LYRIC: Dad

Dad did not choose the life he got

He was not happy with his lot

His own mom bound to his sick dad

He did the best with what he had

Learnt life was cruel; always taking

Learnt rules were subject to breaking

Lost his accent, and gained some degrees

Started writing poetry

An angry boy becomes an angry man

The life he lived, not the life he planned

A compromise: that withered, ugly thing

All symbolised within a wedding ring

Thought that his words might make the grade

To one day be published on the page

Turned out that he was far better

Piling up rejection letters

The failed writer’s focus went to sorting

Once writing books became thwarting 

The Oxford qualified grammarian

Became instead a librarian

An angry boy becomes an angry man

The life he lived, was not the life he planned

A compromise: that withered, ugly thing

All symbolised within a wedding ring

In the shelves he fucked frustration away

With different women, on different days

Like Jagger once said, no satisfaction

But at least sex offered him distraction

Yet even when he finally found romance

Dad could not keep it in his pants

And when he said “I do”, in his heart he knew

The vows that he’d made would not stay true

DAD

LYRIC: Jess

I stood alone in my room

Broken bass bashed in my hand

Mic turned loud

Amp aiming out of the door

“Why did you have me I want to know?”

A lyric that wasn’t rhetorical

Falling on unresponsive ears

They had their own problems

More troubling than mine

We were just collateral 

They were the carnage

We suffered as spectators but got to enjoy the intervals

After-show dissections

Arguments with friends

They were stuck in the performance

Each and every night

Twice on weekends

In character even offstage

Sometimes we would laugh about it

How awful it all was

“I’m off to university,” I grinned,

“You won’t be my problem anymore”

My sister’s face darkened

Condemned alone to the encore

LYRIC: Their Competence

There are no drugs in this story

No broken bones or any straying hands

We never went to bed hungry

And the wolves were always kept far from our door

I didn’t grow up on the streets

The car it always started

Rooms were always warm

The only fights were ever on Nintendo

We never doubted we were loved

What we doubted was their competence

In the one job they didn’t put first

If they couldn’t show it to each other

What the fuck could they show us?

A Sunday morning

A ringing phone

Stranger informs me

That dad ain’t coming home

Rebelling body

Shaking hands and feet

Numbly I listen;

Ask them to repeat

Once again your dad is not around

Because their marriage finally unwound

And in the rubble of your parents

You try to smile through bleeding open wounds

But you’re just another kid

Fending for yourself

Fucked up but far from fucked

There were worse childhoods than mine

But mine was all I had

And what we doubted was their competence

In the one job they didn’t put first

If they couldn’t show it to each other

What the fuck could they show us?

Three years pass by

A phone it rings again

My best friend’s wedding day:

The day I am orphaned

Rebelling body

Shaking hands and feet

Numbly I listen;

Ask them to repeat

Ten years after leaving 86

Teacher training in a freezing hall

They taught us how to spot the tell-tale signs

When you outsource care it’s not called neglect

Except in legislation

Passed too late to safeguard me

When no-one is around

Cuz they’re both fucking around

It turns out the victim is you

LYRIC: This Chord Plus That Chord

I can’t count how many times I’ve picked up my guitar 

Since the day I picked up that phone

How many ideas, how many lyrics, I have scribbled down, 

Crossed out and eventually thrown

How many notes I’ve plucked seeking to drown out my grief

Hoping this chord plus that chord will somehow equal relief

It’s always been how I deal with everything I feel

Until it’s been put in a song I don’t think that it’s real

Ever since I was a teenage kid living in an “Anti Me World”

Yearning for love, yearning for mystery, for an “Unknown Girl”

Raging at God, raging at life, raging at hypocrisy

Raging at the universe, raging at my fucked up family

While the rest of society may be “Culturally Dead”

I found solace translating all of the thoughts inside my head

Into art, that somehow kept most, of the darkness at bay 

A guitar on my shoulder, a pen, a mic and stage

No “Reality Casualty” no “Too Lazy To Live”

I’d write myself out of the holes that life always gives

Each romance, each heartbreak, each precious moment in time

I have always found the right chords and always found the right rhyme

From school days, to college, to uni, to career, to every brand new walk of life

My wedding day gift was a song that I wrote dedicated to my wife

Yet nearly ten years have now passed since the day my life changed with a ringing phone

And still I am nowhere near closer to ridding myself of this stone

Up the hill, just like Sisyphus, a task I cannot complete

An impossible mission, doomed for defeat on repeat

If looking, for evidence just, hear the song I sing now

The plan was my grief song but I just didn’t know how

I started this project precisely to mourn

But all this time later and still no grief song is born

It’s there at the edges, a peak every now and again

But far more than shadows are needed release my pen

I’m done setting scenes while avoiding the plot

My next song must be all the grief song I’ve got 

LYRIC: Grief Song

The first time I told you I loved you

Was in your eulogy

We weren’t ever that kind of father and son

Were we, you and me?

More high-fives and the occasional hug

Than words such as “love”

And all those years of poison didn’t help

You cheated on her, but never on us

But when that voice whispers into your ear

Day after day, year after year

That you were never here

A child finds it easy to believe

But if you weren’t around

When you were fucking around

Why are you so frequently found

In weekend memories

Parents’ evenings

Teaching me to ride a bike

Football matches, cricket games

Lakeland walks and mountain hikes

Sharing favourite books and music

Family holidays, Fish and chips

You financed our first album – 

Shallow Permanence: a Christmas gift

It was only when you really were not there 

That I finally saw how much you had been there

Not the best father

But the best that you could be

And good enough for me

Only – by the time that I could see

You were gone

A Sunday morning

A ringing phone

In a hotel room in Gothenburg 

You had died alone

Meanwhile mom used the word like a weapon

“Love?” with a question mark

Emotional blackmail abuser

A narcissist at heart

Her love always attached with some strings

Love that’s demanding of proof 

Love, once pure, corrupted by heartbreak

His cheating on her; taken out on us

And we were lumbered with all her fears

Day after day, year after year

That he was never here

Fears a child finds easy to believe

But when he wasn’t around

Cuz he was now in the ground

Why was it that she was not around?

Except whenever 

money was mentioned

Selling 86 and his pension

Souring memories; recrimination

Making worse the devastation

In ancient wounds that had not yet healed

Her true character was revealed

In earlier years: our primary care

But when we needed her most she wasn’t there

Little did we know she was dying

And soon our anger would turn to crying

Not the best mother

But the best that she could be

And good enough for me

Only – by the time that I could see

She was gone

Three years pass by now

The phone it rings again

My step dad informs me

Cancer wins again

They’re gone so young

And I’m here

LYRIC: Somewhere There’s a Table

Somewhere there’s a table

Sitting empty

The one I thought that one day

Would be ours

Mom, Dad, Jess and Me

A reunited family

One last meal to put the past to bed

Reminiscing the good times

Those precious few we had

And laughing now about the bad

Mom and her new husband, Dad and his new wife

Each now finally happy

For the third act of their life

All of us at peace

With those years at 86

What seemed so awful then

Having now led us to this

Somewhere there’s a table

Sitting empty

The one I thought that one day

Would be ours

Mom, Dad, Jess and Me

A reunited family

One last meal to put the past to bed

The one we missed the chance to fill

Because we chose not to forgive

Quick enough for them to live

To see the day time healed our pain

Each year a softening

Of a disappearing stain

Where we could reconcile and finally break bread

Because grudges seem so pointless 

When the ones you hate are dead

Somewhere there’s a table

Sitting empty

The one I thought one day

Would be ours

Mom, Dad, Jess and Me

A reunited family

Having one last meal to put the past behind us

But instead I have a hole

Where a mom and dad should be

A half-sister in a drawer

And a step-dad overseas

Two phone-calls and two funerals

And a pair of eulogies

Two sets of ashes that I’ve scattered

Two premature obituaries

An empty table waiting

For a meal that will never be

And an 86 tattoo

For all the memories

From when we lived

For all those years at 86

That new chapter that never quite turned the page

From when we lived

For all those years at 86

Til the cracks just could not be contained