1. |
In Amber
07:08
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In Amber
This phrase, unwritten
These words, unsaid
These nails, so bitten down
These teeth so ground – something in my head
These eyes unseeing
That sound unheard
That thought I’m fleeing from
Impaled upon –or is that the right verb?
This wait, impatient
This pause so cruel
Silence so latent, but
Somehow it’s not – essence is all
This letter’s loaded
This hand in glove
Fingers all poking through
Reaching out, reaching out for love
This screaming silence
In soundproof howl
That passive violence cuts
My own heart in two – feels like that now
Locked out of action
I’m lost in time
Entombed in traction like
Insect in amber, stuck fast and supine.
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2. |
Life's All Surprise
04:41
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Life’s All Surprise.
It took his words,
From in his head
And in their place,
Left holes instead
There’s no route left,
From head to mouth
No escape plan
He’s heading south
Disjoint, disrupt
That path unkempt
No interrupts
That time is spent
The journey’s end
That final goal
He can’t describe
It ate him whole
And standing in the wings of life’s statutory stage
He is still waiting for a prompt
Hallucinating prisoner in his fleshy cage
But the audience’s long gone
Fragments passing through, scenes he just can’t grasp
He’s still groping for the sense
People, places and events, moments all long past
Is this a wall? Is it offence?
That word he couldn’t find in his lexicon?
What was the meaning of it all?
Somewhere, somehow, he crossed that Rubicon
And then he just started to fall.
We are all ships
On rolling seas
The message trips
On waves like these
It took the light
From his old eyes
No memory to blight
Life’s all surprise.
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3. |
Drugged
04:22
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Drugged
Oh so chemically challenged
And hormonally spiked
She’s been running on substance
For most of her life
On the rails of prescription
Channeled straight down the tracks
Chromatographically coloured
Tattooed and abstract
Ritalin Rigor Mortis
A stiff sentence indeed
Vallium induced vortex
Spiraling deep into need
There’s methadone in her madness
Heroine for the night
Gone down, that was, in sadness
Austere ragged and slight
Ecstasy for embracing
And with the speed of light
That dragon you’re chasing
Gives you fire – not insight
Keratin induced coma
So unmoving and pale
Now the climax is over
It was once off the scale
Pharmaceutical science
Beat a path through her brain
Acid ate at the synapse
Now she can’t be the same
Oh so chemically challenged
No emotion unchurned
Fire of all that experience
Left her empty and burned.
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4. |
The Long Wave (goodbye)
07:20
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The Long Wave (goodbye)
The sound of static, white noised in the background
These random sine waves twist my words
Am I speaking clearly? Or is there no sound?
Am I getting through? Am I being heard?
In the long wave
In the long, long wave
In the long wave
Long wave goodbye
Russians are jamming the frequencies on the border
Transmission’s tuned to stem the flow
Antennae twitching, in case we miss a vital order
Faces silhouetted in the last valve’s glow
In the long wave
In the long, long wave
In the long wave
Long wave goodbye
Radio silence, in the stark cold still of midnight
You were always tuning in to that dead air
‘Hilversum Calling’, the sound out of a past life
Now lost in cobwebs no-one cares
In the long wave
In the long, long wave
In the long wave
Long wave goodbye
No transmission coming through
Wait to hear a word from you
Just ghost voices in the sky
Phased reception going by
Waiting to hear a word x 4
Hit the Squelch and tune me in
Call sign fading growing thin
Sunspot activity is high
Phased transmissions make me cry
Waiting to hear a word x 4
The sound of static fades into mute ambiance
Digital encoding, fresh and crystal clear
Eyes are drooping, slipping into somnambulance
It’s five past midnight – I’m out of here.
In the long wave
In the long, long wave
In the long wave
Long wave goodbye
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5. |
The Lights Go Out
07:05
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The Lights Go out
And so the action makes the day
You crash on through to night
Light squandered on another play
Life cheapened, made so slight
And, breathing in, and breathing out
We circulate the air about
All that pose and pantomime
Is another stupid waste of time
One decision plots a path
Your map, redrawn again
A signature, an autograph
Patina on your brain
Sometimes we look but fail to see
Put all our trust in destiny
As if a book, chapter and verse
Instructions for you universe
When we all go
And fade away
Nothing to know
And less to say
The spirit fades
The eyes just glaze
The Lights Go Out
And so reaction fades away
We settle into sleep
Pull up the covers, softly say
‘Goodnight’, sink to the deep
And we breathe out and don’t breathe in
Close fast the eyes and slack the chin
Count virtues, vices, history
In life’s eternal obituary
When we all go
And fade away
Nothing to know
And less to say
The spirit fades
The eyes just glaze
The lights go out
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6. |
Losing Your Grip
09:43
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Losing Your Grip
Losing touch
Your fingers slip
On the edge of the ledge
Or from the people you see
Losing grip
The muscles relax
Something falls from your hand
To a place, hard to be
Losing your touch,
Former skills now unsure
Not the swift stoke of masters
Or the artist’s shrewd eye
Loosening your grip,
On the things that you know
On that sea of emotion
Fed by the rivers you’ve cried
On an ocean of experience, relationships are riding at full sail
On a course, under fair weather, you could never quite believe that they might fail
But the winds are ever changeable the forecasts just projection or surmise
What looked rosy in the sunset could turn so grey and ugly on sunrise
And it’s never easy
To hold to a course
When the midshipman’s queasy
And the winds grow in force
Losing touch
Now far away
From the home and the homeland
From the people you knew
And the power of your grip
And those sinews so sure
Are now only a memory
One you once thought was true
Losing your grip
It is gauzy, unclear
Sight is so ineffectual
Not a sense you can trust
Loosening your grip
On the way of the world
Once it was made of metal
Now that metal is rust
Losing touch
The fingers grow numb
The longing soon fades away
But the echo remains
In the thrall of the grip
You can’t quite grasp the past
There are shadows before you
That no memory explains.
On an ocean of experience, relationships are riding at full sail
On a course, under fair weather, you could never quite believe that they might fail
But the winds are ever changeable the forecasts just projection or surmise
What looked rosy in the sunset could turn so grey and ugly on sunrise
And it’s never easy
To hold to a course
When the midshipman’s queasy
And the winds grow in force
To hold to a course
When the midshipman’s queasy
And the winds grow in force
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7. |
This House (rests)
09:20
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This House (rests) (Weard)
In the corner of my eye
Where the dust begins to gather
It’s too dangerous to cry
Sedimentary sentiments will set
On the window of my my soul
At the heart of the matter
In that emotional black hole
Memories go to forget
In the passage of time
Grandfather clock’s stentorian ticking
Marks this passing pantomime
That has become daily routine
And the carpet of my tongue
Still salty from all that wounded licking
Where the bleeding once began
Marks a reflection – now sanguine
In the cavern of my chest
The heart is huddled by the fireplace
Those last glowing embers rest
That dying ache of their heat
And in the house of me
I close the door and find a safe place
The only place that I can be
Inside the flesh of my retreat
And this house has come to the conclusion
That this meeting is not in order
Sheltering under the delusions
That we are bricks and mortally inclined
We’re scrutinised
And sanitised
And criticised
And so chastised
We barely raise our eyes - at all,
What’s object of the exercise
If all we come to when we die
Is an obituary in fine lines
And dust is blown in others eyes - and falls
This house rests.
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Roy Weard Brighton, UK
Roy Weard was the lead vocalist and songwriter for Wooden Lion - a band that played many of the free festivals in the 70s.
He went on to write for and front cult bands Dogwatch and Roy Weard and Last Post before getting involved in doing crew / sound / tour managing duties for people like Donovan, Roger Chapman, Manfred Mann, and Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel.
He returned to performing in 2007.
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