Would You Rather

25 Thursday Oct 2018

Tags

beasts, horror, lyrics, monsters, nightmare, not a poet, poem, rock, songwriting

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Wrote something loosely inspired by NOCTURNE for Halloween, because I love writing horror songs. It’s another rock piece that I wouldn’t know how to do myself, but it’s got a nice beat in my head.

WOULD YOU RATHER

The dark of the night doesn’t scare me
Unseen eyes stare at me
Teeth bare at me
But they don’t scare me.

Beasts of the night are what they are
Each tear and each scar
Each extinguished star
Just what beasts are.

It’s the liars and thieves that live in the light
That scare me at night
Keep the door locked tight
These monsters of light.

The monsters at night don’t try to pretend
Hunger for the end
But hold your hand like a friend
‘Cause they don’t have to pretend.

Chorus:
I live with my nightmares
I don’t close my eyes
They feed on my fears
Can’t run and can’t hide
Consuming my body
The demons inside
I’d rather live with my nightmares
Than wake up to dreams that have died.

They hide in the closet and under the bed
That’s what they said
The quick and the dead
Hide under the bed.

In shadows they creep and crawl ‘cross the floor
Desperate for more
Than daylight is for
They beg me for more.

I pull back my covers, won’t cover my head
Let them find me instead
Crawl into my bed
Might as well be dead.

But with nightmares even dead can be fun
The night’s never done
Far away from the sun
I’m always the one.

Chorus

Bridge:
Tremble and shiver
My pulse starts to quiver
Cold skin grows warm under my hand
Tooth, nail, and claw
A cavernous maw
I’d follow them down to a dark, colder land.
But they like me alive
These beasts and their knives
They sink inside
I open my eyes
And the nightmare is always alive inside
It’s the soul that has died
As their spirits reside
In the shell I denied
For their pleasure and mine.

Chorus

Floodwaters

17 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Music, Poetry

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anger, climate change, lyrics, not a poet, poem, power ballad, rising waters, songwriting, storm

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Put this one down as ‘when you piss off a poet.’ Well, not much of a poet, but I like to rhyme now and then. Whenever I hear something from this one, I hear a power ballad, but don’t let that fool you.

FLOODWATERS

The end is near
The end is nigh
Whispers in your ear
Poison in the wine

All warnings failed
All signs ignored
We lost the Grail
No cracks restored

Some people are waiting for the whole world to burn
I’m just waiting for the floodwaters to return

Chorus:
The rain will fall
The winds will howl
Rushing water running with rivers of blood
We can’t go back
We can’t stop what’s to come
Everything we built consumed by a raging flood.

Repent, repent
Judgment descends
Condemning us all
To an inevitable end

No peaceful God
Promises aside
Nowhere to run
Nowhere to hide

Some people are waiting for the whole world to burn
I’m just waiting for the floodwaters to return

Chorus

Bridge:
He is not here
He won’t dry your tears
Tears that run down
From short-sighted years
The angels have flown
The devil’s in us
Did we really think
The world needed us?
We can’t wait too much longer
To do what we must.
We won’t do what we must.
We just wait for the waters
To drown us to dust.

No one to stop it
No one to save
We were given a garden
And made it a grave.

Some people are waiting for the whole world to burn
I’m just waiting for the floodwaters to return

Chorus

Trypophobia

03 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Music, Poetry

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Tags

disease, fear, halloween, holes, horror, lyrics, not a poet, parasitosis, poem, songwriting, trypophobia

Photo by Suvan Chowdhury on Pexels.com

I’ve been saving this one for October, because it’s all about trypohobia, the fear of little holes where they shouldn’t be (see Lotus Pods, because there isn’t a photo in the free media library). There’s a theory that it arises from an atavistic fear of the visible symptoms of disease and parasites (see Delusional Parasitosis). Writing a song to invoke the discomfort of the phenomenon was a blast. I should write horror songs more often.

TRYPOPHOBIA

Thin threads hollow in the darkness
Cities and paths kept under the surface
Chewing their way through wooden bones
Insidious underneath skinful homes

Tiny pinpricks all in rows
Pulling from hundreds of little shadows
Slick long bodies and gnawing maws
The ones inside you never saw

Chorus:
Wriggle, squirm, scream, writhe
A pox upon the lotus eye
Itch and scratch, tearing cry
You never know what lies inside

Flowers and pods on riddled skin
Crawling and feeding deep within
Black eyes and mouths, open in wait
Death in moments, disease in their wake.

The hive mind, hive of the flesh
A soul decayed, mind in distress
Is prickling there or is it not?
Don’t you wish they’d stayed in the dark?

Chorus

Patterns of sick, patterns of harm
From deep within pores, from doors unarmed
Digging holes in your perception
Dare see death in your reflection.

Chorus

What Happened

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Music, Poetry

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break-up, lyrics, not a poet, poem, sad, songwriting

close up photography of hand near window

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This was an interesting little piece. I like the ones that feel more freestyle with the rhyming structure.

It’s a more conventional sad song than I’m used to doing, but there’s something about it that’s more poignant than I expected I’d be able to put together. So warning, break-up song ahead.

I can see it going any number of ways, from a quiet country song to a soft singer-songwriter type thing to a rock ballad. I guess it depends on emphasis.

WHAT HAPPENED

It came from nowhere
This news that you found someone
And that you’re going somewhere
Somewhere that isn’t here.

I couldn’t see the signs
The excuses and the empty lies
Sweet nothing lines and wandering eyes
Were all invisible whenever you came near.

Did I cling too close to you before
Or let you wander too freely?
Or was I just a port where you could harbor
Until you found your sweeter shore?

Chorus:
Did you love me just to watch me fall?
When you left, did you mean to take my heart with you?
Did you laugh knowing how I would break down and cry?
Did you ever even love me at all?

It’s like you can’t feel
I run through our years of movie film reels
The dust in your attic won’t dry my tears
Everything I didn’t give, you had to steal.

I check myself every day
Lists of my faults, of mistakes that I made
Ways I pushed you too far to stay
And all the heartless things you had to say.

You put me in the dark alone
Forgot me like your shirts and your heart
You decided you needed a brand new start
Without finishing the story you left back at home.

Chorus

Bridge:
I’m only paper
To fold and to tear
Your love is water
I need more than air
You leave me for dead
It’s only fair
True love is misery
You’re too happy to share.

And I don’t know what happened
I don’t understand
How you could just walk away
Without looking behind you
Taking something to remind you
That we were what happened
We were what happened
And you threw it all away.

Chorus

Without You

12 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Music

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Tags

love song, lyrics, not a poet, poem, romance, songwriting

man in black long sleeved shirt and woman in black dress

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This is not one of my favorites. Sweet romance doesn’t seem to be my style, because my hopelessly pragmatic side tends to push through the mushiness. Maybe some people find pragmatic romance sweet, too. You just don’t hear it a lot.

However, I’m going to share it just for fun. It’s a simple little acoustic thing, meant to just be a quiet song to some guitar or piano chords.

WITHOUT YOU

I can breathe without you
Fears all flee without you
Still sleep deep without you
Dreams will keep without you.

I’m still me without you
Heart still beats without you
Life’s not hell without you
I’ve done damn well without you.

Chorus:
You could run the other way
Say you can’t stand another day
I wouldn’t stop my life for you
My future would look fine
If you weren’t by my side
But I’d rather not be without you.

Bridge:
I can imagine my life without you in it
Don’t need you for me to go on
But I chose you to have me a long time ago
To have and to hold, my whole life long

Chorus

I don’t need you, my love
I just want to be with you, my love.

Tattoo

29 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Music, Poetry

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lyrics, not a poet, poem, songwriting, tattoo

grayscale photo of person applying tattoo

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Inspired in part by the death of Zombie Boy. It got me thinking in the direction of The Illustrated Man and some of my tattooed characters and what tattoos mean to them.

There’s no real style to the song. I don’t hear music to it yet.

TATTOO

Oh, what a tangled web he weaves
When first he practices to deceive
An open book, come enter in
Wears a skeleton on his skin
And his heart out on his sleeve
Inside out, outside in

Ink spills in the air he breathes
What he says, what he believes
Creates the world he’s living in
Wears his people on his skin
Gives away what he receives
Inside out, outside in

What you see, what you perceive
Everyone you love always leaves
When one ends, another begins
Skulls and roses on his skin
Why keep a heart when it can grieve?
Inside out, outside in

Doesn’t care what lies beneath
Colors’ pain is always brief
Hounds of hell, where have you been?
Illustrations on his skin
Showing claws, showing teeth
Inside out, outside in

Oh, what a tangled web he weaves
When first he practices to deceive
An open book, come enter in
Wears a skeleton on his skin
And his heart out on his sleeve
Inside out, outside in

Red

22 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by amandamblake in Music, Poetry

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fairy tale, female revenge fantasy, lyrics, not a poet, poem, red riding hood, rock, songwriting, wolf

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Here’s that fairy tale rock song that I wrote a couple weeks ago, even though I don’t think I’ll ever be able to use it. My voice has no natural roughness. Also, I can’t do sexy to save my life.

I recently introduced myself to Halestorm and Lzzy Hale’s amazing voice, and I guess I was inspired. So just imagine her singing it instead. If I were ever to use this song, I’d have to strip it down a lot.

RED

If you think I’m a pretty young thing
You don’t know what I’ve seen
You know what I mean
Look at my red leather, supple and lean,
Time for me to come clean
You know what I mean

Chorus:
I’m not a good girl
I’m a girl who’s gone bad
The baddest you’ve had
A little bit mad
And though I’m here walking
Alone in the woods
You’d escape if you could
From the pretty sharp teeth of
Red Riding Hood

I used to be innocent, proper and sweet
Not a girl on the street
You don’t want to meet
But a good girl knows just when she’s been beat
I need something to eat
And you’re my kind of meat.

Chorus

Look at me
Dressed in the skin
Of the wolf that I’m in
Can’t you see
You don’t know where I’ve been
But if you let me in…

[Spoken] What big eyes you have…

Don’t go away
Come in and play
If you come this way
I’ll put this knife away
And let you blow me away…

[Spoken] Why, sir, what stunning skin you have.
It would be a shame to waste it on a wolf like you.
Can you see now what little girls can do?

Chorus