Frozen moment, cold
blood time:
the Iguana lady is saying goodbye.... She's
not quite ready, she wants
to stay, she wants to be perfect, but not in
the way.
He tries to be cautious, one more
cigarette, he wants to be open,
but the time is not yet.
They talk
about poetry, life-stories too; he wants to know if she keeps a pet or
two. She's into lizards, she's into snakes, he's
into trauma - still got the shakes from a lady who only talked dogs
and cats making love in the alley - she thought like that....
So he doesn't notice he's falling in to a change in colour of
chameleon skin.
And the sun beats down on the baking
earth in the land where the lizards play. And the
tongues flick out - though they want to touch all the words get
in the way. And it's you and me and it's he and she
and it's everything I say.
Frozen vision,deaf and
dumb: still trying to work out what I've become....
I tried to reach you, I tried to score, I shot the bolt on the open
door... the secret reaction, base metal to gold,
and all I felt was my blood froze... I walked on water - I was
wearing skis - and now the water must dance on me.
Anyway, for all that, will you dance with me? will you dance
with me? And the sun beats down on the baking earth
in the land where the lizards play. And they shed their skins and at
last begin to find colours for the day.
Will you dance with me?
The Habit Of The Broken Heart
Oh, the Sisters of Blindness from
the Convent of the Broken Heart, they want to smother it with
kindness, they want to tear it all apart.
And there's a rock of sterile virtu' in the centre of the
bay.... I'm so sorry he hurt you, but don't
throw yourself away.
You only wanted to have some
fun, you only wanted to try it; you only
wanted to be someone, but everybody denies it. Why's it
so hard to make you listen? Don't go and change your name:
learning to lose can be the start of winning the game.
You're so special, such sadness seems a shame.
I know that
you've got a service to catch, I wouldn't want you to miss it,
but there's something so mismatched, some motive
inexplicit...is it the call of the Convent?
You only wanted to find someone or something more than
pleasure; penitence for the Chosen One
you can indulge at leisure - by the light of the sinking sun,
don't turn your back on the treasure. Whether or not you want to
face it, you're a beautiful girl and
your lay-lady laughter has a right to be heard;
but what can I give you if you've already got the Word?
Don't go don't
start don't take on the Habit of the
Broken Heart
The Siren Song
Letters in pencil, some of them as heavy as lead, as dated as
carbon, as black as coal, but burning as red.
Clues faintly stencilled: the message, though leeched, is
unbled, as secret as marble - as young, as old,
as living, as dead. And always that laugh
that comes as though it's from pain: though I'm lashed to the
mast still it hammers round my brain.
Laughter in the backbone, laughter impossibly wise,
that same laughter that comes every time I flash on that look in your
eyes which whispers of a black zone which'll
mock all my credos as lies, where all logic is done
and time will smash every theory I devise. And the hour-glass is
shattered only by the magic of your touch
where nothing really matter.... No, Nothing matters very much!
So the siren song runs through the ages, and it
courses through my veins like champagne; and with all the sweet
kisses of addiction it's calling me to break my bonds again.
Future memory exploding like shrapnel,
some splinters escape on my tongue, some of them scar
comprehension... beneath the scab they burn,
but the wound becomes numbs. And always the song draws me
forward, rejoicing in the search and the prayer,
bored with all but the mad, the strange, the freak, the impossible
dare. Still your laugh chills my marrow till I
embrace it on my knees.... Oh, when the mast becomes a
flagpole, what becomes of me? What
becomes, oh, what becomes of me?
Last Frame
Pretty keen - yes, my hobby keeps me busy;
and if I talk to myself, what's the crime? In the darkroom I am a dealer
in space and time... when all memory is mellowed,
when the photograph is yellowed, still it never lies.
There you are, your eyes laced with secret pleasure,
saying that you're on the way to change, devouring in inordinate
measure every diversion that's arranged. For
every appetite, a cruel attraction, but there's a panic in your
actions; oh, I never saw you look so strange.
Fixing memory chemically, holding time on the stop-clock,
hanging back from that last frame just in case it didn't show
you in the way I used to know you... I thought
you'd always stay the same.
The red light, the
silver, the black and the bromide; the
silence, the waiting for overview.... The past seems under-exposed,
low tide, but still the images ghost through.
And you're there in the bath, which is all this has led to,
and I can't say your path is a right one to choose....
But then I only have a negative of you.
The Wave
The wave hits the beach,
writing words on the sand - to the academic
man, this could be the answer....
In fact, it's no more than a hunch; still we try to
eat it... I think we're all pretty out to lunch.
The wave is out of reach,
trailing words from the hand only air can
understand; semaphore on the shoreline,
waiting for distance to recede, unhappily
imperfect when we should be happy just to
breathe.
But with each bated breath,
so present, tense, we want to know, we want it
sure, it don't make sense!
So I'll do mine and you do yours but let's not trade
sand and sea for brick and cement.
The wave hits the beach, laps around abandoned
clothes, wants to share a joke with those
who'll brave the breakers, who'll break bread
rather than pray while the definition-maker's
lost in the small print of the day.
The words
are only pictures that the next wave wipes away.
Cat's Eye / Yellow Fever
(Running)
I was walking in the evening, I
was looking for something good, clean, fine,
pure, straight, but instead I found the bunker wall
and gate.
It was open: I was free. I gave
a token guarantee; though I later knew I
had promised more, with an I.O.U. I could
scarcely score my way... Oh! But I herald
Apocalypse anyway! I was a prime believer in the
faith of 'I': yellow fever in the cat's eye.
And it's everything you want, own,love, hate,
touch, dream, trust; and it's everything you need.
I got a heart like a rochet, I
was out of control, I'd cleaned out my pockets for
some luck to show... really looking like a
hopeless case, I found it in my hand, it was
the Angry Ace. He wants to talk to me, one on
one, he wants to give me his professional
opinion...but I'm running; I just can't wait,
I haven't got a moment to anticipate; yes, I'm
running, I just can't stop, I've got to get to the
bottom just to get to the top, I've got the dark
alleys and the open skies, I got the yellow fever
from the cat's eye.
I'll let you know how it
goes in the ninth life.
The Sphinx In The
Face
I remember what it felt like at
seventeen, I was a cat, a snake, a lizard, a
mouse; still got an interest in the limousine
and a spouse and a brat, country house, London
flat.
I'm gonna head for the island when the
summer's out,
I'm gonna do all the stuff that I can, drink like a
fish in a waterspout - I'm a fan of the flow,
it began long ago, I'm a man who should know it
doesn't stop.
There's so much to
remember, so much to forget:
we're all in the possession of the future tense, but
don't know it yet. The flesh comes through the
spirit, the spirit through the flesh...
we look the Sphinx in the face for answers and, of
course, we're really not impressed. We're caught
between age and beauty, experience and
youth, so we feel the need acutely
for any kind of Truth.
Oh, but we get
copped some days, caught between options we've
failed to play, such wasted chance.
So I join the wastrel's dance: it has slow as well as
fast movement, and any change must be an
improvement on simply fossilising, standing still.
I got a steady vocation for the Quiet
Zone, I just can't wait for the song to be
sung, I'm still possessed by the promise
of the Pleasure Dome
You're so young,
you're so here,so gone, so old, so near,so
wrong, such a drag so queer,so strong,so...
to be told. Such a drag to be told...
Chemical World
'Well what's the harm?
It's good clean fun... why don't you just
go on and have another one? When there's
hanky-panky in the boardroom, wooly-bully on
the farm, what's the harm?
It's quite allright - I mean to say,
tomorrow's just another day...'
Oh, but in
the morning, Oh, but in the morning haze
will you still feel as fine, will you still need to
trade day for night? In the country of the blind,
the one-eyed man is king;
in the country of the sheep, they call him Cyclops.
And the quality of mind is such a tenuous thing
that here you need it like a blind man needs eye
drops.
Get out of that back room,this
vacuum, it attracts you, but in fact
you don't know quite what it is; you're being
sapped of everything you once valued so
highly... Will you still feel as strong,
will you still long for weakness to come?
It's
a Chemical World ...Not a candidate ever
fails; though you search for the Holy Grail
you're not going to find it in the Chemical World.
A sleeper train; you can't escape;
fast overnight...the ticker-tape. Oh but in the
morning, but in the morning haze
will the market have turned, will there be no more
days left to trade?
It's the Chemical
World and from the moment that it's
embraced It's the Chemical World
all the diamonds turn to paste in the Chemical
World... Yeah, you think you'll look so pretty
- it's gonna blow up in your face.
'It's just the time, so slow to pass. It's just the
drug...it doesn't last....'