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THREE SONGS BY WE HAD A DEAL

CHAPTER V (THE FINE ART OF HATING WHAT YOU DO)
We praise, we kneel, we repeat, we stand still,
We find beauty and paint it black
Until it’s down to nothing all over again,
We strip the skin from it till it’s only flesh and bones
And wonder why it’s just “defeat” that the banners read
Hung on every empty building we didn’t care for.
This circle you had drawn grew way too small for us,
Too small to hold us in.
So we got lost somewhere in the crowd
That’s trying so hard to be different,
We can’t hear our own excuses whispered desperately.
Tired of mourning till our throats go sore
While better days are knocking on the doors
Of (our) empty buildings we didn’t care for.
So, here’s to “blinders on”, a salute to “gone astray”,
So, here’s to never knowing what we’re for
Only what we trying to avoid.
No more waiting on the rooftops
With lights, sounds and banners
To guide the way for the “good life”
Just in case it ever makes its way.
Tonight they’ll know we’re here.

CHAPTER VIII (I UNLEARNED ALL THE SONGS WE USED TO SING)
Oh bitterness, my dear, would you please marry me?
We’ll have children and we’ll name them “vermin” and “disease”
And become like those before us.
We met at the deathbed of ambition
And this is where it led us (to).
We’re the copy-cats of our own lives.
The lines were drawn way before me
And we’re/I’m just walking them.
Wiser men than me claim that the human existence takes place
Between what was and what will be,
So it’s not really there at all
And by looking around you can tell they’re right.
We’re doing nothing better, we just know how to wait it out.
Disappearing, the invisible generation without a name.
Class-war is over (and all the individuality money can buy won it)
Eternal boredom (that’s eating us alive).
We’re the best informed virgins there ever were.

CHAPTER IV (PIANOMAN PT.II)
We need more,
More memories, more dreams, more bottles;
The fire’s almost gone out,
So throw another penny in the wishing well
And poison down your throats.
Fate gave us plenty of time
And what did we do with it?
We blackmailed the pianoman
With pictures we took Of him and elderly women
Playing doctors and nurses,
We blackmailed him not to play us another song
But to pour us another drink,
For a song we could sing ourselves.

 

THE WORLD OWES YOU NOTHING

MEDICS HAVE BEEN CALLING; THEY SAY THIS BODY IS STILL WARM

We’re constructing alibis and as time flies we’ll change identities. You won’t recognize me
Tomorrow we’ll be strangers plotting a conspiracy. The longer I scream the dizzier it gets.
When will we stop to hide behind our wrath and find there’s nothing left, nothing left to care about.
Only privileged middle-class fucks preaching to the converted, just like me. Afraid of the fact
that we’re all growing old. Too soon we’ll be mocking the days we lived for. This movement will be dead by dawn.
But this mouth speaks only madness in search for reason, in search for the glory that lies in the chance we have
to do the things we love.
For it’s blurred by a state of rush in which I built my home, in which I’m building chapels for our ungratefulness.
Tonight they’ll erect monuments to praise the rings around our eyes only to tear them down by dawn.
Cause it gets hard to dance when the blues is always on. But a self-righteous martyr never lacks words.
So just read on for I got plenty more of them.
Only privileged middle-class fucks preaching to the converted, just like me. Afraid of the fact
that we’re all growing old. Too soon we’ll be mocking the days we lived for. This movement will be dead by dawn.
But this mouth speaks only madness in search for reason, in search for the glory that lies in the chance we have
to do the things we love.

 

TONIGHT WE’LL DRINK THE BLOOD OF GODS

If heart means everything I lost mine to broken doors, burned out holes and poetry spelled carefully on toilet walls.
Bring me the cripples of mind and they may be cured tonight.
At dusk we waltz to anthems of disillusion on the grave we made ourselves
To give us meaning in all that is. At least the end is certain.
This ship will sink but yet there’s no iceberg insight. So tell the orchestra to play a happy tune to make us feel alive.
The siren sings, proclaims its right but not now, not yet.

 

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD

Over there in the corner is where you spend your nights, staring downwards.
“The more people I get to know the more I suggest that the people enjoying what stares back in the mirror
Moved away from this town as soon as they had the chance to.”
A worldly wisdom we both share.
But there’s one thing you miss:
They don’t even know you’re there. They’re vampires hiding in the spotlight to escape the sunlight.
With rolling eyes they’ll salute you, wrapped up in straitjackets made out of their own little problems such as:
Going home alone tonight and hiding their rotten guts inside.
So here’s what we’re gonna do:
You’ll promise me to accept the fact that none of them care about how you feel tonight.
And I’ll promise to stop singing these melancholic songs. Both won’t happen
Although my voice is almost gone and I don’t know if I’ll make it through this goddamn song.

 

CONFESSIONS OF AN EGOMANIAC WITH A MIC IN HANDS

We all search for things that live forever in ourselves and in others,
In symbols that differ right from wrong.
The divide between good and evil is what sets us apart
The human urge to do whatever it takes to fulfil the right side of the coin.
Always faster, always louder.
My head hurts from all that pretty dreams, manufactured to sell, injected in legal doses,
Just enough to make you want more of what you’ll never learn.
On a scale from pro to con I never seem to find my centre.
I’ll never find a healthy way to deal with it
Always too much or too little.
The perspective lacks real options, the possibilities ate them all up to grow strong,
Stronger than I think we all are.
So let the breaking begin, let it begin, may the ties eat their young
While the celluloid celebrates in an apathetic trance.
And we’ll sit here too scared to go outside, too scared of difference,
too scared of ourselves.
No song I sing can make us love ourselves
And still you watch this attention seeking freak show.
You serve my mass for the holy trinity of me, myself and I
Just hope the stage is big enough for my ego, it might not fit in this room.

 

LET ME BE REBORN AS A STONE

Always on the run from slowing down. Never resting till the stomach aches but now I’m resting quietly.
As my arms become wallpaper and my legs become the flooring
I can hear every word they say while they’re passing me. Eyes look straight through me.
I’m gone, alone like the building I became a part of. Found a beautiful peace.
I wanna be a stone, I wanna be a wall. Just let me be something that’s quiet, that’s calm
That sinks and stays down, but never drowns. Something, anything that’s stable
And not always on the verge of an implosion. Nobody acts resentfully if you find your happy-end
At least that’s what the movies tell. So grant me that wish.
Hurry; go tell the sirens I’m deaf to their song of sleep. So turn on the typewriters, tonight we’ll write a novel.
For I almost seem to have forgotten what it is that makes me sleep at night.

 

AND AGAIN THE OLD STORY OF THE APPLE AND THE TREE

These rooms used to mean everything. All of my mistakes and all my losses, these rooms were hosting them.
These walls defined me, carved scars in me and showed me beauty. They used to be my wasteland
And now they’re just reflecting the wish that we all have as we grow old: Not to die alone.
These rooms breathe loneliness. You store the aged in these rooms as if it’s company, the company you truly miss,
The company you always wanted but could never hold. It’s time you so desperately turn backwards inside these walls
They’re the vacuum you couldn’t help but build with your own hands, with your own words.
Born lonely, always missing someone that history took from you.
I can see that now, the defiance in your eyes made room for a fragile loneliness in which I have my part, that I helped to built.
And as I’m leaving these rooms the world is still turning but it’s turning without you.
So this is where I screamed at you so many times but this time I scream for you.
I just wanted you to know that I’m thankful. I just wanted you to know…

 

INTROSPECTIVE SONGS GOT BORING

We all got our cross to carry and being the centre of the world’s a big one. So why are you applying for the job?
Nails still hurt so why do you wanna hang on them? So much for the Jesus Christ pose, so much for “it was better then”.
We both remember these drunken nights. It wasn’t better then, the retrospective lies.
Maybe we’ve just grown old by gaining precious things to lose. Maybe songs are more maybe less than music
Maybe life ain’t bad. Maybe noone hates you. They just don’t know you well enough.
Maybe nothing’s perfect but we all want to be something.
But there’s one thing I know above all questions:
You’re still here and I’m still here and that’s more, so much more than they expected from us.

 

A SERENADE FOR THOSE SLEEPING

From where we sat we could almost escape the static noise of waking up at 5 o’clock and returning home by 9.
There we sat, economy and me. Not one but the same, next to the canals floating carelessly
Into another sea of stillness and weight.
And we sang a love song for the dead and for the damned and for all who don’t know better
but to run in circles and play the hand history dealt by birth.
A love song for the beauty we both found in the uselessness of it all. A toast to life and to a yet doubtful afterlife
And to everything that comes in-between.
So we sang. We talked so much that day. Minimum wage almost felt human.
Hesitating only for a moment the cooling breeze came and took our smell of summer, of failure with it over the canal.

 

THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A LOVESONG

I never even tried to win. All bets on failure, makes quiet a dime. The TV shares its light with the gathered family.
A fight is on, we Vs. faith, round 13, still standing. Gonna be a good one.
And if we’re really lucky afterwards uncle punk’s going to tell the tale
How he stood near enough to get some splatters when 77 killed the future. Gonna feel like Christmas.
Afterwards we’re both sneaking out just as we planned. Meet me up there by the hills and neon signs.
Two cynics with a front row seat for the end of the world. Have a seat, my dear.
Make sure the view is good; you don’t want to miss the downfall, my dear.
So just look down there. Suddenly nobody’s lethargic anymore; every couple enjoys its last dance.
Can you see the preachers? They’re lamenting, must have got into a rush for judgement day.
The sheep enjoy their togetherness while the ties celebrate their loneliness and we’re holding hands, smiling.

 

PREVIOUSLY ON MY LIFE

It’s getting harder to think the right things when every now and then the facade turns and shows its ugly teeth.
It’s moments like these I can see the whole scheme: We’re just counting losses by knowing no measurement to them,
All combined in a faked glory pose of “doing the right thing”.
The apple hopefully falls far from the tree and now it landed. So just roll over and give me space to rest
Cause I’m tired of burning bridges carelessly.
Criticising, overreacting, forgetting names and finding a weakness in every beautiful thing that comes my way.
These are the best parts of me. This is what I know best.
So don’t tell the corpses underneath my bed when I’m gone and I won’t be missing the feeling
That the times we share are only based on reacting to an oh so unjust outside-world.
Because I received a call from grace today and its message was simple: “The world owes you nothing”.