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Bliss

 

Bliss, I’m surrounded by this bliss

Tendril wrapped inside my hand

I’m enchanted by your name

Bliss

Falling gently from the trees 

Bury my bones with their leaves

This is all that I can leave

I’m old 

Enough

 

Colourblind man

 

I’m a colourblind man, I sought to hurt no one

From Paris to Pakistan, it’s like I’m staring at the sun

Unknown is the hurt I perceive, I try to understand

Well known is the hurt that is you, the victim of a colourblind man

 

You might see a child, fall from my hollow eye to bring you, to your goal

You might hear a laugh deep within the dark, a laugh is good and evil, that has collided

 

Passed hand to hand, a servant once and always

Celebrated and curse, the apple in your garden

Close by your skin as you walk, a dirty weight at your side

Funny, I am not your, I’m colourblind

 

All your cries are a silence to me, I am the power you need

Colourblind I serve all that hold me 

All I need 

Is your fear

 

The Ambassador

 

I made my favourite connection 

To a world that I adore 

And she made me fall in love with 2004

She was ambassador that year, I believe that she said 

And it hits me like a ten story water bomb head

The officious mischief, the absence of lies

She held me down with diplomatic ties

In a velvet embrace, she kept the lights on

To imagine a glasnost scene

This special liaison with the speed of a train that could crash into china 

And pull back again

The sparrow sang songs of pulling triggers on plastic gun

 

The Ambassador has come

With the speed of sound

Of promises whispered

That could shake the very ground

The Ambassador has come

And the stupid passers by

Couldn’t see the history we made with their disapproving eyes

 

The lipstick and phrasebook

She kept in her purse

She had a duty to Europe and a travellers curse

Taken for five weeks, with a passport in hand

With pathetic timing

Save the romancing kind

We had similar accents and different coloured eyes

We danced on the red tape the embassy did demand

Then a plane went north on a stinking night in my head

Leaving long john notes and an extra space in my bed

Is the Ambassador dead?

 

Sad songs had me doubled over on the warehouse floor

Sleep came to my diet but I wanted so much more

And I yearned for the photographs, clippings and notes that she sent from the aeroplanes buses and boats

And like green to a field that has been burned

The ambassador returned 

With the speed of sound

Of promises fulfilled with the touch of aeroplane wheels on the ground

The Ambassador has won

And the stupid passers by

Couldn’t see the history we made in their disapproving eyes

The Ambassador has come

 

Aeroplane Dreams

 

Baby, I’ve been having Aeroplane Dreams

I’ve been fraying at the seams

Each time you’re gone

I’m running

Through an empty customs gate

And by a tragic twist of fate

I get it wrong

 

Baby, Aeroplane dreams

They run right over me

The lights don’t shine on me

Don’t shine at all

Aeroplane dreams

They take you further from where you belong

 

There’s a shadow

Hanging on my bedroom door

And it grows each time you’re gone

It getting broad

You see me 

As a halo in the wind

Like a weather damaged wing

A precious stone

 

I hold on to you

My mind holds both your hands

But when I wake up you’re not there

 

 

 

Skin Hunger

When all that you wanted was me

Then the baby you felt kick inside

The house and the land would cause ruin

You’ll never be satisfied

You’re not satisfied

You’re spirit grows cold

But with every new trinket

For a moment you glow

 

You couldn’t give what I give

I couldn’t take what you take

The hunger strike silence 

Covers our hours

With all of the love we don’t make

You never want me to leave

You say that it hurts where I touch

You say I never tell you I love you, you say I love you too much

 

The silence grows heavy on us

 

The baby night cry is a hall

I wonder if you hear it at all

I pad down the floor wearing thin

Wearing my skin down to skin

You turn in your sleep

A jittery body of stone

Even here inside your dreams

It’s worn like it isn’t your own

 

You couldn’t give what I give

I couldn’t take what you take

The hunger strike silence 

Covers our hours

With all of the love we don’t make

You never want me to leave

You say that it hurts where I touch

You say I never tell you I love you, you say I love you too much

 

Honey I can only give, I’m programmed to bleed into dust

You make me as grey as the dawn you make me as strong as you must

 

Polish my place on the floor 

Bounced between two yielding walls

Just wait til the door opens wide

It’s into you that I fall

 

I couldn’t give what you give

You wouldn’t take what I take

The hunger strike silence finally broken

With all of the love you can’t fake

I never want you to leave

Sometimes I bleed when you touch

You say I never tell you I love you, 

You know I love you too much

 

The Cardinal

One day the Cardinal was staring at his door

With a teacup in his hand and his mind empty of patience

I have none of the grace, he cried , that I am searching for

I am a body without urges

I’m a mind turned in on itself

 

Surely the fishermen did not intend to hide

The word in golden suitcases where nothing can be found

I am so tired of my life and of my pious pride

I care nothing for my legacy

Or what the pontiff wants me to be.

 

I am sure that something deep within my robes

Wants me here alive

I am bound to cause you agony 

Just to see

If every crucifixion victim

Is praying to survive

 

The Cardinal, he went outside

With a gun in hand

He shot a turtledove back down

As if escaped the Vatican

He stared at the Cardinal’s crest

Created by a bullet and a man

The doves eye was a peace

The wound was slowly yawning

The Cardinal, he looked skywards and he said

I have given you fair warning

 

Slowly bleeds a saviour

Deeply dives a dove

Inside the skin of all the red blood of a Cardinal

Waiting

For God’s love

 

Velvet

 

So you’ve been, down this way before

So I won’t mention the monkey at the door

Subtle earthquakes, shaken with a paw

There’s a problem with a girl

She’ll crawl inside a bottle made of stone

When she’s comes, the magic’s all her own

Lights out, tides are moving slow

This is how Perry Mason felt

 

It just lies at the top of your bed,

It’s all in your head, all in my head 

Then she’ll come around

Hold me down Velvet 

Sorted me out, sorted me out

 

She’ll turns away

To a temple made of walrus and tradies and images of clay

The worry creeps back into her head

She only needs a friend tonight

But you keep the rabbit in the crosshairs of your site.

 

It just lies at the top of your bed,

It’s all in your head, all in my head 

Then she’ll come around

Hold me down Velvet 

Sorted me out, sorted me out and the press sleep again

You’re talking through wounds, wounds that speak louder, 

The more that you clench them, the more that I move

Hold me down Velvet sorted me out 

 

She won’t pass me a body already betrayed her

But I can rock you through the night

 

 

Eliza and Cormac

 

You never stop asking me why

Your future cut like tiger stripes across the sky

Your laughter pulls me from a dream

Eliza Jean

 

You are the mark left in the sand

I’ve touched a planet in the palm of your hand

Your pulse means we’ve won each game

Cormac James

 

Between the days the night time finds its place

The world is gold and quiet when my hands can touch your face

I close my eyes you both remain

Eliza Jean and Cormac James

 

 

This Falling Man

 

The central explanation was a place that I could run to

When the word fell from papers declaring me the walking dead

God dances high upon the waves of the pacific and she whispers that she loves me but to you it is unsaid

A cross, a cross a crossing is a journey to an ending 

To a place inside a circle carved into a prison wall

And I can wear a cross just as the paper wears a crest it is a 

Free countries insignia, officious and small

 

I have learned to dance inside my chest

My daughters will be free to feed the babies at their breast

Even birds that fly are trapped by feathers

You cannot let me live outside these walls

 

I know that it will end with a face a prayer an agony 

That’s done in Allah’s name or at the pleasure of a lord

But if I know I’m transient a name written upon a beach a song into the wind I will not fear the final sword

Although my lips will never feel the air of sweet Australia, 

My hands not rake its dirt, my tongue not taste it’s fruit

I am as free as fire that will burn all of my papers

That will swallow all my ashes, I am my own tribute

 

The passing of the hours and the love of my daughters

Are the only things remaining in my life still wholly true

In order to escape those men I had to become one of them

I could not fool them again, although I have fooled you

I am tainted by my enemy, whose shadow lays within me

Tainting all the prayers I sing each hour I’m alive

My hands are not bloodless and my soul is not a hero’s 

That the children of a hero, would never have survived

 

 

 

 

Blissful

 

Bliss, 

Knowing that there is no end

Knowing surely that I’ll end

And in the end.