Memo

Haggle for security, money for integrity,
It all gets on top of me so pay off your misery
Settle for your basic chores, hang for breaking stupid laws,
Wither with your human flaws, smile, please, as you hit the floor,
Kick me while I'm feeling down, pat your backs you thieving clowns
Quick stamp out intensity, fuck the mass morality

Battle for your family, I'm weak willed and I'm weak kneed
All we need is some pity from all this overpowering greed
Reduced to cleansing others eyes from these reduced smothered lies
Who is right here? You decide,
While my depth is multiplied
Kick me while I'm standing up and tell the world it's me corrupt
Office blocks and paper cuts
Too late, no-one gives a fuck

Hose your kingdom down in grey, tax us half our fucking pay
Then tell us we'll be okay, we'll live to fight another day
Take our freedom, take our pride
Take our last place left to hide,
then tell us that the Bible lied
It's actually your right to decide.
Insure us for our knee caps, tax the shirts right off our backs
And for those who answer back, strip them of their council flats

Wake up in the afternoon, smile through your impending gloom
You pay for the baby boom, though you never leave your room
Get to work a minute late, you were held in traffic hate,
You've got too much on your plate, move to Europe, it's too late
Give us all we ask you for, after all, you promised more
Smile please as you hit the floor, fuck this we can't take no more

The Next Best Thing

We are not your second best
The bridge you burn after the rest

The face you feel with bonded hands;
those hands, that healed many a broken man.

Is life but a routine? Bound to the past,
swimming around in circles,
searching for a wave that lasts?

We’re at the peak of a downward spiral
listening to the screams,
bargaining with the other side
as life is hard to please.

We are not your tarnished past
The stones that block your meandering path

The match you spark when all is lost
The face the elephant forgot

Are you the victim of your ambitions?
Let us be your food for thought
leaving a bitter taste in your mouth.

I’m left at the summit of this landslide
challenging our dreams,
haggling with the Devil
as life’s so hard to please.

You will be our safety net -
Well, who will be yours?

The Price

The sky is still grey on this rainy day,
the cracked surface below, still gleaming under salty streams
and that endless slap of blackness
through the window, next to his photograph.
This hopeless overkill…
He turns his back on the fragile chill and sighs.

He noticed how the strained, tired sky still clouds over today.
Even though she has gone there is no more wrong
than there was before,
Yet the reasons remain…
Except now he can’t blame her for the cloud, or the rain,

or for the shadow above his head, that bitter mass of obscurity that hangs
even when she’s gone, and the frost bites at his hands
and even when she’s there no more
the Devil lurks outside his door.
Even though she has gone.

Long gone.

The twisting, turning, willing of knife into back
scratching, scraping, streaming
through his mind,
like the polystyrene scream in her eyes...
The truth drowned her voice.

Eaten alive by his bruised white sheets
Caged in a comfort
created by hand
Controlled
in environments stained by man

But of course that spark that flies
It could never die
Only lose itself
In the passing crowd, just as she had done

He discovered himself smiling
A revelation at last, and the confidence flowed through his pores
and words finally flowed freely in this place, through razor lips
that had rarely spoken
words which she did not provoke.

Save all this excitement for a rainy day
and let me watch it wash away.
I love it when lightning strikes
because it lights up our dreary lives.