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1. |
Summer Of The Shark
03:15
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Welcome to the witching hour
The loos are down the hall to the right
Feel free to lean on the wood
Vibrating from an animal bite
The night she went missing
I saw her kissing a stranger in a car
The night of her passing
I was amassing glasses at the bar
Maybe it's just a summer of the shark
How did you know the deceased?
Ah, I didn't really
She came in a lot
She worked every other weekend
At the art and hobby shop
X-Acto blade panic
Were they satanic, those marks
In the bark?
Well any art is exotic
Big city narotics? No ta
We are dwindling sparks
Now it's such a summer of the shark
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2. |
Follow The River
05:19
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It’s a little island of coarse shrub
And you have to cross a bridge to get to it
I tried to take a photograph of the river once
But it was just pulsating with glistening oil
So there I was in the assembly hall
Drawing a cross section of an ox bow lake
For the homework that she didn’t do
I heard a true story that she did someone In the dunes
And I was sick for a week
From jealousy’s noxious fumes
“Are you going to that thing on Saturday night?” I said
And she said
“Yeah I’m going”
She said “I’m going”
Yeah she’s going so I follow the river
I will follow the river I will follow the river
Rumour has it,
Her older brother and his mates
Encountered a UFO down in those woods
But they were probably just high
Off hallucinogenic drugs
I’m slipping through the cracks,
First responder to the love scene
Creased and un-ironed at the window
Hanging your cogoul on the banister
As canticles erupt from the TV screen
Hail crashing on the pond
I will follow the river
I will follow the river
Where ever it leads I’ve got to proceed
I will follow the river
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3. |
Forest Floor
05:55
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Somebody said
I'm not sure who told me,
But somebody told me
Down past the wildlife identification plaque
On Saturday night,
Everyone is staying at each other's houses
Sneaking out,
Out into the thicket
And the fox gloves and the rhododendrons
Bending back
For the breaking glass
Of fake drugs and bonfire ash
What, go to the woods
On Saturday night?
Push the branches back
And have a real cool time in the forest
Under canvas I suppress
The sick feeling of anxiety
Well maybe I could navigate myself
Into somebody's body?
She'll be lounging in the embers
Everyone remembers
How she sought me out after deflection
I'm not ready now
But maybe Saturday night
In the cave
We will paint some evidence of erection
What if, like, something, like, goes wrong?
Are there instructions for getting the condom on?
I tried myself once and the stench made me feel feint
And I fell back and I lay shaking on the bed
What, go to the woods
On Saturday night?
Push the branches back
And have a dead good time in the forest
Sticky tin in tow and does my mother
Or my father know
Where I am
(I'm not even sure)
I see your fingers on the forest floor
I was so uptight on Wednesday night
Well, that afternoon
You approached him with the copy
I was ill with jealousy
All through Coronation Street
But then I was fine
After a bit, I was alright
Where are you supposed to go to the toilet?
That's what I got dead scared about
So I didn't eat that morning
Which meant by the second bottle
Of sickly crisp Copenhagen lager
The woods was already spinning
The woods was already spinning
The woods was already spinning
What, go to the woods
On Saturday night?
Push the branches back
And have a real cool time in the forest
What, go to the woods
On Saturday night?
Push the branches back
And have a real cool time in the forest
(Repeat ad nauseam)
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4. |
Us Off Caves
07:39
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What artifacts remain?
Just metres below our sleeping bags And battery speakers?
Secret mounds indicating
Ice age civilisations
Upper paleolithic
Mammoth ivory
Betula Pendula is her Latin name
I want to touch you at the stigma
Make your anthers explode
In a passionate paroxysm of pollen
(And possibly confetti)
I want to embrocate my infatuation
In your natural lotion
Come the local spores
I want to meet your mum and dad
And watch Jeremy Kyle in your living room
Us off caves
There are oyster catchers operating
On the mudflats not far from here
But you were laughing hysterically
And falling in the stonecrop
I held your body and got you to sit down
On a commemorative bench
In the arboretum, in the moonlight
Smothered by your hot fragrance
Suppressing affection
Until it faded like a phantom in the park
Then you had a bad idea
To swim in the wetlands
(Too much vodka tonic)
Put your hands to the hardening sap
Who needs the city?
We’ve got these spires of bark
Where people do secret deeds
Poke the mystery with a stick
And awaken the sleeping unsolved
Us off caves
Wavering from my designated perch
Makes the blood drain from my face
And normally my legs are numb
Will I make it to behind this tree
To wee on it’s fallen leaves?
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5. |
Into The Microcosm
05:25
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Bodies found in ancient woods
And from the gauge of his corduroy
We can date him back
To the start of the last millennium
Bending like driftwood
Float down with the pond skaters
Now the woods is electric
A nightclub in the trees
One of the older boys
Fashioned a hammock
Somewhere down here
And I overheard you talking
About swinging in it
Oh please, no!
I don’t want to get buried alive
I don’t want the next face I see
To be a Tony Robinson type
And they’ll speculate about my demise
Then go to the pub
Into the microcosm...
Just like these ancient trees
I’m a protected species
Stamp the seeds down in the mud
Germinate it in the sludge
Letting nature take it’s course
It doesn’t come if it’s forced
It doesn’t come if it’s forced
You break me in two bits
Like a breadstick in humous
My guts turn to mush
As his fingers meet stomach
I’m lip reading now,
He has discovered the hammock
And he will take you there tonight
Yes, he’ll take you there tonight
And he’ll enter you
Like a phone in competition
Into the microcosm...
Into the microcosm...
I want to be, I want to be
I want to be a protected species
Like these
We’re going ancient trees
Ancient trees
Everybody here with me
I was trying to get inside your frame
Like an audience member
On Top Of The Pops
I don’t want a Legs & Co. rendition
I want you in the studio miming
I want you in the studio miming along
Into the microcosm...
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6. |
Extinction
05:50
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The aching solace of the salt marsh
Punctuated with a white plastic bag
That was blowing in a frenzy
This is the night of the Triffids
We were creeping like roots
Through the cat grass
We were combing the cave floor
For your mobile
The heavy duty electric torch
Locked you in it’s beam
And your eyes bounced spectrums
Of light round the walls
It was like swimming
In aurora borealis
But more densely perfumed
With Tommy Girl
I had a dream in my sleeping bag
That I had fallen down a telescopic lens
The embers rise
And give the menacing tree
A thousand eyes
You’re a palm of sleeping jewels
Perching on the exposed root of the oak
Sitting your lips on the green glass
We had something there!
I should have ... Taken a photo
But the spark died like the dodo
Over farmed and not scared enough
Of human contact
Petals collapse
And the crackling branches
Meet the bark like spider lightning
Yes, tonight we’re bringing electric pulses
To the prehistoric flora
The reds and greens of the disco lights
Twin beams meet your body
Like the rings of the Mysterons
By half past ten the sun is gone
And someone scary is opening
A cling film ball of drugs
I take a backseat
I let my Neanderthal DNA take the wheel
99.7 percent genetically identical
I want to chase that nought point three
Let’s dance tonight
Let’s take that last misstep into extinction
Let’s take that last misstep
I’ll meet you at the defining line
That separates your body from the planet
I want to set your endorphins off
Trigger sensations on a molecular level
Our legs are caked in the flint flakes
We get our cooked meat delivered
We split the bill
We split the atom
Emerson goes
Emerson goes
“Adopt the pace of nature
Her beauty is patience”
And Leopold goes
And Leopold goes
“I’m glad I will not be young In a future without wilderness”
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7. |
Polytunnel
04:58
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I saw it through the bamboo shoots
He was trying to reach your opal fruits
Adam and Eve
And the Eden Project
In a cascade of cherubs with lutes
So was I like, God?
Or was I the devil?
I was whichever one jumped out the bushes
And went “Caught you red handed!” in the Bible
It’s like, a whole religious thing...
Remember the house
Where outside I kissed you?
The walls were papered in raised analypta
I must have done a bad job
Servicing your cupid’s bow
‘Cause I never really saw you again
I never really saw you again
Some clever lines must equal sex
I just had to solve for X
He lost marks on a filthy text
But worse was my earnestness
Solving the cryptograph of virginity loss It’s like the space race,
But buddy you’ve already lost
But I split the layer of permafrost
When I heard you call my name
In the polytunnel
I realised then you were just a defrauder As my incisors met your vermillion border Collecting bed post notches
Like an antique hoarder
I dropped into the sea
Didn’t make me feel too good
Like a sex scene
Or a philtrum stud
But I had to believe
I had to believe that
Time would mop the dread up
Well the glossiness is gone
Like an advert for an escort agency, Partially faded
I wish that you could look inside my head
Like that Million Dollar Man doll
And see yourself through my eyes
Know how I feel inside
It’s frozen in formaldehyde forever
Writing your name in the water vapour
Penning you love notes on parchment paper
It all fades fast
When you hit that certain age
I remember your mum and dad’s settee
It was leather
It was beige
I didn’t want to share you
I wasn’t Jesus Christ
I just wanted to move you
Like a poltergeist
Methuselah is a Great Basin
Bristlecone pine
It was knocking about nearly three thousand years
Before the time of Christ
Can you feel the buzz?
Kicking in like the extinction of the bumblebee
In the polytunnel of love
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8. |
Count The Rings
05:10
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Rising like a bog man
Out of the muck
You’re facing the jagged wall
And all the birds are chiming
I keep thinking about sticky eyes...?
I used to get it all the time
When I was a kid
In the late 1990s
Maybe it’s just something you grow out?
I want to be authentic like the cave
Like the woods and all the wildlife
Within it
But I’m stricken with second thoughts
And paranoid I might get lyme’s disease
From sitting in the grass
You still looked really great
Even though you’d slept amongst the rocks
But you wouldn’t know it
You wouldn’t know it
Dad picks me up
In his blue Nissan Micra
I’ve never felt these effects before
The smell of Sunday papers
Rises like an orchestra
And I fall asleep on the couch
Everybody peels away
Until it’s just me and Jack
Leaning outside the grey stone finish
Of the posh estate agents
And he goes home and my sore head
Fills up with summer air
I want to be authentic like the cave
But I’m not sure if that’s what you are into
I’ve been more or less well behaved
I don’t want to start smoking marijuana
Under lean-tos
And that “I love you”
You said to me in the shed
I think the Buckfast had just gone
To your head
I count the rings of the felled oak of romance
As the dawn light sweeps across the yarrow
I’m not ashamed
That I never grasped the nettle
Why take the risk?
When your chances of success
Are pretty narrow
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Laurie Shaw Kenmare, Ireland
Laurie Shaw is a Wirral-born songwriter and producer. He now dwells in Ireland where he records from his mountain retreat. He often gigs in Cork, Dublin and the Merseyside area. He has released around 100 albums to date (all of which are available on request). ... more
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