LYRIC: Too

Too many observations

Too many notebooks filled

Too many creative outlets

Too many darlings killed

Too many lyrics sang to no one

Too many words unread

Too many ideas unwanted

Too much repeating what I said

Too much repeating what I said

Too free to be worth buying

Too hard a friend to keep

Too blunt in conversation

Too much the grandson of a priest

Too canary in the coal mine

Too much the spectre at the feast

Too straightedge for your parties

Too many questions probing deep

Too many questions probing deep

Too broken to get better

Too hopeful for despair

Too jaded by the bullshit

Too stubborn not to care

Too stubborn not to care

Too lacking references and mentors

Too few accomplishments of note

Too many other candidates competing

Too many of us stuck in the same boat

Too out of practice for the journals

Too everyday and imprecise

Too radical to take a chance on

Too much lost to a different life

Too much lost to a different life

Too honest for the classroom

Too much daily mental toll

Too few visions of what comes after

Too much losing of my soul

There’s too much losing of my soul  

Too much damage to stay longer

Too many things this system lacks

Too many structural complications

Too many years I won’t get back

Too many reasons for inaction

Too much I’ve sweat and too much I have have bled

Too used to comfort and to routine

Too easy staying ‘til I’m dead

To whom it may concern

Too often now I feel such dread

Too many sleepless nights

Too much repeating what I said

Too much repeating what I said

LYRIC: The Christmas That I Could Have Died

Last Christmas I had COVID 19

And the very next day I still had COVID 19

Because it turns out that motherfucker stays for a while

This Christmas as the tree lights shine

And Cliff Richard sings of Mistletoe and Wine

I can’t help thinking ‘bout the Christmas that I could have died

It’s been nearly two years since this virus first arrived

And it’s easy to forget we’ve been lucky to survive

So far

So far

Last Christmas there was no vaccine

And very few treatments waiting under the tree

So I’ll raise a glass that my white cells did their job

This Christmas I’m at least double vaxxed

But the variants are coming out thick and fast

And I can’t help thinking ‘bout the Christmas that I could have died

Because all around me at this special time of year

Masks start to slip to sing a song of Christmas cheer

Too close

Too fucking close

Last Christmas I had COVID 19

And the very next year there is still lots to fear

But you wouldn’t know it from the tinsel on the street

This Christmas I’d love to let go

But the daily infection numbers grow 

And I can’t help thinking ‘bout the Christmas that I could have died

Trying to eat a mince pie with no smell or taste

Hoping I wouldn’t be the next they’d ventilate

Too many Christmas dinners have less mouths to feed

This year

But we’ve survived 

So far

LYRIC: Condemned To Repeat

Sometimes poetry just obscures

What should be simply said

When fuck the police says it all

Why use more words than are needed?

When you mean to say

fuck the government

Why say anything else

Than fuck the government?

When you just want to tell racists

to go and fuck themselves,

Phobics, incels, sexists and fascists

Why bother couch it in rhyme?

Metaphor can muddy the waters

So let’s now be crystal clear

Some lyrics are for high theory

But you’ll find none of that here

Just Fuck the police

Fuck the government too

To the racists, and sexists, and fascists

Fuck you

Fuck our silent politeness

Fuck my privileged whiteness

Time to say what we mean

In a world that’s obscene

Fuck you sad homophobics

Can’t you recognise love?

Fuck you bi and transphobics

Ain’t life hard enough?

Fuck your gods and your masters

unmasked anti-vaxxers

Fuck all the blind eyes

To our climate disaster

Fuck the billionaire bastards

Leave them all up in space

Fuck the phone in our hands

For the time that it wastes

Fuck all systems of oppression

history’s unlearnt lessons

We’re condemned to repeat/ Condemned to repeat

LYRIC: I’m Sick of All the Hustle

I’m sick of all the hustle

Life shouldn’t be this hard

It isn’t admirable 

how close to the line you are

Or how much you may have struggled

Your way up from the streets

Because everything you needed

Should’ve already been on every street

Right from the start

We shouldn’t celebrate this 

badly broken system

By making role models of 

The ones who wouldn’t let it kill them

Ignoring all the others

Too tired to take up arms

The ones without a choice but

To succumb to its harm 

Forty years of nine to five

You never missed a single payment

But you missed a whole lot of birthdays

And you never spent a single day fulfilled

We glorify this bullshit

How hard we work to make ends meet

How long we fought to make it 

The things we did so we could eat

And it serves only the system

The one that fails us every day

A fairy tale pretending

Things can’t be another way

Than the way they say

All we ever needed

Already it exists

But has been stolen from us

For somebody’s profits

To keep us all exploited

As if it is the natural way

But we could change the whole world

By changing everything today

But I’m sick of all the hustle 

LYRIC: Alternatives To Extinction

Eyes feel like they’re bleeding

Sucked dry by hungry screens

Lost with my attention

I’ve no more fucks to give

The sheer fucking stupidity

Of basically

everyone

Makes it very very hard for me

To want to see

Alternatives to extinction

I have to remember

It’s not entirely their fault

Advertising works

And it shits in your head each day

Don’t believe me?  Well I wrote this song

On an expensive phone

That I didn’t need

After playing mindless video games

On a new console

That I could not afford

More shoes than I have feet

More wants than I have needs

When the headlines sell you

Distorted narratives

And when your best friends share you

Propaganda clips

What chance have you got to know a thing?

Beyond echoing

The way that choirs sing

The conductor’s baton’s tightening

It’s so frightening

How much we are losing

The sheer fucking stupidity/ Of basically/ everyone/ Makes it very very hard for me/ To want to see/ Alternatives to extinction

ALTERNATIVES TO EXTINCTION

LYRIC: Profitganda (The New Variant)

I’ve been told to go to work and that it’s not a threat

By the propaganda spewed by business and government

We must do our jobs but not ask the reasons why

To keep our masters rich so many might have to die?

Essential work must still be done 

so society can run

Inessential work, meanwhile, 

exposes exploitation’s smile

We were told two metres – 

then just one inside a shop

Consume just as you did before, 

until you start to cough…

Think twice about the information you’re fed

Whose interests is it in?

It’s profits over people in the modern age

Do you think they care if you die?

It’s their money they want – not you – the money not you

Are we being told the full story?

What’s being kept out and what’s being put in?

The state controls the information and they want you back at work

If you believe everything you read you’re likely to get hurt

We’ll just tell them it’s safe now, 

But we can’t quite explain how

Take your masks off to eat out, 

but it’s not you who it helps out

We were told to stay at home

but not how we’d pay the bills

Forced the poor out into harm’s way 

so friends’ pockets could be filled 

Refused to learn from the past

Put us at risk to do pointless tasks

Eased the lockdown too fast

Encouraged not wearing masks

When you read more than briefings say

And listen to scientists

The evidence just overwhelms

How badly our government fucked this

Think twice about the information you’re fed

Whose interests is it in?

It’s profits over people in the modern age

Do you think they care if you die?

It’s their money they want – not you – the money not you

I won’t die to increase your wealth 

Hands/Face/Space/Stay Alert

LYRIC: Stay Alert

Stay alert

Stay alert

Incompetence is coming for our life

Stay alert

Stay alert

To how they’re making us a sacrifice

Stay alert to their propaganda

Bold faced lies told with fake candour

In the name of ideology

Stay alert to manipulation

Distortion of the situation

Put us at risk for their economy 

Stay alert

Stay alert

To how the world transformed so easily

Stay alert

Stay alert

To all they do not want for us to see

Stay alert to the latest branding

Designed to twist our understanding

Repeat their slogan in our Twitter feed

Stay alert: their green and yellow warning

Suddenly the truth is dawning

They do not give a shit about you or me

So Stay Alert

LYRIC: With Burning Anger

With burning anger I

Sing songs written in my youth

Furious that the 

lyrics still apply

Police brutality, government lies

Capitalism Sucks, innocents die

The Profitganda media march us to war

The rich getting richer the poor staying poor

With burning anger I

Watch the daily proof

A vindication I wish 

I wish was not the truth

Same ideologies/different hairstyles

Progress Ever Backwards for another few miles

Fat on Junk Food News and Culturally Dead

I Fear For The World, cuz it’s losing it’s head 

Is This What Democracy Looks Like?

Surely There Must Be More Than This To Life?

Or are we Too Lazy To Live?

With burning anger I

Write another song

Familiar lyrics

Until the problem’s gone

I stared at my navel but now I am back

To point out our failings and show where we lack

I play this guitar with burning anger 

We’re still Not The Good Guys

And we never were

LYRIC: The Things We Do To Pay The Bills

I exist behind a guise

Crushed beneath professional hair

Cannot breathe inside this suit

The one I swore I’d never wear

They were the worst days of my life

Yet I’m back inside in that cell

The one I thought I had escaped

The one that I always called hell

The things we do to pay the bills

Can make us strangers to ourselves

If only I could see me now

But I have become someone else

In my bathroom there’s a mirror

But staring back at me

Unrecognizable reflection

Pseudo identity

I plaster on my daily smile

The one the world expects

I turn away and close the door

My tie a noose around my neck

I hear the words fall from my throat

Saying things I don’t believe

Same old stories I was told

The ones from which I had been freed

Until I had masters to please

Bosses I’m forced to obey

The evil’s always so banal

When normalised as just another day

The things we do to pay the bills

Would make our younger selves blush red

If only I could see me now

But the me I was is dead

In my bathroom there’s a mirror

But staring back at me

Unrecognizable reflection

Pseudo identity

I plaster on my daily smile

The one the world expects

I turn away and close the door

My tie a noose around my neck

Life – 

binding me, 

hiding me, 

holding me prisoner, 

entwining me

Now I need, 

to break free, 

now I need to begin finding me

Finding me

LYRIC: To All My Almost Friends

It’s hard to find others

When you keep losing yourself

But harder to lose them

Because they wanted someone else

Think you’ve found a home

But it’s just foster care again

A temporary reprieve 

Until you’re out the door again

I don’t mean to be so difficult

But I will always speak my mind

The ones who like what they hear

Are the ones I need to find

Each time I’ve found my tribe

All too soon I don’t belong

Think that I’ve found my people

But soon find out I was wrong

Each time that I’m welcomed

I’m too soon shown to the door

I show the world who I am

It never asks for an encore

I don’t mean to be so difficult…

I light my beacon, hopeful

It will attract like-minded light

The beacon’s glow starts to smoulder…

Fades, unseen, into the night

I shout these words out in rhythm

Write down who I am in rhyme

My voice is a constant prayer

In a world with no divine

I don’t mean to be so difficult…

But I’m not changing for acceptance

Because those who get it, get it

And those who don’t…

…Were never worth the time

LYRIC: Searching For That Scene

I’m still searching for the scene

Dreamed of in the suburbs

Listening to records of a past already dead

Because where do you go when you want to be you

But you want to be you in a place which no longer exists?

I’m still searching for that scene

We dined on leftovers long out of date, hoping

the next meal would bring nourishment not more empty stomachs

But there’s only so many disappointing rooms taunting

Before you realise this is all you are gonna get

I’m still searching for that scene

Sending out messages in cut and paste, 

With a self-addressed 

Envelope 

To rusting PO Boxes only answered 

By the heroes we were told to never meet

Ahead of our time, we lived in the past

Unable to bridge the gap between the then and now

We were children hunting down an impossible dream

One from which they can’t seem to shake me quite awake.

I’m still searching for that scene

LYRIC: Bursting From The Grave

Just as fucked up as I ever was

Maybe fucked up a little more

The damage of a life lived wide awake

While other people close their eyes

I cut my hair sometimes to celebrate

To mark another minor liberation

You join the dots of every scar

They come together and they form a mask

That’s far too easy to slip on

I find myself when I refuse

When I raise two middle fingers at the world

Bursting from the grave

I gasp deep at the fresh air

A zombie roaming empty streets

Finding myself, Piece by piece

Just in time for them 

To bury me alive again

I find myself in my old notebooks

Which read the same as this one now

And listening back to all those favourite songs

Which never fail to make me feel

The way I felt listening for the first time

I wear myself upon my sleeve

In new tattoos and ancient t-shirts

I am myself when I am ill at ease

Sleepless nights and restless days

I am nothing but my patterns

Childhood traumas locked in amber

Bursting from the grave

I gasp deep at the fresh air

A zombie roaming empty streets

Finding myself, Piece by piece

Just in time for them 

To bury me alive again

We can always disappoint 

The person we see standing in the mirror

But we can also make them proud

A lot is lost with every passing year

A thousand cuts of compromise

But they can never take it all away

So hold on tight to what is left

I have never been the person that they thought I was

Some days I am better

Some days I am much worse

But I am always somewhere inside even when I’m lost I’m still there clinging on

Bursting from the grave

I gasp deep at the fresh air

A zombie roaming empty streets

Finding myself, Piece by piece

Just in time for them 

To bury me alive again

My nemesis is the unthinking status quo

My secret power is my power to say no

Bursting from the grave

I gasp deep at the fresh air

A zombie roaming empty streets

Finding myself, Piece by piece

Just in time for them 

To bury me alive again

LYRIC: Congratulations

False smile, wide eyes

Dreams dead, lost pride

Chin up, shut down

Lost and not found

And hey, what happened to you today

Hey what happened to you?

Where is the you, the you we used to see?

The one with all the hopes and all the dreams?

The one who said the world was ours to change?

Where is the idealist artistic heart?

The revolution we were charged to start?

Where is the you, the you you used to be?

Earning a living

Worn down, give in

Sold out and employed

Bills paid, but hope void

You got a job

Mortgage, locked in

Own your own prison

Pension, pay cheque

Another lost reject

And hey, what happened to you today?

(You got a job)

Hey what happened to you?

LYRIC: Social Distance

I’ve been self-isolating

Since before it was cool

But now that I have to

What is there to do?

There’s been social distance

Now for far too long

Where better than quarantine

To write a song?

Can we all come together now, alone,

And recognise that when we needed help,

We always had each other to provide? 

While the powers that be

Wrung their hands.

The old way of doing things

Falls to the ground

No shock to the system

Has been more profound

We watch the mask slipping

Beneath it we find

Nothing more was needed

Than just being kind

Can we all come together now, alone,

And recognise that when we needed help,

We always had each other to provide? 

While the powers that be

Wrung their hands.

There’s been social distance

Now for far too long

LYRIC: I Will Look Back on This Fondly

Terrified, I clambered over ancient ruins

Rushing sights

Other people wait a lifetime just to see

Counting down the days

I took photographs 

And wished for home

Always thinking of tomorrow, 

I miss out on today

I will look back on this fondly

Even if now I am crippled by fear

Retrospect: the only joy I’ll ever see

When your own mind is your worst enemy

I miss the live show of the best days of my life 

But catch up with them later, on demand

Viewed from a safe distance

I confront anxiety with its false narrative

But in the amnesia of tomorrow

The lesson fades

I will look back on this fondly

Even if now I am crippled by fear

Retrospect: the only joy I’ll ever see

When my own mind is my worst enemy

That sinking feeling in my stomach instead of butterflies

Instead of looking forward I begin to catastrophize 

Wherever I am I am always locked up trapped inside my head

My fingers reach and brush against the key

This does not have to be my destiny

The airplane is hot with expectation

people breathing out 

Summer hopes into a flying metal box

Reminding us there are some laws of nature 

We can overcome

Even when they seem to be so permanent  

We can overcome

LYRIC: The End of the World (Today)

The people have spoken and I’m feeling sick

Who could imagine things changing this quick

Frustrated, ignorant grasping at straws

These are the things that make people start wars

I tremble as everyday life starts to look

Like the opening chapters of an old history book

These were the dark days that caused Rome to fall

These were the factors that started it all

The end of the world

Comes without warning

The end of the world

Is today

A moment of madness undoing the years

Of progress it’s taken to get us to here

Long battles fought and hard victories won

The evolution of civilization

Enlightenment can’t last without any lights

And now we are facing the darkest of nights

Desperation giving way to despair

The people have spoken and I’m feeling scared

The comfort of thinking it can’t happen here

Is the surest sign that it is already near

Right on your doorstep, right on your street

Amazing how well we can walk in our sleep

Napping our way through this democracy

Uninformed, responsibility-free

Until we awake and blink open our eyes

It’s hard to believe that we’re even surprised

LYRIC: The Day I Write That Song

Every summer, every weekend, every fucking night

I tell myself today’s the day

The day I write that song

The one that starts the album

The one I’m gonna write myself

Because I can come to terms with the fact the band went to the morticians

While I teach kids at the academy

But I won’t come to terms with that’s it

When I still have something to say

Even if I don’t quite know what it is

Because sometimes feelings are too big to condense

And you fear garbled words won’t make enough sense

Or, worse, will be met with indifference

And I’m only just one guy

Who can barely play a bass guitar

So who am I?

To write an album when I can’t even read music?

Just been banging these same four strings since ‘96

An old dog with no new tricks

Still tuned badly in open E

The way my best friend once showed me

Because that’s what his dad taught him

And we’re all so strangely shaped by fathers

Even when they’re not our own

When your dad’s not around

Because he’d rather be fucking around

You make do with what you can

So Every summer, every weekend, every fucking night

I tell myself today’s the day

The day I write that song

The one that starts the album

The one I’m gonna write myself

LYRIC: 86

They say there’s no return

You can’t go home again

My haircut proved them wrong

The trimmings fall on local paper

A familiar front door

I was six when I first saw it

Said goodbye at twenty-nine

Dead people don’t need their houses

I used to think the place was haunted

Couldn’t have guessed I’d know the ghosts

Back when we lived, for all those years at 86

That new chapter that never quite turned the page

Back when we lived, for all those years at 86

Until the cracks could just not be contained

They called it a new start

Back when we were kids

Thought changing house might change each other

Pretend the marriage wasn’t over

A new address to mend old wounds

Barely speaking, seldom smiling

An elephant in every room

We were trained to just ignore them

Painting lipstick on a corpse

I used to blame the architecture

Back when we lived, for all those years at 86

That new chapter that never quite turned the page

Back when we lived, for all those years at 86

Until the cracks could just not be contained

Daddy not around

Cuz he’s fucking around

Mom buried in work

To avoid how much it hurt

They wouldn’t even fight

It was somehow worse

Living separate lives

Under the same roof

An appointment after work

Faking first time buyers

A long sleeve shirt to cover up

My new eighty-six tattoo

The one that matches with my sister’s

The one that brands us as survivors

They’d spent a lot to do it up

But 86, it still felt haunted

Plush new carpets aren’t enough

To mask those same old creaking floorboards

Back when we lived, for all those years at 86

That new chapter that never quite turned the page

Back when we lived, for all those years at 86

Until the cracks could just not be contained

LYRIC: Well Kept

Privilege can sometimes be

A burden of its own

We were so lucky but in all the wrong ways

Maintaining a façade

Could break the bank for some

But we had money to throw at our problems

Someone to clean the house

Someone to mind the kids

Someone to deal with all that dirty laundry

Someone to organise

Someone to buy supplies

Someone to do it all so they don’t have to

We were always so well kept

When you outsource care it’s not called neglect

We had a lot of toys

To keep us company

Those endless nights when mom was working upstairs

We had a lot of books

To keep our minds off why

Dad never seemed to spend his evenings at home

We got used growing up

To doing what we’d want

Raising ourselves and setting our own boundaries

We visited our friends

And made our mental notes

Of how a real family was meant to function

We were always so well kept

When you outsource care it’s not called neglect

How old are you supposed to be

The first time you need therapy?

We always just assumed

That it was natural

That everybody had insomnia

The same anxiety

The same panic attacks

The same depression, the same thoughts of suicide

We wanted for nothing

Except a mom and dad

Who actually felt like a mother and a father

They gave us everything

Except the things we need

Just like their own parents had done before them

We were always so well kept

When you outsource care it’s not called neglect

It’s just the price they paid to pay the prices

Of all their cowardice and vices

LYRIC: Mom

If I had listened more

Then I would try to make a clever Shakespeare reference here

But I just used to roll my eyes

Whenever she would try

 To tell the tale of how she came to England from America

Her stomach full of butterflies

Voice of Olivier

Through soliloquy, seducing her far across the raging sea 

He spoke to her and her alone

The Bard was her first love

And she would meet her second in the library studying the first

3,000 miles away from home

Blinded by love she could not see

 That this production was not to be

Some wry and witty comedy

That she was starring in a tragedy

The first two broken hearts

Were of her forsaken mother and the father left behind

Abandoned back in old New York

The third heart was her own

Discarded once again and crying by herself another night

For the man she’d left them for

The man she hoped would change

That a ring would change everything was the tale that she would tell herself

To try to get to sleep at night

A writer by her trade

Published in every paper but always her own best audience

No need to fight when she could write 

Blinded by love she could not see

 That this production was not to be

Some wry and witty comedy

That she was starring in a tragedy

Hoped a baby might work?

And when the first one didn’t change him maybe another would?

Fuck two lives for the price of one

If you repeat a lie

Often enough it starts to feel like it might be something true

She said they were young and in love

Until she understood

That this would never be the fairytale she’d always thought it could be

And she returned across the sea

Her mom and dad long gone

Dead before they knew their little girl had finally found real love

Like I said – a tragedy

Blinded by love she could not see

 That this production was not to be

Some wry and witty comedy

That she was starring in a tragedy

They married on the beach

I gave her away, my sister maid of honour, mom in white

Her stomach full of butterflies