Eight
 |
1. FLYING THROUGH THE SMOKE (Sullivan/Heaton)
Red dots - close my eyes - tunnel vision
the cooling towers like Cathedrals
Pitch black dark, brighter than the sun
Less than zero, more than infinity
Forever the graphics curling on the screen
Forever the numbers counting on and on
Flying through the smoke, flying through the smoke
See the body of people move across the floor
Dancing turning wheeling in the spinning lights
I remember the music and the noise so loud
All I could see was you moving your mouth
Tell me what was it you were trying to say
Tell me what was it you were trying to say
And all the time everything was moving away
like a slo-mo shot as the camera pulls across the crowd
across the faces caught in the last few seconds of life
And you - like a ghost at the feast
your eyes so small and dark and dead - you were uninvited
And me - trying to remember how nobody saw you
sitting next to me on the bus as it turned into Mainstreet
and the bomb in the bag at your feet
What was it you were trying to say
Tell me what was it you were trying to say
Flying through the smoke in a deafening roar
Screaming in the panic as the whirlwind hits
Tell me what was it you were trying to say
Too late to listen now
| Top |
2. YOU WEREN'T THERE (Sullivan)
Well, you say it's such a small, small world
flying Club Class back from the far-east
curled up safe and warm in the big chair
you were drifting through the skies of anywhere
Get the courtesy car to the Sheraton
there's live on-the-spot reports on the CNN between the ad-breaks
so you think you know what's going on - but you don't
because you weren't in Belfast, no you weren't there
and no you weren't in Waco, no you weren't there
and you weren't in Kosovo, you weren't there
and you weren't in my head so you don't know how it felt
walking arm in arm with crowds to the square
and the banners waving and the sun glinting
All this information swims round and round
like a shoal of fish in a tank going nowhere
Up and down between the glass walls
You're so safe in the knowledge they're impenetrable
and you look out at the world and see nothing at all
so go back to sleep and you'll be woken when the time comes
and you'll never know just what hit you or where it came from
because you weren't in Bradford, no you weren't there
and you weren't on the hill, no you weren't there
and you weren't with us so you never saw
just what happened when the television crews came knocking on the door
how the people told them all to go to Hell,
smashed the cameras and sent them away
There were sirens going off and policemen coming in
and all that you love was being swept away
in the rush of a black tide all done in your name
and you'll never know just what happened there
or how it feels - just how it feels . . .
| Top |
|
3. ORANGE TREE ROADS (Sullivan)
It was late, we were driving home in the rain
I thought I saw something flying across the two-lane
It was white like an angel - or like curse
There and gone in a second in front of us
In our house all the trophies are gathering dust
All the things we remember - but only just
We won't need them anymore
Ch: Once we were lost but we can be found
On the Orange Tree trail, on the roads heading south
Standing in the sun, in the fields of grain
Will you still love me when everything is changed?
In the shadows of the mountains we were watching the sky
Hale Bopp flying motionless out across the night
You turned to me and said with a smile
Everything these days seems to be some kind of sign
No one cares anymore where you've been
So you find a quiet place to shed that old skin
You won't need it again
Ch: Once we were lost but we can be found
On the Orange Tree trail, on the roads heading south
Standing in the sun, in the fields of grain
Will you still love me when everything is changed?
| Top |
|
4. SOMEONE LIKE JESUS (Sullivan)
I met someone like Jesus in the spring of '98
He was so full of love and I was so full of hate
So I nailed him on a cross where he belonged
told myself it's what he would have wanted all along
and I drove into the night looking for something to burn
Oh how I love these little parables that I never cared to learn
And I don't know what this feeling is but it's just dripping through me
There's always something in the corner of my life that I cannot quite see
And I'm not sleeping well, all my dreams are so real
I dreamed I set fire to my house, watched the great beams come crashing down
And later on I was standing in the ashes of the stairs
They asked me what happened, it was an accident I said
And I don't know what all this means and I don't care, it's nothing to me
But there was something in the corner of that dream that I could not quite see
And there's a happy family snapshot when you were very small
But there were visits to the doctor, you can't remember what for
The curtains drawn in silence on a summer's afternoon
And the flies buzzing in the room
And you don't know what this feeling is and you can't explain it to me
But there was something in that family photo that you cannot quite see
And I don't know what all this means but it's just dripping through me
There's always something in the corner of our lives that we cannot quite see
| Top |
|
When it comes down, we know we're alone
you could scream and nobody would hear
Today my face in the glass is a stranger's
furrowed with the lines of fear
All the little truths denied, all the little deaths we died
I always thought that it was worth something
All the little rays of hope, always coming back when we needed them most
I always thought that it was worth something
Once we went back to the house we were born in
The glass was smashed and there were boards on the doors
and it seemed so right that the past was all laid to waste
and our trail covered up and lost
All the little deaths we died, all the little truths denied,
I always thought that it was worth something
And all the battles leave their scars
and the gods of Fate still laughing at us
I always thought that it was worth what it cost
Let everyone else decide who's right - I don't care any more tonight
I only know that it is worth something
| Top |
|
6. R&R (Sullivan/M.Dean)
Days into weeks of Sunday afternoons
Nothing much for us to say nothing real for us to do
Just watch the carousel go round and round in endless circles
in the pupil of the Deadeye until you just feel numb
It's virtual Jerusalem. There's not much trouble anymore
it's mostly the blissed-out stuff that people really go for
and the juggernaut tyranny of oblivion 4/4
Double, triple bluff and then back on itself
a world of ironies and tribute bands, everything downsized
I don't know where it was but I swear I've heard that song
it was a century of answers and all of them have been wrong.
Wake me in a thousand years
Sorry little island, you look better in the rain
You looked more honest in blue or something we can't see through
and out across the world I see four billion claims
and all of them have faces and all of them have names
Enough. Wake me in a thousand years
The Prozac dawn opens milky white
I don't remember what it was I got so passionate about
It's all now digitally synthesised, seduced, stainless
the bad smell of poverty disguised, deodorised
There's just the scent of money and Privilege still intact
A century of madness put to sleep to start over again
Here comes the Presidential train.
We looked into the crystal and we felt the Fear
but it's already here, it's already too late
We're learning to love the things that we hate
We're learning to love the things that we hate
| Top |
|
I woke still half-dreaming I was falling out of the trees
and tumbling down into the sky
It's cold, so cold sometime before dawn
searching for a light and reaching round for my clothes
That we believe, so must call, rise
The convoys roll into the coming daylight
Let it not be said that everything must die
without some mark being made of its passing
Ch: As if all the world should now hold its breath
These are the days that we'll recall
when the masks are off the faces
and there's something to fight for
All the lines drawn down in the Soul
You can let your anger burn crazy
There's talking-drums echoed down towards the Kennet Canal
and wood-smoke sweet on the air
And the Yellow Jackets stand with the Thick Blue Line
backs to the woods in the fresh thin carpet of snow
Snelsmore Wood, The Chase, Enbourne Road
Reddings Copse, Tothill down through Andover Grove
Let it not be said that everything must die
without some mark being made of its passing
Ch: As if all the world should now hold its breath . . .
| Top |
|
8. PAEKAKARIKI BEACH (Sullivan)
I saw you walking away from the battlefield
Through the clearing smoke to the other side
Lay down your weary head
And gazing up two ocean birds are wheeling, turning
Paekakariki Beach on the other side
By the green of the hills and the rolling tide
I lay down in the ashen sand
And high above the ocean birds
were wheeling, turning, circling, flying
And you have seen too much
Too many causes lost and won
The wild desires all drowned in the seven seas
And so we walk away from the battlefield
Through the clearing smoke to the other side
Lay down in the morning sun
and high above the ocean birds are
wheeling, turning, circling, flying...
| Top |
|
9. LEEDS ROAD 3 AM (Sullivan/M.Dean)
The Festival is over and the strings of coloured lights
are blowing crazy in the coming wind
One bulb comes loose, shatters on the ground
The empty streets pick up the sound, it echoes like a tiny gunshot
ringing through the damp and through the silence
Water trickles slowly like the feel of troubles only half washed away
Behind the wire the watchman doing nights sits beside a wall of screens
but he's not watching - gazing into the steam rising from his cup of coffee
He's locked away inside
Staring into the light of a different world.
Near the top of Sandford Road, there's a parked Mondeo in the shadows
The lighting of a cigarette illuminates four faces not talking, just waiting
The man in the front passenger seat holds the phone to his ear
listens to a thin voice giving the details
While in the back the boy with the long hair
stares out through the misty glass into the dark streets
and into the light of a different world
Three streets down the restaurant is empty, 3am weeknights, dead-time
The owner came here years ago and never lost the dream of going home
but knows he never will
In the kitchen his son sits head in hands thinks about leaving
Anywhere - just somewhere that's not here
Doesn't look up or see the Mondeo passing outside
He's staring into the light a different world
There's a couple in a red car coming home late on the inner ring
not talking or listening to the music just lost in their own thoughts
The Mondeo shoots the lights at sixty-five
Swerves, catches the red car that spins and rolls
Lands upside down in a crumple of metal and shattered glass
The girl sits trapped inside watching new blood trickle down her shoulder
Turns to see her boyfriend slumped against the dash
as a little crowd gathers round
'Make him wake up, make him wake up' she's screaming
'Make him wake up, make him wake up' and now she's pushing at him
'Make him wake up, make him wake up'
But he's gone
Staring into the light of a different world
Gazing into the light of a different world
| Top |
|
10.
MIXAM (Sullivan/M.Dean)
Cassandra's still shouting from the city walls but no one ever hears
And far below the traffic moves like fish upon the ocean floor
to the rhythms of the tide
We're holding on so tight because it seems as if we're moving very fast
But all this speed is just illusion as we while away our lives
Whatever they want from you - you don't have to give
Whatever they say to you - you don't have to give
Whatever they put you through
Fury to the left of me, madmen to the right
And on Caesars Mall seduction is so sweet
It's easy to forget that there's a price on
Whatever they want from you - you don't have to give
Whatever they say to you - you don't have to give
Whatever they put you through
| Top |
|
11.
WIPE OUT (Sullivan)
This is where we go to - to the blue of the ocean
On the 30 westbound to the diamond water
Lost out in the white waves - salt purification
Bright eyes and breathless - this is how Love feels
Wash away the black stuff, wash away the road-dirt
In the thrill of the wipe-out, feel it pulling you under
This is where it saved your life in the days of the new beginning
All the sweet redemption lines that you wrote and told a thousand times
This is where we go to - to the blue of the ocean
On the 30 westbound to the diamond water
On the back-lanes down to the sea we pulled to the side of the road
Danced together in the headlights beam to the songs on the radio
Cheek to cheek . . .
We're up on the cliff tops as the dusk falls and the wind drops down,
the last of the light fading in the sky out to the west;
and far out to sea, the water glows iridescent, perfect, like a promise
of warm water in the shallows, cold water out in the deep,
splashing on my face and rolling over, over, over . . .
| Top |
|