It's like waking up in a burning building when the smoke has filled your lungs. And you're about to pounce and I can't work out if you're gonna tear out my tongue or maybe shove yours down my throat. For all the horse shit that you wrote. Make my Sabbath and I'll say hail to the goat. Cause I tried living like a righteous man and what fun we had those days, til the women and the whiskey got me with the warmth inside my veins. So now that's the path I chose. You can all shit your holy smoke. Blow it out your ass while I walk down slow. I'm waiting on the platform to watch you go. I've got a box of wine and a sofa so come get deep with me. Cause I went and pissed in the shallow end and I'm hoping you won't see. She thinks I've got my shit together. What she doesn't know can't hurt her. Baby, I just make it up as I go. I make it up as I go. So you can fight until you bleed. Fall down and cry and scrape your knees. But the reaper's gonna get you in the end. And you can fix it so you win and say it's only the beginning. But you're never going to see these days again. You'll never see these days again.

Losing Face

Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me

Panhandling for change as we sit here in the rain. He says "I really hate myself tonight. And maybe it's this place or just these days that I can't face." He says "man, I'm leaving town tonight. I've got some friends just over the way with a flat where I can drink and fuck around all day. A bottle of pills and some boredom to kill and I'll live life my own way." And I said "how could I argue? I've felt just the same as you and still feel it some of the time. At the end of those days I just lie wide awake and think it's living but this ain't a life." I've seen people come and go with careers and families to grow and you can miss out on it all if you blink. A bottle of pills and I'll be happy until I get sober and I start to think. I saw a friend the other day I hadn't seen in years. He skipped town on the 55. I was standing alone when the smoke cleared. And I realised this barley wine's the only true friend of mine since most of the others stopped dropping by. It doesn't know what I mean or ask me how I've been but it makes me feel better for a night.

Choose Your Own Adventure

When the playing gets too painful I just want to sulk alone. The longest lowest days I had to pull through on my own. When I walked from Whalebridge up to Groundwell Estate and wound up back in Old Town where the streets started to look the same - I was wasted and hallucinating. Dim light. Bare hands. Bad girls make plans. I learned about love through tears, stomach cramps and hating myself for hurting you. Worried about the windows and the marks left on my face and the width across my back and how these stains can implicate. So batter up. I'll bat my eyes and bend back protruding bones. I've got bills to pay so I've got skills to hone. Pile the filth into bags slid under beds. Locked into boxes. Stacked under sheets on shelves. Wasting and wanting. Drop this conversation so I can breathe. The small talk and presumptions are killing me.

The King Of Shit

Fucked up again today. Shut up and held my place. After my shift I drove out west to the Avon river. Another thread ripped out. Cross-stitched across my mouth. Shot down. Forgotten. Got a lot to consider. I realised the days of yore were never mine. Just yours. I spent a decade face down on the floor. Painting shadows on this face. Nothing to reciprocate. Just pining in the silence. Tell my family and my friends I thought of them right at the end. Bon fucking voyage. Paper boats at sea. And did I mention how the tension's got me choking on the motion of restless routines. Leaving me no time to breathe. Slow drinking sloe gin. Buried in the berries. Forgiveness for my twenties, still just beyond my reach. The plaster cracks and slips. Runs over chewed up lips. Shredded exterior. Exposing dark beneath. Disgraceful spectacle. Empty receptacle. I left a red smear on this glass. Face first into that adult crash. Sanded bleached yellow bones. Two hundred days from home. I'm falling to bits. I'm too fucking old.

Closet Drama

Send in the satyrs. Making drunken passes. Leery. Lascivious. Grabbing each others' asses. The only thing we've really got is time. You'll never guess what but I'm drunk like a fox so padre pardon my cotton socks. Roll me on my side cause I'm going into shock. Check my pulse. Count my blessings. Sitting pretty in the dock. Doc, doc - I get this fever when the fear starts to flare. Give me something for this itching and these ingrown hairs. But spare the resolutions. There's no moral at the end. There's no narrative or nuance. No design to comprehend. So at dusk let's dance and make it rain until the riverbanks burst and overflow the flood plains. But I'm still sure that we'll find shelter. The only thing we've really got: setbacks to drown and bombs to drop. This beating heart that's one day gonna stop. Off the wagon and across the line. Our guests of honour took their sweet time but finally arrived and now they're here. So I say: send in the satyrs. Send in the satyrs and the nymphs. We came to raise hell not to cry. So being gracious hosts let's raise a toast with honey, milk and rye. Before we're bloated and buried let's celebrate and sin. Cause even the very best days bring us that much closer to the time we will decay. So while we're still alive... send in the satyrs.

Send In The Satyrs

It's probably just the gin talking. It puts words in my mouth without a gauge. This tongue gets loose when it's been on the sauce and sometimes winds up in places strange. I cut the rug just like a dead man walking so pass my party hat and my cane. When I came clean I split the scene as fast as I could fake it and choked on this rusting chain. Waste my life away. What else have I got to do anyway, but go out and get drunk and all kinds of fucked up. Remember nothing. Forget yesterday. So you can pass time currying favour and stake a place in the world as it burns. Or spit in the eye of the saviour and either way end up as feed for the worms. But when the wind kicks up and I get grit in my teeth and the sand scratches sores on the soles of my feet. When we've run out of booze and the night's at an end. The angels are tired and crawling to bed. I stay up and hope the sun rises again and think about me and you. That's when I know it's just the gin stalking. It sneaks up on me when I least suspect with some choice dirty words nibbled into my ear that it dribbles down onto my neck. Don't make much sense being dehydrated when there's bars on every corner for miles. Cause if doesn't make a difference and it's really all pointless you might as well learn to fucking smile.

Highball

I'm a motherfucking spirit drinking straight out of the tip jar. Burned with bruises turning blue like cheap tattoos traced over scars and sunken features. I'm drunk and speechless cause I'm drowning in my body weight of chlorine and tequila. Salt and wind. Caked with ink. Swallowed with the dreck. Passed out naked with three holes chewed out of my neck. Flea bitten and worm ridden grizzled mangy dogs. Roaming through the streets. Five fathoms in the grog. What do you think of my skipper's hat?! And I can see you making eyes like we could make it for a night. But baby, save your breath cause it happens all the time. I'll be wandering these roads right until the sun explodes and the world becomes a caldera and buries us below leaving bones. Only bones. Skeletons far from home. Fuck everyone tonight. I just want to be alone. My throat is torn to shreds and these eyes are searing red from the dreams that take me back to my woman and my bed.

Notify The Families

On the grandest day in history. Buzzing on wine and three hours sleep. Stunned and slouching. Dragging my feet. The most pathetic state I could ever be. Four shitty years in a sterile rut. A graveyard inspiring rotten guts to seize and spray the bile and alcohol. But I ain't drowning my sorrows. No I'm not drinking to forget. I've got a girl that makes me feel all right. We'll bury every last regret tonight. There's sanctions and there's backlash. But I don't give a rat's ass. Bring it on motherfuckers. Give it your best shot. Come on motherfuckers. Is that all you got? We've got the booze. The heart. The years. The blood and the scars to prove it. We've got bottles filled with lightning from clear and cloudless skies. We're layabouts and tearaways. Hypocrites who only make mistakes. But tonight it doesn't matter anyway. Bring it on motherfuckers. You'll never keep these old dogs down. You had their bodies interred long ago but the ghosts still walk this ground.

Memento Mori

I've got bodies hanging on these rails. Dusty desiccated bags of bones. I hear the scratching as I'm hammering these nails into these rotten coffins beneath faded tombstones. This seedy dive bar with its broken pool cues. This stinking squat stacked floor to ceiling with its stolen booze. This bathroom sink full of bloodied butt plugs reflecting inner pain in half a dozen neon hues. I'm only fragile til I'm shattered into brittle broken pieces. Bitter biggest quitter. Bottom feeding with the lice and leeches. Stinking like a Cleveland steamer. Like I'm reeling from the ceiling of this heaven made for heathens or some nonsense I believed in. Cause there's the life. That's where there's feeling. Is it such a surprise it's no longer what you recognise? You drifted. Now you're deadwood washed up on the shore. You bloomed and faded into cataracts and canker sores. I hope I can find a bottle to hide behind or some lonely woman's bed to crawl inside. It don't get easier. You just realise you feel older. As you're regaled with tales of minor risk really no less flaccid than these riffs to which the bodies twitch and wail while I wipe vomit from my lips.

Vulture Eye

Tard raging almost all of the time. Half-assed with a wandering eye. I've spent way too long with my head down a toilet. Holed up in this hangout getting high. And there's no better time now I'm fucked up on wine to get my shit together and get growing up or maybe run my mouth and get my ass beat again. The doldrums left me with static ringing like white noise in my ears. The pile grows high. Falls and ignites. Abandoned on these years. Dead-end girls. I've known a few and I've quite liked some but not quite like you. Heaven sent. Now hell bent on revenge. I've spent the last five days in a state of seizure. Faith like a lobotomy. Well, are you drinking with me Jesus? Ain't no one dying for my sins but me. So clutch the pearls and pray cause there's plans afoot. There's plans from a mind filled with filth and smut. Go raise a loud alarm. Spark the shortest fuse for all who swore I'd be yesterday's news. Break out the equalisers and polish another turd squeezed out by a creeper who's been calloused by the world. But that's the hill we climbed and that's the way we roll. So cross your heart and die cause you ain't ever going home.

Raining Aces