Thistle Tapes (2026)

SHERE KHAN

I am the Khan. I am the force of me. I am the power. I am identity. I am the ruler. I am the hidden god. I am salvation. I am the raging blood, the raging blood.

I am the Khan. I am the god of war. I am the mover. I am the holy lord. I am the giver. I am the will of one. I am redemption. I am the burning sun, the burning sun.

I am the Khan. I am the open eye. I am the reason. I am the reason why. I am the jungle. I am the night and day. I am the shadow. I am the beast of prey, the beast of prey.

I am the Khan! I am the goddam Khan! I am the Khan! I am the goddam Khan!

ARCADIA

I cannot trust you, I never will, and I’ve been falling since the day we met. Not even ghosts keep me company, not even demons find their way to Hell.

Arcadia shining of flowers red, and see the falling of the autumn leaves, and on this hill where I rest my legs, I sleep in high grass of memories.

All I’ve lost and not forgotten, on the stone hill of Asphodel.

I cannot trust you, I never will, and I’ve been falling since the day we met. And this graveyard of lonely rocks, and the carvings of life and death.

Arcadia shining of flowers red, and there was me with eyes of ivory, and oh the blood ran down from the hill under the shadow of the autumn tree.

All I’ve lost and not forgotten, on the stone hill of Asphodel.

I cannot trust you, I never will, and I’ve been falling since the day we met. I dig the earth with my wounded hand where bones of mortal men have gone to rest.

Arcadia shining of flowers red, Arcadia shining in the autumn tree, and all the graves are just full of earth, and not a wind in the falling leaves.

All I’ve lost and not forgotten, on the stone hill of Asphodel, on the stone hill of Asphodel.

WILD HORSE

For all the anxiety of this woman — her blond hair running like a wild horse down the hillside of Mount Ararat — there was no twilight I could hold back.

JARS OF CLAY

Eden had grown like love in the dirt, a temple of trees and of grassland. And in that deep wood they both understood — the sky was the lid of a glass can.

But shade of the past that crawled from the roots, it spoke with the tongue of the shadow. And husband and wife, oh beautiful wife grew new life in the meadow.

Able was born to hunt for his food, search in the wood and the marshland. His brother was born, oh brother his blood, stronger than death in this harsh land.

But envious fly on carcass so black: you will never hunt like your brother! So Cane cut him down a stab in the back, took him away from his mother.

ROYAL GARDEN

I am alone again, and an acid rain is falling outside, from the reservoir, where they keep the tears from the souls they turned.

They only feel the void, the smell of envy. Oh this city hurts my eyes, for the neon fires keep on burning.

I am alone again, and I heard the speeches, listened to the rumors, and I saw the desert sand blowing from the highway.

City made of wonder, oh the honey pot for creatures walking on their hind legs and without no shadows breathing.

I am alone again – like a spacecraft that is passing by myself into the never-ending hole in this city skyline.

This is how the world ends, like a hundred shattered stars, powdered across the suburbs, the horizon like a shockwave coming.

I am alone again – in a black hole, where the ash of people glow like a paradise torn down by this fire.

I see expanding thickness bend like plastic wrapping in the hot air, buildings that were heading for the skies are burning.

I am alone again, and remember, oh they were my children. Distant are the echoes of voices in my royal garden — distant are the echoes of voices in my royal garden.

THE WEREWOLF

Why do you run my brother? Why do you run from me? Now all is lost my brother, all is lost to me.

Shimmering fields, and the sky is red. I’m returning to Eden from the walking dead, and no I am no Messiah! This feeling haunts me day and night: the water is black and the earth is white, and God you are the celestial liar.

Time has passed since I saw her cry, a lonely child screaming “oh God why? No, why do you walk away?” Eternity feels so far away, the bliss of joy, and the light of day — some say there is no more to say now.

The emerald heights are a demon’s dream, the birth and death, and the void between. Oh no, some days I want to find you — beware of sheepdogs, big lone wolf — covered in spikes and their long white wool. Just don’t hunt when the sun is shining.

Why do you run my brother? Why do you run from me? Now all is lost my brother, all is lost to me.

SUNKEN SHIP

I’m alone, all the world is gone, and I don’t know where to turn ‘cause the day is done. There is no light anywhere for me.

The smoke is gone and the curtains are drawn, and I’m leaving the world ripped and torn. Scars inside my skin is what I own.

If there is a God out there, why are you so quiet? Without a single word you watch me fade away.

A tender wound cuts through my soul — black and swollen, a big dark hole. Loneliness is such a quiet friend.

A sunken ship rots in my heart. I want a new life but where to start? Death is so much more than just a ghost.

If there is a God out there, why are you so quiet? Without a single word you watch me fade away.

I lie awake all through the night, until the grey bleak morning light shines upon my slowly fading eyes.

The ocean cold wash through my blood, lets me drown and feel the flood. Take me to depth where I belong!

If there is a God out there, why are you so quiet? Without a single word you watch me fade away.

When a stranger knocks the door, no one’s there to talk no more — eyes wide open on the kitchen floor.

My naked arms have dropped the knife — a carcass left without no life, a silent voice for no one else to hear.

If there is a God out there, why are you so quiet? Without a single word you watch me fade away.

Without a single word you watch me fade away.

BROKEN LIFELINE

Naked eyes, you stare at me, without you being there. I’m a void in your black life that spreads out everywhere. Anywhere I look I see my world is breaking down, lost among the pieces of a love I thought I found.

Heavy rain, it pours down on me from an absent god. Faces stare right through our window from the graveyard mud — and if you say the dead are rising would it still be true? A broken lifeline hanging lose like someone that I knew.

But would you rather, would you rather, would you rather stand by me? Could you do it, could you do it, could you do it and stand by me?

Wounds they heal as time pass by they say with empty smiles, as they’ve done all through my life, just fed me with their lies. I know I’m right: what you have done has turned me into stone. These walls cave in around me, but I used to call this home.

Every flower that you buy me, every rotten seed is a sign that you still cannot heal me when I bleed. And if you speak the truth when I ask what’s on your mind, then what have I been going through, and who of us is blind?

But would you rather, would you rather, would you rather stand by me? Could you do it, could you do it, could you do it and stand by me?

EXISTENTIAL SOUL

Her soul had travelled sorrows past the ages — long lost landscapes in her broken mind. Her walk was that of shadows in the darkness, no mortal sky to make her eyes less blind. Did he for one brief moment love her back?

FIMBUL SKY

The sun breaks through the clouds, the fimbul sky, golden ring on blue on fields of rye. The sharp beak of a raven takes your eye — black wings high, shiver, quiver — fly!

HARMATTAN

They have all got the eyes of the desert: dry like the Harmattan wind, skin like the sand of Petra, the bedouin cliff. Leaving the shores of Ireland, young men with slave trade eyes — dry like the Harmattan wind, dry like the Harmattan wind.

They come like the stars at twilight from the Liverpool docks, on the sand from Gaza, the unquiet grave. Follow the trail of strangers, enchanted by stories and tales — dry like the Harmattan wind, dry like the Harmattan wind.

They walk on the bones of their brothers, old like the promise and dream — each like a grasshopper swarming for leaves of grass. But dry and dead is the hot wind, the grass has turned into sand — dry like the Harmattan wind, dry like the Harmattan wind.

TWIN FLAMES

An angel wrote me a letter in blood from a silver white bird, as the guns were thundering over the men who lied down in the dirt:

”I will come back in the water and wind, and the moon and the earth. I will watch over you. I will watch over you.”

PUSH OF PIKE

Oh brother, you see the sun shining yet? And the fall that came to our keep? Over acres, far as we get, for we – yes we – will push the pike deep.

Oh sister, your sun is pierced into red, like the fall that came to our keep. A silent rain falls down on the dead. Did we – did we – push the pike deep?

And over fields that glow so red in the bloodline morning graze the white waves of hundred sheep, the frozen grass under my feet.

NORRBOTTEN

Thirst, fill your mouth full of water, clear from a well in the north. Deep is the sea of the morning – leave your tribe and come forth. Come hunt me with love as your payment, with arrows as white as my skin, and tell every fish in the ocean: this land was carved by your kin, this land was carved by your kin.

So cover your body in water, and dive into sleep in the storm. Your eye wears the ring of the midnight – ice and wave is your form. Come hunt me with love as your payment, and paint the black sky with my blood, and tell every fish in the ocean: a mortal can turn into god, a mortal can turn into god.

The north wind ripples the water, beneath is the depth of your eye. Your claws are the hammer and chisel carving my tale in the sky. Come hunt me with love as your payment, lit by the light of my skin, and tell every fish in the ocean: my bloodline is where you begin, my bloodline is where you begin.

LITTLE PARIS

There is a girl still waiting for her mother on the moon, staring into the black hole and thinks she’s coming soon. The stars they look so marvelous, so white and cold and clean, and far away the earth is just the echo of a dream.

Her deep blue eyes they stare into the great and black abyss, thinking mother will come soon, it will not end like this — “it was not meant to be this way, the purpose of my birth was not to die two hundred thousand miles away from earth.”

The open void won’t give her shelter from the burning sun, stranded on the rock alone, the night’s forever young — each meteorite is passing by like lonely highway cars, and her skin is frozen by the cold light from the stars.

And her frozen body cannot weep and cannot sleep, yet she dreams of crying slowly through an endless deep, like a planet lost from orbit sucked into a star — every leap of faith has seen her fall into a scar.

CALDERA

I see volcanos’ fire burn a barren land. I see a desert stormwind grind down all life to sand. I see a void so endless I cannot see its end — a black soul in a body he is destined to defend.

But as I look closer I see myself as a child.

I see great armies marching on feet of iron dust. I see two eyes of death full of vanity and lust. I see a narrow bed where a child once used to sleep. I see an ocean current suck me down into the deep.

But as I look closer I see myself as a child. But as I look closer I see myself as a child.

ST HELENA

And the ferry is moving, and the land seems to blur, and the green fields of Europe are gone. And the ferry will carry me over the sea to the hill of Golgotha where all cease to be, where dead men hide from the sun.

And the ferry is moving and the sea lies ahead — the gorge where no mortal can pass. And the ferry hangs high above the abyss: a lonely watcher into the mist, the water, the rhythm, the mass.

THE CROWN

A lion came to marry me and swore an oath of loyalty: from the mountain to the sea, the northern wind is blowing free.

VIEWFINDER

Far away from the path, wandering on frozen legs, behind the warehouse brick wall — IRL FPS. Under the closed off bridge: beer cans in the gravel. Just a walk around the block, no need for worldwide travel.

I love you my viewfinder, watching a forgotten world. Tomorrow’s stand still, what yesterday used to swirl.

Wonder why they built it — a staircase not in use, clings onto a thin construction, rings against my shoes. I raise my cell phone camera through the backyard shadows — another of these wondrous days, the birth of more tomorrows.

I love you my viewfinder, watching a forgotten world. Tomorrow’s stand still, what yesterday used to swirl.

My lens is where I save those places where my eyes are full of living color, below the marble skies. The kiss that echo slowly, the moment when the light stops to move and all I want is within my sight.

I love you my viewfinder, watching a forgotten world. Tomorrow’s stand still, what yesterday used to swirl.

BRIDEWELL

I might just confess I did not know how to live. I ran from movie to movie and played each character well. I did my best to understand and forgive – I did my best to save my soul from Hell.