this became the only place my words meant anything
the only gap in the day when I knew exactly what to say
the only slight likeness of truth
in a dark dark room
whisky on lips
I was almost honest about you


some times I kid myself into being real
riding the tube train
reading about changing faces and crashing planes
I kid myself into being another guy
in his mid twenties
waiting for the next chance to speak
but I never have anything real to say

Tanya fades in and out now
sometimes so lightly I can't imagine it was me
that made such heavy work of longing,
sometimes she isn't on my mind
so these days,
like all days,
the world goes on
and everything changes and stays the same

I was better when I was sixteen
I was better when I sang with a real heart
I was better when I feared god
I was better when I first fell in love
I was better when I sang Famous Blue Raincoat the sixth time
I was better wearing a suit
I was better in Peel Park, where I met with heaven, and the woman I loved stood beside me on the battered old bandstand as the golden summer sun moved out of view,
as my fingers traced the words in French I had scratched with slate,
as we sang a Charles Trenet song
and my heart was countless pieces of shattered pirouetting mirror blinding as it caught the thick and dreamy dusk light,
when my heart was so young that I could almost pull off such poetic drivel
before I became a man
before I walked to a dark and cold church in the freezing fog of York's Winter streets
in the year two-thousand,
the year I lost so much
and everyone called it gain