The mouth of the river is overflowing
I guess it's clearing it's throat.
You've cut down all the trees in town,
But you don't know how to build a boat.

So it looks like the flood will make us all drown.
But let's just see how well we all float.
The witch hunters were not playing around,
So now we're all tangled up in rope.

The cat is out the bag
But the bag is in the river
And sinking down we have just found
The (death) bed.

Even Mushroom Clouds Have A Silver Lining.

I want to see this city in flames.
I want to cast a fucking plague.
Let it rain.
Oh, let it rain.

And clean these shitty streets
Restart this heart so it beats
For something
That's not just in vain.

We're all dead, we just don't know it yet.
So go out and take everything you can get.
I can't wait for the south to sink,
It seems the price of hope is disappointment.

There is no ambition here.
When will what we've done become something real?
You all fail me,
Because every time's the same.

This web we tried to weave,
Didn't catch a fucking thing.
So now let's tear it apart
And start again.

If you're thinking what I'm thinking
Then you'll see the south is sinking.
The city's dying, let's pull the plug and run.
Because these roads don't feel like they hold homes,
They just host the weights that will make us drown,
But we're too jaded now to ever die young.

This is dead, poisoned by regrets.
So let's look to see what we can kill next.
I can't wait for the south to sink,
It seems the price of hope is disappointment.

The darkest hour chimes and I have been waiting so long
To exercise my right to enjoy that what I'm told is wrong.
For now the time has come and so yes I will slake my thirst
For carnage, for trauma, to maul, rape, maim and worse.


Light from your bedroom window, like a beacon beckoning.
Fight me if you must, just know that I will not give in.
Your wrists and ankles pinned in the name of sheer atrocity
A microcosmic example of this sick society.



Do not fight, do not resist me, I will enter all your homes.
Such barbaric savagery, should surely remain unknown.
Yet here I am, the harbinger, the deliverer of such filth.
The bringer of pure violation, the ironic emblem of this bilge.


The downfall of all you hold dear and simply nothing less.
Until you weep and bleed and wail my crusade will not rest.
My mission paradoxically pure, so simple is my cause
To remove all your security, to forever alter your thoughts.
Fuck.


And so as blood red morning breaks, my work here is completed
All your infantile faith in the human race stands utterly depleted.
You ask, how could this happen to a little one, in an innocent existance?
My answer is not my own, for I channel a world so fucking twisted.

The moves I make are consequences of strings pulled by our culture.
The lives I take are offerings to this warped icon sculpture.
If contemporary life has lead to the skin deep being hailed, extemporised
Does it not follow in this order that the beautiful ones are sacrificed?

Can you not see that this horror is but your own creation?
A promise I fulfil, but made to you by your own mother nation?
Feed the best ones to our deity, we must please the gods night after night.
If must breed the strong to cut them down, then forever I shall bear the scythe.

a bit of a weird, fucked up, moralistic stream of consciousness, about celebrity/western culture, superficiality, society in general, and american psycho.

We are not well, we are not well.
Why do we put up with this living hell?
This weight around our necks
Is a locket made of everything.
And it gives us these stories to tell.

These tales to scream at mirrors
'Cause your reflection isn't there.
Everything cracked when your mouth opened.
Except me and how I care.

I'm saying goodbye to everyone
But I'm not going anywhere.

We are young, we are young
Yet we live like our days are nearly done.
These shackles at our feet
Can't keep you from leaving
But they mean I can't even run.

You could leave and come back a thousand times,
You could move around and live a thousand lives,
I think I'll always wish you were the love of mine,
I think I never want to open my eyes.

I don't want to see I'm all alone
But I don't think I am fine.
I know I was never perfect
But you and me were so alike.

From Beyond

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Beyond_(short_story)

I have taken this science
And forged a chemical axe.
I have carved a great divide,
Tearing open my third eye.

They are just on the other side of the mind.
And I have broken a hole in the wall, and pulled it so wide.

We are shattering the crystalline
Gates inside my own head.
And crowning this feeble spine,
Lurks the trapdoor through which we ascend.

I have evolved
To a new plane of life.
A new realm of horror.

I am meeting that which comes from beyond.
I am awake and alive and alone and all gone.

This drama has been going on for weeks,
And the doctors have got all the best seats
To watch it all unfold,
So we do directly what we're told.

But there are no prizes and there are no awards
'Cause we're behind a hospital ward's closed doors.
And with the curtain creeping closed on my shining star
I wish I wasn't so sure
There will not be an encore.

Us actors, playing the roles of our lives,
Praying to be fed our lines,
About the things we silently feel
Yet can't script ourselves without it sounding much too real.

But there are no prizes and there are no awards
'Cause we're behind a hospital ward's closed doors.
And now the spotlight's getting dimmer on my leading girl
I wish I wasn't so sure
There will not be an encore.

I'll find the writer of this story
And beg for the ending to be changed.

Because it's getting so close but I'm still so sorry,
I'm not ready to go alone on this grandest stage.

And there are no prizes and there are no awards
'Cause we're behind a hospital ward's closed doors.
And there's no flowers flooding in from the crowd,
There's no cries from the dark, not a single sound
And I wish to God I wasn't so sure

There will not be an encore.

Hahahaha... I've been writing for a good few years now, and ignoring the somewhat shameful fact that nothing has ever really 'come of it', it's been a fun & useful way of expressing myself, the various good and bad times I've had. This particular song, I think I wrote when I was about 17, and listening to a lot of poppy emo. I really like it still because it reminds of being that age, and falling for someone for the first time, but at the same time, the current me is getting massive laughs from reading it.

I
am
pretty sure that I
am
all you could ask for
You
are
so pretty I'm sure we'd be good.

It's not
just
something physical. You
must
be some kind of miracle
I've
got
this feeling it feels how it would

If I were in love and if I'd found
The girl of my dreams so stick around.
When I wake up in the morning
I want you there.
I never thought I'd get what I want
But what I need I might have just got.
Cos I assure you, it's a sure thing
I'll always care.

As long as you'd like me to,
I will have eyes only for you.
No one I know
Can compare.
Only while you want me to,
I will do anything for you
Just to show
I'll always care
As long as you'd love me to...

And even
If
We are only ever friends, hear
This
How I feel now may never end
This
Is
A chance I'll take cos I know I should,
This must feel like it would

If I were in love and if I'd found
The girl of my dreams so stick around.
When I wake up in the morning
I want you there.
I never thought I'd get what I want
But what I need I might have just got.
Cos I assure you, it's a sure thing
I'll always care.

Fail.

It's far from a secret I like thrash/death, so here's my shot at just writing gory & cheesy as fuck metal.

Nearly dead, severed leg, blood is everywhere
Artery, crimson spray, misting in the air
All alone, far from home, I don't want to die
Gone insane from the pain, one thing left to try...

Turning white, seeing the light
Life just ebbing away.
Plunging a knife into my own insides
Making an intestinal tourniquet.

Handful after handful of my own guts
Come glistening into view
No other option, if I'm to survive
Then this is what I have to do

Stretch my bodies organs
Wrap them round the wound
Already the flies are feasting on me
The stench of my innards makes me want to puke
I'm festering, convulsing, a vile corpse to be.

Paler than bone, dying alone
Penance for my panicked state.
Bloodless by my own hand, I cut myself in half
To tie off my intestinal
(The pain's infinitesimal)
(Rotting body festival)
Flesh tourniquet

Exhale this history.
Then listen for the fanfare of a coming age.
The sound of tomorrow, coming home today.
The trumpets playing.
The crowds are gathered to celebrate.


And none of it's good enough.


Erase this history.
Wipe out the work and bury the evidence.
Burn all these headlines.
The flashbulbs like mushroom clouds.
Inhale, breathe deeply.
Choke.
Choke.

I was a bit of a mess when I wrote this, but upon reflection its either about how the superficiality of the mass media would trivialise even the end of the world, or about how a relationship could completely fall apart, but material things can remain and remind and hurt. I don't honestly know.

You were the pinnacle.
You were the peak.
You were the strongest, making it through the weeks.
They are the poorest, despite their wealth.
They are the sickest, despite their health.
They are the coldest, despite their houses and their heat.

What a fucking travesty,
A state sponsored tragedy.
You may be cold and gone,
But you're not the one who's dead to me.

Passers by, living up to their name.
Every single one should feel ashamed.
They never broke her, though, even at the end,
When the rules of the system just refused to bend.

It's a disgrace how easily they refuse.
When have they ever had to choose
Between risking life and facing death
Or losing the little they have left?

I hope your flowers grow from the ground you're in now.
And I hope you can forgive us all, some way and some how.
And I hope they can't fucking sleep at night.
Because people like you are finally on their mind.

http://www.b3ta.com/questions/tramps/post472804
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/7861600.stm

Curtains Up, Party Down.

Set dancemoves to rock n' roll.
And set minds to sex and drugs.
This floor is far too empty.
Time for me to take it up a notch.

Get busy or get gone.
Set fire to this hall.
It's friday night spotlight on me, motherfucker.
And I will show you all.

So let's kick it off with a bang.
Let's drink all night, let's fuck, let's fight.
Goddamn, come on.
I'm going flat out til I pass out, baby.
Is that so wrong?

You know you're a real great girl
Why don't you come home with me?
In the morning I'll be sad to see you go.
But I'll love watching you leave.

The glitterball's got me spinning in circles.
I love being blinded by the lights.
I can't see, I can't speak, cos it's the end of the week
And fuck yeah, I finally feel alright.

So let's kick it off with a bang.
Let's drink all night, let's fuck, let's fight.
Goddamn, come on.
I'm going flat out til I pass out, baby.
Is that so wrong?

This is the first song on the rock n roll album I'm building in my head; hence the first part of the title. The other part should be self explanatory.

Dreaming of Indianapolis

"This next ones about killing yourself by getting a shark to eat you."

Out here, so dark, surrounded by fucking sharks.
This rain, this ocean, I'm drowning in slow motion.

The open air is killing me, I'm finding it so hard to breathe.
Don't know how long I've been drifting for.
The man in the moon is my only friend, but no good at conversation.
I don't want to carry on anymore.

Slit my wrists and thrust them under the tides, the water's reddening tonight.
They'll smell this from a quarter mile, and I will wait for the bite.
The bloody ocean waves are crashing up against this raft.
This life will end piece by piece.
Thank you, my beloved shark.

Please come, please take me, let your daggers rape me
I'm gone, I'm finished, the will to live is totally diminished

Sandpaper brushes on my skin, I want the bastards to begin
I know the beasts are circling me.
With my hands beneath the water level, I scream for the black eyed devils
No trace of my long gone sanity

Then one by one I feel their bites, the water's reddening tonight
I'm limbless but pacified, knowing it's the end of my life
Their frenzied jaws are driving razors through my heart
My life's over, I'm released
Eaten alive by fucking sharks.

Casting Our Crowns

I'm not sure I want to be there when you head down the aisle.
I'm not sure that I could stand it, though dear Lord I'll try.
You know, I remember how you said you'd always light my life.
Said you would live with me, said you would be my wife.

In a small church we gathered, to open up and let out love.
The service served it's purpose, then we went outside in the sun.
Songs still ringing in my ears, as the corners of my eyes were cradling tears.
In a church yard we gathered, and I just wanted to run.

You see I want to see you happy,
But I want you to understand
That what I want more than anything
Is just to still be your man.

Because kisses on pine boxes can sometimes be enough to say
How you loved someone and how you wish they could stay.
And kisses on pine boxes can sometimes be enough to say
That you'll miss someone so much, but that you'll be ok.

If I could only tell you all the things I've never said.
I'd never have to write or speak or sing like this again.

I wish you the best.
And I wish that I can give you that.
And I wish for nothing less.

Six Shooter

If we're just warships that passed at sea in the night,
Then the daybreak took a long long time.
You are full of life, a floating vessel.
I am the Marie Celeste, I am a listless ghost now.

There wasn't even a warning shot across the bows.

No cannonball, no smoke, no flame?
Not now, not ever again.

If we're just grains of dust in a desert
Then there's a breeze blowing us apart.
But if we should meet soon, one hot high noon
Let's just aim for each other's hearts.

Burden down these bullets broken from the start.

Steady hands and sharp eyes to counteract these cool winds.
Feels like the end is rolling in.

So don't you use your words as weapons,
I'm scared you'll run out of rounds.
Six shooters soon get empty.
And I know I'll be counting down.

So if we keep it calm then maybe
No one has to feel a thing.
Let's lay down our arms and shut our mouths.
And keep pretending.

6)Everything
5)is
4)going
3)to 2)be 1)alright.

When I Sleep I Dream Of Forever

Tonight is the night, for love to come on home.
What gives hindsight the right to show us what we've always known? I'm so sorry.
We can't talk the way we used to.
But it seems I can't sing about anything other than you.
And I bet you don't think about me anymore.
There's no winner here, I don't think we can settle this score.

They said we could live our dreams, if we pray each night before we sleep.
I'd pray someone could sew us back together, but I'm afraid of what I'd reap, and I'm sorry.
Cut the tension with a knife, when we're in the same room.
Open my mouth and watch the air turn blue.
And I can't write without spelling your name somehow
In words and shapes and phrases, I can't quite let you out

You,
A colour in a black and white crowd,
You,
The sun behind my clouds,
You
Lightning at the bottom of a bottle
You
A memory better off forgotten
But I can't quite let you out.

Tonight is the night, for love to hit home.
Time has gone by, but I don't think that I've grown, and I'm sorry.
I ran away when I could have fought this fight.
But I lose time and time again, thinking of you every day of my life.
And I hope you still think of me, hope I'm still afloat in your own ocean.
If I wash up on your shore, would you cure me of how I've been left floating?
Love me or leave me be, just set me free.
I'm sorry.

Mannequins.

You're not even real.
You're a page in a book, you're a scene in a photograph.
Changing costume every hour, of every day, living life at twenty four frames per second.

You're not real.
You're a congregation of other people's ideas.

You're a confirmation of all your own worst fears.

And when no one yells CUT just what are you going to do?
They say the whole world is a stage, I guess you must think it's true.
But does it fuck you up to think that the curtain's calling soon?
You've been read cover to cover too, and this is our overall review.

You're not real, you're just a collection of stolen trends.
You're not real, you're just tied together loose ends.
You're a congregation of bad ideas.
This is a confirmation of all you've feared.
You're not real.
So how could we ever be friends?

I Simply Am Not Here

I have a narrator sitting right behind my eyes.
Tonight we hear the voices outside, it's 3am and I'm fucking wired.
He tells me:
"Go run in the streets, run wild, ruin all you meet, run wild run wild
And don't stop til you're stopped, don't stop til you're stopped, don't stop don't stop run wild."


It's walking through the town and knowing enough is enough.
It's taking a look around and realising there is nothing you could love.
It's outstaying a welcome that was never really there.
It's feeling like theres nothing to be done when you used to care.
It's the end.


Served up on a silver plate made from all the spoons from our infant mouths.
Living beyond our means has meant we're far from living.


I don't see a hope anymore.
We are all monsters undercover, we are all worthless at our core.
This is why we weave webs of lies.
To protect one another because the truth is something I'd rather hide away from.

I woke up to a choir singing right outside my door...

The World Is My Oyster, And It Tastes Like Shit.

Fingers in my eyes, the blind leading the blind.
Dragging myself to the brink of a black hole.
Hand over mouth, speak no evil, speak nothing at all.
The streets are filled with... no, say nothing at all.
Yet they are happy.
Little multiples of the one viral cell.
Coupled up like links in a fence.
(Asking nothing)
I can't help but question the direction I'm heading.
Cut away my body from all sense.

There is an abstraction.
There is an image.
There is nothing I want more than for this all to finish.
Feeding myself distractions.
Hiding from the sky that's falling.
I think I can catch it all. I know I could catch it all.

Rebuild it into a stairway to heaven.
And arrive at the gates as a trojan horse.

Someone's levelled the buildings for miles.
Someone's opened up the horizon, it's too horrible to take in.
Someone's given me freedom, and now my body's caving.
The question I'm always asking:

How can I love someone else
When I can't even love myself?

I will take and take and bleed you dry
And all you will do is love me. I'm so sorry.

A Liferaft Built Of Bricks.

You'll never reach your own ocean going this way, and I will show no pity,
You're being buried alive, immersed in a concrete grave shaped like a city.
And the town has tamed your tiger, and its tale's been heard before.
Repetition has blunted the bite and claws, and no-one's listening anymore.

Smothered in bright colours, seeing stars in your short sighted eyes,
Comfortable in the superficial, sleeping heavily on thin ice.
Caught up in patterns, ever changing stripes and spots and this year's way to escape the truth.
Sailing on together, trying to believe the waves will favour youth.

Each other's shipmate. Each other's life-saver. There's rot, under the water level. There's a hole in the hull and you're sinking, you're sinking.

Regurgitate the words you ate, then spit up all the sentences.
Take back every time you promised me anything.
My cocoon's torn open, I'm blooming and growing,
And your promises are unkept, you're where you've always been.

We're looping like a record that's out of things to say.

One way conversations are all you get when you talk to mirrors anyway.

Those lights on the horizon are our home, and they feel so far away.

When I sleep I dream forever, I feel so tethered when I wake.

The seed that split and grew us both was never meant to tear in two.
There's something wrong with the hymn sheet, still we sing the same tunes.
The spotlight we were born to share shines only on you.
I am awestruck, I am headfucked, I am contented and confused.

Sister of mine, what have you done to me? Broken your promises, borderline lied to me.
Sister of mine, I only bring honesty. I am jealous, I am sick. I am my enemy, I am full of envy.
It's not like I never told you all of my desires.
Remember that night you said my sparks could start off the biggest fires?

We used to be each other's open books.
Pages constantly being written and read as we lived, and we loved.
But we seem to have bled this 'family' dry, we're frail and fragile and brittle.
I think we've read each other far too much.
We've read each other far too much.
This story's done.

Burn our tales to start a funeral pyre.

*this note comes to you in new and improved form, aka, it has been edited*

If anyone reads this and actually cares about my never-quite-there musical efforts, here are a bunch of titles that I plan to put to some instrumental songs that I might make, at some point, someday.

Welcome Home, Great Provider.
Lay Your Skin To The Ground.
Crucifixion Platform.
Smoking In The Cancer Ward.
Vancouver.
When I Sleep I Dream Of Forever.
Small/Far Away/Small.
Invisibility As Beauty.
3 A.M. Phonecall
And You Shall Go To The Stars!

Originally the sound I had in mind was a post-rock sort of thing, but recently a lot of electronic music has started to click with me, which coupled with the realism of getting a band together, has lead me to re-interpret my ideas. So, using my laptop, guitars, and almost anything I can get my hands on as long as it makes a sound I like, I'm going to try to make something, and I'm going to bear the following in mind and occasionally ask 'what would xxxx do?':

Godspeed You Black Emperor, Telefon Tel Aviv, Royksopp, M83, Russian Circles, Explosions In The Sky, Boards Of Canada, My Bloody Valentine.

Hopefully, updates will ensue..

So today I finally thought of a name for this whole never-quite-off-the-ground thing I'm doing.

Emblem.

em·blem
n.
1. An object or a representation that functions as a symbol.
2. A distinctive badge, design, or device.
3. An allegorical picture usually inscribed with a verse or motto presenting a moral lesson.

I think it's fitting.

Title Me Please.

This one's about how sometimes my favourite bands can express how I'm feeling better than I ever could; how music can make me feel in love with being alive. I've slipped in lyrics and references as 'nods' to the bands in question too. How many can you pick up on?

We’ve forgotten how to have a good time
We go out but we keep it straight faced
We talk about life and loss and love
Forgive me if I sometimes see that as a waste.

We’ll all lie in graves with regrets
So why are we spending our lives under such restraint?
I’d rather face an awkward morning after
Than another boring respectable night...

Lose some sleep and say you tried,
Lets go and play crack the sky,
If you’re learning to live then now is the time
To make mistakes
Who destroyed your appetite?
You’re in the middle of the ride.
Let the glory of love make you feel alive,
For your own sake.

So when you hear a sad song, cry a little
And when you fall in love, fall hard.
The contents of your photo frames can always be replaced and changed
But you should always be proud of your scars.

You know I’m sorry but I’m sick
Of our pillow talk being politics.
There are kids who would kill for this...
Yeah, just a little bit.

And there are better ways to see my point of view,
Songs that could show you better than I could do.
That’s why I’m singing them now,
So you might stop to look around...

Do you think everything will stay this way forever?
Do you think anything will ever feel this good again?
I think not.

Lose some sleep and say you tried,
Lets go and play crack the sky,
If you’re learning to live then now is the time
To make mistakes.
Who destroyed your appetite?
You’re in the middle of the ride.
Let the glory of love make you come alive,
For your own sake.

Reasons Not To Sleep Tonight

Give me all you've got, give me your best shot
I've got a glass fucking jaw.
But you should know, that with every blow
I resolve to take one more.

All you can do is push me back,
One day I'll find a breakthrough.
Past all this shit, I'll never quit,
Finding ways to scream fuck you.

This world is abysmal, so fucking dismal, filled with hate and war
But we're all miracles, we could be incredible, we are not a lost cause.

We can fight this fucking world.
We can fall in love.
We can win this war with ourselves.
Just never give up.

We are all so beautiful, I feel duty bound to shoot for the stars.
Never let anyone tell you our dreams cannot be ours.

My every breath is a fuck you.

This life is hell but we live it anyway.
Because we all hope tomorrow will be a better day.