1. |
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Don’t park your heart here
It doesn’t fit
And you don’t even have a permit
I will clamp it
We don’t fall in love
We get stuck quick
Like two cormorants in an oil slick
I wouldn’t risk it
Don’t bring this sadness on yourself
Please fall in love with someone else
Don’t bring this sadness on yourself
Please fall in love with someone else
Don’t park your heart here
I’ll clip its wings
And it’ll never fly, or roam free
Never roam free
I just can help it
This cycle’s mine
My soul’s been through the dark wash too many times
One too many times
So don’t believe the things I say
Just have some sense and get away
Don’t believe the stupid shit I say
Just have some sense and get away
And find yourself a decent boy
With a decent job
And an even plan
Who treats you like the queen we all know you are
A decent haircut and a working car
Don’t sit on stairways
Don’t stare in doorways
Don’t swallow chewing gum
Don’t park on clearways
Don’t be unhappy
Don’t get drunk daily
Don’t be a fool
Don’t work for free
Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t cry, don’t moan
Don’t piss, don’t fight, don’t fart
And don’t park your heart here
You’re a butterfly and I’m the lowest,
Lowest,
Lowest,
Lowest
Form of life
Way below pond life
So cut your losses, cut them now
And when the darkness falls leave town
Cut your losses, cut them now
And get the first bus out of town
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2. |
My Bohemian Life Part I
05:53
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As the town dust settles on my wrinkles
And this old pain settles behind my eyes
I ponder how they lost their twinkle
Along with my bohemian life
I am respected in this townland
And with all my good work that’s my right
But what if way back when I’d cut loose
And lived a bohemian life
And you tell me every day you love me
You there, with your powdered face and your trousered thigh
I tell myself that, yes, this is love
And I try to do you right
But picture you in a flower garden
Your hair paying homage to the sunlight
Picture you in love as you might
As my bohemian wife
I could throw this paper in the shredder
My two weeks holidays per year
I could throw it all away forever
Leave, and never come back here
My dedication to your company
Is nothing more than a hill of sand
I could turn the hourglass right around now
And be a bohemian man
As the town light makes shadows of my wrinkles
I shuffle all my work and sigh
Somewhere a distant star twinkles
And that’s my bohemian life
Time to turn in now and reconnect the dots
Tomorrow is another day in the bosom of my family
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3. |
Doorways
06:30
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Buttons missing from my coat
My back is broke
My greying face is wincing now
I feel a steady rising sickness coming from my feet
And then sinking down
I doodle pictures of a hangman’s noose
I fumble with my key and chain
The front door reminds me of my esteem for you
As undiluted, blinding pain
As if I need reminding that you don’t love me
You pause at the doorpost
That smiling girl’s a forgotten ghost
And your downturned mouth
And every plodding step towards the bathroom
Reminds how life has beat you down
You turn the mirror
Towards your sagging eyes, expanding thighs and falling bust
And say how I’m like the books you read at school
Rather dull, and full of dust
As if I need reminding that you don’t love me
And this could all mean nothing, and you’ll remember nothing
By the canal I watch the young lovers confess
Maybe I need new in-soles or I’m just depressed
Old women and old men will feel this way, I guess
Rewind the camera, buy a newspaper and go home for your tea
Good bye, good bye, good bye
We’ve sat in rooms as cold as tombs
Thinking of
How we were not meant to be analysed, or scrutinised
Just to be loved
As if I need reminding that you don’t love me
This could all mean nothing. You’ll remember nothing.
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4. |
Windows
02:49
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5. |
Mysteries of Life
04:19
|
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It seems too long since we once shared a room together
And now I see you listed in some famous science paper
And memories of you now float like water vapour
Though they once were so sublime
We ran through corridors and smelt the dust and learning
And blazed like meteors pulled in by the earth’s yearning
Your eyes were copper blue, my heart was all for turning
But yours was water, crystalline
You unveiled the mysteries of life
And I’d die just to have you here again
You unveiled the mysteries of life
All those insincere and thoughtless things you said
We’d languish afternoons and make weekends of Mondays
And play your copied tapes of Slowdive and the Sundays
You’d change how this world turns with me beside you some day
Or that’s how I thought it would be
We’d share a microscope and count small things to pass time
You’d share your thoughts with me and I’d put them all to rhyme
And droplets of your breath would intermingle with mine
It was liquid entropy
Now you unveil the mysteries of life
And I’d go through death just to have you here again
You unveil the mysteries of life
All those insincere and heartless things you said
Mysteries of life hold me in the lowest place
Keep the boot down on my face
Digging through the dirt of everyday
These white coats remind me of the sycophants around you
And all the things I said I’d do but never got around to
You left to find yourself, how come I never found you?
And how come you never found me
When you unveil the mysteries of life?
And I’d sit through Napalm Death just to have you here again
You unveil the mysteries of life
All those insincere and heartless things you said
You unveil the mysteries of life
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6. |
A Music Lesson
05:26
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What’s to become of Jean?
Her students pile in with their music sheets
The smell of rosin and the tune-up screech
And poor technique - some days can’t end too soon
And old familiar tunes
The Sing Hosanna and the Claire de Lune
Fill empty spaces in old Georgian rooms
Where floorboards creak
As does my ageing pulse this afternoon
In 6/8 time
I feel you move sometimes
I feel your thoughts and your heart meet mine
But words can be so shallow
When music flows to and fro
My notes cling to the stave
Like brooding ravens cawing from the grave
When semi-quavers dance right off her page
How my arms ache
And what’s to become of Jean?
The students saunter home in twos and threes
And giggle past her on Haightsbury street
She’s home at five
Two porcelain dogs say hi
Well, so would I
I feel you move sometimes
I feel your thoughts and your heart meet mine
But words can seem so shallow
When music flows to and fro
I stand and watch cars pass by
Then so do I
I feel you move sometimes
I feel your thoughts and your heart meet mine
Words can seem so hollow
When music flows to and fro
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7. |
Stairways
04:40
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The painter sat there on a stairway
Contemplating rain
And other inconveniences
Drips from the leaky ceiling hit his in-betweeniences
Oh, essence of life
Oh, dilution of it all
And then she joined him on the stairway
Uncoiled her elbows and knees and then released the unsaid
Like the last verse of a song she’d started inside her head
“The baby sitter’s gone,
I’ve put the kettle on.
“How could you do this to me?
Sit here between love and me?
I’m so tired of our words
I feel it like a tragedy
That what I say just makes a fool of me
“I wish we had blue-collar problems
That you could fix in minutes with your fists
Or a good old lock-out
Put paid to conversance because, my dear, I’m all talked out.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
No more creeping ‘round like woodlice.
“How could you do this to me?
Sit here between love and me?
I feel so tired of our words
I feel it like a tragedy
But what you say just makes a fool of me”
The painter shifted on the stairway
Contemplating colour
Unchanged and undiluted
The leaky ceiling wept to his right just where she had
He thought he might paint it all
Then shivered right down to his balls
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8. |
All the Bored People
05:34
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Lily came home on the bus from her college a week ago
Stayed in her room with her medical books and took long walks by the train tracks
She said “Dad, you’re a self-loathing Irishman”
And he said “Lil, that’s not fair. I hate everyone else just as much,
Hate them all just as much, hate them all just as much,
Hate them all just as much, hate them all just as much,
Hate them all just as much…”
And as she left the room he kept saying as much
As for you
If I ever bore you
Use these signs to warn you
If I would ever bore you, if I ever bore you
Andy would comment that politics never excited him
Rhetoric too
And though he’d engage with the soul of a party
He’d usually leave on all fours
And the counselors said that “wandering ‘round in France
Might be good for your tan but you won’t find romance
No romance, you will find no romance
You will find no romance, you will find no romance
You will find no romance, you will find no romance
You will find no romance.”
Well, of course you’ll think this if you never dance
As for you
If I ever bore you
Concentrate on the road before you
And I’ll of course write to you
If you ever get bored
But don’t come back to Dublin
Just to become one of them.
Nouveau-riche observers
With nothing new to say.
Lily will die in white-rimmed glasses at fifty-three
With an unnamed husband with too many teeth
No witnesses and no memories of her many complaints
And Andy will wake up on honeymoon with a French burlesque star
Drunk on wine in a Perpignan bar
And, veiny-eyed and stiletto-scarred, he’ll run like the wind
He will run like the wind, he will run like the wind
He will run like the wind, he will run like the wind
He will run like the wind
Life and liver caving in
As for you
If you ever get bored of me
Just do what’s best and leave me
But do spare a thought for me
If you ever get bored
Monday, I’ll be out on the road with my job
And then Tuesday, I might sell some home conveniences
Wednesday I’ll make some money lying to people
And then Thursday, I’ll sing a song about the days of the week
Friday, I’ll be back to my home and my family
And then Saturday, I might watch some sport on TV
And then Sunday, I’ll go down to the track and I’ll strangle a man
And Monday, I’ll be back out on the road again
Andy and Lily walked up to the graveyard late at night
And looked at their town all wasting in light
They sighed and they smiled and they held hands tight
And they had nothing to do
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9. |
My Bohemian Life Part II
04:31
|
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Town life—it’s the clustering of algae ‘round your head
It’s the drab haircuts on indie kids
The gougers on your sleeve who won’t let go
Well, let go
Take the train as far as it will reach
Past the geometric roads in squares
The bag-infested colonies
The bilge and froth of beercan leach
But to where?
I don’t know
What’s the point in a country town
And middle managers grafted there?
The tractors and machinery
Peering over walls like four-year-olds
So to where?
To County Mayo’s open cliffs
To hear the whistle of country, lost?
We’ll drive right off those open cliffs
Let seagulls watch us crashing through the air
I ran through the carriages, sun flashes reflecting in
The myriad lives of husbands and wives
Rattling into oblivion
Wake up! quick! and let the sun in
The drunk man’s gone home, dead and tired
Wake up, open out the windows
And shake the dust down off your eyes
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10. |
This Golden Age
05:12
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I will always remember you
Putting your grey bag in your car
There in your white uniform
As I walked away, spinning tales
And as I strolled down Bloomfield Avenue
My heart spun around in the day
All the people with dollar signs over their heads
In this golden age
This golden age
Golden and sleazy
Glowing and teasing
So fragrantly pleasing
Yet so lazy and easy
Oh did I spend so much time, back in school, with my biros and maths
Just to give all my sweat to a state that’s unburdened and crass?
A society bored and undaring
This city life, tiring and wearing (oh, it’s so wearing on the senses)
Commuters with chemicalled armpits
Robotic limbs hold up the train
I’m just counting the hours till I see you again
And your golden face
Golden face
Golden and shining
Lustrous and brightening
There in the doorway
Patiently smiling
I will always remember you
Holding those three lights in your arms
As I walked back up Bloomfield Avenue
A swing in my step to meet you
And though we won’t write the book on happiness
Without footnotes on every page
We’ll keep these lights burning oh-so-bright
In this golden age
Golden age
Golden and shining
Lustrous and brightening
Just a little bit frightening
So is it the right thing
To dwell on what you’ve said
Or on some things that I did
When Death’s waiting for us
Patiently smiling?
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