Mandrake – Music and Lyrics

Winter acts ruthlessly leaving everybody in its wake

No-one can control its path, winter goes where nowhere comes

Bearing future on its back, winter is the time for change

Every year I’m facing the change of the things that I used to know

Chorus

I am standing here with my feet firm on the ground

Can’t you see that everything is going to change

Trying to prepare myself for what is coming

Let the future come, just breathe in and bring it on

Springtime warms my heart with promises of what’s to come

It follows the path of change and brings hope for new days ahead

While reaching for that change, it’s prepared to go the other way

Every year I follow the path that sweet spring is laying out for me

Chorus

Summer is here again with its flowers and the greenest grass

It warms the corners of my heart, I can feel a new day has begun

Forget about your worried past, the light will fade your troubled mind

Take the time to heal up now, for the time of change will come again

Chorus 2x

Fall darkens the days ahead and scares the summer warmth away

It splashes my green hope red, brown, yellow and some gold

Those colours replace the warmth and prepare for the change to come

For winter will follow close, I can feel it breathing down my neck

Look at them go

They’re running uphill

Never standing still

Into the great unknown

They can never ever be alone

See how they march

No breaks till they die

Never question why

Living from day to day

They can never ever break away 

We follow and pray, don’t question why

We never say what’s on our minds

Working all day and sleep at night

For that is the way we live our lives

See how it goes

The ebb and the flow

Watch the current grow

Looks like they all fit in

Wouldn’t even know where to begin

Strange how it seems

I’m rowing upstream

Stuck inside a dream

Following my own course

I will never ever leave my source

We follow and pray, never question why

We’ll never say what’s on our minds

We’re working all day and we sleep at night

For that has been the way that we’ve always lived our lives

We follow and pray, don’t question why

We never say what’s on our minds

Working all day and sleep at night

For that is the way we’ re content with our lives

Sing me a song                 

To rid me of fear

Please, Sing it loud and clear

Close my aware mind’s eye

With a  wake-up call or lullaby

Have you felt how the wind blows strong

And carries your thoughts home

Home where the hearth warms

Your feet when you return

Return from lands unknown

You’ve travelled all alone

To find what you’ve been searching for

And couldn’t find at home

But couldn’t find at home

Chorus

Find your way back to the place you’ve left

Greet the ones that had to stay behind

Recognise the warmth of their hearts

When you’re far away from home

Have you felt how you have been longing for

The things you’ve left behind

Back where everyone awaits

Please stay you wide-eyed wanderer

For what you have been searching for

You’ll only find at home

Welcome back home

Chorus

Rubbed my face on a sandpaper moon

Callous as can be

Led away by a will-o’-the-wisp

from this bleak society

I’ll go

I’ll implode

Chorus

Do we drown our witches or burn them?

Do we starve our demons to death?

Shall we cross the bridge of sighs tonight?

or wait ’till our final breath?

Can we give ourselves to our freedom?

Can we own this freedom at last?

Can we leave our worries and fears behind?

Can we rid us of our past?

We can’t tell what the future holds

Will it trump our history?

An enigma, wrapped in a riddle

Surrounded by mystery

I’ll go

I’ll implode

Chorus

Don’t listen to the static

Don’t listen to the noise

Their verbal defecation

is reflected in your voice

My auditive receptacle is bursting at the seams

Eternal Chinese whisper of merging mondegreens

Don’t listen to the static

Don’t listen to the noise

Their oral defamation

is reflected in your voice

Diatribes, soliloquies, L’esprit de l’escalier

Your lingual cornucopia puts my thoughts in disarray

Don’t listen to the static

Don’t listen to the noise

Their vocal denigration

is reflected in your voice

Your lofty dissertations have no reason and no rhyme

your simulated eloquence is only wasting time

Don’t listen to the static

Don’t listen to the noise

Their feral altercation

is reflected in your voice

Don’t listen to the static

Don’t listen to the noise

Chorus

Oh, I see the walls tumbling down

All around your base the ruins can be found

No need to rebuild them straight away

Cause I like the center that is on display

Who can see behind his closed eyes?

I cannot, believe me how I’ve tried

Never breaking into his closed mind

Where his treasured chest I’ll surely find

Chorus

Now his chest has opened up to me

I see the treasures slowly breaking free

My world awaits him from the fragile start

He’ll give all that’s wrapped within his fragile heart

Chorus

I like how I’ve made you change your ways

To incorporate the aces and spades

Of my personal play that you’ve tried to evade

There’s no need to delay, since you’re in my arcade

Chorus

Signs for dynamite

Suddenly appear

Without quarrel or fight

All at once so near

Waves drowned in the tide

Will never reach the shore

Should I in vain abide?

Beg for her love once more?

Feelings not as bright

As words of good intent

But grey and black as night

By heavy  discontent

Fresh and new sown seed

Devoured by the old

Overgrown by weeds

Of tales already told

Chorus

This is how

I will go down

This is how

The memory will stick inside

And only now

Is this the crown

To which I bow

The memory of love that was so near

Unfolded maps lie rained upon

On autumn forest floor

Will they again, dried in the sun

Unfold for me once more

Rotten leaves in time will feed

The sprouting springy green

But first, alas, the fading creed

Will slowly loose its sheen

Leafless orchards old

Moulding sweet delight

Leave leaves prone to the mould

When sun is out of sight

Signs for dynamite

Suddenly appear

I am without might

You’ve drawn a new frontier

Chorus 2x

Please tread lightly

Wait here

With naked paws, retracted claws

And keep me away from the sun

Until all my worries are gone

Whisper slightly

Tell me

Will you be here to watch me if I

Wander off in the night

And keep me out of the light

Cause down in your cellar

That’s where I crawl

With cracks in the ceiling

And blood on the wall

You’ll need to shout

For me to come out

Or I’ll reign from my nosebleed throne for eternity

Lead me to the surface

Show me how it’s done

Open up my eyes

And let them stare into the sun

Blind from Daylight’s poison

Lonelier than before

I’ll creep back to my cellar

And I shall want no more

Twisting, turning, round and round it goes

Wouldn’t dare to miss a beat

Drums are pounding in our heads

We wear shackles round our feet

Time is catching up on us

We are on a one way street

And we know we can’t turn back

We’ll just have to take the…

Heat of battle

Go full throttle

One chance only

Time is money

Twisting, turning, round and round it goes

Following the beaten track

We are just a flock of sheep

With a price tag round our necks

Guided by a hidden force

some old mercenary’s creed

we have sold our innocence

to attain the highest…

State of numbness

all round dumbness

one life only

I’m so…

Void of intention

Trapped in a snake pit

Of guilt ridden shame

Am I too costly

 will I be able

to pay for my name

Am I an asset

Or am I a burden

A loss or a gain

Twisting, turning, yielding, yearning

                Tired, wired, broken, fired

Breathing, living, knowing, giving

                Withered, tattered, worn out, battered

Trying, flying, falling, dying,

                Staggered, laggard, jilted, haggard

Raging, burning, chiming, churning

                error, error, error, error, error

I am walking all alone

On this road that

Leads me

Away from home

I’ve lost the sense of

Being free

This cotillion

Feels like limbo

To me

But what if I stop

And leave this dance behind

Let go and jump off the edge

The world that was flat

Goes on forevermore

And I can’t seem to find

Its ledge

The vastness of choices

Cripples me

I can do all

But what I want I cannot see

Standing on this higher plane

What I’ve lost

I can never

Win again

But what if I stop

And leave this plane behind

Let go and jump off the edge

If I don’t do it now

The world might turn away

Losing…

Light of my heart
Can you reach out

And fill their mind

With your warmth?

Dip my paws into black ink. I can see the way that the letters form curses, uttered in silence luring them right into my trap. Shapes that rise from the ashes chanting songs from yesteryear’s newspapers, telling of all the epic battles that I had to endure. Cryptic dances of wronged messiahs. Infidels that still feed the fire. Local guardians of ancient temples sell the truth by the pound. Drunk men slide from their barstools into cosy thickets of warm embers, reaching out for new lifebreath that is caught before it became.

Lonely dowagers panting to the rhythm of their own pulsating heartbeat, all the while longing for one glimpse of what they once had. Denizens of this land beneath the orange trees are now blossoming, force-fed pancakes with golden ladles. Gleam but don’t make a sound.

I, enticed by your splendour, colour crooked rainbows on gingerbread houses that you have eaten just to satisfy all your needs. Blemished ivory eyeballs, specked with crimson watering irises, staring down a TV-screen where some dark cartoons are displayed.

[ Instrumental ]