here are the lyrics to my album...
1.Frost (based on the russian fairy-tale known as twelve months or, in russian, dveenatsat meesyatsev)
We've woken to lots of snow,
Sana said "mother, I think that we cannot go -
out into the cold and windy morning,
where father
frost comes leaping through the boughs.".
We've woken to wind that blows,
Sana said "mother, I've nothing to let me know -
how to salve a suitor singing blue songs
that numb me more with every word I hear, I fear here".
We've woken to lots of snow,
Father fled, heavy head, out to the forest road.
We've woken to wind that blows,
coat of fur hugging her, under the branches low.
"Daughter, how did you survive the harsh night?"
"I spoke to him with words as soft as snow"
2.Elm tree tall (about dutch elm disease)
Once twenty-five men crown to sole,
the time of the last elm tree tall has passed.
So fall the fruit that will not grow,
no saplings shoot once the snow has passed.
3.Ivy (though the song is inspired by autumnal virginia creepers -which are deciduous but look like ivy. 'virginia creeper is embarrased' etcetera wouldn't have worked so well...)
Ivy is embarrased,
turns red,
for fear she has offended the summit slopes.
Your hair, says she,
snow white at the crown.
Shortly it will work its way down from the roots.
Ivy is ashamed,
turns her face away.
Stems snap, leaves fall
like red cards wave
to indicate foul play.
4.Sprigging him with tansy (complicated explanation. to sprig someone with wild tansy is to declare war. Im not a warmonger but the song was originally a poem inspired by someone who made me angry. Anger is better when it comes out in songs and not in fists)
The sodden bilge engulfs the boat:
you work like a scrimschander,
make snakes in my bones.
The lines have appeared to itch,
since I learnt their language.
A coil will not land in the same pattern,
the knot will not knot itself into a noose -
After muddying a verge,
the tansies, ever hardy to dirt,
are washed by the rain -
fit for sprigging again.
The lines have appeared to itch
since I learnt their language -
so at times I do regale them
with a flying bowline and a song that came at sea -
cover up your mouth when it is open,
yours words are a fog so thick i cannot see.
No charity for my fare,
just a stalk the stem is bare.
I can see it in your cheeks,
out in pink the roses peek.
The lines have appeared to itch
since I learnt their language.
5.The sentience of toes (from a poem i wrote about spring-time and the feelings of my toes. in brackets is the unsung part of the poem)
(Cold solstice passes,
performs the inversion of curfew.
A steady drip of day,
and nights saturation ensues.
Then flora comes, all vernal,
brings a nascent rust to the copper boughs.
Toe nails still yellow,
I purge and preen,
for soon I will adorn my little piggies with leather thong.)
Hush now, dawn birds :
We ten pink fingers of the foot
are meeting with a snail and a slug,
in warmly dewed morning grass.
This winter we were kidnapped,
bundled into socks.
Our home is the moss at goblin combe.
Then two starlings halted mid-song,
so hungry from their morning mantra,
hopped off pronto, from the envy of their watchful foe.
And look! Spider got a bumblebee.
Bad start to the day.
Stop, step down,
a tread of mud gives way,
paints our pale faces brown.
(We mulch like a pot of stodge.)
We know the cost of keeping balance.
6.Rosie (something my friend Rosie said when we were on holiday in cornwall)
Rosie said -
"love must be like the motion of the sea, churning over rocks."
7.Bellows song (about the day my friend Rosie told me Saul Bellow had died)
On the day a poet brought bad tidings to the ferryman,
he diverted all attention from his task
to indulge in her sentiment
by looking to the clouds.
To the high horizon,
amongst the abundant blue,
were the beards of three frail grandfathers
dispersing there, effortlessly,
in the new spring sun.
And at that moment,
the prevalence of unobstructed sky
metaphorically swapped elements
to reflect on a mind-flood of thoughts
as intense as rivers overflowing
where water allows only lofty summits to show.
8.For an apple (inspired by, and a sort of homage to benjamin britten's ceremony of carols which i sang as a choirboy in the cathedral with the harpist merrissa robles. About religion by default, and my renouncement of it as an adult, and also about the day i was working on the ferry and a lady told me it was impossible to whistle after eating an apple but i discovered she was wrong)
We never say deo gratias,
we came away from those days
when we said deo gratias.
All was for an apple,
an apple that he took,
as clerkes do find a-written in their book.
Lady says
"its impossible to whistle after eating an apple"
Nay, I do discover,
performing my feat,
though it is a fruited sound,
my mouth being moist and sweet.
And all was for an apple,
an apple that he took,
as clerkes do find a-written in their book.
We never say deo gratias,
we came away from those days
when we said deo gratias.
9.Keeper of the swans (edited from an unrequited love poem i wrote. the full poem is here :
http://www.poetrycritical.net/read/37773/ )
Our hearts are folded -
it takes two to make a full frame.
And over the murksome mirror
comes a graceful brute to beak my dusky face.
This line of sight lays bait for thought,
and I lose my light to the food which is sought.
I truly wish to be feminised -
your chapped fingers startle my entire thrill
but there's soot over me,
and the finest chimney sweep I ever did see
is only to be had in a cloud of something i do not breathe and cannot precipitate.
10.Ashevak (inspired by a sculpture entitled 'flying shaman' by the inuit Karoo Ashevak)
I am the bridge on a river
which shocks each mute couplet
to a grunt.
I see you come,
I see you go.
I cast a shadow even when the night is black.
11.Threecliffs song (it was written on the beach at three-cliffs bay in the gower and the words are superfluous. its about feeling exhilarated)
Lo, the good man sings I am still with you after all
the winters, springs and summers,
Im still with you when the leaves, they fall.
There are some more poems here -
http://www.poetrycritical.net/~sisotowbel/ if you're interested.
See ya later,
w x