I found all the things
Here that hurt you
All the things you couldn’t
All the things you wanted to do.
I see them on the tip of your tongue
They are just shooting stars
Dancing through the streets
Smiling, saying who cares?
I’ve got it all now
You won’t think you’ve waited all your life
Because here she is
The woman you waited for to arrive.
So you finally made it
I was so convinced we would
She doesn’t love you for money
She loves you for what she should:
You.
I see solar flares right across the sky
Why did you sink so low
When you had so far to fly?

Get a bellyful of bubbles
And watch them form one by one
As they come to the surface
All your troubles are just gone
They just pop. Pop.
I will pop some for you
There goes another
Look, it’s so easy to do
We could do this all day
Just you and me
All that time spent worrying
It was a waste, don’t you see?
They were really nothing
It was nothing to hold back?
It was just little bits of nothing,
Air. One by one, in a stack
I see the bubbles floating up
I see it in your eyes
They become so blue when you let go
Of the bubbles of hurt and lies
These tiny little bubbles
They’re the things that held you back
When you just wanted to have fun
They didn’t cut you any slack
And so they’re really nothing
Blow them away and say ‘don’t come back’
The worst thing you can do is bottle them up
Because then the bottle goes crack.

Women. Making out.
I don’t think I’ll come back
It’s just like a circle
We’re on a one-way track
Looking for something
Looking for some meaning
So tell them sorry
Sorry for leaving
Do whatever you want
You can burn all my mail
I just don’t feel I belong
And it’s all in the detail
I don’t want to do this
I don’t want to conform
I don’t want to be everyone else
I don’t want to be the norm
And I know it will be hard
For just a l’il while, to go there all alone
But I know it’s the road less travelled
Once I’m there I won’t want to come home

If the time comes when someone
Asks me, “Dan,
What one thing would you hope for,
For this world I mean?”
I guess, after much deliberation,
I’d have to say ‘hope’
I’d wish for ‘hope’,
It’s all you can do.
The hope that this
Fear that consumes us
All in concrete
And frigid isolation
Dissipates
Along with the falseness
And the corruption,
And that we are free
To seize ourselves
Seize the day
Seize everything we want to be
Maybe I would not go
As far as Blake to say
We could retrieve the lost Golden Age.
I am by all definitions a pragmatist
Therefore I am hoping.
Hoping
  And waiting

It doesn’t matter who you get with
Or how many parties you go to
At the end of the day you retreat
To that hole inside of you.
Where she once sat
Strumming your heartstrings
And now late at night you sit
Weeping, oh how it strings
You can’t choose your family
Just as you can’t choose where to leave your heart
Neither can you choose for it to be accepted
But you can choose to go back to the start.
It doesn’t make you weak to think:
If only I’d help on a little longer.
It’s not abnormal to think:
If only I could have been stronger.
Then the next day you’ll go out
Walking across the common to town
And you’ll see her walking by
Headphones on and her eyes down.
I’ve been there my friend
With all this madness where are we bound?
When we can’t just love each other
And unite two lonely hearts, waiting to be found.

To Sam Bradley, who was taken away from us too soon.

I could tell this day was coming
My body knew this day was near
I could tell when my life fell apart
There was a return of all I fear.
I guess everything I was
Everything I am sure I want to be
Every bridge I burnt
Was because I needed you near to me.
And look, three years on
Every day is still a case of survival
It’s a struggle I know
This feeling no-one can rival.
So I sit down and write,
I think about girls, counting the cost
Yes work’s a bit hard
But I look at what you’ve lost.
And that makes me cry
It sends shivers down my bones
They took you away from us
Somehow I’ve got to make it on my own.

“Virginia Woolf was wrong, you don’t need money, hell you don’t even need a room , to be a writer. All you need is a lonely garret and a toilet. Got that, and a writer’s got it all.”

I think it’s a misconception
That a writer’s garret is blue.
Not at all, it’s a place of bonding
Where it takes me and you.
The only choice we have to make
When you come over at two
Is to think when you’re reading my poetry
Have we got any learning left to do?
We get on so well
There’s nothing left to say
Apart from to have a laugh
And strum the day away.
I treasure these moments
It’s more than a poem or a song
It’s more like a healing
And I feel it growing strong
You show me what you’ve written
I’ve tried to hold you before
But only now do I see that
A relationship is so much more
Than a warm body to hold
And our experiences are so sublime
When I’m sat with you
And you’re glowing all the time
You’re smiling, ah yes
This is a partnership we both can offer to
A writer’s garret is a place where we can grow
Not a place where we go to be blue.