1. |
Thoughts
04:12
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Tom taught me the word sonder
Later pinging it through Alta Vista
Have to remind myself what a noun is
Never top of the educational lists
Sleeping in the Wendy House as the first books were passed out
It’s just a thing, a person, an idea, a name for something
All around us are messily latticed, unwritten epics
Part forgotten by the protagonists
Pausing in my perambulations I stare at the Great Bear
Though with those legs he looks more like a fox or a frog, or a fighting sled dog
In the thawing North, Douglas firs hide and seek you
Outside a bleak view
Take a picture and crank up the brightness
Take a picture and crank up the brightness
Take a picture and cut out the contrast
Pull through colours that weren’t even there
The closeness, the coldness, the doses
I lost focus, lost touch with old friends, did not seek amends
Eyes open during grace, silent in the amens, the empty plates
Look round the table, reach out for the ladle, hands I can’t see stop me
The same ones that rock me to sleep ten times each night
Take a picture and crank up the brightness
Take a picture and crank up the brightness
Take a picture and cut out the contrast
Pull through colours that weren’t even there
I no longer care who was right, though we both know it was me
The mirror behind the bar revealed it all
There was no fight just flight, downstairs
Recurring dreams of swallowed pride
Tried to stop being so soft, but the intent is lost in the wash
Yeah, the intent is lost in the wash
Take a picture and crank up the brightness
Take a picture and crank up the brightness
Take a picture and cut out the contrast
Pull through colours that weren’t even there
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2. |
Gallant Encounters
04:01
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Would you still be leaving if I wore glasses
Or gave up rapping to teach science classes?
If I was less passive aggressive and more angry aggressive?
Less obsessive about tennis?
You know I met Rod Laver once
At the urinal both nodding and smiling
Never asked about his 200 titles, just where the beer was
Never meet your idols
Jim Courier pushed me and called me a drunken limey
You remind me I regaled you with this once or twice before
But he was the king of the court, yeah he was the king of the court
Would you stay if I was less cowardly with the neighbours
And hadn’t interrogated poor Kate about being an accountant?
Was more well-groomed, plucked ear hair, used razors
Fought for you with no hesitation, excelled in gallant encounters
Not my borrowed stories of escapes from bouncers
Or the answers I gave to dodge fines at libraries
From now on I’ll be pulling pensioners from fires and going back for their budgies
Drinking in rough pubs on weekends to catch fists and barstools
I’d backflip to catch a thief and act like it’s all average in my day
If it’d make you stay
You learnt dance moves on your dad’s feet
I’m a minus on your balance sheet
I slept in parties that I crashed
Sprawled on the carpet
Borrowed beers in my jacket
Now, I rarely agree with anything cos my spine clicks when I nod my head
And I’m deafened by my breathing when I’ve ear plugs in to block the sound of the wind
So I’m wrestling with all the chores I haven’t done
The unglossed doors, the numbers not dialled, the burnt on béchamel sauce left to soak
I’m a collapsed pile
Unread email subject lines generate through my pineal gland
‘til it all fades to sepia
Hastened on by my anaemia
You learnt dance moves on your dad’s feet
I’m a minus on your balance sheet
I slept in parties that I crashed
Sprawled on the carpet
Borrowed beers in my jacket
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3. |
Wizard of Oz
03:46
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My moods are conducted by the weather
So when it snows I tiptoe softly by your house
I know I’m always saying that I’m sorry
Though I’m never really sorry
I just mean I wish it didn’t hurt
If I was god, or the Wizard of Oz
I’d make you like me, just like me
Self-help’s no assistance
Faking notches on my bedpost
Won’t get myself distressed
Even John Major bagged a mistress
But my mother’s ringing thrice a week
Straight out worries not oblique
So I say I’ve been dating with Sandra and Deborah
Fictional all but it brightens up the call
Leave your job through the window
Leave your home through the floor
Crush up your SIM card gaffer tape the door
If I was god, or the Wizard of Oz
I’d make you like me, just like me
Cinema trips alone trudging home in the snow
Looking for a face in mirror that wasn’t my own
Constantly dreaming of floating up to the ceiling
But in the daytime pinned down by my duvet and my cat
Feeling the betrayal of friends busy off having children
When it’s me not calling back and it’s me that’s failing them
But I think you could change it all like a struck match or a phone call
If I was god, or the Wizard of Oz
I’d make you like me, just like me
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4. |
Eggshell Blue
04:20
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Kelly said, “it’s only poison if you drink it, or read it and misunderstand it”
This old cassette holds more than voices and laughter
Background traffic noise transports me, more than photographs have done
The back of envelopes the back of hands
Start a notebook in the middle
Write to gentle folk in distant lands who can’t read your scribble
Like a spider crawled out an inkwell on scented paper eggshell blue
Unravel the kinks and the curves the words are a mask and a hinderance
Need assistance for every sentence
When right now I only want to smell and touch and clutch and burrow
Kelly said, “it’s only poison if you drink it, or read it and misunderstand it”
This old cassette holds more than voices and laughter
Background traffic noise transports me, more than photographs have done
Animals in your pad drawn with dreaming faces
A walrus or a bat, swooning blowing kisses
All whiskers and teeth, huge eyes
Bassett hounds in ties discussing imports and exports
Don’t scrutinise the logic, I’m getting off the topic
Which is that fiction is easier to write
I put a weekend aside but gave up and called a voice recorder
An answerphone at home with no one to answer
Knocked sideways by a centimetre of whisky
Kelly said, “it’s only poison if you drink it, or read it and misunderstand it”
This old cassette holds more than voices and laughter
Background traffic noise transports me, more than photographs have done
A chapter erased now beyond reproduction
One day I’ll get nostalgic about right now, but not about the sitcoms
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5. |
Spokes
05:01
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We went night swimming, me and her brother
She stopped at the villa digesting her dinner
Calamari supper, afloat on a red wine sea
Gave some doofus a crook look
Should have got a phrase book that covers hand-signals
Round here I think that they might carry pistols
Stop me if I’m wistful, shove a stick in my spokes
If I exist when I’m 90, I’ll still repeat the same jokes and anecdotes
Feeling empty inside, I eat when I’m not hungry and drink when I’m not dry
It can get out of hand like vegetation in Spring
A word not crossed but stored in your closet lingering
You don’t have to be prophet to foresee
Silent and frosty
Deliver information like a bee sting
Or just ignore it
I’m probably not up for the fight
Hiding on the backstairs
Afraid of the night
I’m probably not who you wished I would be
Short temper, short tongue
I lost my mystery
Sorrentino’s a hero, but I wouldn’t want to meet him
Life can chance in an instant, but it usual doesn’t
My cousins moved away, left me coughing from my stomach
The Consequences of Love left me without a compass
I’m sleepless and shallow
Meatless yet callow
Somehow draw a salary without creating casualties
Accidents aren’t always avoided by reference to past events
Concrete reinforced by steel and hidden secrets
I’m probably not up for the fight
Hiding on the backstairs
Afraid of the night
I’m probably not who you wished I would be
Short temper, short tongue
I lost my mystery
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6. |
Elocution Lessons
04:54
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I keep a lock of your hair, that I took from your plughole
Snug with bugs on my mattress, it’s potentially disastrous
Press the spacebar, delete my profile,
I fade to blackness
You said I was always concerned with childish things
My heart skips with the telephone rings
Answering in my deepest voice
Give my number first and then hang up
Now in a spell like I’m being read to
Of you I’ll always contain an echo
Like a shell replays the ocean
I have welcomed in a trojan
Fed it it’s favourites, whisky and gin
Remorse, regrets and might-have-beens
Piss-poor records from the 90s
Neither of us are aging kindly
You are not the ads in your browsers sidebar
Or what you do with tissue paper
Through the blur of my self-hatred
My internet recommends Russian dating
You’ve got problems with your diphthongs
So there’s misunderstandings
I’m taking elocution lessons from a retired actress
We dress like it’s award season for every class
Me in dickie bow and velvets while she’s shod by Louboutin
I get my cape on to leave
We pose for paparazzi
In front of plastic palm trees
As we kiss bon soiree
But I’m an outsider as I float passed the bookies
Sit upstairs on the bus
Chewing on day-warmed butties
I keep a lock of your hair, that I took from your plughole
Snug with bugs on my mattress, it’s potentially disastrous
Press the spacebar, delete my profile,
I fade to blackness
When you notice how narrow your eyes focus
It can sow the seeds of mild psychosis
Trying to only look at the world through a screen that’s flat and bordered
There’s no depth and all’s in order
I’m treading water in the shallows not on the surface of the deep sea
No shadows move beneath me
I won’t see my coiled spring unfurled
I’m closing out all complications
Seeing only one side of the story
I’m picking my favourite army
I’m picking my favourite toothpaste
Every morning I pack a suitcase
Made connections on the dark web
An error, a fall, a misstep
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7. |
Moist Breaths
03:30
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It was the first place I’d eaten where they bring you two spoons
Sidled out without paying the bill
But felt ill and rang back to pay on the debit card
Of an unwitting friend who draws cartoons
Three panel pieces of crushed hopes
Which at first seem satirical
Then gloomy
Then sage and truthful
Determined to pour my heart out
But forgot I’d already spewed it
Woke up dry and unhealthy and dry round the edges
Like a spider plant sustained by office lights and moist breaths
He’s got less backstory than any item in my wardrobe
Flash forward to 2023
A 16 month wait for a new knee
Calculate the flow of the Wear
Semi-hallucinate a tiny kingfisher
Camp out from five to see a native snake
Suppressing the shivering becoming reptilian
Determined to pour my heart out
But forgot I’d already spewed it
I was inspired by a TV cookery programme to buy a TV cookery book
I never cracked the spine but spent my time reading history
From the labels of beer bottles
My unbranded wheat biscuits have ruined our romantic milk bath
I’ve heard foxes smell like marijuana
Or a cross between sweat and urine
I could beat you all at table football by only playing the goalkeeper
Telling everyone that I’ve got secrets to spill
Determined to pour my heart out
But forgot I’d already spewed it
Anthropomorphise everything
I see faces in trees and in coffee cups
Dogs named Steve, cars called Elsie
Talking lions and what the hell is a Moomin?
And why does that one dress like me?
How can the sea be cruel when it’s just centillions of molecules
More a medium than a man?
It warms my heart that comedians doing stand up make you awkward
Science has taught me that when you blush the inside of your stomach glows too
I’ve never been drawn to solipsism
But when I’m hushed, drunk and warn out I can believe there’s just me and you
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8. |
My Indefensible Acts
04:18
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The foil on your pills sounds like blistering chicken skin
And I’m forgetting the names of exes’ exes
Who know what height these snowflakes formed?
Tuck my trousers in socks to keep my pins warm
Now I’m lowly Faithful Johannes
But trying to use more words than Declan McManus
Like pangolin or circumloquacious, fluoxetine or abyssopelagic
The later pertains to the ocean’s depths
More explored in fiction than in fact
At the bottom of the Marianas Trench there’s only fine silt and film directors
But, I keep my pastey scared body in the shallows
Tiptoeing round weaver fish spines
Surf’s rolling in both ears full of brine
I got my Sunday TV through showroom windows
We recorded over the C90 of your wedding
But you haven’t noticed
Staying up late to find a melancholy melody
Is this heartfelt or a cruel self-parody
I’m insecure like my tenancy
Steadily altering my personality
In heresy to my teenage self
Stealthfully let my dreams decode my indefensible acts
Buy a pet rodent and call him Penelope
In nearly every sentence there’s sub-conscious synecdoche
Cry listening to Yo La Tengo in traffic
Blame Ira Kaplan, there’s no need to panic
Who know what makes these teardrops form?
Maybe atmospheric pressure, it’s building to a storm
Like on that trip back from Eaton Hall
I was small and certain it was the end of the world
Sky darkened further by the tinted glass
Vice grip on the car door
Praying to a girl in my class
I got my Sunday TV through showroom windows
We recorded over the C90 of your wedding
But you haven’t noticed
Pangolin or circumloquacious, fluoxetine or abyssopelagic
At the bottom of the Marianas Trench there’s only fine silt and film directors
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9. |
Character Killer
04:53
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I raise my game
Pheasants and deer
Animal husbandry
You don’t know what you mean to me
Hands soaked in white spirits
Rough enough to light matches
The catch is the when it enters the blood stream
Flips co-ordination and you can’t catch things
Cold water stream
Cold walls in the kitchen
Cold and damp feet
Cold heart
Cold frozen ground
Icicles in the pantry
Cold and numb hands
Cold heart
Said I’d make a new start
Forget the city
The pruned parks and cut grass
All the earnest artworks
Politely resigned from the committee
Avoiding all investigations
Let’s just stay calm
No one asked why?
But I didn’t seek questions
A few said goodbye
But I was not listening
At first the birds wake you
But it doesn’t take long
To feel like you belong
Got a dog, we swim in the lake
Say up late and read,
although the readings just me
You don’t know what you mean to me
Stay calm, is it better not to chance your arm
While I wait for a change in the weather
The only think holding me together is barometric pressure
Cold water stream
Cold walls in the kitchen
Cold and damp feet
Cold heart
Cold frozen ground
Icicles in the pantry
Cold and numb hands
Cold heart
It can change with the turn of a lock
A mountain range only stores secrets for so long
It can change with the ring of a phone
The whispers in the trees reflect your own
I raise my game
Pheasants and deer
Animal husbandry
You don’t know what you mean to me
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Outside Your House Durham, UK
BBC RADIO 6 MUSIC:
"One of those records I wanted to listen to several times over" Gideon
Coe
OUTSIDE YOUR HOUSE have drawn a cult following from their unorthodox energetic live shows; feat. toy keyboards, driving bass hits & unique / direct lyrics.
Music - Jonathan Swift
Words - Faithful Johannes
WWW.SAPIENRECORDS.COM/OUTSIDEYOURHOUSE
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