Paul McCartney
You Stayed / To Live
In 2016 we stole a couch from an abandoned post office and set it ablaze
At late I watch videos of that day and make play you stayed
Garda drove by three times but never stopped at the sight as we carried that couch over head height in the night
Left it in a field to burn tomorrow or the next day in art's name
Film the flames as they dance and sway
Repeat on film the makeup of our estates
And like it always would we returned two days after to charred wood on the couch that had already been burned
As I pen this fire tears through a car parked right outside my window
I push outside to the bright heat
Sparks litter the street
And to me
I just want to text you a photo and say this looks just like that Mount Kimbie video we always watched
Nothing is real and you're not here
Vacuous flames just tease
How can this bring us to our knees?
Why do I think to stand again with you in front of an inferno and gaze could bring ease?
Answer my call
Make these flames dance for me
In 2008 we had a band called Plagues
Me, you, and the two Robbie's would play for days during breaks
And then sit around me Ma's place on Myspace
Pasta for dinner, as we filled the plates
One of us got some idea
Thought it'd be great to set a t-shirt ablaze inside our wooden shed and instead learned our mistakes with great haste
And I blasted the kip with the spray of a fire extinguisher, til the sound of flames made way for the weight of “what the are we doing? Fuck sake.”
The place looking white as Christmas day but this time in mid-May
We left that kip in some state
And like some cruel twist of fate
The loved memory of stopping flames would make way for the welcome chase of the same
Later down the line on a new date
As we would lift that couch over the motorway and into our estate
It too to see the flames we never grew out of, just reshaped
Fresh with a new weight
Some things from our teenage days never changed
As we'd burn to do something great
As we laid that couch down in the backfields and then made ourselves away
Fire walk with me
I'd hear you say
I have a love
And it never fades
I have a love full of flames that rage
I have a love that never turns
And I have a love that burns
I have a love
And it never fades
I have a love full of flames that rage
I have a love that never turns
And I have a love that burns
I think you may all have heard of our poet
At the very start, hands on each other
Great at the very start, hands on each other
Great at the very start, hands on each other
Great at the very start, hands on each other