WITHOUT ME  

I've written and recorded a song
Based on moments that took me far too long
To mean anything to you
Now you're without me

Collected some words from the street then
Furnished my shoes with crocodile feet 
That walked a thousand miles across Basque mountains 
And all to be without you

I've frowned at all the hairbands and frocks
Ran Olympian speed from olive oil soaked blocks
To turn and stare at pistol smoke
Through a barrel aimed at me

But my love for you is deeper than these words 
deeper than the meaning of this verse 
Deeper than the signified
Beneath the essence of the sign

I've wrestled all my friends to be proud 
Was always up when they were really quite down
They looked on me for inspiration
Which i always had when you were with me

So I tore up these words like a book
Of meanings misquoted & so misunderstood
I cut them and read them backwards to see 
What it might feel like to be without me

I listened to the whispering leaves
Fallen from rows of towering telegraph trees
The words didn't hide me or bruise me or cheat my honesty
Sweet tastes like poison when you rang to raise a glass to memories

My love for you is deeper than these words 
deeper than the meaning of this verse 
Deeper than the signified
Beneath the essence of the sign

Tomorrow brings another backward thought of Memories that are borrowed from what's slackened then pulled taught 
Of memories distorted by a time 
When all was not consuming like this poetry that's fighting for a rhyme 
 
We built this house with only our hands 
Suffering the time hungry gravity of sand 
Now the winds of complacency spin the weather vane
As you try to live without me

Loving you's like swaying through a train with lost stability
Connecting doors below the metal clashes with insanity 
Sunlight flashing on two steel veins 
though a tunnel brings on a yellow flame 
Like the gentle warning whistle of your name 

My love for you is deeper than these words 
deeper than the meaning of this verse 
Deeper than the signified
Beneath the essence of the sign 

Copyright Colin Hilton October 2025

Without Me

PAINTING BY NUMBERS 

I walked the street until my shadow grew 
like a stencil of an after life 
Drawn upon the concrete's subtle hue
This canvas bears no rebel's brand 

Now these slogans are on city walls
they gasp and fall upon their knees
A cuss on riches, guns and politics
Silent children grow from hot house seeds

The deconstruction of his art
Put the horse behind the cart 
To turn them in their slumbers 
So they can feel the loss like pain
Beneath the curd of his distain
Just like painting them by numbers

A pretty girl with blood red curls
Can speak much louder to the world
Than a house of whispered sermons yellow
As the page from which they burl
Disneyland to Bethlehem the irony's divided

And the corset round the world is pulled so tight 
It's no shock that truth has fainted
In earthy tongues that please revolution plants its seeds 
Mystery falls upon its knees the painter becomes painted 

The deconstruction of his art
Put the horse behind the cart 
To turn them in their slumbers 
So they can feel the loss like pain
Beneath the curd of his distain
Just like painting them by numbers

Millions will chase and place a snare for you
A ghost who paints rebellion
With the slight of a puppet's hand
Satire through geometry will smile back at you

Copyright 
Colin Hilton  October 2025

Painting By Numbers

ALPHA GEN' MIRROR 

Her reflection grieves the loss of her closest friend the id
While the children of the Alpha Gen' roles become bended
Crosses her clothes and
Powders her nose
Smarting pictures with a dumb phone 

Her alter ego shares under the light
Where boys and girls select their love punching without a fight 
Truth blurs its borders
Night turns sons into daughters 
To blossom beyond battery life

He hasn't the courage he can't be so bold
This girl is from the classroom but can never be told
This theatre is turning and the wings have been splayed 
So love transfers with duty a new generation is made

Desire confuses as identity grows
The young are raised with stories stepping on their toes
Rigid diversity
With quiet adversity 
Imbalances designed to collide

A stylish tale with a daring theme
This generation questions what is true and what is mean
As genders flow
Culture takes on the blow
So structures crack to let in the light

He hasn't the courage he can't be so bold
This girls from the classroom but can never be told
This theatre is turning and the wings have been splayed 
So love transfers with duty a new generation is made

Copyright Colin Hilton October 2025

Alpha Gen' Mirror

PHOENIX 

The phoenix 
The phoenix 
The phoenix 
Rose to cross my heart

Through broken stone and shattered street
She drags her soul like a ballet dancers 
Bound and crippled feet
A city drained then filled with ghosts
Staring at her shapeless hope  
behind a sepia screen of desperation's smoke 

Her face has been restored by surgeon’s skilful art
But the deepest scars avoid the scalpel
Remain inside her heart
The woman's gone but girl within 
Will lean against the street lamps as they spin

She whispers 
The phoenix
The phoenix
The phoenix rose to cross my heart

She whispers 
The phoenix
The phoenix
The phoenix rose to cross my heart


The phoenix rises in her heart
From ashes deep in war that
Tore her world apart 
She seeks the man she called her own
But the eyes that should have known her name 
Stare blankly back made of stone 

This monster sees only profit without shame
So he trains her ghost rehearses lies
While longing hides within her guise
Her voice a blade to cut through fear
She sings, unmasked, her truth released
And the song's illusion joins the deceased 

The phoenix
The phoenix
The phoenix rose to cross my heart

She whispered 
The phoenix darling 
The phoenix honey 
The phoenix baby rose to cross my heart

Copyright Colin Hilton October 2025

Phoenix

RIVER BOY

The headwaters of the river boy
Are surely not so long
From the birth of melting snow
Over rocks of babbled nurseries
Falling as he grows

Trickling like childhood time
Sunlight brushes stones
Magnified and polarised
With the wetness of his eyes
And the floods of buoyant groans 

I sat and watched his teenage years 
When question's can run deep 
The surface growing darker
Hiding secrets of a boy beneath
A man made tide

If I studied every eddy from
The pebbles skimmed and thrown 
Would ripples share their mystery
With reeds that follow faithfully 
The water's flow 
I wondered if the boy would know?

The river boy's his father's son
Operates the locks
Turns the key for hopeful journeys
Lets the water rise
Over the wooden stocks 
Above a weir that questions
Hidden rocks 

The river boy's his mother son
Holds back her strength through loss
Sends the water down again
Let's loose a tide of pointless journeys
Below a weir of worries
That's a mother's cross

His thoughts circle like driftwood
That have fathomed every bend
Bark without a destination
Wider than the banks
Towards the rivers end

Beneath the surface obstacles
Emotionless and blind
Discarded through inequity
Consumerist futility 
Just stepping stones
Or maybe hidden mines?

The river boy's his father's son
Operates the locks
Turns the key for hopeful journeys
Lets the water rise
Over the wooden stocks 
Above a weir that questions
Hidden rocks 

The river boy's his mother son
Holds back her strength through loss
Sends the water down again
Let's loose a tide of pointless journeys
Below a weir of worries
Well that's a mother's cross

The river's tide obeys you
Like the swan commands the lake
Sits silent on reflection 
Where the water surface softens
With a slower pace 
And the moon pulls up 
To draw upon its grace

I watched you smiling sadly
Of what might always be
A boy born of fresh water
As his life meanders slowly 
To a salty sea

The river boy's his father's son
Operates the locks
Turns the key for hopeful journeys
Lets the water rise
Over the wooden stocks 
Above a weir that questions
Hidden rocks 

The river boy's his mother son
holds back her strength through loss
Sends the water down again
Let's loose a tide of pointless journeys
Below a weir of worries
Well that's a mother's cross


Copyright Colin Hilton November 2025

River Boy

NEW GIRLFRIEND 

Through the trauma and wake of a severed lost friend
One new will rise and amend
To dance away the loss and pain 
'Til love can no longer pretend 

New friends lie within much softer frames
Sketched by prism split pens
With silk lipped smiles
And the laughter of a child
Wisdom in love soon deepens 

Oh girlfriend 
She's the new girlfriend that's true 
But my love for her might become less absurd 
If I weren't her new girlfriend too
Yes girlfriend 
She's a new girlfriend to keep 
If only to see the new woman in me
This friendship could be more discreet 

Hearts conceal what only hearts reveal
Through movement, laughter and phrase 
She finds a new love to explore that keeps 
Self discovery guessing for days

Desire reshapes a tender new play
Grabbing bats to play for both sides
A tantrum of dreams on a bed without seams 
Sows stitches that crochet the night

Oh girlfriend 
She's the new girlfriend that's true 
But my love for her might become less absurd 
If I weren't her new girlfriend too
Yes girlfriend 
She's a new girlfriend to keep 
If only to see the new woman in me
This friendship is more than skin deep

Oh girlfriend 
She's the new girlfriend that's true 
But my love for her might become less absurd 
If I weren't her new girlfriend too
Yes girlfriend 
She's a new girlfriend to keep 
If only to see the new woman in me
This friendship is more than skin deep

Copyright  Colin Hilton 2025

New Girlfriend

HOWL

The social margins
Of a London page
Burn like oil
I sit and watch the silent cabarets 
A restless head sits upon
A restless heart

Artists addicts and
Radical queers
The spectrum's gleam 
And poets swing from woven chandeliers 
The divided self becomes 
A divided sex

Subterraneans suck 
As the altos blow
On the road 
The Beats feedback on open microphones
These smoking bars are full of
All that jazz

So Howl
Go on and howl
A sleepless mind flirts with dark horses 
You spin the wheel of fate
And land upon Section 28
Howl 
Go on and howl
You've lost your head in self diagnosis
I've seen the best minds undress
Diversity mistaken for madness

Like the Mandarins
Of Saint Germain
Existential desire 
The boomerang of love comes back again 
Authentic themes within dreams
Revolutionaries 

Communism plays Colonialism 
She bends their brains 
With a cocktail sipped and then thrown up again
The best minds are shaved
by Occam's razor 

I'm not a wasp
In your factory 
A bird or a bee 
God I'll be anything I want to be
But be careful what you wish for
A Lilac Ward makes Lilac’s whine

So Howl
Go on and howl
A sleepless mind flirts with dark horses 
You spin the wheel of fate
And land upon Section 28
Howl 
Go on and howl
You've lost your head in self diagnosis
I've seen the best minds undress
Diversity mistaken for madness

Copyright Colin Hilton November 2025

Howl

HOWL

The social margins
Of a London page
Burn like oil
I sit and watch the silent cabarets 
A restless head sits upon
A restless heart

Artists addicts and
Radical queers
The spectrum's gleam 
And poets swing from woven chandeliers 
The divided self becomes 
A divided sex

Subterraneans suck 
As the altos blow
On the road 
The Beats feedback on open microphones
These smoking bars are full of
All that jazz

So Howl
Go on and howl
A sleepless mind flirts with dark horses 
You spin the wheel of fate
And land upon Section 28
Howl 
Go on and howl
You've lost your head in self diagnosis
I've seen the best minds undress
Diversity mistaken for madness

Like the Mandarins 
Of Saint Germain
Existential desire 
The boomerang of love comes back again 
Authentic themes within dreams
Revolutionaries 

Communism plays Colonialism 
She bends their brains 
With a cocktail sipped and then thrown up again
The best minds are shaved
by Occam's razor 

I'm not a wasp
In your factory 
A bird or a bee 
God I'll be anything I want to be
But be careful what you wish for
A Lilac Ward makes a Lilac’s whine

So Howl
Go on and howl
A sleepless mind flirts with dark horses 
You spin the wheel of fate
And land upon Section 28
Howl 
Go on and howl
You've lost your head in self diagnosis
I've seen the best minds undress
Diversity mistaken for madness

Copyright Colin Hilton November 2025

Howl  (In Your Sleep)

THROUGH YOU

There's no beauty in pure symmetry
I love your awkward curves 
Or urgency behind the way
You choose your clumsy words 

You thrift your clothes from bargain bins
And vintage barrel shops
Choose a colour mix that matches
Melting lollipops

You smile often when others frown
At situations strange
See the funny side when things fall down
Or matches rearrange 

Behind a wink so widely shut 
Withholding all the clues
You wince and stare quite vacantly
At tales told to amuse

When you walk into a crowded room
Conversations stop and stare
Defiance of the devil 
Lets envy of the also rans
Fall by splitting hairs

Through you
I hear fountains by the church yard sing
With words that seem
Less complicated
Through you 
I feel September storms stir 
After an April tease
So innocently
Through you 
I see what YOU can see
And the wilder side of a loving moon

Sing slightly out of tune
When the descant's unperturbed 
Balloons free untied ribbons
And rise from tangled words

When puzzled books twist your mind
Frustration cries are like
a new born shrill in a mother's arms
or an old tusk as he dies

Your laughter triggers mine 
Though i need not know the cause 
Sleep whispers nonsensically 
Til dawn unbolts your doors 

Your dance conducts all music
With a rhythmic off beat strum
To love you is to love ALL love
The father ghost & son 

When you walk into a crowded room
Conversations stop and stare
Defiance of the devil 
Let's envy of the also rans
Fall by splitting hairs

Through you
I hear fountains by the church yard sing
With words that seem
Less complicated 
Through you 
I feel September storms stir 
After an April tease
So innocently
Through you 
I see what YOU can see
And the wilder side of a loving moon

Copyright 
Colin Hilton November 2015

Through You

Words and Music Colin Hilton
© August 2019


Bass                    Freddie Washington 
Guitars                Michael Thompson
Guitar                 Colin Hilton
Guitars                Jack Pearson
Keys                    Jeff Young
Saxophones       Eric Marienthal
Vocals                 Colin Hilton



The song delves into the complexities of trust, portraying it as both foundational and perilous in relationships. It begins by highlighting trust as essential, yet potentially infinite, guiding like a parent’s hand but also capable of leading to deception when misused (“Trust can be a drunken fool”). The lyrics reflect on the impact of trust on perceptions of truth and the passage of time, noting the nostalgic pull of memories and the fleeting nature of youth. Overall, the song grapples with the dual nature of trust—its power to clarify or distort reality, and its significant yet ambiguous role in shaping life’s experiences.



TRUST
Trust is a beginning
A means that never ends
Breathe it in and hold in deep
Before you choose your friends
Trust removes the blind fold
holds a mother's hand
The middle distance stares at me
And kneels to take a stand

Truth I'm falling through the memories of my life
Youth just look at you a born and natural high

Trust can be a drunken fool
Loose with many ties
Drive a couch and horses through
A perfect storm of lies
Trust will have its way with you
Its innocence a curse
Rhyme and rhythms magnify
The faith you lost at birth

Truth a body lost in time goes hand in hand
Youth your hour glass will slave
to falling sand

© Copyright Colin Hilton August 2019

Trust

Written, performed and produced by Colin Hilton
© November 2020


Vocals          Colin Hilton
Bass             Keith Horne
Drums          Ricky Lawson
Keys            Jeff Young
Piano           Jeff Lorber
Guitars        Michael Thompson
Guitars        Greg Moore
Guitars         Jack Pearson
Guitars         Colin Hilton
Saxophones  Eric Marienthal



The song describes a contemplative day by the sea, filled with sensory and imaginative experiences. As the narrator relaxes on the shore, memories of past companionship mix with the sights and sounds of the beach. The narrative then shifts to a fantastical realm beneath the waves, populated by mermaids and sirens, symbolizing a deep emotional exploration. The chorus highlights the liberating effect of Pebble Bay’s natural beauty under moonlight, suggesting it has the power to inspire and heal, much like it could revitalize Frida Kahlo. The song encapsulates themes of nostalgia, fantasy, and the therapeutic influence of nature.



PEBBLE BAY

I was sitting on the breaker wall listening to tunes in a modern way
With my shoulders back i closed my eyes i smelt the salt and let my body feel the ocean spray
The distant screams of children's laughter 
Melted into gulls that swooped and dived on junk food prey
But every time I thought I'd caught your smile
A wave would flip your hip and our footprints would catch the wash and fade away


And when you're at sea what do you dream about?
When your hair caught the breeze and i saw you laugh out loud
I wouldn't believe there's a song about it would not bring a new dance to town
Cause you rock in Pebble Bay when the moon is up and the surf don't bring you down


The waves began to fall in time with every breath and sigh I couldn't hold
Maracas stones and shaker sands Waded up to my waist my heart began to sink so in I rolled
Beneath the waves there's clarity where women are half women and the other half have tails
The sirens scream emotional wrecks while the mermaids
Just sit and paint their nails bright red 


And when you're at sea what do you dream about?
When your hair caught the breeze and i saw you laugh out loud
I wouldn't believe there's a song about it would not bring a new dance to town
Cause you rock in Pebble Bay when the moon is up and the surf don't bring you down
And your phosphorescent glow would un-cripple Freda Karlo
So paint your pallet blue paint your pallet blue


Colin Hilton
© November 2020

Pebble Bay

Singer, poet, song writer, musician, performer and producer : London United Kingdom

Trust

Colin Hilton

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