Words & music (c) David Harley
Backup:
Minutes ago as God measures time
Something manlike emerged from the primeval slime:
Ever since, Mother Nature has been on the run
From a hand with four fingers and opposable thumb.
That hand learned to grip, then it learned to shape
Flint into a weapon, then a tool to shape,
To build and to kill, and around then it learned
To strike sparks to bring fire and lighten man’s world.
The tune may change a little before I finish with it, and I need to practise a bit more on guilele, which I don’t often play. But I quite like the overall sound, where the light-ish arrangement lifts the rather sad words.
Backup:
Bedsit Blues (words & music (c) David Harley)
Breeze on my body, the sun in my face
It’s a do-nothing kind of day
Laying back in the grass and closing my eyes
Letting my head drift away
But my mind rambles back to that faraway summer
Less than a year ago
12 months can be a lifetime
More than the long years before
Was it so recent, that first light kiss
That wakened my sleeping soul?
It seems so long since you laid in my bed
So many bad trips ago
But love is a whisper, an echo, a candle
Wavering in the wind
And a year can bring changes too deep to ignore
And wipe out the person you’ve been
Now it’s ten in the evening, the jukebox is playing
“It’s all over now”
I doodle on beermats, chat with a stranger
Close my ears to the sound
“I used to love her”: Lord knows I loved you
God help me, I love you still
But I talk at new faces and try to relate
I wonder if I ever will?
I suppose if I wait for an aeon or two
It’ll start to make some kind of sense
But I’ve tried for a while, and I can’t seem somehow
To think past the present tense
The fact is, it’s easy to live without hope
But once let it into your head
And time is an arrow; love is a knife;
Loneliness a single bed
Words & Music (c) David Harley
I haven’t tried this with guitar yet, as I wanted to get the tune down before I forgot it…
Backup:
Jericho
(Originally a meld of Johnny from the faintly scandalous ‘Gently, Johnny my jingalo’ and Bunny Jingedangelow from the Brian Aldiss novel ‘Greybeard’, but the character seemed to take on a life of his own.)
Breach the barrel, drain the cask
Scrambled wits behind the mask
And drink awhile with Jimmy Jericho
Sell your soul and pay the fee
The price of immortality
You pay to Jimmy Jericho
The master sings, the jester dances
Round and round the room he prances
Dancing to the tune of Jericho
And as he spins such fine romances
Disciples quarrel for the chance
To gather at the feet of Jericho
Round and round the room they go
The tears, the tears they trickle slow
Down the cheeks of Jimmy Jericho
The devil scans with eyes like coals
The broken dreams and stolen souls
Betrayed by Jimmy Jericho
David Harley
David Harley Words & Music 
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