The Crash Test Dummies: "There Are NIghts When All My Aching Bones Won't Let Me Sleep"

THE GHOSTS THAT HAUNT ME

There's a skeleton in everybody's closet
I can think of one or two in my own room
But I would like to introduce them both to you
You'd shake their bony hands and so dispel the gloom

'Cause you're so kind
I know you would not mind
You'd send away the ghosts that haunt me now
And the things I fear
Just wouldn't seem so near
And when I stroll out late at night
There would be nothing rattling at my heels

There are nights when all my aching bones won't let me sleep
And demons come to plague me as I lie in bed
But I know if you were sleeping there beside me then
That you could fend them off and they would let me rest

There are nights
When the wind comes howling through my old place
I have dreams
And I wake up with the sweat pouring down my face
And I wait till the morning comes

There will come a time I fear when all my days are done
And they will come collect my corpse and bury me
And then I hope you'll come over to the Other Side
To join me in our new life, keep me company

--Brad Roberts

from the Crash Test Dummies' debut album:

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

Sinead Morrissey: "& Forgive Us Our Trespasses"

& FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES  

Of which the first is love. The sad, unrepeatable fact
that the loves we shouldn’t foster burrow faster and linger longer
than sanctioned kinds can. Loves that thrive on absence, on lack
of return, or worse, on harm, are unkillable, Father.
They do not die in us. And you know how we’ve tried.
Loves nursed, inexplicably, on thoughts of sex,
a return to touched places, a backwards glance, a sigh -
they come back like the tide. They are with us at the terminus
when cancer catches us. They have never been away.
Forgive us the people we love – their dragnet influence.
Those disallowed to us, those who frighten us, those who stay
on uninvited in our lives and every night revisit us.
Accept from us the inappropriate
by which our dreams and daily scenes stay separate.   

--Sinead Morrissey

Mermaid: Reprise

October 2010.

A Boat-Load Of Charm

In progress.

Face Time: Wet Clay

Practice session. 

Kavanaugh's "On Raglan Road"

ON RAGLAN ROAD
          (Air: The Dawning of the Day)

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew 
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue; 
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way, 
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day. 

On Grafton Street in November we tripped lightly along the ledge 
Of the deep ravine where can be seen the worth of passion's pledge, 
The Queen of Hearts still making tarts and I not making hay - 
O I loved too much and by such and such is happiness thrown away. 

I gave her gifts of the mind I gave her the secret sign that's known 
To the artists who have known the true gods of sound and stone 
And word and tint. I did not stint for I gave her poems to say. 
With her own name there and her own dark hair like clouds over fields of May 

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet I see her walking now 
Away from me so hurriedly my reason must allow 
That I had wooed not as I should a creature made of clay - 
When the angel woos the clay he'd lose his wings at the dawn of day. 

-- Patrick Kavanagh

And here's my favorite rendition of this poem by Mark Knopfler and Donal Lunny.

Shelf Life