LYRICS

I read myself to sleep
Phone apocalypse
Late night blue light
News feed for scripture
It’s hard to rest
when everything you read
tells you the ship is listing
We’re springing leaks
but the captain
and the crew aren’t listening
Smiling while fighting
Teeth the colour of ambition
Now even in my dreams
I’m rescuing children
from floods and liars
Turn the ship around, please
Turn the ship around
Does anyone else even know how to steer it?

Gold yachts
Poison plots
Treasure chest beaters
Clean suits and arms dealer dinners
Oil, aftershave
and families torn
like cheap meat
Rebels and rubble
Power in a bubble
Cliches littered like dog turds
Strobe light news cycle

Squandered blood
Auctioned hopes
Sinking boats
Hymns
Songs for the dead
Prayers
Headlines
Hymns
Fires
Footballers
Celebrities in the jungle
Gossip on the blindside
If you blink and cover your ears
you’ll miss the bodies like flotsam
Drowning and burning
Falling and running
The sea’s rising to meet us
The clock’s running down
Buck passing
Lack, like a lock and key
The clock’s running down
Privilege, like a lock and key
The clock’s running down
And hymns
And newsfeed
And newsfeed
The clock’s running down
And newsfeed
And newsfeed
(repeat)

I need to sleep

And in the dream
a creature comes to me
She has the body of a griffin
Heart of the blackest ocean
Voice of Nina Simone
She crushes my phone with her piano key talons
I say, “But the ship! The ship is sinking
and that was my window!”
She says, “Windows
are only as good as the view they frame.”

She says, “Imagine another ship,
a different ship.
Tall mast,
oars and sails,
a figurehead.
A boat built only from breath
and the smoke from yesterday’s fires.”
She says, “Paint it in whatever colours
you imagine love to be.”

She says, “Breathe in,
stand on the deck.
Listen to the whump of the wind
in the canvas,
the groan of masts,
the clatter of rigging. Sit
on one of the long benches.
Notice the others sitting with you.”

I look around and everywhere
people are rowing, singing as they do
Bus drivers
Nurses
Poets
Tight-rope walkers
She says, “Now, row.
Press the oars into your palms.
Feel the weight of the waves,
foam on skin of blue belly below
and row.
Breathe.
Row.
Breathe.

Row.
Breathe.
Row.
Breathe.