1. ANTARCTICA

Father, we fled your house of grey.
We ran from home to seek a place where our bodies would never grow.
Dreamer, child, be cautious of this world.
She has an appetite for boys and girls and she’s hungry for your soul.

Little boys with dreams of paper planes were never meant to scrape the sky.
Keep your feet on the ground kid, only birds were meant to fly.
Little boys with dreams of paper planes were never meant to scrape the sky.
Keep your head from the clouds kid, keep your wings,
Always keep them by your side.
Remember:

Before you fly you’ll fall, before you walk you’ll crawl. (x2)

You’ve no need to stitch your shadow to your heels.
No, not this time.

Son you’ll walk with no whisper, no sound.
Only the feet of the heavy hearted are held to the ground.
You’ve no need to draw the curtains son, throw them wide.
Cross the borders between the never and the night.
Find the twinkle in your smile, chase it on ‘til morning,
Past the second star to the right.

Little boys with dreams of paper planes were never meant to scrape the sky.
Keep your feet on the ground kid, only birds were meant to fly.
Little boys with dreams of paper planes were never meant to scrape the sky.
Keep your head from the clouds kid, keep your wings,
Always keep them by your side.

We’ll be the smoke curling on the still.
The airship captains; we wait for sun to brush the hills.

Son, I share your windward dreams,
To soar from this little town of shacked up windows and swinging doors (swinging doors)
The rafters creak and the floorboards groan
While the shadows dance to the tapping of my toes.

There’s nothing left for us but altitude.
We’ll be the kings of the air.
(There’s nothing left for us here (x2))

There’s nothing left for us but altitude.
We’ll be the kings of the air.
(We’ll be the kings of the air.)

Stolen, by the wind that turns the leaves to razors (Before you fly you’ll fall)
Holding just a string, our twine and our paper lost to the breeze (Before you walk you’ll crawl.) (x2)


2. DON'T LOOK NOW, I'M BEING FOLLOWED, ACT NORMAL

Is this the edge of the world?
We chased the horizon down ‘til it hung beneath our feet.
Now I’m drifting blind.
All I know is we can’t move closer.

I’ve never seen the lights of the north,
The constellations are so unfamiliar.

We followed far, as far as this machinery takes us,
To some imaginary place where the compass drifts
And our lips shift to our cheeks.
Is this the edge of the world?
All I know is we can’t move closer.

Searching for some apparent place where floated needles decide the way.
I’d dig in my heels but I might crack the ice.
Give me some solid ground.

The frost is sinking in, in my cheeks, in my chest, in my fingertips.
‘Desperation,’ we name every cape beyond the last.
Frozen senseless. Every day is a winter solstice.
The view’s a wonder, but I can’t take it in.

Sun, make canvas of coastlines, so I know where I stand.

We round each cape to find a bay to call our own.
We round each cape to find a coast to call our home.

Make canvas of coastlines.


3. THIS AIN'T NO PLACE FOR ANIMALS

The gasoline is mixing with the oxygen.
In this carousel, the silence is so surreal.
I’ve been misled through empty streets to the heart that never beats
Of a body that I can’t keep.

We’re blessed with these horrors for highways.
This city turns, no longer content to just brush shoulders.
Have we lost our touch?

A light goes on.
We throw our blankets aside.
It’s been hours now and we still know nothing.

The scars just don’t heal the same, when we collide.

I’d never say that we step to the other side to keep us from brushing shoulders.
But it’s collisions we need to remind us that we’re alive.

I’d never say that you make me sick, but you’re turning all the questions to cancers.
Someone call in the emergency and we’ll peel back the dressings so we can see
The kind of things that the surgeons see,
When the bloodwork won’t give us the answers.
They’ll never tell us, because they don’t know whats killing us.

My heart’s at a million miles an hour as we brace for the impact,
It makes time stand…. still.
Forcing momentum into a moment so for a split second, I see your face
In between all the broken glass hanging like a mobile.
This is a picture we’ll never quite forget.

The surgeons pick, they pick at my body.
Their fingers dance, they dance all around me.
Hold still while they pick at my body.
They’ll dance all around me.

The surgeons pick, they pick at my body.
Their fingers dance, they dance all around me.
Hold still while they pick at my body.
They’ll dance all around me.

Breathe your anaesthetic words to slow us down.
(I've got a secret, I'll never tell. Trust me, I'll keep it)
Tear back the skin to find, to chase a pulse back home.
(I'll never tell)

I’d never say that you make me sick, but you’re turning all the questions to cancers.
Someone call in the emergency and we’ll peel back the dressings so we can see
The kind of things that the surgeons see,
When the bloodwork won’t give us the answers.
They’ll never tell us, because they don’t know whats killing us.


4. SPINELESS CROW

Streets, these visions, an origami city folding in.
Construction, creation, we are architects and kings,
Lifting street stones from their beds to build these homes from memory,
As we’re tangled in our sleep.

We were young together, but I’ve grown ancient.
Cracked and weathered and filled with regret,
Waiting to sink, rushing to sink in my sleep.

The realisation sinks in through the skin like a disease,
A blight inside of me.
Missing your touch, your weight on my fingers,
What was familiar becomes unfamiliar.
Give me an anchor, a lifeline to hold.
Bring me back to something I know for sure.

Locked away, a dream-dweller pale from hiding with secrets
Deeper than daylight dares to seek.
Come out, emerge!
Hands to our eyes, overexposed for all we are.

Lay me down in a den of dreamers,
Put me to rest on a bed of sleepers.

Doubt is a plague. We’ll never be safe here again.
When all their eyes are tied to me, just carry the conversation please.

We were young, sandcastle kings building empires, cities and homes.
Architects tangled up in our sleep.

Wake up.


5. STARVING TO DEATH IN THE BELLY OF A WHALE

There’s no injection for this, the aching in your lungs.
So bite down, but even vipers mind the venom lacing their tongues.

Puncture wounds and almost no colour in our skin.
And we smashed every vial of the cure.
Aren’t we vicious when we’re backed against the wall?

I wish you’d just passed me by and we went about our ways,
Instead of this bitter exchange of poisonous words.

If the sting would tear you inside out,
Wouldn’t it be worth just holding it inside?

Revenge should be honey on our tongues,
But it’s turned to ash in our mouths.
Empty out the hives of our honeycomb lungs.

Don’t we all want to be left alone?


6. A CLOWN AND HIS PIPE

There’s better ways for us to waste our days,
Than returning stares that we borrowed for too long.
For too long, swallowed up by an empty page.

What starvation feeds you, devourer
Of the words of a thousand authors and poets, alike?
Wells have emptied to whet your thirst,
So I’ll shake out to the last, a drop of fluency
To carve ink into these precious words,
To dedicate a thought in desperation.

We could light a fire and forge a silver tongue.
Drawn beneath our blunt remarks,
Fashioned from all of our meaningless change.

What would it take, to pry these ragged teeth, to tear these jaws apart?
What would it prove, to wrench them from my heels, to shed them from my heart?

Swallowing swords, sharpened by turning cheeks between blows.
I feel this is better left a performers art.
It’s a narrow throat that keeps a razor’s edge from the heart.
I’d rather not speak in tongues.
But I’ll take every breath - I’ll make every breath a piper, charming flames,
Singing and dancing, out from their smouldering bed.

Swallow the pen, devour the sword.
Inhale the proverbs whole.

Spinning on static, gouged before the peak.
In this chaos of frequencies it’s so hard to speak.

This noise is nameless,
Stumbling like a beggar,
Desperate for some kind of change.


7. THE DEFINITION OF NOT-LEAVING

I wish I’d just stood and let the sun creep through me.
Instead of my attempts to build slingshots, spools and sinkers to bring in the sky.
Inventions out of sticks and stones, a crown dusted off from beneath the bones.
A white liar, protector of our hearts and homes.

Stay, don’t go,
I’ll eat you up, I love you so.

I want you to follow and find me,
Howl like its us and no-one else,
We could keep out the sadness and stand so tall,
We could run like wild things, and lie right where we fall.


8. LION SKIN

I wonder, can you daydream at night?
Lying awake, I've had too much time.
I'm watching picture shows in the shadows
Dance for the crowd tonight.
Imagination is such a vivid place to hide,
While stars watch over you.

Through silent homes
The lights are out but I walk these halls,
The way I've walked before,
Sleeping, with saints and apparitions between the walls.
The lights are out but I walk these halls,
I promised not to wake you, so I'll walk light, just so you can hear,

The rats in the roof and termites in the ceiling.
We'll hear everything except what we need to hear.
Sleeplessness is for the restless, and I'm just fine,
Left to wander, aimless in unconsciousness.

There's spiders crawling from the corners of my eyes.
Let them weave their little webs to snatch the sunlight from the lens.
I'm staring at the ceiling 'cause I'm fed up with the sight.
Weigh my eyelids back to sleep, sealed by silken silver threads,
While stars watch over you.

Through silent homes
The lights are out but I walk these halls,
The way I've walked before,
Sleeping, with saints and apparitions between the walls.
The lights are out but I walk these halls.
Cast the sheep out of your mind,
Count the wolves and we'll sleep tonight.

I stumble in and I stumble out of unfamiliar rooms in foreign houses,
But I'm at home, a ghost that has left behind his sheets,
Unrequited, until I wake up somewhere I know that I've never been.

I'll stay 'til sleep takes over you.
And I'll walk while stars watch over you.

Through silent homes
The lights are out but I walk these halls,
The way I've walked before,
Sleeping, with saints and apparitions between the walls.
The lights are out but I walk these halls,
The way I've walked before,
Sleeping, with saints and apparitions between the walls.
The lights are out but I walk these halls.
Cast the sheep out of your mind,
Count the wolves and we'll sleep tonight


9. ONE HUNDRED

Hold your breath, baby.
We have to make our hearts sit still.
Hold your tongue, honey,
The things we know could unleash hell.

Patch me up, my skin is so tight around my chest, my heart is leaping out.
I feel my imagination playing like a movie in my eyes,
It’s got me firmly by the sleeve.

Hold your breath baby, we have to make our hearts sit still.
I swear they’re beating so loud that anyone could tell
We’re keeping every thought to ourselves in case we mention how we feel.
Hold your tongue honey, the things we know could unleash hell.

I see your imagination shimmer in the way that you move,
Hardly afraid that anyone could see.
We’re caught up in the moment, it’s got us now, and you’ve got me by the collar.
What are you waiting for?

Pull me in.

We saw the warning signs too late, and we’re too far gone.
Please don’t remind me of reality now,
I’ve been pretending for days by now,
My god, it must have been days.


10. WATCHMAKER

Watchmaker, teach me the ways.
I want to learn the secrets and the sciences of seconds,
The methods to dull my ears to the sound.

Teach me how to rewind, rewind,
So I can relive every second,
Minute, all I missed oh.
I'm always focused on the next thing
If only I could pause and re. Teach me how!

If I were a watchmaker, I’d build suspension into the springs.
Hidden gears, secret faces.
Undiscovered hours to keep you in.

There’ll be no back, there’ll be no forth,
Just us, where we are.

Watchmaker, teach me the workings.
I want to learn the secrets and the sciences of seconds.
Teach me the seasons, the measure of these machines.

I’m haunted by mechanical sounds.
Damped, stolen and swallowed, relentless, counting down
In the bellies of old enemies. I’m plagued by the tick tock, tick tock,
But with vehemence I’ll take to their faces and tear them away.

Come teach me the ways of the watchmaker,
We’ll dull our ears to the sound.

There’s tension in me, I’m wound up and bound to an endless release.
A robin imprisoned in a carved clock, I’m a tune locked in a music box
To a grave melody.

I can feel a nervousness in my fingers.
To spindles, they’re wasting away.
And with every twitch, they’re turning,
Passing by with my meaningless revolutions.

I gazed too deep, I leaned in too close.
Caught by the collar and dragged into a two-four waltz.
Drawn into steps unfamiliar to me,
I was passed like partners between turning teeth.


11. THE SOWER

I wade through the earth,
Sowing my own, bound up in discords
Spread in the stones,
Planting deep into ready fears.
Soak in these heavy rains,
Break from your chrysalis beneath the clay.
Though I left you behind,
I'm all the while, wanting, to make my way home.
All the while, watching, to see just how you've grown.

I'm the seeds among you, I am emerald blades
With other sides and deeper shades.
I'm the weeds among you, I am constriction.
I'm the tightness in your chest.
I could ruin you.

I am the horizon, the sinking sun,
I'm the buried, the believer, the tomorrow that will come.

I'm the seeds among you, I am emerald blades
With other sides and deeper shades.
I'm the weeds among you, I am constriction.
I'm the tightness in your chest.
I could ruin you.

I could ruin you.

Convict me of the devil in the details,
Of these crimes; oh so meticulous were we,
Of passion; I'll plead guilty.
I'll plead guilty to every taken chance.

I am tangled machinery, I am wreckage.
Distinguish the scars between;
The pleasure as you dragged me down,
Or the shards as they dragged you free.

I am the knotted anchors below the ground,
I'm the shadow that weighs you down.
I'm the ghost on your lips, the phantom's kiss,
I'll be the page of your book that's missing.

I'm the seeds among you, I am emerald blades
With other sides and deeper shades.
I'm the weeds among you, I am constriction.
I'm the tightness in your chest.
I could ruin you.