| Aaron McMullan - "196 Or So" (2006) |
| The Lyrics And Stuff - Click Here For The MP3's |
| The Lyrics From The Songs On "196 Or So" By Aaron McMullan All songs written by Aaron McMullan in Spring / Summer 2006. Sketches In Broken C (Aaron McMullan, 2006) These charcoal slipstreams hiss an’ spit Past dead-grass paths all piss an’ shit An the gangrene thoroughfare snarlin’ wi’ jealousy… Oh bent back lamp-light, ‘luminate These cracklin’ wounds by station-gate Like the dawn scarrin’ the night-time stretched ahead o’ me And nostalgia thick and potent and as pulsing TV radiance And the concretes tauntin’ cries “Come on singer, fuck sakes, sing for us” And a sketch predictably Coiled around a broken C Broken-glass bouquets lain over streets, catchin’ reflections Of the mornin’ clutchin’ gifts o’ clarity And in her smile A momentary burst o’ some sweet decadence She takes my hand She says the drunken day is waking Take me someplace still in awe of twilight Vagrant chorus lined up ‘long the walls outside the chapel Singin’ “Which Side Are You On” an there’s a hint of something glorious Swellin’ in the pauses ‘tween the words Set for piercing almost every ear that’s listenin’ Yeah, the rest just sigh an keep on walkin’ Broadsheet prophecies! Some monstrous calamity! I’m makin’ notes, I’m writin’ lines Chockin’ on fear an yeah, sometimes The fear is crippling an’ I’m trembling I bite my tongue till everythin’ is Fragments of a narrative A fiction, nothin’ more Grafton Street all raw wi’ memory, we walk on wounds And sit by cafes watchin summertime carve madmen from Cathedral stone I love you and it cuts my tongue to say But that’s ok My melancholy suits my haircut Like the piss-burn suits the gutter steam Oh, To Tremble… (Aaron McMullan, 2006) Oh, to tremble like that fella sometimes trembles That fella plays the organ like it’s boilin’ on his tongue Spittin’ blind across the keys, those flick’rin’ notes like ashes flung To the whipping o’ the breezes The lashin’ o’ the light And his fingers fired wi’ some beautiful rapture Some throbbin’ in his soul all raised in lumps across his chest Some arachnid terror swinging on his spine, he’s stood possessed By the thousand devils laughin’ In the gaps atween the sighs She throws her head back ‘gainst the screen, she’s pushin’ my hand away She says “Oh what I’d give for to sound like I have nothin’ left to say” What use is a voice, she says, all shining? All shimmering? Oh to conjure sapphire smoke-rings from these pages These pages all impressions of those smoke-rings I recall Windin’ up and out and throbbin’ in the cracks behind the walls Where all those fellas high on Jesus Screech silent in the night For to find something that’s worth the hours o’ searchin’ For something new to say with all these tired metaphors These lines all thick wi’ lines I’ve used a hundred times before Yeah I’m looking at these words And yeah, I’m sickened at the sight And stood by the gates o’ the cemetery I’m craving a fresh new way To say, “Yeah this is what I been thinkin’ about since last I came this way” And they They’ll smile as they watch that fresh phrase shining And shimmering And I met a poet high on aching language I met her in a red-light bar-room looks out o’er the sea And in time I fell in love wi’ her, and she in love wi’ me And she kisses me like melody Might kiss the saddest songs And I’m fishin’ for a verse or two to hand her A verse that maybe tells her somethin’ close to what I feel When she wakes me in the morning an I see the new day reelin’ In the corners of her smile Her smile all glistenin’ in the dawn And sometimes I’m lain there ‘neath the sheets and I’m tastin’ her dreams And I… I’m hearin’ the songs all spun cross winding stages back her eyes And I… I’m feelin her breath against my chest, well, yeah I’m trembling… The Morning Swelling (Aaron McMullan, 2006) Yeah, I took a walk ‘longside these lines she threads From sleep-starved movements, lines all red And raw and softly sighing Oh, in some off-colour, off-key dream I saw those words all glistening Carvin’ the day all dying She caught shadows ‘tween those pauses ‘tween those verses ‘Tween those pages An’ yeah I’m wond’rin how those shadows maybe tasted? Tastes like night-time hangin’ pregnant wih the mornin’ The mornin’ swellin’ Yeah, I watched the ocean spittin’ smoke-ring rhymes I watched the waters split in time To some sad rhythm pulsing I saw those saints all coiled around those spires And all those upturned eyes afire And all those walls convulsing An’ all these visions caught in fragments, caught in ashes Kissin’ breezes An yeah they’re risin’ off those lines all weepin’ whispers Singin’ softly of some pain all whiplash hiss And still she’s stood defiant… Blackness On My Tongue (Aaron McMullan, 2006) There’s a blackness on my tongue, there’s a night all twisted And a storefront choir raised on broken rhymes, they’re singin’ Those songs you sketch for me, when I’m all dreamin’ Dreamin’ savage purple choruses all coiled round hope all bleedin’ There’s a blindness I been chasing, an innocence all waitin’ by the sea It wanders over rocks all coloured morning And ocean spray all threaded long this chemical breeze driftin’ I fell asleep inside a word you left for me, all white-light blindin’ There’s a hand upon my hand, and his eyes all throbbin’ Oh, he smiles in detuned C and I’m listening… Yeah I seen you here before, he says, you look no better Oh, but you’re something close to something more than nothing There’s a promise of a dawn all breathless melody, it’s callin’ from the glass Laced along those convent walls all red-eyed troubadours Each one swears he’s bent back further than the cunt before him There’s a band of blessed bastards hung round memories all slack-jawed wailin’ There’s a blackness on my tongue, there’s a softness swellin’ In the cracks between my teeth, and a couple curses grinding There’s a wrist alive wi’ sin, there’s a lust all boilin’ Oh, these infamies all flung in ropes to broken paving There’s an opiate that I been tasting, rises from her hands There’s a bitterness so beautiful it scars me See it lining dreams all lain o’er burnin’ sheets across the sands She’s sat singin’ by the waterside, I’m trembling Broke Sun Fixed (Aaron McMullan, 2006) Think it best if I quit singin’ songs I know you don’t wanna hear And songs that it pains me to write And words draw blood But it’s ok, yeah I feel great And in a dream you were an opiate Think these lines been bendin’ you wi guilt Guilt that you can’t tolerate Till resentments all you feel for me An no, it’s all ok, an I feel fine And in dreams you let me hold you sometimes This morning sleepin’, in dreams I’m wishin’ That the bed might swallow me - and the broken sun Burnin’, I’m wakin’, the night was fixin’ To bathe the sky in pristine moonlight waters An in visions I saw Dublin weep in awe of you Like I still weep in awe of you Jonathan came home on Thursday night, he’d spent six months with the Lord Learnin’ all bout how the love he had cut Jesus to the bone And now he sees That a dream is all he wants to be Spent my birthday talking to a hooker, yeah she helped me write this song Outside a city-centre bar An’ neon dancing in the cracks beneath our feet An’ a ten-quid kiss off Donegal Street Someone was whistling a song found shivering Wrapped up in blankets, left abandoned by a burnt-out factory A song written for you, another lovelorn verse or two Alive wi’ screamin’ longing, an your smile as towerin’ effigy Ahead and to each side a me And God in every purple whisper And still sat watchin’ the TV glowin’ Pulsing from cracks inside the walls, an you were bleeding from this wound I’ve had since early spring, when first I saw how everything Was stitched from strands of savage purple light And yeah, the world held up on strings Manipulated by the hands I hold when sleep can find me Ode To Innocence (Aaron McMullan, 2006) Somewhere ‘neath these cardboard bindings There’s a room that’s lined with notes With photographs of cities that the camera’s never seen And there’s a couple books I read to you When night-time grants me dreams Floor burned black wi’ petrol blazes, scorched and cracking Dead eyes gazin’ out o’ concrete All things rise and fall And here with you, and all the things once set me shakin’ Well, they’re nothing much at all I remember tasting you beside the water in the spring I remember you sat listening To a couple verses written For to make sense of this screechin’ hind my eyes And yeah the clouds tore themselves free O’ that vast blue stretched endlessly Those whispers bleeding overhead And so we danced wi’ heaven shakign Twilight swelling, moonlight breaking From the wounds winding like vipers in the sky Let this be all I ever see Let blindness swallow me, let time devour me There’s a message from some fella someplace just outside of where we’ve ended up Or where we’re stopping off Talkin’ bout voices they are currency, and his worth more than most An yeah I kept his words for sometime I might need a line to make sense of a thought A state o’ mind that I been trailing It’s a G-flat exorcism, it’s an off-key detuned cleansing, it’s a farewell to the ghosts I remember cell-door steel and red-raw lashes cross the wrists And jacket-pockets fulla sedatives And her voice as rowboat waitin’ Led me back across the Acheron And held me by that furnace on the shore And I recall apologies stacked up in threes, anticipating Some new sorrow, some disgrace Another four, five days a weepin’ ‘Tween the sheets an never sleepin’ Pleadin’, “Help me, I can’t do this any more” And I don’t do it any more No, something heard me, something pitied me and cleansed me There’s a woman used to wander ‘long the train tracks Whispering to lovers long since lost to history, to memory As distant as the faces she can’t recognise in photographs Still hanging down on strings across her chest Times I see her in my dreams, cursing wildly at Prometheus Says “Give me back my blindness, and my ignorance An let my lost naivety crawl ‘tween my legs an enter me An let me taste my youth wi every breath Let the night solidify ‘till everything is concrete black And I’ll be eulogised in prose And I’ll be half-heard myth And tale passed down as hymnal And these tracks as blessed shrines For all those eyes all grey with nothingness” In A Dream (Aaron McMullan, 2006) In a dream I saw the summer bleeding azure cross the city And the city bleeding sapphire o’er my shoulders, Like those memories All shimmering, all crystalline, and tied ‘round broken branches Held above the heads o’ phantom children Massed on either side o me In a dream I saw the words all rise from well-thumbed cracklin’ pages Saw the words boilin’ on sun-kissed stones All shades of saddest poetry I tasted every syllable o’ those mournful, dawn-light verses And I gathered them and swallowed them And felt them swell inside o’ me She’s all needle-eyed again and he’s all slung cross line again And somewheres ‘tween the two, a song… They’ll dance around that melody, they’ll kiss in G and fuck in C They’ll fall, the song still skips along… In a dream I saw a cancer spittin’ rabid over youth, I saw A generation crucified ‘neath Middle Eastern skies, I saw The dimming of the streetlights and the snarling of the rifles And God and gods all lashed I saw The guilt burn back their eyes, I saw A consciousness all colours of the morning ‘gainst the windows And the rain all tippin’ tappin’ at the glass My hands are pressed upon A whisper as a slipstream, as a burst of August radiance The blooming of those promises I lay my dreams to rest upon A circle all electric hiss, and tongues entwined and smoke-rings wisp And weave and paint the pulsin’ sky A triangle, a trinity, a triptych points to you and me And something else still undefined As I wake I hear the slinkin’ of a record someone’s playin In the room beneath this room all strewn with Fragments of the night before I woke and I heard fusion, I heard Bitches Brew all oozin’ From the speakers stacked beside her Three abreast upside the bathroom door The day is tricklin’ glorious across those skyways ‘head of us And somewhere to the left of us A song worth singin’ waits for us A lyric speaks to none but us, and yes, on loan to all of us A tune played in the key of us On strings plucked someplace under us She Is Waking (Aaron McMullan, 2006) The glistening of summer swellin’ In the dawn all hung in sheets around the room Oh, the mornings subtle sighs Whisper someplace back her eyes As she is waking The melodies, I hear them rising And the murmur of the morning’s pregnant glow And on her tongue, a velvet rhyme She threads her fingers between mine As she is waking She kisses me… I close my eyes… I can taste those nights spent shivering ‘Neath the sheets in cells all pulsin’ I can feel them tricklin’ back my mind And they’re trickling on’ Cause you led me home And I was out there wandering ‘Pon burnt black stones Where nothin’ grows But silence… She says “In sleep I heard you singin’ And I saw a street all red-raw memory” Yeah we both hear those memories scream From every corner of our dreams But we are waking And in her hand some song she’s holding For a time when she’s in need of something pure Yeah, someday she’ll let it fly And watch it bloom beneath that sky All bent and shaking She kisses me… I close my eyes She’s telling me… She loves me There’s a light all swellin’ in my chest There’s a hope I’m scared to name But still it lingers back my eyes and Hangs from off my breath Yeah it paints my thoughts In shades so beautiful And I feel complete, were I once lay wrecked And broken The Ballad Of Him And Her And Me (Aaron McMullan, 2006) Eyes all raw an lips all bleeding Sat there by the back door reading Letters from her lover He’ll be home sometime ‘fore summer so he says An they’ll go dancin’ by those waters whisper broken in her dreams Have you been dreamin? I been dreamin’, I saw hope all tremblin’ Oh, she woke up cryin’, an still she’s smiling when I ask her how she feels An all those track-marks reek a longin’ All those bruises stink o’ mornings after nights spent shooting phantoms in the fog Him an her, they both got rifles primed an both bein firing blind into the dark Smile all throbbin’, eyes all pulsing Hand upon my hand An yeah he’s asking if I got a place to sleep and if I got a hand to hold An with her silences still carvin’ ragged trenches cross my thoughts I’m ‘pologisin, makin’ ‘scuses Headed back towards… Her sonnets all indifference, her lies all truth an truths all cloaked in lies Her opiate words drippin’ from her mouth all cravin’ someone else’s kiss An someone else’s tears to taste Yeah him an her, they plan to marry But yeah I knew that fore I let her see the scars Eyes all raw an lips all bleedin’ Sat there by the TV weepin’ Says “He’s comin home” “He’s comin home” she says a hundred times an I… I take a walk down past the waters taunt me every time she speaks An yeah I’m sorry, an she’s sorry, an he’s standing… By the dunes all sunk wi’ terror ‘Neath the sky all scarred wi screamin’ bloodied shame An yeah he knows somebody else has been inside her But they leave her And he has never left her… No Yeah him an her, they’re set to marry, by those waters paint these blacks with shades o’ blue © Aaron McMullan / Mondo Irlando 2005 Whatever you do, don’t forget to Fling An Email Of Some Sort. Thanks folks. |
