Get all 7 Mathew Kerry releases available on Bandcamp and save 50%.
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of If You're Not Going Home With Me, That's Okay, Quarterlife, Nugh Yorque, okie dokie?, Paper Round, Peanut Butter, and Temporary Tattoo EP.
1. |
Temporary Tattoo
02:37
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You are an interchangeable belt buckle,
Not necessary but I think that you’re cool.
You’re loose hairs laughing at the bottom of the bath,
A bit of a nuisance but inevitable.
You’re a temporary tattoo,
You’re gone before your novelty wears off.
I wish you’d stick around
So we could wind each other up and get down.
You are an appetite for something you don’t like,
You're eating when I’m bored.
You’re the sudden change of texture when I’m chewing,
Comfort food for thought.
You are empty calories
But God forbid my dietician keeps you
The hell away from me
Give me gout so we will never have to leave the house
I am a bag of meat that appreciates your company
You are a magazine that tolerates mine
I am an inability to say exactly what I mean
You are the perfect way to finish this rhyme.
You are the birthmark that looks like a coffee stain
You are wine in plastic bottles
You are spiced rum and Strangers on a Train
You are a frozen tuna steak.
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2. |
Dimmer-Switch
03:56
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This wound is not a power-cut,
There are lights that stay on at every floor.
This is a dimmer-switch, heavy on one side,
an unfractured filament that just cannot glow anymore.
I have everything to fear tonight
If darkness is the absence of light.
I will feel bitter and I will feel cruel
As long as guilt is the absence of you.
Maybe I have no love to give,
Maybe I’ve been giving it wrong,
Maybe we look a lot like lovers
but we just get along.
We say we fall in and out of love
As if we trip and graze knees on one another,
But in truth it's just a bruise that you get used to
That only hurts once you loosen your grip.
Maybe my hands are too weak,
Maybe my skin is too strong,
Maybe we look a lot like lovers
but we just get along.
I held her by the hand
And let go of her heart, to find
the shadow of my grip,
The grooves cut by my fingertips,
And all this time I thought I was kind.
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3. |
The Hand on Your Knee
04:02
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It wasn't just the hand on your knee
That told me you were fucking.
It was the eyes and ripped beer bottle labels
you once threw at me.
It was the way you stood closer than you needed to
When getting drinks in at the bar,
It was the fact I could tell you were happy,
I remember when I made you happy.
And believe me I know I've no right
To say that I miss you, but fuck it, I miss you.
But please know that I don't want to kiss you goodnight,
I have to believe my decision was right.
I got stuck wondering why
every time that I see you, knuckles climb
up from my stomach and tug at
the lump that is stuck in my throat
I figure it's that you make me face the fact
I'll forever be riddled with gaps, and there is
not enough sand in the sea to satisfy me.
And believe me I know I've no right
To say I miss wine in a glencairn glass.
But please know its not that I want you back
It's just I could have fixed us but I can't fix our past.
And all I can hear is you
singing songs in your underwear
A siren's attack now soaking some other sailor
Whilst I sail on past, tied to the mast,
sinking sideways out of your reach
How I wish my men had let
your death wash over me.
It didn't take the decapitated packet,
the empty wrapper, sat happy in the trash
to confirm what I knew,
All I needed to see was the way he looks at you.
And I guess I sacrificed
any right to criticise the next guy
that you let inside your mind,
So I suppose I'll forgive his apparent lack of courtesy.
Despite what I think, I know he makes you happy,
And I guess the best thing about him is that he isn't me.
But please know that I’ve got your back and I trust your plan of attack
and the bits that we saved will keep you safe either way.
And believe me I know I've no right
To say that I miss you,
So I don't think I'm going to,
I know that we've both got better things to do
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4. |
Whetstone
04:30
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I'm not naive; despite my regrets
I know that we wanted different things.
I know I was the one who made the call,
I couldn't be the man that you needed anymore.
But even though I know
It was probably for for the best,
that won't make me miss you any less.
I can mutilate any one of
the reasons I had for walking away.
I can attack who I was with a cleaver
scraped across a rose-tinted whetstone
Whilst yesterday's weapon of choice
lies blunted by the door;
Only ever as sharp as I am sure.
And I read somewhere that
the space in between galaxies
Is expanding faster
due to some dark energy;
I couldn’t help but think of us.
I wonder why I do this to myself,
I struggle to leave the past in the past,
Trawling through fallen leaves of conversation
Trying to find when I said I loved you last.
I found a splinter of the person I was when I was with you
stuck in the thumb of the man I am trying to become
When I let myself think
whether I would change a thing
That splinter sinks into my skin
And if I ever happen to wake up in our past,
If I stumble into an evening
Where we slept back to back,
I'd roll around and bite your ear
with the bristles of my beard
And stay until my arm went dead
from lying on my side
Maybe then I could live with how we died
Knowing that for at least one night I had tried
I only wish we had tried
I'm not naive; i have my regrets
But I know that we wanted different things.
You deserve to be loved,
And I wish you the best,
But that won't make me miss you any less.
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Mathew Kerry Manchester, UK
Heart on sleeve and tongue in cheek, candid and silly, Mathew Kerry is a bespectacled singer-songwriter from Leeds currently based in Manchester. He is always writing and performing, and often forgets to eat.
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