In a dream.

In a dream that I had, or maybe another life,
I'd never been bad, and you were proud.
I can't say it aloud- but every day I wish I wasn't myself.
and when you left the room, I'm sure I heard you say
'I wish she could be someone else.'
And I don't know anymore if it is you or me,
and I don't know why and I don't know how.
Look at me now. I can see all the reasons for your shame.
I'm stone in your shoe, a restless breeze in the hall
and I take the blame, I take it all,
All I can tell you I'm not what I seem,
and in my dream, we shared a phone call. I had the answers.
I could take some of the weight from you.
You told me you were leaving but you said, 'I'll wait for you.'
I don't know what it could mean.
I don't know what it could mean.
There must be some way I heal the wounds that I've made,
there must be a way I can turn it around.
Didn't make a sound, but I caused an earthquake.
I brought down your walls, wasn't around
to see them shake, coming to the floor.
And in the dream, I was caught in the rain, it started to pour.
but I had some keys and you were waiting when I opened the door.
We've done this before, but I wish I could do it over again.
I'd change everything.
I'd change everything for you.

Vespers

We spun out our nights lighting fires on the beach.
He smelled just like honey, the palm-reader’s son.
I fell in mad love when he went mad on the piano.
The sea has its limit but my desire had none.

Shakespeare and songs about sunsets past
sailed some hope upon my heart as it tossed in fear.
Too afraid to make friends, make amends, though I tried
to put the world to right, but was too quiet for it to hear.

A carnival ride

Our blueprinted fears, disconnected appliances,
sparking careless and unpredicted,
a narrow infrared beam for the moon rising.

It’s evening half-light, glistening on a collection
of machinery and whispers, the quiet moments,
the fish humming in coin fountains, gold,
red as fire hydrants against the indigo October.

Careless bookshelf bright with cries, at the window
the world is watching this funeral motorcade
crossing the soft, blank country, no solace.

Static crackling in the cat’s ear, thorny wool.
Evening grass rustles the silent delirium.
 Galaxies wheeling through a suburban bedroom.
This is the alchemy of guilt, falling into clean halves.

One heard horrors that she had misremembered,
the other did not wake so close to the edge of disaster.
My secret kingdom, she thought, and it lay buried.

And like a lazy connotation, grey morning came,
awestruck, and bells follow you and me
in an unbending line. It's a carnival ride,
our documentary world, an absurd illusion.

Memory is

Memory is a schoolyard, a racetrack, a Kandinsky, a UFO sighting, a scarcely-contained thrill, snake eyes and stone eyes and an infinity of eyes, the audience in red, the humming news at six o’clock, what is behind door number three, headlights, night-lights, mirrors and smoke, a forest of exquisite sentences, a prank, skylines I haven’t seen, a hundred thousand songs, a flat circle, films with gunfights, films with dogs, mountains and monuments, boxcars boxcars boxcars, of bars, of beaches, of brain, in fact already gone, a tripwire, a tantrum, an escape plan, a complex equation, this strangeness, frozen in radio, all the trains, a haunted factory, ferries I should ride, a terrible headache, a most beautiful alien, a gimmick, playing cards facedown, wilful confusion, our big reveal, a mountain they died climbing, the inevitable, sometimes no reason, the harbinger of burnout, the bringer of ageing, something we invented, facts not questions, a curse, light that comes from nowhere, retrospect, an ethos, blood-stained, the hinterlands, the moment gone forever.

Jamnesty- a concert for Amnesty International UK- Southend-On-Sea

I've comprised the first of two videos I am making for Amnesty International UK. This is the Amnesty theme song, 'I Shall Be Released', featuring performing musicians at the concert in Southend-On-Sea, organised to raise funds and awareness for the cause.