A Dance on the Edge of Dystopia: Part 1.
The Early Hours
There’s a couple lying on the pavement,
Leaning up against a pub’s walls.
It’s half-three and the bottle
Third wheeling beside them is half full.
They’re discussing the world
And everything in between,
Using his coat as an outdoor duvet,
Here, everything seems okay
And four o’clock doesn’t exist.
It’s the early hours, where stillness
And pain combine in a weird twisted bliss,
Where the sky is hazy grey
And fades up into the abyss.
It’s hard not to reminisce
Under the streetlights and drizzle,
Hard not to surrender to the stillness;
The hum of the early hours,
Where couples crash on pavements
And lonely people stalk the streets
For the love they couldn’t find in a club.
The early hours are my peace,
No one wants or needs me there
And my mind can sink into the silence.
After Party
Recharging on an old sofa
With a blanket thrown over it.
The summer sunrise is streaming through the window,
I haven’t slept yet and everyone else here
Seems to be dealing with their regrets.
But it’s just me in this little box room,
On a stranger's sofa, thinking of you.
Thinking of all the things I should do
And I should say before these hands decay,
Before this world gets washed away.
Empty brown bottles scatter the sunlight
As it dances about this little box room.
The argument on the floor above continues,
Fleeting words leaving invisible bruises,
But I guess that’s love in all of its ugly hues,
If that is love…
Who am I to say anyway,
I’m just a drunk guy on a stranger’s sofa,
Yearning for connection
In all of the wrong directions.
A Dance on the Edge of Dystopia
Your eyes try to disguise
All the pain you’ve ever felt
As your voiceless broadcasts
Clash with the asteroid belt.
If only you could see the light
That bursts through brickwork for you.
If only you could feel the warmth
That fights off the winter within you.
We dance on the edge of dystopia,
Worried about our words and wants
As shop signs and powerlines
Hang above us like dead men.
There’s a girl I know,
Her eyes try to disguise all the pain she’s ever felt
And her voiceless broadcasts clash with the asteroid belt.
She feels the warmth within her somewhere
And one day she’ll see it; the light and the love.
It’s then, and only then, that the asteroids rain,
Fall like tears from cheeks, holding all of her astral answers within.
She swirls through this Orwellian dream
In her sexy black boots, tailored in defiance,
Crushing the glass left over from fires and riots,
She glides around streetlights that lie like giants across cracked roads
And duets with stop signs pulled like teeth from the concrete;
She dances on the edge of dystopia.
A Smile Under Candlelight
The distant clink of pints.
The smell of the bogs wafts past
As an older gentleman staggers back to the bar,
We’re all surprised he made it that far.
The room was candle-lit
And your smile stole the show.
Folk music and friendly chatter
Didn’t matter to me that night.
Another round,
Another tune blazes on in the corner.
I’m struggling to hear what you say
As a big fella jams away on his guitar.
But your smile is more gorgeous than ever
And I can’t help but zone out to the flicker
Of the shadows and warm glow
Created by a candle that sits snugly
In an old Jawbox gin bottle,
Centre table, listening in on all of our stories.
We laugh at something silly
And you put your hand on my knee
But I see a pain hidden away in your eyes,
A pain that I can’t disguise as well as you do.
But I know it, and I see it.
So we head outside into the night,
Our noses morph into steam train chimneys
And your dark hair flutters around
In the dead December air.
The cold disguises my nerves
And just as I might regret my words,
A kiss blazes on under the moonlight
As sirens race off into the distance.
