One of my songs, just for the hell of it. The idea is a collsion between a Bowie song "Strangers When We Meet" and a story I read which was about selectively editing memories. If you could erase something really painful from your memory, would you? I wrote this just after the love of my life stomped all over my emotions; blanking her out of my mind seemed like a good idea at the time. Yes, I stole a line from Bowie, yes it was deliberate. My way of acknowledging the influence and inspiration. Mindkiller Now its all over and I have to come to terms and consider the options, its such a can of worms. If I choose to remember all the joy we have shared I have to face all the pain and I dont know if I dare. Like a living bereavement through every dying day there are painful reminders of all that has gone away. Through the cold concrete nightmares, forbidding and empty now - I cant believe its so different - an alien world somehow. Should I take all I have shared with you and erase it from my mind? Spare myself this torture, and leave my emotions blind? Well become part of the faceless crowds we push past in the street with no spark of recognition and be strangers when we meet. This unbearable sorrow draining my life away bereft of all hope, with nothing else left to say. Blessed forgetfulness will lay down in my bed rewinding the tapes of my life, leaving all the words unsaid. And when I wake tomorrow you wont exist for me I wont know what I have lost, wont feel this misery. I have heard that its better to have loved and lost but fools who say these things never counted out the cost. I will take all I have shared with you and erase it from my mind. To spare myself the torture I will leave it all behind, and in the faceless thousands we push past in the street Ill forget that I once loved you... well be strangers when we meet.

Here's another one. Same person, same subject. I guess it was exorcism or something, because I don't usually write this type of thing. Josephine From the ends of your compassion to the depths of my despair - all the spaces in between and the silences we share - we have seen our new horizon in the false dawn of our day as we watch our golden wings become our feet of clay. In this fortune of reversal I will make my peace with pain and hold my empty heart forever in this doorway in the rain. As your eyes once turned toward me and your words were once unspoken (with such sweet anticipation) all your promises unbroken. Every beat of every moment rains like tears from mournful skies - the beginning of forever - in the land where no-one cries. In this fortune of reversal I will make my peace with pain and hold my empty heart forever in this doorway in the rain. In this fortune of reversal count the cost of all your gains and hold your empty heart forever in your doorway in the rain.

I can hear the rhythm in the lines, which is good. (they gotta scan well to work on the song..;) Don't worry, I've gone back through my lyrics before..they sure can make you wonder about your earlier self..;)

I like it! Your choices of words and expressions definitely fit the selective mind-wipe you explained. I almost wish you had presented the poem first and the explanation after. The rhythm feels a little irregular to me in the first stanzas of the "Mindkiller," whereas it is much more insistent in "Josephine."

Thanks for your replies. The meter isn't necessarily as important in lyrics as in poetry, as the melody can be used to mangle the rhythm of the words as they fall. Which is why I view lyrics and poetry as separate entities. mysteri - there is a very strong rhythmic pattern in "Mindkiller", not immediately apparent without the music. I tend to sing and accent certain words to fit. Maybe if we ever have a MP3 upload on the forum I'll post up a performance version. In truth, they are not the lyrics I'm the most proud of; that honour belongs to a song called "Flesh", which I wrote in 1983. I'll post it up next with no explanation. I'll let you take your best guesses as to the subject matter, as per your request for "Mindkiller".

Flesh She puts me in a box at night, she thinks Im safer out of the way trapped behind a bolted door in silence at the end of the day. Where secrets and forgotten vices eat slowly through a rotten shell twisted reversal in midnight black a frozen wasteland, a silent hell - Flesh. An open wound of endless hate where motives serve a visceral need - conscience falls to its knees in chains crippled by devouring greed. And now when all the empty hearts lay broken, lost and bleeding - their lifes blood swallowed in desert sand - no emotion left for pleading... Flesh. They sweep through piles of broken bones and grow like cancer in my mind bursting out from memory where ignorance will leave us blind. While poison eats away at life and honesty is left for dead we live our worthless, empty lives - morbid, filthy, rotten flesh... Flesh.

These are some very interesting songs!.. I only wish I could HEAR them, I wonder what the melody sounds like... I can really relate to your first 2 songs, you have portrayed that feeling so well.. when your heart is broken, but instead of realizing what just happened, you keep asking yourself "how do I continue my life now"? That's what I got from it, anyway. :) And as for "Flesh", you had me right with "She puts me in a box at night, she thinks Im safer out of the way". Just the most amazing line I read in ages. In short - I think all three were great. Sorry for my broken English... It's been a weird, long day. :)

"Flesh" is very strong as well. I'll have to admit that while the lyrics evoke some strong, queer imagery, I'm not sure I can figure out the exact subject matter or its circumstance. So relieve my curiosity... And I suppose the music would help for "Mindkiller." I won't agree to split lyrics from poetry entirely, but I recognize what you are talking about in shifting the accent to strengthen the rhythm.

I can't figure out what music would go with Flesh. I may not want to. I think it's great as a poem, perhaps with a suitably dark picture to accompany it. Where secrets and forgotten vices eat slowly through a rotten shell twisted reversal in midnight black a frozen wasteland, a silent hell - Beautiful, haunting stanza. It reminds me of a macabre version of Blake's "The Rose." Mindkillers is a great premise, but - at least on the page - seems a bit over done. It might work better sung. I've a tin ear for that sort of thing. I prefer Josephine. It's subtler with some interesting turns of phrase. Cheers!

A_ PM me your address and I'll send you a CD with some of my songs (badly) recorded. myseteri and Crescent - Flesh is (mainly) about sexual abuse. Some of the inspiration came from a short story I once read, which described one of the characters as a "Sexual Rumplestiltskin". I wasn't entirely sure what the author meant, but it made a few lights go on in my head. I dragged up a lot of my own personal demons for that song, too. As for "Mindkiller", yes, it is quite a lot overdone, some of it deliberately so, some of it down to my lack of self control. I was thinking of a 1984/Brazil doomed lovers scenario, crossed with the Bowie song I mentioned. I kinda went for the big, overblown weepie with that one, but in truth, that's really how I felt at the time.