Lyrics

 

Hellhound

​

Hellhound dance in the killing rain

Hindlegs daggered to the creeping plain

 

Where the landslide and lava stream bubbled and burned

On the homeland's remains when faith had adjourned

 

Hellhound heels and wheels like the crow

For the not yet quite carrion, in its lifeblood's stopped flow

 

Whilst melting and morphing

Through debts that have bought you

The bitch barks in brimstone where searchlights will scorch you

 

Where water splash torments and clanging bell bruises

Drop anchor the hindlegs where danger diffuses

 

Stilettoed and crusted with mantis intention

To eat you alive as you practise abstention

 

Hellhound dance in the killing rain

Hindlegs daggered to the creeping plain

Hellhound

Hellhound

 

 

 

 

Things that are Round

 

Things that are round

In pairs quite often found

As matter, or

as holes we can’t deny

A planet or a void

Becoming cardioid

Square pegs need not apply

 

Things that are round

Can sometimes let you down                                                       

Things that are round can go stra- ange

 

Pictures getting blurred

Through questions deferred                                                                          To expertise referred

You fall behind.

Swelling circles found

Will pull you back to ground

Awaiting ultrasound

For peace of mind

 

To break through the veneer

Where water surrounds a sphere

And corneas close circles in the mist

The window to the world

(Will show it’s perimeters come uncurled)

As straight lines can agree to co-exist 

 

Things that are round                                                                        

Can sometimes let you down                                                           

Things that are round                                                                      

can go stra- ange

 

 

Stalemate Closing 

 

 

The dawn choruses in peeling layers

Where you can be found

In abandoned streets where the

ravaged cars cry themselves to sleep

and your footsteps creep without a sound.

 

Dumped on a road without a map and

Questions greater than you can know.

Or playing blind man’s buff in the Hotel of Chainsaws

 

 

Love left the house before the lights came on to show you

Where the emptiness

Breathes dust from the wilderness

(Stalemate closing)

And down in the vaults

Where the dynamite is sleeping lighter

Than the bitter air,

or the history that put you there

(Stalemate closing)

 

Where winestain lips speak truthful

Mirrored in the curved chrome.

And the windbells ring on the desolate farm

Where the klaxon cattle roam

Home is where the poisoned heart sits in the broken gardens

Coughing out the dragonflies

In the summer of three oceans

In the turn of the tide of that lake so wide

where you dive

to revive your sunken dreams

 

 

Love left the house before the lights came on to show you

Where the emptiness

Breathes dust from the wilderness

(Stalemate closing)

And down in the vaults

Where the dynamite is sleeping lighter

Than the bitter air,

or the history that put you there

(Stalemate closing)

 

 

M about M

 

Dear Friend

Old friend

My brother had a thing with your mother

Did you know?

It was a long time ago

What a find

A fly off the wall

My phone’s bit the dust and hit the locker

I can’t reach you

And I’m curious

 

Dare I take this kindling flame

To accidents of happenstance?

Communications wireless and frozen screens of random chance

You changed your name- mine’s the same

On a boat in life afloat

And I always wondered if you knew the story

 

I have a pack of letters

I have a pack of letters friend, can I tell you this?

Brother told me a long time ago

What do you know friend?

Like Brother I am floating

 

Could we have perceived these twists and turns

Forty-something years ago?

 

I remember the abandoned lanes

Shoes slopping through the straw horse mud ‘neath the flat skies of clear red fire in springtime dusks

And sometimes I felt closer than the thirteen steps behind him

 

The evenings yielding woodsmoke scents through sloping tomes in bookshelf gaps

Machines pay out through laths and cracks

And cats that fought on crooked floors that

Mewed and monitored milk and babies

Near a churchyard

Still awaiting his name

 

Flora

 

Once I did sing this song to you 

Although the words were not yet revealed to me

Now the stones have them drawn from the tide

In the folds of quarter of a century

 

Through history’s camera I follow your gaze

Exposing to memory our travels in clearer times

Gaudi and Dali through the hopes and the haze

Candled the swans in the charcoal night

 

Summer mountains and sunflower fields

Once through a tunnel, the horns were a fairground ride

They twist me a tune through the turning of wheels

Burning in the splintered light

 

From the camel sands where Bedouins pass

To where the shimmering heat melts all the palaces

And Spain was a sarabande through the spidering glass

Shattered panels in the electric night

 

As journeys found paintings that mirrored our days

We shone on the canvas of Spring in the gallery

Ochres and oxides under skies set ablaze

Promising futures for three of us

 

Why did the warm times hide from the light?

Where did the reason get exchanged for conspiracy?

The day when the water was thicker than blood.

Taking your leave on Flora’s day

 

Lull

 

When all clear comes and the calm smoothes the crumpled sea

And the dust

Is driven from the choking breeze

The island

Is the higher land

We hang up what’s left to dry

As the violence is silenced

Still we’re compelled to ask why

Were these bad choices

Over the rough waves strewn?

The storm took the story and

The dark ran away with the moon

Two times, the chain lines

Danced with the ghosts in the curse of the unknown

The warnings of sailors

Drowned in the mists of sundown

 

Here comes the lull

Here comes the lull

Gentle the lull

Long stay the lull

 

See the starlings skim as the cormorants dive for the new day

The gulls take the scraps and the air is alive with the salt spray

Soon to be leaving regrets of the lost souls taken by the raven

Bound for the halfway house in the halcyon haven

 

Here comes the lull

Here comes the lull

Gentle the lull

Long stay the lull

 

River

 

This river twists through winding glades and laps the sloping shore

With currents deep, her waters words yield wisdom to explore

 

These torrents know the bark he wears, the long grain sealed within

The past and parched fragmented roots,

The heart inside the skin.

 

His arid leaves absorb her wine

Which sparkles in their veins

Rising from the splintered nest

The watchful night bird reigns

 

The snakes pale slough is stripped away

Lost bones reform to walk

Foundations once less firmly held

Now anchor in the chalk

 

She leads him to the wider stretch

Before the open sea

And moving through the mirrored past

She sets these timbers free

Now budding branches stretch to touch

The springtime’s sweet embrace

As under stars she glints and glows

The full moon lights her face

 

 

 

 

All songs copyright Nick Pynn 2015