed it open, and stood behind Vincent Craine.
He leaned back and locked his arms around her...
Her thin, awkward legs.
They watched the sunlight slide in cold squares across the walls.
They watched the sunlight
Slide in cold squares across the walls.

Gone...Like the Swallows

Balancing on the wind,
Leaning on the cliff edge wind, in limbo --
He watches sand running through the fingers of his left hand...
And into the palm of his right.
He sees someone walking in a hot, dry wasteland,
Young, hesitant steps...
Recognised her crooked fringe and narrow eyes --
Threadbare, summer patterned, dirty cotton flowered dress...
Scratched ankles, and nail bitten hands.
Wanted to touch her cool brown hair...
But she was gone.
And his old tired face was still as ever.

An aeroplane hummed way up in the sky,
High up, high up, high above the clouds.

A green teapot, and a pair of boots,
A broken pocket watch and chain,
A born dead baby pig, 
Lying, pure white...bloodless
Soft, smooth as a gloved ladies hand;
a spinning wheel, a bill hook,
An umbrella, empty bottles, tin bath,
rip saw, a hat stand and a slate grey pillbox hat --
They sailed past his grabbing hands,
And were gone...like the swallows.

Stuttered words, stuttered words...
Voices asking questions he cannot hear.
Come and find us...Step back or you'll fall --

but the aeroplane is humming so loud now...

Tried to cling to the summer cotton, light, threadbare
patterned sleeveless flowered dirty carnation sunflower
sweatstained primrose threadbare dirty disappearing
decaying flowered fading cotton forgotten fucking summer
dress...
But it was gone.
Gone...like the swallows.

Virus Meadow

Rattled chime, slow ringing echo,
Roll around in virus meadow.
Suck enchanted nightshade twine,
Hear the bells beneath them chime.

Sinking sermon, priest head murmurs
Holy words across the meadows.
Kissed the plague's black rolling hand
and from his lips the virus sang.

And the rooks seem to follow him wherever he goes.
Flapping in the flat sky, shreiking in the spire,
Hanging in the lead sky, dangling from the sun,
the rooks, they seem to follow him...wherever he goes.

Nodding thistle, English sun dew,
Swansneck woman, child-bed meadow.
Aching shoulders sink and grow,
As the bells from ditches toll.

And the smeared skin wrapped limbs
of the night brothers.
Struggling, crawling...
Throught the empty crack of morning.
And the night brothers.
And the night brothers.
And the night brothers.
The night brothers.