2014: Lyrics & Poems

By Andrew Robert Chapman

A collection of rhymes from 2014 written as song lyrics.
About half of the rhymes remain poems but the other half were married to various WildScreW guitar melodies and two of the lyrics found their way onto a professionally produced recording studio CD.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Andrew Robert Chapman
• Release date: Feb 6, 2019
• ISBN: 9781370272846

Andrew Robert Chapman

Having earned an upper-second-class BSc Honours Degree in Computing Science from Stafford University (the then Staffordshire Polytechnic), I worked for several English manufacturing companies before accepting an offer of work in Germany in 1991, where I have been living and working for several blue chip financial institutions based in Frankfurt am Main till this day. As a result of my career I wrote and self-published “Cobol: Optimised and Maintainable Application Programming” in 2003 and “JCL – STEP by STEP” in 2008. In 2012 I was asked to write lyrics for several rock band projects, an adventure which led to the role of singer/songwriter in WildScreW and the composition of several hundred lyrics, the majority of which are patiently waiting to be put to music or self-published.

Book preview

2014: Lyrics & Poems

Copyright 2019 Andrew Robert Chapman

Self-published by Andrew Robert Chapman

Edition 2020.4.18

This book is available as an eBook and traditional paperback.

Table of Contents

Preface

Preamble

Proem

(You Don't) Cut It

Ballbreaker

Cluster Fuck

Deathly Grey

Down The Rabbit Hole

E.M.P.

End Of Beauty (3 Verse)

Heartbreaker

Lockdown

Misery

Ouroboros

Too Late

Untrue

Untrue (3 Verse)

Walking On Air

Walpurgis Night

Song background information

Ballbreaker

Cluster Fuck

Misery

Untrue

Song breakdown/explanation

Down The Rabbit Hole

Misery

Untrue

Great American Song Contest Evaluation

Misery

About the author

Other books by the author

Contacts and Links

QR-CODE Links

Preface

History

My late, great-aunty Jean was an avid fan of literature, language and especially poetry. Nevertheless, despite her persistence, cajoling and seemingly endless off-by-heart recitals from her many favourite and famous bard’s literary masterpieces, and although I did possess an unhealthy interest and certain talent for English language and literature in school, I always considered my sister the more gifted poet and artist and myself more adroit in the (especially then new computer) sciences.

Sure, in my late school years and youth I’d occasionally pen a poem, compose a clerihew or write a rhyme, but always for specific purposes: love letters in the main but also a couple of songs for a my schooldays band Guillotine. But, as demands from career and life’s many other interests and distractions gained the upper hand, my literary efforts were restricted to computer program documentation. But there was always a book burning away in the back of my head and, after several aborted attempts at fiction, I decided around 1998 that I’d be best writing about something I know, which resulted in two self-published technical books in 2003 and 2008.

These tomes combined with (too) many years of unsuccessfully trying to master the German language, resulted in me falling heavily back in love with my native tongue. As essays are not my forte and technical reference books a labour of four or five years, I began writing poems and rhymes for my own pleasure and therapy.

My jottings and ideas were randomly scattered about various electronic devices, books and scrap pieces of paper and, in 2010, I stumbled across the term blogging and specifically WORDPRESS and decided the free application was also a perfect, practical and localized way to store and work on all my poems and lyrics.

In 2012, and quite coincidentally to my personal rhyming efforts on WORDPRESS, I was asked, solely because of my native English skills, if I was capable of writing lyrics to original songs melodies. Luckily for me I decided to blow my own trumpet and confidently replied that I could. I thus found myself writing lyrics for several band projects, one of which was to lead to the formation of the rock band WildScreW and culminate with the production of a studio CD, "Writing On The Wall"*, at the end of 2016 with myself as vocalist.

Furthermore, the CD’s title song was to become a finalist in the 19th Great American Song Contest in 2018.

*Paperback readers must navigate themselves manually to the hyperlinks embedded directly in the eBOOK by referring to the "Contacts and Links" section, or use the QR codes, where all relevant hyperlinks can be found, including the location of any audio files.

Method

Before I started to marry my lyrics