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Carnival |
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You win the arguments you have
you want so badly to be right
But they just drift away
You're left there with nothing in your hands
While we tumble from the mountains where we were born
Born of sky and mountains we tumble from the rocks
Shifting coloured patterns in the brightness of the day
We're only made of water
The full moon gets us high
We can change our shape into anything
as often as we like All our lives are liquid, there's nothing that is stone
The angles wash to curves and in the end we soak
into the hollows of the earth
And home we carry with us just a sense of where
we've been as we flow into one another - I've found you
and lost you and found you so many many times We're only made of water
The full moon gets us high
We can change our shape into anything
as often as we like And mischief and meaning and tricks of the mind
The spray and the mist and the falling of time |
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Adolescent dreams and the ghost of Tupac
Still the devil has all the best beats
Hip hop and an image to keep
Brother hardware under the seat
On the wall "Bin Laden was here"
Turn around and it disappears
Soft spring rain and wild skies
Wild hope in all the kids' eyes
And no one's really sure if this is home
We close early when the nights are slow
Hit the shell garage, Thornton road
Take a long drive up on the moors
Park up in a place we know
Sat in the back seats getting stoned
To forget everything at home
Mess about with bleeping phone
Gazing down on the city below
Where no one's really sure if this is home
Check the rear view mirror at the lights
To see who else is about tonight
The mongrel dogs that run the streets
And the families all with secrets to keep
I lie awake and I hear the sounds
The sirens' wail and the car alarms
A call to prayer and a call to arms
The bass subs of the boom-box cars
The first riffs on the cheap guitars
Tinker ponies on the edge of the park
Drunks roll home and the dogs they bark
I know the sounds like the beat of my heart
And it's not where you're from or where you've been
It's not a matter of blood or family tree
Everybody believes what they want to believe
But they come from some kind of refugee
Running from something, turned out of somewhere
All looking for somewhere, exiled from something
And no one's really sure if this is home
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I met a Moko man from the other side
The room began to capsize as he was telling me his tales
And all my beliefs and best belongings
were flying useless through the air
And when they all were lost - then we were brothers
By the wheel the tellers stands shaking numbers from his hands
His face is masked and his coats tails are waring
He cries 'round and round and round she goes
Where she lands nobody knows, but hey thank you for asking'
The prayer flags are flying in the wind
In the last days of winter, just a few of us remained
We built a fire of remembrance on the frozen land
And as the sparks flew up into the night to dance around the
stars
Beneath our very feet the ground was shifting
The prayer flags are flying in the wind
The prayer wheels spinning in the wind
And
there she blows - our time is gone
And in the womb a new head is beginng to turn
Beyond these Carnival lights there is nothing at all
Just the distant screams and the endless fall
A single drop of rain falls on my windscreen
We’re closer to the very edge than we realise
The bridges all have been washed away or bombed out
And the water runs fast and black and cold...
The prayer flags are flying in the wind
The prayer wheels spinning in the wind |
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Pushing
up on Carlisle Road into the seething shadows
Through the plastic visor - a hail of broken kerbstone
Fire-lit-faces, all the noise - so much hatred
What I remember thinking - I can't believe this is happening
All I remember thinking
Came home four, four-thirty, Emma was waiting up for me
News chanel drone on the TV, her arms clapsed around her
knee
She looked up but said nothing
I went up to the kids bedroom, touched their sleeping faces
Wondered how I could protect them
Wondered how to protect them
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The
rock is made of diamond, the rivers wash with gold
The sun beats down in rhythm, pounding on our reason
Pounding on our reason, ringing in our skulls
Sometimes this land looks empty - it plays so many tricks on
you
The soil of dried blood-sown with seed of people
Overrun with armies that grow out of the earth
They flow down from the mountains, sring out of the ground
The shacks they all have numbers
The dirt tracks run in straight lines
Vanity and uselessness, the minds of prison guards
Praying on a Sunday, dressed up in our finest
Any god is welcome - any god that will come
To give back what was taken, take back what was given
Blood and death and sacrifice, the curse of wasting plagne
And all the beauty tainted and east of Eden cast
Children walking bare foot in the golden dust
Boys with blinding eyes, perfect skin and bible names
Machetes and AKs, perfect skin and bible names
Machetes and AKs, perfect skin and bible names
Take back what was taken, take back what was taken
Take back what was taken, machetes and Aks
All the waiting, all the walking all the miles
All the working in the fields and in the mines
In the orchards of the rulers
Bring us cure, bring us deliverance from evil
From the sins of all the fathers
Bring us water, bring us vengeance, bring us power
Catch a sound in the dead of the nihgt
The clicked triggers of security lights
By the pool where the shadows stir..silent, silent
Through the scented garden moving in
By the waving of the skeleton trees..closer and closer
and through the doors and through the walls and...
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I
stared at the mountain, the mountain stared at me
I couldn't hold its gaze, I couldn't bare what I might see
Tell Mary I never chose to come but all too late
This time the time has chosen me
The fields of ice are blinding white
The crystal light so piercing - there's no air for us to
breathe
Too close to the sun
Burning up, bleaching out
Too close to the sun
The calling's always been the same
To the source of light and beauty cast upon our lives
And desert hieppies, warrior monks, addicts all
Staring out from hollowed eyes
With melting wax and feathers falling
And far below the old world turning sad and slow
Too close to the sun
Burning up, bleaching out
Too close to the sun
Sweat cold upon my skin and pounding in my chest
Reaching out to touch
too high, too far, too fast, too much
Too close to the sun
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Pulling
away from Preston Street at the midnight call
The animals are restless and awake
We travel in hope just like we always have
Like everyone always did
The woman with topaz eyes who takes the money
and rolls the dice is counting the cards
We get weak tea and cheap food from the tattooed man
in the caravan, I don't know many things that taste this good
And there's always something new to fall in love with
Gaze into the heavens on a night as clear as ice
We held our breath, as a new jewel glistens in the
Belt of Orion - out to the west
And parked up on the ridge between all the different lands
I feel I've always been here
Do we go back to the city, back to the lights
To the unforgiven world or on into the nihgt
Where there's always something new to fall in love with
Searching after something new to fall in love with
There's always got to be something new to fall in love with
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You
could be there
On a dark october night
Waiting for the moment to be
Swimming 'cross the freezing river
Holding a plastic bag of belongings just out of the water
Climbing up the banks on the other side
Hiding in the trees so cold
That you hardly show as a target
On the heat seeking gear of the border patrol
But you made it, you're another one over
Sleeping on a bench in a railway station
In the heart of Europe
Haven't eaten anything for two days straight
But where there is a will there's allways gonna be a way
And every door is guarded
And every guard costs money
So the women are bought and kept and raped and sold as slaves
Because the family borrowed from the man
And the man has allways got to be repaid
For the deals of the borders and the fake ids
And the stolen passports all locked away
While the women are working and gagging down on their knees
And somewhere in the back of terminal 3
In the clogged-up corridors of the imigration authorities
Whole families with the wrong bits of paper
Are waiting to be sent back to where they came from
Escorted by officials out across the tarmac
With their wrist bound tight with cable ties behind their
backs
It's dawn and there's fog in Rotterdam harbour
And the guard's on his break and the dogs are chained by
the wire
Three figures come out from behind the cranes
Make across the train tracks
Climb aboard a Panamanian freighter headed for the isle of
grain
Find a place to hide in a stack of containers
Another payload of world trade because
Goods are free to move but not people
Oil is free to move but not people
Jobs are free to move but not people
Money is free to move but not people
And today they got a man hauled off a truck in the port
of calais
We watch him in silence as they lead him away
Clutching his battered suitcase
But his face betrays him, lost and scared and defeated
Sitting in the back of the white port authority van
Well, where do any of us come from, it's pretty hard to say
While high in the sky above us tonight
The bombers are heading the other way, south and east
Into the blood red crimson sunrise of another imperial day
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Busted
out to the halfway house
At the top of Undercliffe Road
You and me and your motorbike
In the ice and drifting snow
3 a.m. and empty, the city ours alone
And laughing through the trails of frozen breathing
I swore to you that I could fly
If you only let me go
Holding on as we leant over
the edge of Baildon Moor
And far beneath the shadowed lands
The rocks and shapeless dark
And all that space for us to fall in
And all I could feel was myself falling...
Neon weekends and madhouse nights
And so much time to taste
We built monuments to the things we loved
Then laid each one to waste
All in suicidal vengeance
Screaming 'justice justice now'
As across the burning bridges we thundered
Now all the rooms at the Inn are taken
By those wiser than us
We're still driving for the sunset, love
And then on into the dusk
Because all the dreams were meaningless
And impossible to touch
But we're still crazed enough to drive for ever
I swear that I can stay awake forever
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The
wind blows keen across the ridge
Black against a charcoal grey
We climb up here by the winding path made so long ago
In the valley below the last few lights
glow just like the embers of a fire
We begin to remember, we begin to remember
We came by the sea and we took the land
We spread out across the plains
And on and on to the mountains
Until there was nothing left to conquer
The sound of chopping trees echoed through the woods
We built the ships and the houses
and the bridges and the fortifications
Until there was nothing left to build with
Now in the silver grey dome of the sky
The birds fly home for winter
And we all come down to the shore and stare across the waves
We've got to get off the island
We carved monuments to the angry gods
We hauled stone across the deserts of our own making
From the standing stones to the villages
To the shining palaces looking out over the water
The soil is growing thin, the yield running low
There's too many of us here, too many of us here
And now ragged ribbons of rain sweep in
As the birds fly home for winter
And we all come down to the shore and stare across the waves
We've got to get off the island
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All
the mistakes that I have made
All the things I should have seen but I looked away
All the things we should have shared that we kept to ourselves
All the things that we shared we should have kept to ourselves
And I guess it's the modern way - the phone call that comes
flying out of a blue autumn day and suddenly everything
goes so and quiet and soon everyone seems to be alone
with their own thoughts And now it's as if I'm standing
beneath a torrent of falling water, feeling things I don't
want to feel, remembering things I don't want to remember
But we said what we said and we made what we made
And so I say the things I have learned to say
Thankful for words that can be used
We were both like waves not able to break
Rolling and turning and turning and rolling
But still not able to break
And I'm numb, I'm numb like when you've been driving
so fast for so long that it feels as if you're hardly
moving at all, my body rigid with tension, my sould all
wound up like a twisted tree, the way we used to be when
we sang of passion and justice and faith was easy and
celebrated in a ritual of curling smoke, arms all raised up
towards the lights...
And we said what we said but we made what we made
And so by now you'll be further on that I ever went; and is
it still painless? Do you get to float and look down and do
all of that? Tonight would be as good a night as any..
you'll see the city alive like a great resting animal
lying in the lea of the hills and the moorland and
breathing little patterus of fire out into the cold dark
coming of winter. And I'm warming my back against
the heat of a bonfire - like the ones you so loved so build
and I'm thinking about it all - and I'm sorry and Im not sorry.
Our time was made up of confused emotiongs and little
whirlwinds and all that stuff we coulnd’t really talk about
but most of all it was sealed in sacred moments like these
And then it was gone...
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