Don't you remember when the embers of the fire we burned
Tended to lend their distended heat to our dismembered concerns
About guilt the in the darkness past the attractive flames
That we built a stark distraction reactive to the shame
Of the past and the last active claim of aghast blame
For tame transgressions with vast, intercessive aims
It's not a game
I make no claim
to understand the rules of an impressive refrain on expressing pain
I've always been **** at making real appealing fires
So I gave it to you to take your ideals and desires
And make something that burned brighter and higher
Than anything our nights could ever really earn or require
But the wind had called a favour in
And winter walled that labour in
And so flames buffered and suffered
Fluttering, stuttered, they were scuppered
The ashes of our confidence now paper thin
Unreliable light will let the darkness in
It offers the undesirable, heartless spin
On this starless night we're tiring in
We can build it back up but the conditions are tough
In the build up to an admission that enough is enough
We always could give up and freeze to death still kissing in the underbrush
With Failure's frost seizing our last wistful breaths
and Hope's ghost leaving us to a listless Death
Heavy with regrets gasping a dismissed homesick song
I'm not ready for that yet, let's risk throwing another stick on
I want the heat and the light to cheat on the night
To melt the meat from my cheeks and let my heart ignite
So tonight let's reach a heat to set the past alight

He lived in a room with no windows
He hung pictures on the wall
Of driveways, cars and hedgerows
Of redbrick homes and even a town hall

But soon he began to miss a view
That offered some variety
Nothing breathed and nothing grew
At the centre of his dead society

So he moved a couple in next door
And an accountant the other side
An old lady got the house with the green front door
A large family had the garden with the slide

The postman liked to come at noon
A bus passed on the hour
He saw children playing in the afternoons
And lawns brighten under spring showers

It didn’t exist beyond his doors
This idyllic, sunny street
But now that he had some neighbours
His new home felt complete

But like all things of beauty
The cracks began to show
Reality likes to exercise duty
Down to the smallest bungalow


One day the silver car was missing
And, when watching the road for more
He the saw the man next door was kissing,
Mrs Across the Road, not Mrs Next Door

A while later, there came the shouts
And the gasps of laboured crying
The street knew what the row was about
And so Mrs Across the Road was caught lying

The kids were put in the car, confused
Bras were strewn across the front lawn
She begged him to stay but he refused
And an ambulance was there by dawn

Mrs Across the Road was dead
They found her hanging from the ceiling
And Mrs Next Door had a cut on her head
That gave him a queasy feeling

Vandals came, the police followed
The old lady’s front windows were broken
The had tulips wilted and the people wallowed
He watched the decay, alone and heartbroken

He decided to move away from this street
The sobbing through the walls plagued his evenings
A new set of windows, new neighbours to meet
The real world could be conquered by leaving


But when moving day came, and he arrived
He felt suddenly much less sure
When he noticed that, well and revived
Mrs Across the Road living next door

From then, wherever he went they came
His neighbours’ rows and cries were haunting
He moved some more, but it was always the same
His world was inescapable, the fiction taunting

Eventually, his patience snapped
Which led him to a more physical hell
Windowless once again, he could never adapt
To the bars on the door to his cell

Those days were the idle ease of clouds  
Those mornings breathed
The nights hummed
Vibrations of existence
And the anticipation of dawn
Until time began to wail
Unmistakable
and inconsiderate
The stark countenance of responsibility
Sidled around the curtains
Immediacy stopped consistency
Reality burst forth from the boxes
We could never quite seal
The uncontained became contaminated
Leaves turned brown
Minutes turned grey
The solace of the night suffocated itself
And drowned our plans in silence

Dawns barbed tongue
Licked regret off my face
And finally
It seemed as though the four corners of the world
Were finally coming home

I gasped but only your voice went in
After the lies I'd told like magic
Emptied themselves as marbles
On the hard wooden floor
I collected myself
With my hands
Dropping the hope
I had been holding on to
Ambiguity ripped open
A line between my heart and chin
I gasped and only the truth went in

Those stars you see are dead
Only blackness there instead
Sights that enlight hearts and heads
Are finite delights we misread

And those TV shows and media spiel
They're real profits for fake ideals
Our lives are dull, at worst ordeals
And to appeal to the way humans can feel
Cuts the thickest, if slickest, business deal

So we divide ourselves into groups and sides
Find the one that best describes what's 'inside'
Who we are is defined by who we stand beside
With as much control of the pride or snide chides implied
As we have over landslides or mountainsides or the tides

In the age of the original, the individual
We shun the biblical, the ritual, the miracle
And turn to the visual,
A new kind of digital Fictional
Where the  miserable are invisible
The political are cynical
The habitual criminals reciprocal
And the principles hypocritical

Those stars you see are dead
That's what the phycisist said
Even sky has us misled
When the truth that's spreaded is dreaded
The truth we bred is embedded
The easily read are easily led