We reach for things where once they were
and grasp, confused, at empty air
And try to catch the time we've missed
by glancing at a watchless wrist

We follow patterns long since drawn
although the artist's dead and gone
We pantomime a lack of care
but reach for things which are not there.

The sea pulled in its gut for me
to show its rugged, rockpooled shore
then at the turning of the tide
exhaled and overflowed once more.

A singer died
when he and I
were twenty five.
I think I found out
some weeks later,
playing his album to a friend.
"He's the one that died, isn't he?
Fell out a window?"

I was sorry
but unaffected.
I'd seen him on T.V.,
thought he sounded
a bit like me,
bought the CD.

Sixteen years on
I am pummelled with nostalgia
for a blithely immortal age.
My band broke up,
reformed, broke up,
I got married, had kids
became a teacher

But he sits
in the impregnable fortress of maybe,
always smiling,
twenty five
till the sun swallows the earth.

Early on
it was clear
I was coming nowhere in this race
and so my eyes began to wander,
pick out the daisies in the grass,
note the sweep of the horizon
and -
stop.
A long time,
the thunder of feet
fading into the distance,
leaving breeze,
bees
and other tranquilities.

Until a small man
in a tight suit
approached me with a clipboard.
"Ah," he said,
sycophantic smile
splitting his tanless dinnerplate
of a face,
"I see we have another
"like-minded soul!
"We'd like you to join
"the non-racing society!
"You can look at daisies all day long
"and at the end of every day
"we quantify who has done the best!"
And I, sad,
sat,
and wished the sky
would swallow me
whole.

You want this conversation
Well let's take the ******* out
You call for independence
So let's see what that's about
You're gonna need the banks for money
Gonna need the toffs for land
Well that's a kind of independence
That I just don't understand

So who are you kidding now, who are you kidding,
Nothing's going to change
With the same old queen and the same old scene
and the same old parlour games
This ain't no custody battle, you're not taking the kids to the zoo
If we don't want central government then why would we want you?

Now I find you quite convincing
when you say that things are wrong
But it seems that your solution
Is the same old same old song
And a suit in Edinburgh
Could be a suit in London town
Because you're all a million miles away
from the **** that's going down

Ah, who are you kidding now who are you kidding,
Where's the brand new dawn
It's the millionaires and the stocks and the shares
That'll keep on keepin' on
And this self-determination
Might catch you by surprise
The united states of me and my mates
Curse every flag that flies.

I was always told to stay away from the street
Keep myself protected, redirecting my feet
The traffic rushing past would **** me deader than dead,
that's what the old folks said
But little did I know that by avoiding the cars
I wandered in the path of something badder by far
Keeping to the fences and the gardens to play
That made me easy prey
For the houses, on the prowl
The houses, on the prowl
The windows, are a hungry scowl
And the doors are jaws to swallow you down

Ever seen a picture of a venus-trapped fly?
Happy as a clam as if it's ready to die
Sucker for the honey never knowing it's bait
Until it's far too late
Well comfort and protection are what houses pretend
A welcome sanctuary and a fabulous friend
We lavish love upon them like they're part of ourselves
Until there's nothing else
But the houses, on the prowl
The houses, on the prowl
The windows, are a hungry scowl
And the doors are jaws to swallow you down

People at the window, haunted and confused
Something's got them prisoner, and it'll never let them loose

I know that you will think it's just a travellers' tale
Like Jonah or Gepetto in the guts of a whale
But they were brought salvation from the soul of the sea
And that's never come to me
Helplessly protesting at the ribs of the room
Quietly digesting in a wallpaper tomb
It's hard and getting harder to get out of the door
And the world don't care no more.

I woke from hazy kingdoms
to a frost-shackled landscape,
two boys to dress, feed and wrestle with
and a million undone things.

Shirt and trousered, stepped outside
Set my engine running
to clear the icy windscreen
and the radio ranted over the smokey wheeze
about a world ablaze and changing

My senses crisped like the crystalline verge
light shone unfettered through my eyes
And I was excited afresh
by this beautiful world
and my place in it

Driving breathlessly to work
through the glinting freeze
I passed a lost cartographer
who was looking for his path
in a book about maps.

And I will not write about writing.
I will not write about writing.
I will not write about writing.
I will not write...