I used to be beautiful

I remember magic everywhere
As if the earth were newly cut open

I used to not think twice
But these things you can lose overnight

I used to be brave
But had no idea

There was so much love
But I was just letting go

Spring you mighty thing
I'm down here looking up at you

I want to evaporate into your blue
And rain again
Good as new

What a beautiful memory
She'd come to find me
To sort that out
Her little boy storming off in anger
That terracotta courtyard
Under a blue sky
Just to laugh and smile
And set the day right

Dry your eyes
I'm coming home
Fly your fabric soul
I'm running down the road

All your worry
And the things you can't change
Don't be afraid
I'm coming home

You thought I'd disappeared
But faith wants me here
You thought I didn't care
But I was always there

Tie your hair to the side
I'm coming home
Let Spring arrive
I'm running fast thru the cold

New jealousy, new grace
A new truth and place
Open your heart
I'm coming home

Each day the animal bites
He wants to hold me down tight
But I'm music now
Dancing like a brave kite

Dry your eyes
I'm coming home
Fly your fabric soul
I'm running down the road

Nothing's going to stop me
I'm coming home
I'm coming home

There are few places left
Said the gardener
As she swept leaves under the apple tree

But no-one is in control of mystery
It stands here
Just like you and me

Bring your love to me
Said the heart
With it I become visible
I go from being lost to being found
Bring your love to me
Don't turn around

The world moves on stagnant water and breathes stale air
We are tied down to it
There is no rest
And even less

And before you know it
The people you love
Will be gone

Bring your love to me
Said the body
I want to tell you
How grateful I am
Bring your love to me
I don't want to miss my chance

Bring your love to me
Said the mind
I need it to grow
I need it to climb
It is the key ingredient, every time
Bring your love to me
Don't leave me behind

Bring your love to me
The only gift
And true mechanism
Bring it to me first
Bring your love to me

Melbourne to London
Taking the flight again
For singing and songs
And to see where life takes me


The first time I did this flight
Would have been when I was a child
My twin sisters still babies
My parents setting up our lives in Australia
Finding work as nurses

I remember the simple housing
Playing army figurines with my mother on the old carpet
And the Golden retriever who jumped the fence and played with dad



Melbourne to London
Taking the flight again
For singing and songs
And to see where life takes me



School and growing up was hard
There was always a bit of turmoil and fighting in the house
Dad got me a bass
Chris got me a guitar
I sang because I needed it

I never finished university
I wanted to play in bands

I met people who were my friends
But there were some jealousies
I kept on in a rage
Pride and self respect wouldn't come till later in life



Melbourne to London
Taking the flight again
For singing and songs
And to see where life takes me



Where I grew up is beautiful
The surrounding bush
The way my mum keeps the garden
Full of flowers, kumquat and apple trees
It's a paradise I don't want to leave
I don't want her to leave

My sisters are young beautiful mother's now
The cutest kids with a head start in life
I'm largely silent around them
My guitar stays in it's case
I still need to find my place
I still want to surprise everyone as Uncle James



Wide expanses, yellow fields in the sun
Across the ocean
Time differences
To smaller plots of land
And the spill of industry
I've come here to make the puzzle of my life fit together
With a belief I've always had in myself
That only used to be an idea

Each day a year

Away from you

The love that brought me back



Outsaw me

Ran me out

Gave to me

More than I could myself



It's snowing this morning

Primavera is on my lips

The new day

And magic


I'm laughing

Creeping across the dark

I'm forever grateful

Now I can see


Each day a year

Away from you

The love that brought me back



Outsaw me

Ran me out

Gave to me

More than I could myself

I've broken down like a little girl

But there's another girl flying high thru the sky
Wielding her sword of freedom
The one she fought every day for

And another who has set up a house
With two more girls in it
Each of them
With an executive mark

But I've broken down like a little girl
Looking and feeling all sad

And all my sadness is in my feet
and I can't move
In my head and I can't think

But the minute it stops
I'll be a man again

And I'll please that little girl

I know at some point
We have to stop

Stop in the body
And let our imaginations take flight

Inhabiting eternities
Endlessnesses

But I want to get as close as possible

Music will save everyone

Because my dear child
There will always be a war somewhere

And it may even come close one day
Who knows which route insanity takes

But music will be there too

There will still be celebrations
Festivals and a reason to get together


War will always be there
The way the world is made to sustain it may never change
It has and will always affect us

But music will always be there

And it will save everyone

It will go unexpected
And underestimated
But you shouldn't

Because music will save everyone

Eternal
Crush my tree
Fantasy
Will you marry me
Or just kiss me?

In love every time
Doesn't grow old
Been all this time

Everytime
A surprise
I'm scared to look into her eyes
Are you there?

Friends for life
The way she cares
Her eyes, nature, body and hair
It's all there

Look at the sky
She said that morning of the afterparty
God made the skies, said the song
To reach for
It could be freedom,
but she is cute too

Eternal
Crush my tree
Fantasy
Will you marry me
Or just kiss me?

Desire went walking down the street
Open sandals around bare feet


The chains and bolts snapped and buckled
Ropes tore exploding tiny explosions
The lawmaker looked on keenly
Invoking words of power that stood fixed into the cold stone


Desire moved with a steady intent
Like the sun rising under the sea


I want to kiss you inside of your mind
On this happening of you and I


We all watched, taking into account the circumstance
Thought of the children of tomorrow
The way we came and what it made


Taboo and touch
Gathered invisible words and sounds
Making themselves heard
Desire would come to stay
The bed was already made


I want to kiss you inside of your mind
On this happening of you and I

Her name was Serenity
She's a recurring theme
She drew everyone's attention
Because she walked around completely naked


I saw her first at university
Studying poetry

Then around the people and the music
The warehouses and the art



I saw her in the red light district too
Like me, she must have been two people too

She must have worked her way up, it seemed
And didn't have to take her clothes off
She was all clad in black
We said hello, making eye contact



Her name was Serenity
She's a recurring theme


I saw her at a festival, we kissed and she showed me things for free
It was like a bad dream





Her name was Serenity
She's a recurring theme

And there she is again
Smiling, she's in a good place
And I'm here too
Who was it? Who did that to us?
It was anybody's game

Like all artistic hearts, we felt that responsibility


Her name was Serenity
She's a recurring theme

I want some honesty, some success
I see pictures of a girl who smiled at me 20 years ago
She looks like success
Did I get lost?
Trying to make it?
I feel I haven't sung before,
Never written a song
Never played guitar
I feel like all the things that have put me together
Have just fallen like a stack of sticks

Everyone looks so successful around me
Cars and babies, books and music recordings

I just prayed for help
I could run around the city
Just one more time

When will I land?
I thought life got easier
The steam train of my mind
Is running hot

I must be like a box of fireworks
There's only so much preparation you can do
Before you explode

Round and round I go

I am
As I am
No more
No less
And today
It will do

Clouds pass each other
Kissing like Venn diagrams

Pin his tail
The butterfly too
Use what they were saying
the both of them too

Buildings touch the sky
But 10 times more stand behind the eye
The paths shine
I've walk them a million times

Try to catch me
Locate me
Fascinate and dissect me
Put me on display
For the crowds of imagined friends
Who aren't there

I'll collapse by the end of this bleep
Something immortal
Better than sleep

Hot day, cooling down
Cold shower
Chill

Wordless, the cooking's all done
Rested
Good to be sitting
Curtains partially open
Shadowy lighted room
Clouds behind curtains
It's like what siesta time would be
A time for talking, no
A time where no talking is ok
The peaceful coming of day's end
Mum's quietly moving around the cupboards in the kitchen
The hard-drive is humming away
A car just drive down the court
My feet warm against the touch of wood
No disruptions

Love is in the mind
Love is the only essential ingredient for growth

Maybe something of the old dreams have died
It's the end
And we are on the other side
Now we can be free
Not a moment too soon

Bloom without ropes that bind
But with dance
With water
With being
With truth

Maybe something of the old dreams have died
The cavernous shell
Is cast aside
The world is bigger still
It didn't wait
And it wont

Your memories have tied you in remembrance
You can't deny the hollowness of your life
The distance of it

It's time to find your truth
To be selfish
To not want to be the world
But to be here

Maybe something of the old dreams have died
And die they will again
Like they are meant to

I'm peering with a new silence
A discerning silence
I wait for sound

Dreams are coming and going
Up and down the shore

What's wrong is right
It's life
If it's alright, it's alright

Let me take your mind off the storm
And the flood that's come thru the room
Left everything in a mess


One light
In a crowded room
And I wasn't so frightened, I wasn't so lost

One day
I won't be here to play this guitar
The rain I will no longer hear
The people I love will have come and gone

The churches
The tribes
The great tomes of mankind
Can't tell me where

And there will be a hole in my heart
There will be a hole in yours

There's a pink elephant
Walking across the continents
He's bigger than the sun
And all the stars that peer like newborn children

He's got places he likes to visit
Places he likes to drink and eat

Songs he likes to sing
And people he likes to meet

I look at him
His trunk like a question mark
He is there at every breath
Walking across the continent
Visible thru every window

But for the skies there are no fences facing
The crow speaks into the blue openness
I don't have to be anybody else here

Eucalypts hang lazily
This part of the earth bends into the sun
Its natural inclination

There are no labels
The cupped hands that held the rains are still there
They can't be bought or sold

I feel the press and the crowd
The roof-blown churches
The new religion loud
Where to now?

Well, just as you are

Into this landscape
Changing with the seasons
Falling and rising

When I'm in the atelier of my mind
I return to that feeling
Of not being able to run away and escape

I could be in the middle of a fair in Buenos Aires

It could be a National day of Thanks

There could be sunlight pouring through the house

And there I am

So a lament for that which always struck me
about singers of songs

Why so sad? So serious? I'd ask

A Lament, and lamentable sounds
And willow trees swaying lugubriously

A Lament, no smiling allowed
We wouldn't want to cheapen something so profound

I feel I'm moving against the current
Time and his characters
Fate and her fire
Trying to be infinity in a spot

Trying to make someone
With character
With fire
Who will stand the test of time

There is no button for me
Fast-forward, rewind
I'm yet to sing a song
By the campfire

The one that keeps burning
With stories and wonder
The one that can't be put out
The one I know is there

When I'm stuck in the train door
With my guitar
You're there running to help
Pulling at the doors
I look for you in the crowd
I look for you in a new town
And I know you're there behind me
I can hear your braided hair
Thankyou

Cool calm killer
Calm and considered
But everyone's got a knife
To carve a smile into this black
Where's your's?

The weight of it
Dropping like a dead planet
Find it
Find it
Test it, try it

One good **** is a **** for us all!

Move like the black river
In the moonlight
Looked at by people on the bridge
silent, steady, courageous
Almost frightening

We made a line for you, mindful of our step
Up the perilous *****
While the sun made a line across the stone
And the lines of corn, like braids in the mountain, rustled under a blue sky
Moving slow against the compass

Desolation

I've got an obsession
The empty building
The empty room
Whistling a tuneless tune

A subterranean
Crying lonely tears
It's the only place I'm happy

Desolation

Grey skies make me smile
Silence is music
I could go a year without seeing anyone
Why is that so?


I'm so miserable
Those warm lights
And warm sounds thru the house
Make me feel strange

I have so many ideas
My brain could explode
I can hear the wind on the road
I can hear it when you smile

Turn off those lights
Turn down those sounds

Desolation

Life collects like dust in a cup
Slowly, day by day
Priceless
Earnings

Mystics
Readers
Tea Leaves
Interpreters of Life

Hot air balloons
Thru the doors
And halls of this house
Giant

I'll always have my eye on you
It's true
It'll never be thru
You're that character in my black book

I say I miss you
I'm already looking forward
To catching up with you

Is it crazed
Is it cool?
This eye I've got on you

I'm not going to say it
Neither are you
I'll always have my eye on you
You're that character in my black book


                    I don't know why you think of me that way
                    I thought I already said

                    That hangman puzzle has got you good
                    The lot of you standing there
                    Like firewood

                    I pray for you
                    I pray for good

                    I'm not going to say it
                    Neither are you
                    I'll always have my eye on you
                    You're that character in my black book

My imagination is aging
deteriorating

How I need a mountain view
A sea, salty and blue


I want to be a free spirit


Open the box
See it from the outside

Outer body, outer mind


I want to be a free spirit


I've been here for such a long time
Knowing what's behind

How I need a mountain view
A sea, salty and blue

I want to be a free spirit

I need to increase my imagination
With nature, road trips and hiking trails

Wonder is priceless

I'll always have my eye on you
It's true
It'll never be thru
You're that character in my book

I say I miss you
I'm already looking forward
To catching up with you

Is it crazed
Is it cool?
This eye I've got on you

I'm not going to say it
Neither are you
I'll always have my eye on you

I woke up and I was old
Swimming around like voices thru Barcelonas streets
I feel strange
Where is the world running to anyway?


An idiot gets up to yell
A priest sits nervously behind his eyelids
Dreams and the body work alternate shifts
I can't see the youth who shot straight and clean


C'mon comet
C'mon
If you're going to burn
Thru the sky and across the trees
Do it now

Black seeds at the bottom of the sea
Singing a B minor Melody
Where the black and blue meet
Draw your hand, the open rake
Make shapes like seaweed
A Tasmanian underwater forest

I'm from there, a part of me at least
From where a mother finds her son dead in his sleep
From where the sweetness of the world collects and meets
We make homes out of homelessness
All of us

You can try to keep me out
To organise me
Like a crack riddled Canadian Street
And push and bump into me
Like I was a girl minding her own business
Who happened to look Chinese

But those arrows that reach
Those arrows that seek
Thru the black and blue
You'll never stop those

They ridicule the soft white foam that sits lifeless and still, obsessed with death

We reek of love, life, dreams and eternity
We mingle and meet
We turn out the street

Come hang out with me
Watch the never ending shapes in this never ending sea
As they seek and reach
Rising like a sun under the sea

I want to do the taboo with you
The city would become a deserted island
If they knew what we were up to
I want to do the taboo with you

Even the gods, Muhammed and Jesus
Bhudda and the powers that be would take a day off work
Because of you and me

Let's wander thru the galaxies
That sing above us with their mathematics
Let's walk on clouds that tempt us with their peace
In our flesh
That moves with bone and blood
Its smells and re-growth
Its dying
Its strength
Its boundaries

I want to do the taboo with you
The city would become a deserted island
If they knew what we were up to
I want to do the taboo with you

2 birds of prey
Not crossing each others line
A robin beside me in the tree
One singing where I can't see
When will they meet?
And see this life how it's meant to be seen?

Love I'm looking up at you
Give me vision
Talk with all the wisdom of the ages
Let this humble being be
I'm on my feet

I'm working thru the days
That play out like cards
Ever watching, busier that those busy bird notes

Love give me inspiration
Give me new truths and insights
And I'll float on them
Like candles down a river
Like candles down a river

I don't know
I don't know
That original sin
That desperate heart
Those new babies and I can't see what it means

Love I'm looking up at you
Give me vision
Talk with all the wisdom of the ages
Let this humble being be
I'm on my feet

This is a "next time thing"
Said one river to the next
Rivulets of sun and paranoia
Playing on their surfaces

Parting with a hug
And so ran one with trust
As before, and not more,
In itself

2 is a good time to go to bed
3 is two late
And 4 you might as well stay up to see the sun

Only the poor still have a soul
Only the poor still know how to talk with it
I'll have to figure out a way to be a poor man with money

I'm off to **** a beast
I'm going on my own
I'm not taking my phone, don't wait up
When I'm back
I'll let you know
I'm off to **** a beast

I'm going on an idea
I had from long ago
The feeling has grown and grown
It would make me the first
In a long line
Off I go
I'm off to **** a beast

I'm happy on my own
My light is on for me to see

I'm off to **** a beast
There is rage, rage, rage
Sticks that easily break
And sounds that interrogate
But I have faith
Beasts beware
I'm off to **** a beast

I'm happy on my own
My light is on for me to see

I'm off to **** a beast
I'm going on my own
I'm not taking my phone, don't wait up
When I'm back
I'll let you know
I'm off to **** a beast

But really
It's this theory
I'd be the first to **** the beast in a long line
Now's my time
I'm disappearing into the woods for a while

Today is a write off
There must have been sand in the air
Because I could feel the rusty cogs squeaking stubbornly in my head
I didn't punch anything though
I've improved since childhood

Today is a write off
I raced home on the bike
Had a cold shower
Typed this
Now I'm going to turn off the computer and meditate

Leave a space for the unknown

Mark it out
With an X
With an altar
With a prayer
With respect

Leave a space for the unknown

Run to it
Walk with it
Dream about it
Enact and perform it
Be it

Leave a space for the unknown

Let it be
Call it what you like
Believe and re-believe
Learn and re-learn
Here's one for the unknown

Look after the unknown
Take care of it
Be understanding with it
Hold it
Set it free

Leave a space for the unknown

With a torchlight in her hand
She's coming to set fire to this land

The streets and shop signs
Are lying naked and cool tonight

The world is dancing
Moving slow
I just know

It's a parade
Wobbly heat waves
Children and colours
Canteen food
And the snapping sounds of foldable plastic chairs

Little athletics day
Here he comes
Handkerchief on his head, tucked into his sunglasses

Mum never came

He could be harsh
My sister cried once
There was pressure to win
I never did
I was afraid I'd be clotheslined by that finishing line
Be my guest Flash
I wasn't fast, but I wasn't slow


This is me
Relay leg no.3
Baton in my hand
Whistling thru the air
(Missing you, missing me)
Round the bend
Furthest from the crowd
Running thru heat waves
Angling like a fish, oh yeah
(Missing you, missing me)


I asked for your help
Speaking to that place in my mind that doesn't change

You gave me every weapon for this world
And I still don't know what to do

I wasn't at the funeral
I was far away, making myself out of sand at high tide

Thank you for everything
The way they remembered you, how you made peace come true, I never knew, or maybe I did


This is me
Relay leg no.3
Baton in my hand
Whistling thru the air
(Missing you, missing me)
Round the bend
Furthest from the crowd
Running thru heat waves
Angling like a fish, oh yeah
(Missing you, missing me)




It was really blooming when you left
The police man and his bunny were making fun of your emotions by then
Playing substitute friends
There was something biting that wouldn't stop

But you were appreciated by us
And still are
So many memories


This is me
Relay leg no.3
Baton in my hand
Whistling thru the air
(Missing you, missing me)
Round the bend
Furthest from the crowd
Running thru heat waves
Angling like a fish, oh yeah
(Missing you, missing me)

Sit by my lullaby
Before we have to go
Before the lights come on


You're brave and it makes me braver
A saviour
A clash waiting to happen



Saint Francis of Assisi was loved by all creatures
He retired two houses down from me
His Franciscan robe folded in two

Would you sit by my lullaby like you used to?



Forget that we have run out of time
I just arrived

Do me while I'm singing to you
Do me while I'm playing my guitar


And let me play you like you want to be played

Sit by my lullaby
Before we have to go
Before the lights come on

How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?

It’s the moment he realises his *** is not a weapon
He can feel it
It’s something to do with ****, again

Into it, is the humanity he understands
Some men reach it early, some never
Here’s a toast to manhood and its many forms

(p.s., ok here's a bit more:-
  I think it's to do with usefulness.
    Make yourself useful in this world)