Belong :: With Those Who Belong

The bell tolls
The bird sings
I believe there is lavender
In the garden

The body breathes
The mind thinks
I believe we may find peace
In the soul

The light grows
The darkness recedes
I believe we may find balance
In the margins

The doors open
The doors close
I believe we may find each other
In that place in-between

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Lest There Be :: Any Misunderstanding

I am here to stay
Just for a few days
I say the words slowly, carefully
In case they should believe
I wish to stay any longer

I am seeking
No more than sunshine and rain
Perhaps a stroll on Totnes Plains
Or an hour or two
In Dartington Hall's Meditation Garden

I did not mean to cry
But cry I must
Cry tears of joy
For the clumps of evening primrose

By the half-barrel
Full of pebbles and water
Outside 30 Victoria Road’s
Refurbished Old Stables

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Beside The Stream :: Beyond The Cross

Was it you
That I came here for
Or is it myself
That I seek out once more

Thistles by the stream
Pebbles in the water
Love of breath, and breeze
Alive, here and now; to so dream

Bird-box on the tree trunk
Lichen-cobwebs on the branches
Life of ages in each and every leaf
Alive, here and now; to so believe

The outcrop bears no names
No prior memories erupt
From the fierce-thrown granite
Alive, here an now; to so climb

Somehow we find symmetry
As in sunlight, as in shadow
As on balmy days also with rain
Alive, here and now; to so feel

To feel magnificent pleasure
To feel immeasurable pain

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The Last Time (Rolling Stones)

This could be the last time
Maybe
I don’t know
This short path to the last line
Perhaps
Fast-fast-fast then slow-slow-slow
Mick Jagger’s swagger and Keith Richard’s licks
Exciting the young girls
And thrilling the young boys

On their holy communion day tricks
This could be the last time
Maybe
I don’t know
Perhaps
Today and today and today and tomorrow
Alex’s poise for the Arctic Monkeys latest kicks
This sure could turn out to be the last line

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Imagine (John Lennon)

In the blink of an eye
In the closure of a door
In that last moment of why
In that step out onto the dance floor
In that walking together
Of an April afternoon
In that sunlit fair-weather
To spill a cup and a spoon

The blossom is full
As you prepare to say au revoir
The crystals colour the skull
As my words say mon amour ce soir
Afterwards I will try piece by piece
To build the memory of this day
To listen and to learn and to seize
On the all of the how
Of how and why I played

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I Send You This Cadmium Red (John Berger And John Christie)

A train to an aeroplane to another train
A taxi to a door to another door
A lift to an upper floor
To a waiting room
Where relatives sat in silence
Where relatives sat in tears
You entered yet another room
Only for you only for you now

Bright blue Atlantic surf
Signature light of St Ives
No time for clothes to be discarded
Time having hardly been on your side
A step and a stride and a leap or dive
Swimming and smiling and laughing
The letters would say thank you
The actions would say love

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All The Blue Changes (No Man)

Where did I find you and how did I find you
What did you mean to me such that
Such that I should happily include you
Include you in my permanent collection
And now that you are so to speak as resident
I can tell my close friends all about you
About your background and your provenance
Your origins and your exceptional raison d'être

Giving up on beautiful and giving up on pain
Where did I find you and how did I find you
What on earth did you mean to me
What on earth did you see in me
Sunshine and rain so plain
Your wish to be with me
To rearrange and realign
The previous proposal stain
Beside the Machair
On those windblown beaches
To redistribute and reaffirm
Our closest furthest reaches

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Walk On The Wild Side (Lou Reed)

We spoke of Raglan Road and Grafton Street
Indeed a few years ago you and I walked
From the former to the latter on our way
To the Gresham Hotel down O’Connell Street
Where the men of the cloth wined and dined
Of course we looked into the cloisters
Of Trinity College where many years before
I had begun to lose myself and find myself

Found by talking with Professor PJ O’Reilly
Who asked if he may join me for dinner
Found by buying and then reading
Jonathan Livingston Seagull
In the airport departure lounge
Where also I spotted
The brothers and the sisters of the faith
Priests resplendent in velvet robes
And crocodile skin shoes
With nuns carrying their personalised
Versace leather handbags

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Daydream Believer (Monkees)

Would you like to come into my bed
Isn’t that what you always wanted
Please pick yourself up from my floor
For that you see is what I always wanted
From first sight to longer view
I said to myself yes why oh yes
From breaking light to morning dew
I thought to myself why yes oh how blessed

To slip together so easily
To lay there free and swell
Abroad on your breasts so eagerly
Such had the fires of fate to sell
In and out and to and fro
Our words no more than gasps
Up and down and back and forth
Oh how those lips of lust we clasped

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Let It Be (Beatles)

Sedum Palustre, Sedum Rotundifolium
Serums of ecstasies
Serums of saints and sinners
Sedums of successful procreation
Latin first and Latin last
Latin for lover’s communication
Lothario with his poems of pasts
Latin to the point of fornication

Let it be then let it be
The chosen words where it was ok
Let me see then let me see
The chosen words were encouraging
Yet not to be said again
No, no more those words to be spoken
Neither on the pillows nor the bed
Words of sex so even-handedly unopened

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She (Charles Aznavour)

Soft submissive sands
There to place hands
Softly upon your navel
Warm instilling thoughts
That we ought to didn’t we
We ought to go a little further
Further into the deep of night
Further to the hopes of our saviour

Tender is the skin
The skin which so so calmly says
Pray won’t you please come on in
Enter but enter slowly and fondle
Feel the storms begin to rise
With those wanton wish-fulfilling sighs
Yes oh yes we should oh yes we should be sated
Be together yes sated together as now as later

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500 Miles (Proclaimers)

You slide about
On packed white snow
I walk into town
In search of toothpaste and slippers
You post a streaming video
So that your friends and folks might know
I on the other hand
Remain mute about listening to The Hunter

Once more as before
You bag another Scottish Munro
Whilst for our tea on Thursdays
We have milk-boiled kippers
You sang in abundant joy
At the Portuguese karaoke show
Albeit against a disapproving face
As black as abject thunder

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Reason To Believe (Rod Stewart)

Seriously pink sand
Are we going anywhere
Let me take you by the hand
Let me meet you there
Single golden band
Are we tied to anything
Some words are rather grand
They say so so many things

Roll back
As waves for surfers surf
Add to the stack
With love not mirth
Turn over
As once we are, so so once more
In the clover
As kept always in the store

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Hallelujah (Jeff Buckley)

And so then now why wouldn’t you
Make your own cover version
Nothing of you hidden or given away
By you singing someone else’s song
Not by the words that is
But boy oh boy
What heart-wrenching longing
What tearful soul-suspended despair

For you your minor key was anything but
Heavy with the blanket of a lover’s ache
Heavier with the futility of a lover’s loss
Yes you took yourself to anywhere but
Into those rooms where fools and devils roam
Into those spaces for the almost silent
Except, yes except you heard your own cry
A cry which carried itself into the vast deafness

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Ship Of Fools (Robert Plant)

No one is here now
No one at all to disarm
The seas they are clear now
And soon so soon there will be calm
But first a raucous adventure
Some way beyond the gales
A theatre for rolling and rocking
And for ably going off the rails

No one was there though
No one to hold nor to charm
The tide turned ever so slow
As lips without the curing balm
But yes there was a naughtiness
In so deep it was a new way to fail
The novelty of such intense haughtiness
For a time it matured but then too went stale

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I’m Losing My Mind (Liza Minelli)

Hide away your Lazarus
Your hopes of slight refrain
Cover up your own ambition
With thoughts of nought or nought to gain
Obscure them with the obscurity
That certainty of knowing how to stain
Become purer than pure with such a surety
From the flowing of the flowing of the grain

Don’t you go steal the highlights
On the darkness of the turn
Rather be hidden by the street fights
The starkness through which we learn
Move onwards then endways to your ending
Satisfied with your rustle in the bushes
Rather than it be the opening night
After the final shuffling of the royal flushes

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I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (U2)

I scathe at the indifference
Beside myself with rage
I crawl with stiff resistance
To forge words on the page
The lathe of love once turned
I remember to this very day
Those hot-ache cokes that burned
To fire the kilns of clay

Hide away then the inference
There’s more which I wish to claim
In this league of subsistence
The desire is mine to aim
So my dear once more to flower
Before the time to go on stage
I write for the coliseum’s power
Of that pastoral present age

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Seasons In The Sun (Jacques Brel And Rod McKuen)

I spoke of the truth
Yet so so few did receive me
I crossed out the lies
Which tried so so hard to deceive me
I sang the song that I saw
And oh, oh how time raced along
I was you see as I was before
And oh, oh how the passions raged among

Yet guilt was always close on by
As those cold unbeholden no-no words surfaced
I never was so so foolishly unwise
With absolutely no certainty of purpose
Today it is the Cherry Blossom
Blowing low, wafting low on the breeze
The equanimity of you and you, my possum
Whose lower than low esteem I had to leave

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No Face, No Name, No Number (Traffic)

Without your identity where are you
Without your intention where are you
Without your light where are we
Where then might our catchment content be
Born into the valley
Given to the clay as given to the water
Thus to call out all over the oceans
Thus to climb up to the top of the hills

Without sight how might I see you near me
Without sound how might I round you up
Without scent how might your aroma fill me
Where then might our essence ever dwell
Scattered to the four winds
Gifted to the previous attachments
Is it ever to parade itself majestically
Thus to bounce lightly on and into the night

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I Talk To The Wind (King Crimson)

On the unadopted road
With four pairs
Of Nineteen-thirties semi-detached houses
With open fields
To the front and to the sides
Where on the night of the party
Friends congregated, including
Teenagers seeking to lose their virginity

The policeman asked
Is that King Crimson I can hear
The prog-rockers in their glitter said yes
The folkies with their acoustic guitars said yes
The soul dudes in their mohair suits said yes
The hippy hippy shake shakers loosely said yes
The LSD boys said yes, at least imagined they did
And I said; yes, yes it is officer; do you like it?

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Nessun Dorma (Jeff Beck)

The players are due out soon
Crowds of fans wait in anticipation
Hairs rising on the backs of their necks
Smiles foraging about in the sunlight
Another Sheffield Wednesday Saturday
Another day among friends on the Kop
And aren’t we classy to play Nessun Dorma
Before we sing along to Hi-Ho Silver Lining

Six plays of the newly downloaded playlist later
Jeff Beck’s music is lucidly infused within me
I was close to tears watching and hearing
Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton and Jan Hammer
Talk so lovingly and adoringly about him
This was the peer to peer adulation we all crave
You may have been there with Elvis Costello
Or the Arctic Monkeys could take you there

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Made Up Love Song # 43 (Guillemots)

Tonight it is standing room only
Leaning on each other
Leaning into each other
Leaning and singing to each other
Joining in with the young people
Joining in with the band
Everyone tonight is happy
Be happy or else be damned

The doors open
Crowds tumble out
Into the night air
Onto the night-time streets
Past the down and outs
Bedding down beside the canal
Past the drunks and the druggies
On their way to they know not where

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Where Do You Go To My Lovely (Peter Sarstedt)

With each turn
I turn away
With each turn away
I return ever stronger
What I learn
I choose to say
I learn to choose to say
Stay a few more moments longer

With each loss
I lose a little more
I lose loss that little more
Each day to become stronger
What I gloss over
Is the determination to move on
I gloss that to move on over
I am sure to be alive a little longer

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