A butterfly flutters its wings
You already know the answer
To sing
To breath
To feel for form and formula
To ask questions
Without conceit of wisdom or concrete belief

Wistful thought and playfulness
To wish
To exist
Persisting in perpetual motion
Release regrets to the sea

To be still in the night
To sit calm and twilit
On barren rock
Ignited by stars colliding
Far from nowhere
Silent light & air

Head for the horizon
The line you never cross
If a tree falls in the wood
Does it seek permission?
It does not.
Does it announce or document its descent?
Or simply give way to the inevitable gravity of everything

So sing your song
You already know the answer
We’re atoms
We’re dust
We’re the tiny spark that lights a whole fire
We’re nothing
This everything there is
We’re never coming back

This is done
Or it goes on forever
Never knowing
Never knowing how to know
And it never mattering that we don’t

So sing your song
In all your pointless glory
We’re nothing
This is everything there is
We’re never coming back.

What do I do
If I can do what I want to?
It’s confusing
If I’m not your fool
When I’m not your shadow
If I’m not trying to be a good girl anymore

What do I want
If I can want anything at all?
If it’s my choosing
And I’m in control
All my thoughts are my own
When I’m not trying to be who you want anymore

What if I let myself go?
What if I let myself off?
What if I stop
Trying to work harder
Trying to be better?
What if my tears never end?
What if I’m weak
If my voice wavers when I try to speak?
What if I’m truthful
If I never lie
What if I gave you a piece of my mind?

What do I do
If I can do what I want to?
It’s confusing
When I’m not your fool
Now I’m not your shadow
When I’m not trying to be a good girl anymore.

Like a cat can catch a tiny bird
How the bones between your fingers feel
Fluttering fragility of all the life that you could steal

If I could twist a sentence round your neck
Squeeze it hard until it hurts to breath
Then and only then I’d know you’re listening to me
Bleeding ears be hearing me

I can whistle on the wind
Tell a tale with any tune I like
Expect to feel the echo of my melody
In your memory every night

I could tear through you with just my tongue
Scorch your skin with things I’ve sung
And I am unafraid of any consequence
What could be done to me has been done

I have fled the forest floor on scared bare feet
I have hitched the whole way home
I’ve unstitched the itch of your tightfistedness
This flimsy feathered foe has flown

Like a cat can catch a tiny bird
How the bones between your fingers feel
Fluttering fragility of all the life that you could steal

I’ve come to rescue you
In the dark of the night
In the dark of the night

Words hung here like a rope
When you’re lost without a hope of light
in the dark of the night without a hope of light

Lonely feeling like a ghost
Like a shadow
No one else knows
When you’re lost in the dark of the night without a hope of light

Follow this melodic line
Footsteps falling right and left in,
left and right into the dark of the night without a hope of light

Leading you back and forth
For the dawning of the day brings a brightening in the dark of
the night without a hope of light

On the tip of it
Take it back
Drip drop
A rivulet
Reverse it
Slack to the stream
Ascend the slope
From the river

All running backwards
In dreams of sleep
Where life unravels
To nothing
All coming apart at the seams

You’re falling, you’re falling, you’re falling
Calling out
“Does nobody care?”
You grasp at the air
And it’s as if it was
Never there at all

When will I know it’s the end
When I sink like a sack
Into to my bed
Falling right back
To the edge
Down among the daylight

Time is slipping around
I can’t keep my grip on it
Always pulling me down and back a bit
Till I’m underneath the sealine

All the things I have done
Have not counted for one
Will I have lost
Or have I won?
Or all come undone
Was I ever there at all?

If you were the person
At exactly the time
Stars all aligning
What you most desire

Would you recognise it
Would you know what that’s like
Would you even want it
Would it even be nice

The succour of struggle
In the triumph & trying
I want no winning
Without a fair fight


Could you learn the lesson
Without a mistake
What are the chances
That you didn’t take
It’s no kind of gamble
If you’ve nothing to lose
There’s nothing to handle
If it’s a path that you’d choose


The succour of struggle
In the triumph & trying
I want no winning
Without a fair fight

If you were the person
At exactly the time
Stars all aligning

When you say I broke your heart
You don’t mean it
Myocardial Infarction, pain in your chest
Feeling light-headed

I don’t know what you’re talking about
But you’ve said so many times
In so many different ways
I think I get it now
I can take it from here

When you say I take your breath away
You don’t mean it
You’re in respiratory distress, shortness of breath
A lack of air

I don’t know what you’re talking about
But you’ve said so many times
In so many different ways
I think I get it now
I can take it from here

May I paraphrase
Your love is like a big red balloon
What exactly is it for?
Nothing more than hot air
Ever growing or dying
Even though it was never there

I don’t know what you’re talking about
But you’ve said so many times
In so many different ways
I think I get it now
I can take it from here

Roses are red, violets are blue
Your love’s redundant
But A I love you

Bushes, briars and thorns
Are in my blood
I like my wind north-westerly, cold and dark
Bushes, briars and thorns
Are in my blood
They learn us pain will always come with love
Bushes, briars and thorns
Are in my blood

Fair as any flower that grows
Sweet as the red, red rose
Those who bloom in the dark and gloom
Have a heart that knows

Bushes, briars and thorns
Are in my blood
Your kindness would be wasted on me love
Bushes, briars and thorns
Are in my blood
For love is but a thousand little cuts
Bushes, briars and thorns
Are in my blood

Take your mythical heroine
Make her robes of stars and sunsets
Give her something to overcome and then your story’s done

Ssanna your eyes are like the darkest pools of water
That all might fall into
Ssanna You’re a warrior beset by all the things you might expect
Anyone to be beset by
Ssanna you’re a heroine who won’t be prepared to find yourself of a rare, beguiling kind

Ssanna you must try your best to search the deepest part of you
That knows the wrong from right
Ssanna There is nothing to fight for
You win with truth and love and nothing more and no one else decides

Ssanna life goes on and on and on and the story’s never done
You just drag on and die
Ssanna I will leave you on a lighter note
Within despair there’s always hope and you only have to try

A Life in monochrome
A house of shards and shadows
Existing all alone
The horror story no one knows
Sneaking out at night
With a lie so white
It caught the light

Within a mirrored room
Where every truth’s consumed
A vacuum of the darkest void
Wherein every living thing’s destroyed

Where the clocks go running back
When suddenly the time goes slack
The line you’re hanging from
A chain of every game you’ve won
By deceit or treachery
The parts of you and me
That go unseen

The tale we tell ourselves
Is hurting no one else
The fears we daren’t speak
Are the ones that never leave
Forever locked and lost the key
Hang in the hallway hauntingly

The name you claim you do not know
Regret you’re hoping will not show
Through layers the years put on
Time’s fastening won’t come undone

The lips you never kissed
The train you said you would not miss
The call you didn’t make
What you denied for pridefulness sake
A wake for what you could’ve shared
A problem halved by being aired
In the sun or the dusky light
All that we might, we might
Be spared the silent pain
Of loving half ourselves
A love in vain

A Life in monochrome
A house of shards and shadows
Existing all alone
The horror story no one knows
Or stepping into sight
With a truth so bright
It caught alight

A bite from the underdog doesn’t kill you instantly
They release a deadly poison that degrades you gradually

Hear it howling at your door
Then you don’t hear it anymore

The bark of the underdog is whimper in the night
They visit you in dreams slowly blocking out the light

Hear it howling at your door
Till you don’t notice anymore

The underdog it eats you inside out
Feeding on your fear, deepening your doubt

Hear it howling at your door
Til’ you don’t notice anymore

The bark of the underdog is a whimper in the night
They visit you in dreams only wake up when it bites

Hear it howling at your door
Then you don’t hear it anymore

I’ll remember you like a fine afternoon
Wherever we go
Out into the blue
That’s where I’ll put you

In my memory, sweet reverie
The walk by a river
Soliloquy
A soft and lilting melody
Playing perpetually

I’ll remember you like a fine afternoon
Short and sweet
Warm with a breeze
On a sunny day, you half in the shade
Afternoon shadow
Sauntering slowly away

A slow burn
Building a fire, piece by piece, that never goes out
Watching it glow in the cold lonely nights of my doubt

You cannot shake me or wake me this isn’t my dream
It’s a whole lifetime of sewing each stitch to the seam
When I leave it will cover a place on the earth
And there’ll be no question of virtue or value or worth

A slow burn
Building a fire, piece by piece, that never goes out
Watching it glow in the cold lonely nights of my doubt

For I am making the mark only I can make
And I will have done it despite all the toil that it takes
Trying to be all the best that I could be
And no other person will withdraw that reward from me

A slow burn
Building a fire, piece by piece, that never goes out
Watching it glow in the cold lonely nights of my doubt

So why don’t you do all the things you thought you’d never do
You’ll be surprised at how naturally they’ll come to you
There isn’t one thing worth having that doesn’t take time
All of the best things test the strength of your heart and your mind
A slow burn
Building a fire, piece by piece, that never goes out.