Kae Tempest
Patterns
Man I feel as if every day I've lived
I’ve lived to help me understand
The viewpoints of the people who I loved and lost
Who wandered off
The ones I acted badly to who acted bad to me
And all the ones who held my interests close I've learned that it all had to be exactly as it was
For those immersed in the dull fog of years long since grave bound we blaze skunk in the playground you laid down beside me held my hand and asked if you could stay round
This was way back before abortions, addictions or breakdowns
With wild eyes, we laughed colour into the concrete of this grey town
And now I make the page drown in all this drunken poetry
I know it's you you know it’s me and this was all supposed to be
I know it's you and you know it's me and this was all supposed to be but me the kids I see scoffing their feet at the bus stops
They are the same as us
Sure of their immortality they live to play the dangerous games they trust that they can never part they trust that they can never age
They trust this world was made for them and that no body knows the rage they would unleash at those who dare to trespass against the ones they love the most
They do not know that soon enough all love is dreams and ghosts
And that the only ones who can hurt us are the ones who care and love us well so now I watch them from afar cause I'm a grownup now with much to tell
Thinking look I don't want to remember or forget I don't want to harbour days it's just so hard to place the past in context when the past it rules my darkest days
But I'm illuminated by the sparks that fly when I realise we live the same stories until we have played every part until we know our reasons and have found peace with all of them splintered things I think of you to summer from which my endless winter springs and I tell you I know my reasons and I’ve found peace with all our splintered things but still I think of you, the endless summer from which my endless winter springs
So to the past then, come to the past let’s journey back by making sense of now by making sense of then and I'm sure we can be friends again
I’m just so far from who I was when last we spoke but man I'm still the same girl I'm still a wreckhead with a method to her madness who watched the flames curl around us as we burned a burn of fire hearted kids and I make peace with all we did and I forgive and I will give my time to all of you at some stage cause those were fun days before the young aged bunking school just to do nothing right time wrong place and yet some gave their minds to the madness and others got caught in a routine all I know is we were blessed to have ever made aquatinece we kicked our cans along the pavement we were the valiant amongst the vacant this is for those who gave my voice it's cadence and pushed me to seek my strength in statements
Patterns everything is balanced by these patterns I have seen them in a way that I relate to my companions look in everything that happens they are patterns I mean it everything’s in stages, cycles, phases and they all have these patterns at their bases I'm talking patterns fits of passion waking up wishing you hadn't took my 23 years just to fathom out that pattern the same situation endlessly repeating all the changes are the roles you play and once you start learning all the roles you played you will understand the roles you gave to others
They are patterns in the way we fall for lovers and who we recognise the others who have loved us badly well well either way I've seen the patterns in the past it was enough to blow my mind away
See there's this man I've known for years and still till this day do I know him and I love him very much but it's very hard for me to show him cause back then and even now I feel there's something that I owe him and that feeling should be going over time but no it's growing
We were kid mates, making mistakes playing give take big hearts battling the big snakes rattlign their tails look he was like the wind in my sails and I was like the water for his keel it was real
He used to hurt my flesh that his water scars of heat and steel
He used to hurt his flesh just to see if he could feel
To cut a long short he weren't ever really the strong sort
Got into the wrong sport big swigs long snorts
And quarting that spiral he saw attempts to help us spitful
Pretty soon he got so down that he got on the brown and word got around and people did not like the sound
So they told me to stop popping round to see him and I kept disagreeing but soon he was a different being
See he got into stealing, robbing I'd still see him frequent often
Eyes all sobbing freaking out he wouldn't speak about the things that made him weak cause doubt would stop his throat mid sentence
And yes his face would paint repentance but his actions spoke dependence
That's when our friendship became difficult to say the least he played the beast oh well I wondered how we'd ever make our peace that's when we drifted we never argued it just became clear that the parts that I loved so well had slowly disappeared I said 'you look the same but I don't recognise you I'm looking you dead in the fast and I can't find you I don't like the way you always talk in a past tense but you can't explain the present until you work out what the past meant
See I'm looking right at you but you ain't present no more and yes you laughed the same laugh but it's echo is flawed now when we talk I feel like I'm walking on the edge of a sword and I've tried to forget about the past I just remember it more
And yes I'm here for you whatever the score but it don't really feel like you're my friend anymore the more we talk about it though the wider the space them days are gone when we were 13 dividing our apes making promises would always relate I tell you straight I'm well versed in a chapters of lies I know this honesty it's not how much or what you're using that even bothers me it's the fact that you feel you have to lie about it that really worries me
Cause you might well be my oldest friend we were at our closest when the days we yearn like our hearts heads and handprints standing on the grand cliff of reckoning that we could never grow either old or apart but that was then and we might never be a team again
But I remember backies on your bike we were teens and then
I remember had another day we linked up and had nothing to say
Fuck it bruf I miss you I just wish it weren't an issue but you look the same mate and I don't recognise you I'm looking you dead in your face and I can't find you I don't like the way you're always talking in a past tense I got so much shit to say but when I see you I just can't vent I don't like the way we always talk in a past tense but you can't explain the present until you work out where the past went
The past went to the patterns I mean it everything is balanced by these patterns I have seen them in a way that I relate to my companions look in everything that happens they are patterns everything's in stages, cycles, phases and they all have these patterns at their bases I'm talking patterns fits of passion waking up wishing you hadn't took my 24 years just to fathom out that pattern the same situations endlessly occurring all the changes are the roles you play and once you start learning all the roles you played you will understand the roles you gave to others they are patterns in the way we fall for lovers and who we recognise the others who have loved us badly well well either way I've seen the patterns in the past it was enough to blow my mind away
And then I looked at you, with the same look that was looked at me before and then I saw that I had become the same one who back then turned my heart so raw and I was turning yours
You were innocent and unaware of my displeasure you moved towards me like you thought for being closer together physically you could bring my heart back round to being brimfull with your features you didn't know my heart was brimfull with someone else's so from beloved to loved one the other is always so vibrant the violence of holding it in the silence of skin against skin elicitly kissing and slipping through hithered encounters while you bake them pies you clutch me too tight and you wept in the morning and I'm so sorry but the patterns will be until they are no more an adorning of truth the floor spins my sickness is swelling there ain't no telling my cerebellum mate it does what it wants at the cost of my health but I meant what I said there could be no one else too little too late oh the patterns emerged and spelt destiny
This was the legacy left to me
Mismatched staggered affections you see you either love em too much or you don't love em enough and you were the same
Are they embers or flame?
Our calls going cold and the great are maintain that the point of it all is to check for it next time so know your own nature see your own weakness no more of this bleakness this indiscrit sweetness my heart still belongs to the one who completes it there are oceans between us as the patterns to Mars the patterns advance and they shattered our carment of frenzy so now I miss you but it's pointless cause your gone and if you miss me it's pointless cause you're gone you'll be wondering I keep you inside I don't mean to but do tonight for sleep my dreams will be of you I keep you inside I don't mean to but do tonight for sleep my dreams will be of you I keep you inside I don't mean to but do and tonight I won't sleep at all no tonight I will shuffle my feet mate and I'll stare at these walls while the ugliness creeeps from my core cause I'm stained and I can't keep my mouth from making the shape of your name I'm shaking and strange and I'm thinking of you and I'm sat at a pub now and I'm drinking for two and I blink in the new light of night and I'm sinking the truth and a few pints and I want to see you
Naked stretched out smoking before speaking the way that you do
But these are the patterns that when I must be patient these are the commons bounds between us and the ancients we went from cheated onto cheater from beaten onto beater but then we broke the cycle and didn't want to be neither I've been the flirter and the flirted at I hurt them all they hurt me back I've been the speaker of the curses and the viessel that the words attack and I say who isn't in love with you
It seems we're all under your spell
Young and older we as hungry as hell for you to hold us and love us as well as we know you can I really like holding your hand
So I find myself here as mad for you as once they was for me it's sad but true that there is always a lover and a beloved there is always another to noruish and courage and so with a flourish the cycle's completed retracing the loop until it's defeated and I will leave it up to the winds of time because I know you and I are of the same kind I will leave it up to the winds of time because I know you and I are both the same kind I will leave it up to the winds of time but I just can't drink you off my mind it's weird
Since the first moment I touched you, I touched you so purely that all of me touched you you're kinda someone I look down at and up to but I met you to love you so let me just love you
The patterns will teach me to trust you
The patterns will teach me to trust me
The patterns will kill of the hands that clutch me
These hands of dishonesty there's clouds in the prophecy
Obscure in the memories of days not lived yet
Quick let's skip town walk along the sea front on a grey day
100 miles an hour on the motorway
Broken window loads to say it all got blown away
So let's get wet in the rain
Let's begin the regret forget the pain
Cause now we're kissing the world into focus and when you look out of them shining eyes I can't I don't notice you're fragile just like me
We ain't as strong as we think we are that's not to say it's an act
What I'm saying is I write poems for you all day long that you will never read but what I lack in discreaton I make up in passion
Me I live at the mercy of patterns
See Oscar Wylde once wrote and when I read this I believed this
'The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it'
That's why I yield to the patterns cause I know that everything is balanced in these patterns I have seen them in a ways that I relate to my companions finding everything that happens they are patterns everything's in phases, cycles stages and they all have these patterns at their bases I mean it patterns fits of passion waking up wishing you hadn't took my 25 years just to fathom out that pattern and the same situation endlessly occurring all the changes are the roles you play and once you start learning all the roles you played you will understand all the roles you gave to others
They are patterns in the way we fall for lovers and who we recognise the others who have loved you badly well well either way I've seen the patterns in the past it was enough to blow my mind away
I saw the patterns in the stars and they sang to me of brighter days I hold your pattern in my arms and I swear I'm gonna make you mine someday