I was thinking about things I loved to do:
Getting drunk with my friend David, on Saturday afternoons.
Walking in fits and starts by the Main Street,
With the aspect of dizzy birds fleeing from their flock.
How we did promise those days would never end!
“Friendship will always stay before things that looked like love”.
So we took advantage of “happy hours” and
Each cheap cocktail, any waiter’s urge to invent.
Best places where to drown
Were coloured glasses, romantic ethyl flings.
Best places where to drown
Were “Golden Dreams” and “Singapore Slings”.
It would be stupid today to deny
That those days didn’t go by
And come around just like summer storms.
They’re in our brain, in a place we could define
As “The one with things you miss and you don’t need”.
It all makes me think what the hell is time,
Is it just a way to distribute all what we do?
Perhaps ev’ry act you write to shape your life
Is always remaining somewhere not just in your mind.
Best places where to drown
Offer you those options often hard to find.
Best places where to drown
Allow some situations outside a plain life.
I also think these are my best places where to drown.
I also think these are my best places where to drown.
You slightly refuse to stretch yourself
And it’s easy to confuse our feet on the unmade bed,
The sun’s a faraway flame,
The orange bedroom glows.
Your eyes are green and your hair is red
Between the sheets I see your head,
You play to hide and seek,
To laugh and peek.
And my house is getting
Full with your things.
You’re a daily joy, a litlle toy,
And a satin handkerchief.
The doll with more than a thousand kinds
Of different smiles.
Your plastic duck and your wooden daisy
Wait beside me ‘till you’re washed and dressed.
And when you leave the bath,
We’re ready to go.
I wear my broken shoes,
My winter clothes.
You wake before the alarm clock
To sleep in my small lounge.
Or you play the limpet on my back,
You funny lunge.
I call you squid, I call you potato
You open wide your eyes, you’re smiling and though
They say that time’s a lie; it’s a western lie,
So it’s no solace for a western guy.
Day by day I feel the change
That’s taking place within.
A love that grows while my house is getting full with your things.
Words of fear were scaping from my lips
As I looked down to avoid the face who tried to teach.
Bit by bit I raised my moist eyes
And I began to reconsider what I did.
It was a win, it was a draw and a defeat,
But that’s the way I’ve found that are most things.
And I looked for the suitable words
To restore the missing peace.
Words of surrender were floating in my mind
When my father used his finger to point me out.
Threatening, he told me off for getting late
And the whistle of a coming whack was all I had to wait.
Later, in my room I looked into my eyes
At the mirror behind the door I used to hide.
I became convinced of there were no lords,
not to try to choose the correct words.
Now I think that then began my youth
When I chose to change the truth
And I was nobody’s clown,
And I was nobody’s fool
Then I locked my ears to the ones
Who decided what was right.
I commenced my career
But the change was not at once
And at first I felt
Words of love, by her side,into the church.
Her eyes were turning from devotion into trap.
And I went ahead but knowing very much
I wasn’t ready to be honest or such.
It was the first time I tread on my old fear to hurt.
I was strong enough to know they’d call me curt.
I felt a little vertigo looking back,
With all my belonging in my small rucksack.
Words of doubt like glimmers of the past,
Each time I had to dissapoint or to decieve,
Words of shame when after a hard choice
A crack permitted to listen to an inner voice.
And if a hand was on my shoulder, I withdrew,
So I got used to knowing each day something new.
I cursed one more time my old state of neglect,
And changed for loneliness my own respect .
Now, a precious view from my top,
And though in times it is a sop
To the silence and the cold
In which lap I’ve grown old,
I have to say that I feel fine,
Since I decided not to feel.
I realised my Achilles heel
Was never being sincere,
Chosing the suitable words.
It’s always been almost beautiful, but it was raining limpid drops that relieved my tears.
And from the hill where the clouds stagnated I felt unsettled for the promise about the fields.
I used to sleep in a sprung bed,
And I had worn many loose shirts
And my words were very small
But very clear.
Until I felt the last blow,
The straw that breaks the camel’s back,
And my reflection in the water as a clown.
When the voice that talked of vertigo invited me – almost forcing me – to leave my dreams at home.
I took my flask from my coat,
My diary from the moat,
My pistols from their grave.
I think it’s been almost beautiful,
But like a poisoned cake,
Or a carnivore plant.
A mixed feel between rage and sorrow,
A sour taste for tomorrow and for coming years.
The incubation passed away, and so the sickness did.
I’ve left behind the fever,the sweat and the ache.
I see the minstrel carrying flowers for the lady he’s been longing and the future is in the full bloom of youth.
It’s over now. It’s been almost beautiful. If I think of it, I think I’ll think this way.
And all I’m taking is my numb diploma,
Almost beautiful and -sure- not for free.
When she got in the chapel
She wore flowers on her head,
And she looked at me out of the corner,
I was sat on the last bench.
Behind my shades I scorned her,
But she knows me so well, it’s just my way to joke.
And she walked forwards the altar
Where her husband held the yoke.
Staring at her neckline
I got lost in her white light.
And it was the sun who shone there
Between the walls, into the church.
She was running in the cornfield then,
Collecting poppies, singing an old song,
Spinning over her shoes,
Feeling like home.
If there is a guilt, we share it,
As we shared so many things:
Like a piece of cake, a milkshake,
A pillow or a million of dreams.
If it’s alright when it ends alright,
It’s just another inflexion point,
For it can’t be a full stop,
I’m sure it’s only dots…
Now I’m back to my hangover.
We’re all in the house of God,
And she has said yes, and she’s looked back
When I was leaving by the door.
And I know fate is having a hard task,
It will have to manage itself alone
To put our steps together,
In the place where they belong.
Say goodbye
To your old plans
That looked like dreams
but were jails.
Prepare your heart
for what you can’t believe:
Life has reserved a place
And a time for you and me.
Hide your thorns
And curve the slice.
Don‘t let the frost
To settle in your smile.
Though when I’m near
You withdraw and you leave
Soon you will regret
Having behaved like this.
Begin with my name,
Then pass to my face,
And don’t go thinking
It’s a kind of chase.
Now I’m sure:
You were born to be mine.
And I can give you rope enough,
And our children will laugh.
I talked to the stars,
And they said I was right.
They told me your love
Wouldn’t come at first sight. /
But one day,
Whenever you realize,
Strange as it may seem,
You’ll be by my side.
You’ll collect the words of the moon,
For us to fly around the world
And our children will laugh.
The big plot includes the difference between roses and books,
The big plot includes a swindler and someone that brooks.
There’s a slow war in the bedroom with the cold and the hot,
Almost ev’rything’s included in the warped and big plot.
Why do praying mantises need to eat
after their mating the first thing they find?
And why do billy goats have those horns?
And I recognize it’s an uncomfortable situation,
That all this photos don’t deserve a close ovation,
Yes, we all have the right of information,
I don’t want to change the way of your conversation,
But there’s a biological explanation.
You know that the ovum is larger than male gamete,
And perhaps in the beggining we, men, started to cheat,
Put the blame on evolution, put the blame on ev’rything
This is not my revolution, what’s a queen and what’s a king?
The way you scorn me reveals you and tells
that you don’t believe my reasoning.
You never think of you as made of cells,
And I make efforts to reason out my temptation,
I’m sure it’s related to molecular vibration,
We can look for it in the dawn of creation,
As anything is better than a sad frustration,
I trust in my biological explanation.
Why do you think I’d do the same?
Come on, and try, there’s nothing left to loose.
If being alive is the biggest game,
Then I don’t want to live renouncing to flirtation,
I don’t need to wait for any stupid salvation,
I’m always looking for a new sensation
I feel I am in a amazing permanent formation
And there’s a biological explanation. .
Mine, she said, you’re mine forever more.
I’ll be the only target of your eyes.
I’ll be the only red tile on your floor.
I’ll even be your February twenty-nine.
Mine, she said, you’re mine and no one’s else.
I was smiling out but shivering in,
This time- I thought- I’m in such a mess,
How will I get out of this?
But she looked so smily and happy
Hanging from me.
Mine, she said, you’re mine and she made a call:
She told a portraitist to paint it all.
He tried to inmortalize us and our love,
But he was always saying that I moved a lot.
Mine, she said, you’re mine you can’t be not.
She began to look just like a witch,
It’s been a lie, it’s been a trap,
She’s been trying to fatten me up
But there are too many ties to break the rope.
So I walk beside her with scorn,
And we stand one another all along
As she says I’m hers and I say I was better alone.
When you’re young
Your inertia tries to find a final place,
an empty espace to settle down.
So you draw a hopeful trembling road
That sinks in the mist
or else is blinded by the sun.
But as you grow the forecasts change,
The road forks and at close range
Each surface has a lot of crinkles that you hadn’t seen.
And you begin to understand
That you have no instructions to choose well,
Which deviation you should take to reach the elusive goal.
Being two
is like a pebble in your shoe,
You have to stand in crossroads and tracks multiply.
And at first, you calm your partner’s thirst,
But time helps you to forget you’re not alone.
If for moment you get confused,
It’s enough to set feelings bruised.
She looks at you, she thinks you’re strangely a stranger.
Some traits around your upper lip
She recognizes when you sleep,
Makes her think it’s you, but most of the time she feels she is in danger.
Poor Marie.
She’s still crying for me,
in the seashore where I promised I would stay.
Little child, her voice was always mild,
It seems to me her road was easier than mine.
Is it so difficult to set it clear?
Is it so hard, is life so weird?
Will I ever rest before I cannot choose.
She always had a tender word,
A soft caress I never saw,
She was so sweet, and so discreet
Until the night she left me saying:
You don’t look like you at all.
You don’t look like you at all.
You don’t look like you at all.
You don’t look like you at all.
I thought I got it made, I thought I got it won:
The embraces in the dark, the umbrellas and the coat.
The whisper of her breath, her warmth, her welcome smile.
I thought I got it won and she shouted I was just a man.
Until one day I knew I had to fight to keep,
But wisdom came too late, when there was too much to sweep.
I had to pick up my case and draw another map,
And re-write my life,
And feel like able to decide.
I always build to destroy,
In ev’ry brick I see a toy
That I have to break.
I always build to destroy,
To be a man is to be a boy
With bigger hands.
To be honest, all this time I’d say I’ve lost my mind,
Playing with two cards: the gentle and the wild.
The subtle difference between her and me
Is that she controls what she is and what she wants to be.
And I wonder how is she able to renounce to the unknown,
To fix her eyes in what she owns, her obstinate way to love.
Her giving up is for good, not like my curses that were just jokes,
And only I know
The reach of my pardon.
I always build to destroy,
I haven’t seen yet any joy
Into being the way I am.
I always build to destroy,
I haven’t seen yet any joy
Into being the way I am.
La la la la la lala la la
lalalala la la la lala.
(INSTRUMENTAL)
Far, beyond what I understand,
Far from where I wanted to be,
I stand still under this heaven,
I see women passing beside me.
And I know I have to let them
Let them go walking down the street;
I listen to the birds in the cold day
Singing happy and free.
But I can’t stare at things as I did,
Now that I’m behind my moving glass,
Wrapped by a calm, I should be appeased,
But I only feel like half drunk.
If your hands were here to heal it all,
I would bend in front of my past.
My arms were used to your chains and ropes,
To your easy thoughts and our quiet nights.
Now I have an empty place where I rest
When I get to decieve my old heart,
Trying to fall in love of beauty
As if beauty was a static pillar.
As if time was a paste I be able to mould
Stretching it, compressing it at my will,
Selectively forgetting what I choose,
What I let live and what I kill.
These eyes are not exactly like yours,
This nose is not exactly your nose,
You wouldn’t have said this in this circumstances,
You wouldn’t have been that close.
And like these, all my beauty criteria
Are modified by the curse of our love.
And I don’t know if my will is that you leave me,
Or I’m longing for you not to let me go.
Often I find myself faking
I’m someone who really I’m not.
I have to be stronger,
I have to be colder,
And the trouble is a snowball.
I shout to my wife and my children,
And doing that I have a tough time,
But I do so to correct them,
I do so ‘cause I love them,
If I didn’t I’d be really bad.
And it’s so many years pretending,
So many lessons and fights
That people’s beggining to forget
That I am not this one.
In times I’d like to vanish in the morning:
Disappear to appear elsewhere.
I wouldn’t care to leave my family in mourning,
All wrapped in tears and saying a prayer.
But December’s caught me with no trousers,
And I’ve had to cover with my hands.
They’ve become useless in a second.
Now I can’t work with them again.
So I never change my way back home,
I never crash my car.
I watch the clock and let myself go,
Carried by the waves of time,
Carried by the waves of time.
On sundays I often cheer after the lunch,
With true red colours on my cheeks,
Perfectly faking I belong somewhere,
That I enjoy and I agree.
But I know this is not my place,
And I play alone with my hidden cards,
Like a bandit I know to profit by darkness,
Waiting for the changing off the guards.
I’ve traveled ‘round the world with my mind,
I’ve known everything I’ve not.
God bless my goddamned conformism
That makes me never change my way back home.
I never change my way back home.
I feel like a prisoner who escapes from jail
But comes back at night to sleep warm.
‘Cause I feel it’s frightening being free
under the mercy of sudden storms.
And so it goes: life passes with few worries
If you rule over your will.
Take this advice of -in inverted commas-
“Someone as happy as me”.
The dog receives me barking from the door,
I see my wife, I honk the horn,
I put on my smile and my automatic brain,
But I never change my way back home,
I never change my way back home.
When life was black or white,
A simple choice
Of dark or bright,
I was free, then.
In front of a white page,
A big love was a cage,
“We or me, baby”.
It was a wonderful feeling,
It was an amazing find,
But starting from a near limit
I took back the promise and the rose
To lock up in silence all her words.
I receded down the hill
While she stared me
From her sill:
“I love you, baby”.
And, by the way I smiled,
She saw the signs of my goodbye:
“It’s a farewell, baby”.
Though some of them were not pretty,
And some brunette, others blonde,
From ev’ryone I took something:
Little moments that come wrapped in dreams, different perfumes, brushings of their skins.
Those Sunday afternoons,
by the phone,
in our rooms:
“You and me, baby,
Could meet now for a film,
Take a walk, or just some drinks.
Would you like, baby?”
And all their tears and their rages
(Depending just on each one)
Were the other side of my wages:
Indigestions of a Christmas meal,
The bitter taste when one sticks a seal.
But I did the best of me,
I never wanted to hurt or decieve,
All my life I have made up excuses
to know what I mean:
like my cliched dreams,
my eighteen years,
ah,
I’m sorry if I made you cry
One more time.
I’m so sorry, I’m feeling
So sorry, so sorry.
How are you, where are you,
Which are you, who are you,
Who are you, baby?
I’m out of my old props
And it’s hammering my thoughts.
Who are you baby?
And when it’s cold in the morning
Or when it’s dark in the night,
I know it’s late for the warning:
All those things that looked like love
Were the closer you’ll have been to love.
Now I see a summer dress,
so humble and discreet,
your longing heart.
I hurry to play with your fingers
And down on my knees
I’m saying : I’ll be here, I will stay,
beside you,
my loved one,
There’s no need to roam,
You’re my home,
And your smile is enough to make me whole.
There’s nothing more important in this world.