Freedom Isn’t Free

We’re the lonely souls
Of a populist generation
We’re the fools
Who choose not to have a say in
The things that used to matter
Get swallowed up by distance
A right to vote
Outsourced by applications
Not even fighting
Every new distraction
Freedom belongs
In a cell we won’t fight free from
Democracy
A shadow of it’s former self

Don’t sit up straight
Or form an orderly queue
Don’t bend over
Or hand over the lube
Don’t take yes for an answer
There are ego’s to bruise
Don’t stand up to be counted
Stand up because we’ve got something to prove

Apathy
Has become the new religion
Stay switched off
And yet always connected
Stay social
Accompanied only by your thoughts
Stay bowed down
Sucking on the mainstream’s dick
But it’s ok
The pension’s really good
If there’s no conflict
There will be no resolution
It’s plain to see
We bring it on ourselves

Don’t sit up straight
Or form an orderly queue
Don’t bend over
Or hand over the lube
Don’t take yes for an answer
There are ego’s to bruise
Don’t stand up to be counted
Stand up because we’ve got something to prove

Now conscious thoughts
Are nothing but a relic
Reserved for posterity
A shop bereft of goods
Footnotes of history
A graveyard robbed of tombstones
For charity
The church is selling Devil horns

Don’t sit up straight
Or form an orderly queue
Don’t bend over
Or hand over the lube
Don’t take yes for an answer
There are ego’s to bruise
Don’t stand up to be counted
Stand up because we’ve got something to prove

Hopeless Romantics

HOPELESS ROMANTICS

 

It’s time to make new memories

Let the current ones grow old

History just collects dust

And we don’t have to do this alone

Why dwell on a past

That will never age as well as us?

The future is what you make it

If outside forces don’t get their way

We’ll carry each other forward

There’s no horizon beyond our eternity

Make the distance greater

Between us and yesterday

 

Take my hand and trust me

In a way that I can’t trust myself

Feed my soul

By letting me know

You will never give up on hope

 

What should have been is a distant glint

Stubbornly refusing to cry

Now the malaise has set in

Hope passed us by

And we never took the hint

We should have just stayed in that moment

A photograph in time

Why did no one tell us

That love can never defy age

Stuck in a vicious circle

An endless two person parade

 

Don’t take my hand or trust me

Because I don’t trust myself

You Fed my soul,

By letting me know

You would never give up on hope

 

The halcyon days are what broke us

Tore us both in half

Don’t repent or question

A blind hope we thought was made to last

For the very last dance

Let’s hold hearts in our hands

Face the music of a record broken

As lights dim on romance

We’ll whisper with rage

Relive our first gaze

And through eyes speak the unspoken

We wanted to live in the moment

But the moment went too fast

This is the life we have chosen

We never gave ourselves a chance

 

You took my hand and trusted me

And now you can’t trust yourself

You fed my soul

Now you’re letting me go

We  gave up on each other

We gave up on hope

 

PAINT WAR

Ok, I’ve been thinking about stupid comments I read and hear about a lot of my favourite female artists. These comments are all too prevalent and are shot through with sexism, whether unknowingly so or for the sole purpose of causing offense. So I wrote this. At first I was writing in the third person but that seemed odd so then imagined it as a Tuts song. Nadia shouting over stomping bass and drums in the verses with the guitar kicking in for the chorus. Yes, I know there is irony in a male writing about sexism from a woman’s perspective but… deal with it.

 

Punk is a state of mind

Not a closed one

Keep the women in line

As long as you pay them

Times change

Clearly attitudes don’t

You say our image doesn’t match

With what we spit out

 

Girls can kick ass

With their make up on

(With their make up on)

You can kiss our ass

When we wear our thongs

(Wear our thongs)

There’s more punk down our bras

Than in your opinion

 

What is punk

But an attitude, a cause?

Stick to your beliefs

And your Keane records

We have the vote

It’s just a clause in the law

You have free speech

Which we want to ignore

 

Girls can kick ass

With their make up on

(With their make up on)

You can kiss our ass

When we wear our thongs

(Wear our thongs)

There’s more punk down our bras

Than in your opinion

 

Your version died out

Died out with the Dodo

Let it go, old man

Let it go..

 

Girls can kick ass

With their make up on

(With their make up on)

You can kiss our ass

When we wear our thongs

(Wear our thongs)

There’s more punk down our bras

Than in your opinion

It’s not anti-feminism

You’re the trigger

We’re the weapon

(We’re the weapon)

 

George Osborne’s Existential Budget Lies

George Osborne’s Existential Budget Lies

Statistics can be regulated

Facts corruptly bended

Your shortfall is here for the long haul

A democracy jaded

Silence those

Who speak up the most

Reroute marches fighting against your cause

A free speech castrated

What do the government want

With a public that has balls?

This boom lacks an explosion

Muffled out by spin

Employment hasn’t risen

The situation remains grim

Flat lining is still declining

We’re on the outside of society

Looking in

Make the rich richer

Let them feast on metaphorical pheasants

Take from those

That need it the most

We are your literal peasants

Your basic rate

Calculates the wrong equation

You speculate

Charge above our means for an education

You are playing with our futures

Zero contract hours

Zero hope required

Employment figures massaged with hands that tighten

We still feel the squeeze

Vote winning policies for middle England

But I’m still here

What about me?

You’re only duty is to stamp over us

Belts well and truly tightened

Bedroom tax?

Cut us some slack

Next they’ll tax us to pee

You cut benefits for the disabled

To further constrain their mobility

Our grey and unpleasant land

Might yet one day

See the green shoots of recovery

Because if we don’t have hope

Then we may as well vote Tory.

Don’t Write A Blog About It

 

Don’t waste your protest vote

On a throwaway celebrity quote

Don’t misjudge the context

Just to feel the offense

Talking in tongues

It seems, is your natural dialect

 

Don’t write a blog about it

You’ll burst a blood vessel

And make yourself sick

Please please

Don’t write a blog a about it

All opinions are tomorrow’s landfill

Or ‘Page No Longer Exists’

 

Don’t waste your protest vote

On a throwaway celebrity quote

Don’t misjudge the context

Just to feel the offense

You revel in its lament

And not all the facts

Only fragments

 

Don’t fill pregnant pauses

Or get on high horses

Reserve this energy for when you really need it

Not on pointless causes.

 

Yeah ok ok

But don’t go writing another blog about it

There is no glorious career in politics

You are not Katie Hopkins

For that we are grateful

Don’t write a blog about it

Let sleeping dogs lie at the bottom of the molehill

Instrumental

I heard this song today
And it reminded me of you
Though I know you haven’t heard it yet
It was stange and beautiful
And took me somewhere new
I think
It was called ‘A place inside your head’
And though
I’ve only heard it once
I hope not to forget
The melody calling
Trying to cling to its hope
But I’ve always been out of step
I forgot this song i heard today
That’s what made me realise
I’ll never be with you
This song
Was only ever in my head
Too afraid to make a move
Even if you had heard it
You’d never have known
It was about you
This song
Will always be in past tense
We will always be old news
I had a dream today
Where i could remember
And you could hear it too
I had a dream today
Where you found out the truth.

Badbury Rings

Back when i was an idiot
Nature as to drag coals and build with sticks
To feel patriotic towards civilisation
If we were ever to find it
Subject to process
Laid slain by evolution
Will we ever learn our lesson?

But until that day i’ll stay away from Badbury rings
But until that day i’ll stay away from Badbury Rings

Then, when i was an idiot
Culture formed circles and fell to bits
Now we’ve common sense
And all the shit that goes with it
False hopes pinned on new dawns
I worship the ground no-one has walked on.
Will we ever learn?

But until that day i’ll stay away from Badbury rings
But until that day i’ll stay away from Badbury Rings
Let’s make our prints in the landscape
Let’s make them so ashamed

But until that day i’ll stay away from Badbury rings
But until that day i’ll stay away from Badbury Rings

… And What Have You Done With Your Life?

..and what have you done with your life? 
Got yourself a high paid job and a dead end wife

Greedy cars stealing all my oxygen
When i need it to run down the shops with
To buy some more cigarettes
Slaves
We do it for the dignity.
It’s the dignity of breathing in the dirty air
But who are we to say anything
I was born free but caught in a penn
Keep our heads in the sand
And wait for the tide to come in.

This is the demeaning of life 
This is the dumbing down for dumbing downs sake. 

Slaves
We do it for the dignity
It’s the dignity of breathing their dirty air
But who are we to say anything
I was born free but caught in a penn
Married into convention
Breeding as part of the rat race
It’s not a crime to touch but it’s wong to feel
Every word spoken is not original at all
Dictated the script i have to follow.
Hanging onto gladrags because it’s all we know.

..and what have you done with your life? 
You sold your soul for happiness.

Your Body And How To Use It

The eyes have grown a conscience and they’re telling on me

Don’t let the head rule the body language

Or the heart be complacent and weak

Caught in two minds but none of them can think

Do not let the lies affect your speech

I’ve seen the diagrams and they don’t look realistic

A frame can feel naked with no soul to represent

A jigsaw puzzled by and questioning its own pieces

The food chain won’t open up to let me in

A human resouece recycling wasted energy

Call it a compromise because that’s the way it is.

This is my body and how to use it i don’t know

I can’t operate yours as well as my own

All i know is how to hide in

How to abuse

How to disown

Little toes send signals to our little brains

Only over where to go, not what to say.

Inner belief is out of reach, out of harms way

Arrows, directionless and self-inflicted Absorb the pain

Fingers cling to my body in self defence

All it protects is my cowardess

A crawl that can’t stretch beyond still

Keep safe from all that is fragile wrapped in cotton wool

Static in a pose where my head meets my hands

Don’t let the heart rule what you don’t understand

Never get too close to what you can’t ever have.

Call it a compromise.

This is my body and how to use it i don’t know

I can’t operate yours as well as my own

All i know is how to hide in

How to abuse

How to disown

Your body is my temple, don’t crumble

This is my body I can see right through to its bones

It’s transparent we are little

Together we’d equal something and that’s all i know.

“I WISH I KNEW I KNEW HOW IT WOULD FEEL TO BE FREE, I WISH THAT I COULD BREAK ALL THE CHAINS HOLDING ME”