Words – Micko Westmoreland

 

Noisy Neighbours

It’s been going on some time

Net curtains are a twitching

On the wires of the nerves

Second hand slowly ticking

With a glass to the wall

Listening out

It’s kind of scratching

I could do without

Going down on all fours

Heard through the floors

It’s a form of torture

Coming through the walls

 

Chorus

 

Can you hear that banging?

It’s hammering home

All kinds of strangeness

Down to the wire with my noisy neighbours

 

But how to complain?

Describe those grunting noises

It’s more trouble than it’s worth

When you hear those disgusting voices

In the head and all around

An unbecoming slapping sound

Keeping note, date and time

Hours pass, state of mind

Up the alley, right on cue

Caught on camera, point of view

In and out, it’s all untrue

A carnal matter I can’t undo

 

Chorus

 

Noisy Neighbours, Emotional Failure, Noisy Neighbours, Anti-social behaviour

 

Chorus

 

Can you hear that banging?

Can you hear that banging?

All kinds of strangeness

Down to the wire with my noisy neighbours

 

 

Psychedelic Shirt

Went to a disco, I was 13 years old

In a disused scout hut, I was all on my own

I’d bought a new shirt, red, blue & green

Bought it down Leeds market subject to my means

 

Chorus

 

Check out my psychedelic shirt

So out of time it hurts

If it’s not for you, not for you, it’s for me

Back in the day, young offenders leave me be

 

Gone from the cloakroom

Strung out on the toilet floor

Mopped up in the fluid

Screwed up in a ball

 

Walking in defiance

I left behind a stream

Those torrents of abuse

Defined you, as they define me

 

Chorus

 

You don’t have a future

From that moment I shape my own

I’m glad I’m not like them

Mulled it over on the way home

 

Even at a tender age

You get a sense of what things mean

Reaching out from the gutter

In search of star filled dreams

 

Chorus

 

The Finger

Don’t point your finger at me

I’m not responsible for misery

I watch the world but I don’t see

It works out better than way for me

I’m just the man in the street

I’ll read my daily paper down the pub

It won’t burst my bubble

I really don’t think it should

 

Chorus

 

It’s not like I don’t care

I don’t give a shit

I’ll just show them the finger

If it ever boils down to it

 

Do you remember a time

We holidayed in Majorca

We drunk on Mother’s credit

To our firstborn daughter

The liberation of those days

Innocent and care free

Sign of the times

In hindsight it was luxury

 

Chorus

 

It does do my head in

To turn a steely eye

On the seething streets

Curse, coz I know why

Still, I’ve got my paper

Half my sanity

I can tut, grunt and shrug

At all that hipster vanity

 

Chorus

 

You Killed My Father

Those sunnies look like our telly

Fringe, cut square on a curly wig

Hawaiian shirt, nylon sta press flare

Medallion man lights up my Mother’s cig

Weekends in the club

Aunties and Uncles we hold so dear

Pop and crisps, bowls or snooker?

One armed bandit, domies with beer.

 

Chorus

 

You killed my father, now you must die

You killed my father, now you must die

Enter the fray I beseech you

Tis on this day we say goodbye

Coz you killed my father and now you must die

 

Now the atmosphere’s turning weird

No one gets it, how you’ve taken his place

You seem to enjoy the attention

Cocky smile right across that face

This lurks in a colourful past,

To stop it I have to take the strain

Dig in this trench of forgiveness

Forgo warfare to remain sane

 

Chorus

 

Imelda

How do you look so young?

You spent a thousand dollars on chewing gum

Forgot your cheese in Rome

Divert the plane

from returning home

Will anything ever be enough?

Sparkling jewels glisten from above

 

You were a beauty queen

This week’s girl from a magazine

Obsessed with shopping sprees

Dreaming of your powers to be

Can a steel butterfly flap it’s wings?

Fired from a furnace of forbidden things

 

Chorus

 

Imelda, Imelda, Imelda Imelda

 

Ransacking national treasure

To feed your stately pleasure

Addicted to scheming schemes

What is it you wanted to achieve?

Specials shoes made for the Beatles

Endeared you to all the lowly people

 

Did it feel like torture

To be deemed unimportant?

Flee to Hawaii

Appear in court if necessary

Leave all those precious things behind

For the national audit committee to find

Taking all you will for yourself

Covering all the tracks for your mental health

 

Chorus

 

Sick & Tired

We are sick & tired we’re sick & tired

Of a member of the clergy accepting free cups of tea

There’s so much work to be done here at this jumble

His face is full of biscuits like it’s some kind of jamboree

 

Chorus

 

Nothing seems to satisfy, finding fault in everything

Happy to externalise than accept what lies within

 

He is sick & tired he’s sick & tired

Of the unsightly nature of his next door neighbour’s place

Stray branches, grass clippings left all over

He says he’s bone idle, but never to his face

 

Chorus

 

She is sick & tired she’s sick & tired

Of the sound of the doorbell, it’s ringing all the time

It can wake her from her afternoon slumber

Although the deliveries were the ones she placed online

 

Chorus

 

They are sick & tired & sick & tired

Of the new management and the way they run this place

Used to be quite a quiet little restaurant

Now it’s full of kids, they’re flicking food & smashing plates

 

Chorus

 

You are sick & tired, you’re sick & tired

Of the sight the homeless begging round your door

Every time I feed them a little loose change

It just encourages them to hang about all the more

 

Chorus

 

The Fear

Are you afraid of the dark?

The creature under the bed

What currently lives in the wardrobe

May also reside in your head

Darkness conceals, imagine danger

Tension leads to avoidance behaviour

Shrinking courage limits decision

Fear brings fears like an old superstition

 

I can’t rescue you from despair

You’re a prisoner of your heart

Running scared, you’ll never be free

Hell bent when things fall apart

 

Chorus

 

Feel the fear & go with it

Feel the fear & flow with it

Live each day like it were your last

Feel the fear & flow with it

Feel the fear & go with it

Let go of the future & the past

 

When words go beyond just words

Those emotions eat up time

It becomes a tangled fusion

Like a virus in the mind

But letting go of the little me

That needs so much attention

Reflects upon this economy

It’s a self-imposed detention

 

So careful what you feed

Whilst trying to escape

If you manage to break free

Don’t let demons haunt your wake

 

Chorus

 

 

Good Friend

I’m so tired of your face at my window

Making demands, facing those commands

Scratching the pane, break the glass

Cursing the splinters, forcing the catch

 

Chorus

All you had to be was a good friend

All you had to be was a good friend

 

Now you’re in again, destroying my mind

Shattering the pieces, drinking some wine

Think you’re entitled to what you’ve not got

Fighting for justice whilst twisting the plot

 

Chorus

 

Parading sensitivity like a weapon

Demanding sympathy whilst seeking attention

Seeming so righteous but fearing humiliation

Aren’t those oppressions of your own creation?

 

Chorus

 

Beautiful loser, King without a kingdom

Arrogance, supremacy, mastication

Where is the cavalry now? Since you spat them all out

No time to tear the place down, now there’s extra mouths

 

Chorus

 

But as you read this & you balk with scorn

Chastise & ridicule, downgrade and withdraw

‘What’s up’, would have been enough

Never an apology needed

If you’d of been prepared to open up

We both wouldn’t have conceded

 

Chorus

 

 

The Now

Plug yourself into responsibility

Believe it for very sound reasons

Argue for your own limitation

Face the music of your own demons

 

Fear of failure keeps you falling

You don’t have to do all the things you must

They may string me up for saying less

There’s a freedom you may learn to trust

 

Chorus

 

We are in the timeless now

The spotless here & now

We are in the formless now

The tireless here & now

 

Wait in line for your state of mind

It’s a timetable of frustration

Coz even without a valid ticket

You’ll arrive at your destination

 

The background static of discontent

Is pushing you towards the edge

Coz, the physics of your journey here

Is better left un-sketched

 

Chorus

 

Drawing on disappointments

It’ll drive you round the bend

This unkind kind of thinking

Is no journey’s end

 

So

Magnetise into your daily life

Whatever you hold in your dreams

Coz the future remains unwritten

Let the feel for life reign supreme

 

I don’t exist to impress the world

I’m here to make myself feel good

Try to see life as it is

Allow myself to live as I should

 

Halcyon days

 

Those legs go up to eleven

Glitter, pearl, Saffron, lace

Stumble through a hall of mirrors

Fashion yourself from any place

 

Little children twist and scream

Never reaching limitation

Fire together in wildest dreams

Endless fascination

 

Chorus

 

Halcyon days in exotic ways

You’re a walking work of art

So party like New York City

Until the daybreak’s apart

Halcyon days in exotic ways

We all played a part

So party like New York City

Until the night falls apart

 

So you try to change your world

But it all seems so far away

Like peering through a parted curtain

Figures in a distant play

 

So do your very worst

You budget avenging angel

Shipwreck of the streets, set the world alight,

With your powerful imagination

 

Chorus

 

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