Lyrics-Martyn Bates

<Mystery Seas(Letters Written #2)>

Shore Poem
come along come alone
to run all these sands that you know
come alone run alone
by the watery flow

i love to see you
whatever you do
i love to see you
and all you live thru
tho blighted misfortune
disowns you
and
blocks you
tho
time seems to run like sand
dismissing you
out of hand

this shore hands

come along come alone
to the roar of the tides ever new
come alone come alone
run your changeless desires
for
i love to see you
imperfect actor and player
i love to see you
sweet salt sea
in wounds

this shore hands

Calm of Dark
when
calm of dark comes
do you listen
keen and pointedly as a blade
homing into every fissure
carving out a fresh shape

(and everything you knew
comes flooding to you in your dream
and you'll want to hold it to you
but you know
you shall leave...)

so like a secret
comes the evening
decked in covers
oh so pale with a moonlight
with a stillness that implores you
to sleep

to wait

when calm of dark comes

Imagination Feels Like Poison
imagination feels like poison
in me today

it evokes a meanness
a mean spirit in me
and i'm not giving a thing
away

i'm stopped like a dam
a looming night-sky-tall wall of no
no more

i'm empty of giving
and i'm ugly for it
disfigured
disarrayed
despoiling the beauty

imagination is a wildfire

i'm a knife inside
and i can't give you anything new
except cruel fingertips
like ice

i'm tracing old breath out in the heat
of the room
I'm tracing the shape of a doubled up man
old in words and eyes and tongues and razoring face
i'm a knife inside
i can't give anything

imagination feels like poison
into me today
and i'm not giving
i'm not giving a thing away

Trade Winds
i'm struck
and sure every splintered sight
will run together tomorrow

that trucks well hidden
will hide my flight
so that where i go
no one follows

oh i long to know you as no one else
i know i know that you're moving me
with your red and golden heaven scent
all a blazing perfume of loving

a tear for a tear i will trade you then
a tear so long to be learning
a hand of joy like a pearl
a pearl to spend upon a spangled journey

i long to see you in morning light
oh let a stranger discover
that the face to gaze from my dawning sight
is the smile
on the lips of a lover

Over The Waters
i can read into faces
a thread so apalling
weaving a likeness that betrays
that betrays a failing runnning in each
in each mask that covers all feeling

and i recognise sometimes
that this is slowly creeping into the way i smile
and in how i am breathing

years
crowd you out

like a weight
to your shoulders

vast
bearing down on you
calling you older

repeating
in swallowing curves
running round madly
hemming in on you

with you wearing it badly
like it's meant for you
and you'll let it hold you
you'll let yourself be pulled in
just as if you had no say in this
lie of age
this sinking trap
that says there is no meaning saved
from past
and seemingly brighter far off days
crying lies at you
always as your sorry voice says

says nothing
only sighs

Everywhere There's Rain
everywhere there is rain
there is more
more than at first appears

dark and light run
in and out
and wildly career over all
bearing down
and mapping out
in clear rhyme and reason
to the sound that only you can hear

ah if i can only see what meets the eyes first
then
i feel that i fall short of what i could see
if
i opened up my eyes wide
wide to it all

the night a-fire with subtlety

crazily aflame
burning quietly
in the heat
of everywhere there is rain

Empty Pages
empty pages
a day whispering

dissolving melancholy
into joyous soft sung quiverings

tasting wine
in drowning seas

a splash

a falling in a river of salt water
down from a bridge

a moon
breaking on the ripples that smash
and scatter
fixing your gaze within
within these tears
these dry scatterings of dead leaves
blown far afield

ah
you must clear the dampering visioning
that seems to rain
and to seal you into every flowing gutter

this is purifying

coming clear
and seeing surer
and stepping firmer

and
you trace back what seemed to be
empty pages

but
they are filled
filled to be brim

Midday Coming Misty
clasped hands
to the hiss of the hail
cracking at you
singing as it pours

this day
is a curl to the lips
for a hard heart
emptied out of warmth

(you see some faces grinning
see small hands press the glass
tapping
shouting you to look
as you hurry on past)

voices scatter
over the hiss of the downpour
in a nameless blur of a feeling
coming misty
with a pale hues of the midday whirl

(and they're looking out laughing
thru the smoke of the room)

noises
tumble in the lanes crying
crying at you

Sky After All
floods of thoughts
unsettling fetters
chains of saddening weight
beneath my feet
as far and few
they are claiming it all back
calling back their smiles
all their deeds

you offer a hand
and i am cautious
like a trial is unfolding
like tomorrow is an open pit
a place to fall and fail that ill be held in
left in
after all

and
night brings music
slow coming lightening
fills out all of the dead sky
after all
after sunrise
after rainbows
comes the emptying dead sky
after all

stared and said
what steps to take

steered to where there is only
forlorn waiting
only straying steps of sour
stepping around
already withdrawn hands
under damned sky
after all

If I Could See In Everyone
if i could see in everyone

peer thru
into every face
it would be
as if i had come to a stop
to some barren place
washed out of all its colour
finished up and wasted
all askew
astray and empty
empty of rhyme or reason
derelict
in the unhappiest of ways

if i could hear in everyone

if i could hear in everyone
attune
to every voice that sang and spoke
alike
and
listen to every word
each story running thru them

then i would feel somehow wrong
somehow cheated out of something
as if
i had robbed myself of something
something oh so strong

if i could see in everyone

Of Night
salty air in my eyes and in my hair

the sound of night
caling right thru to me
its a sound
i've learned to want more
to yearn for
when the dreaming night is over
once more

ah
looming
somehow older than even time is
such gnarled immaculate rocks of tall warning
and splintered fear

i'm watching two figures filled up with a wonder
with a frightening awe

and mist is everywhere

and
the two of them
are grasped up and flung bodily
into the hiding seas below

and
the water clashing on the cliffs
that scratch
scratch against a sky of stone

and
this sound
that runs thru me
and calls again
is a beautiful secret
to own




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