C.L.U.T.C.H.I.N.G . A.T . S.T.R.A.W.S
HOTEL HOBBIES
Hotel hobbies padding dawns hollow corridors (1)
Bell boys checking out the hookers in the bar
Slug-like fingers trace the star-spangled clouds of cocaine on the mirror
The short straw took its bow
The tell tale tocking of the last cigarette (2)
Marking time in the packet as the whisky sweat
Lies like discarded armour on an unmade bed
And a familiar craving is crawling in his head
And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen
Introducing characters to memories like old friends
Frantic as a cardiograph scratching out the lines
A fever of confession a catalogue of crime in happy hour (3)
Do you cry in happy hour, do you hide in happy hour
The pilgrimage to happy hour
New shadows tugging at the corner of his eye
Jostling for attention as the sunlight flares
Through a curtains tear, shuffling its beams
As if in nervous anticipation of another day
(Champney's Health Farm, Tring) (4)
WARM WET CIRCLES
On promenades where drunks propose to lonely arcade mannequins
Where ceremonies pause at the jeweler's shop display
Feigning casual silence in strained romantic interludes
Till they commit themselves to the muted journey home
And the pool player rests on another cue
Last nights hero picking up his dues
A honeymoon gambled on a ricochet
She's staring at the brochures at the holidays
Chalking up a name in your hometown
Standing all your mates to another round
Laughing at the world till the barman wipes away the warm wet circles
The warm wet circles
I saw teenage girls like gaudy moths
A classroom's shabby butterflies
Flirt in the glow of stranded telephone boxes
Planning white lace weddings from smeared hearts and token proclamations,
Rolled from stolen lipsticks across the razored webs of glass
Sharing cigarettes with experience with her giggling jealous confidantes,
She faithfully traces his name with quick bitten fingernails
Through the tears of condensation that'll cry through the night
As the glancing headlights of the last bus kiss adolescence goodbye
In a warm wet circle
Like a mothers kiss on your first broken heart, a warm wet circle
Like a bullet hole in Central Park, a warm wet circle (1)
And I'll always surrender to the warm wet circles
She nervously undressed in the dancing beams of the Fidra lighthouse (2)
Giving it all away before it's too late
She'll let a lovers tongue move in a warm wet circle (3)
Giving it all away and showing no shame
She'll take a mother's kiss on her first broken heart a warm wet circle,
She'll realise that she played her part in a warm wet circle
It was a wedding ring destined to be found in a cheap hotel
Lost in a kitchen sink or thrown in a wishing well
(the Quaterdeck, North Berwick)
THAT TIME OF THE NIGHT
(The Short Straw)
At that time of the night
When streetlights throw crosses through window frames,
Paranoia roams where the shadows reign
Oh, at that time of the night
At that time of the night
Your senses tangled in some new perfume
Criticism triggers of a loaded room
Oh, at that time of the night
So if you ask me how do I feel inside
I could honestly tell you we've been taken on a very long ride
And if my owners let me have some free time some day
With all good intention I would probably run away
Clutching the short straw (1)
At that time of the night
When questions rally in an open mind
Summon all your answers with an ice cubes chime
At that time of the night
At that time of the night
Pretend you're off the hook with the telephone
Your confidence wounded in a free fire zone, (2)
Oh, at that time of the night
So if you ask me where do I go from here
My next destination even isn't really that clear.
So if you join me and get on your knees and pray,
I'll show you salvation
We'll take the alternative way
Clutching the short straw
If I had enough money I'd buy a round for that boy over there
A companion in my madness in the mirror the one with the silvery hair.
And if some kind soul could please pick up my tab
And while they're at it if they could pick up my broken heart.
Warm wet circles
(Mayflower Hotel NYC, Wheatsheaf - Haywards Heath)
GOING UNDER
Is it wrong to talk to myself even when there's nobody else
I'm just checking out that I'm not gone under the water
Thrown on the beach like a seal ready for slaughter (1)
Can't you understand that the way things were planned
It never worked out so I just went crazy
I took to the drink, like something says its "maybe" (2)
I ain't got no excuse and that's really the news
Got nothing else to say, that it's my way, it's always my way
I seem to be running away so often
I'll try anything once and that's the way we should be
But it's always the same getting caught up again in a habit
A habit I just can't shake off the way it always turned out
Can you understand it's the way I choose to be
Everything seems so easy this way but I'm going under fast
Slipping away
Am I so crazy
JUST FOR THE RECORD
Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways
But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze
I'm serving a sentence to write life's sentences
It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this
Just for the record I'm gonna put it down (1)
Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around
Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym
Just a bar room dancer on my final fling
Just another writer paying off my dues
Just finding inspiration well that's my excuse
Just for the record I'm gonna put it down
Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around
Just another empty gesture with an empty glass
Just another comic actor behind a tragic mask,
But I've got no discipline got no self control
Just a little less painful here when my back's against the wall
It's too late, I found, it's too far, I'm in two minds
Both of them are out of it at the bar (2)
When you say I got a problem that's a certainty
But I can put it all right down to eccentricity
It's just for the record it's just a passing phase
Just for the record I can stop any day
(Marquee Club, London)
WHITE RUSSIAN
Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
They boarded up the synagogues, Uzis on a street corner (1)
You can't take a photograph of Uzis on a street corner
The DJ resigned today they wouldn't let him have his say
Surface scratched where the needles play, Uzis on a street corner (2)
Where do we go from here
Terror in Rue de St. Denis, murder on the periphery (3)
Someone else in someone else's pocket
Christ knows I don't know how to stop it
Poppies at the cenotaph, the cynics can't afford to laugh
I heard in on the Telegraph there's Uzis on a street corner (4)
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
The more I see, the more I hear, the more I find fewer answers
I close my mind, I shout it out but you know it's getting harder
To calm down, to reason out, to come to terms with what it's all about
I'm uptight, can't sleep at night, I can't pretend everything's all right
My ideals, my sanity, they seem to be deserting me
But to stand up and fight I know we have six million reasons (5)
They're burning down the synagogues, Uzis on a street corner
The heralds of the holocaust, Uzis on a street corner (6)
The silence never louder than now, how quickly we forgot our vows,
This resurrection we can't allow, Uzis on a street corner
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
We buy fresh bagels from the corner store (7)
Where swastikas are spat from aerosols
I sit in the bar sipping iced White Russian (8)
Trying to score but nobody's pushing (9)
And everyone looks at everyone's faces
Searching for signs and praying for traces of a conscience in residence
Are we sitting on a barbed wire fence,
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home
We place our faith in human rights
In the paper wars that tie the red tape tight
I know that I would rather be out of this conspiracy
In the gulags and internment camps frozen faces in nameless ranks
I know that they would rather be standing here besides me
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home
You can shut your eyes, you can hide it away it's gonna come back another day
Racing the clouds home, are we racing the clouds home
Racing the clouds home
(Hilton, Vienna)
INCOMMUNICADO
I'd be really pleased to meet you if I could remember your name
But I got problems of the memory ever since I got a winner in the fame game
I'm a citizen of Legoland travellin' incommunicado (1)
And I don't give a damn for the Fleet Street aficionados (2)
But I don't want to be the back-page interview
I don't want launderette anonymity
I want my hand prints in the concrete on Sunset Boulevard (3)
A dummy in Tussaud's you'll see (4)
Incommunicado, incommunicado
I'm a Marquee veteran, a multimedia bona fide celebrity (5)
I've got an allergy to Perrier, daylight and responsibility
I'm a rootin'-tootin' cowboy, the Peter Pan, the street credibility (6) (7)
Always taking the point with the dawn patrol fraternity (8)
Sometimes it seems like I've been here before
When I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it deja vu (9) (10)
I just put my faith in destiny - it's the way that I choose
But I don't want to be a tin can tied
To the bumper of a wedding limousine
Or currently residing in the where are they now file
A toupee on the cabaret scene
I want to do adverts for American Express cards
Talk shows on prime time TV
A villa in France, my own cocktail bar
And that's where you're gonna find me
Incommunicado, incommunicado
Sometimes it seems like I've been here before
When I hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it deja vu
I just put my faith in destiny - it's the way that I choose
Incommunicado, incommunicado
It's the only way
(Rainbow Room, LA ; St. Moritz Club, London)
TORCH SONG
Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks to burn a little brighter now (1)
Something about roman candles fizzing out, shine a little light on me now
Found a strange fascination with a liquid fixation,
alcohol can thrill me now
It's getting late in the game to show any pride or shame
I just burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now
Doctor says my liver looks like leaving with my lover,
need another time-out now
Like any sort of hero turning down to zero still standing out in any crowd
Pulling seventeen with experience and dreams,
sweating out a happy hour
Where you're hiding 29 you know it ain't a crime
To burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now
Dr. Finlay: "And my advice is if you maintain this lifestyle you won't reach 30" (2)
Torch: "Christ - it's a romantic way to go really,
it's part of the heritage, it's your round i'n'it?"
We burn a little brighter now
Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks to burn a little brighter now
It was something about roman candles fizzing out, shine a little light on me now (3)
Found a strange fascination with a liquid fixation,
alcohol thrill me now
Getting late in the game to show any pride or shame
Burn a little brighter now, we burn a little brighter now
We burn a little brighter now
(Virgin Airways, 747 - Newark-Heathrow)
SLAINTE MHATH
A hand held over a candle in angst fuelled bravado
A carbon trail scores a moist stretched palm
Trapped in the indecision of another fine menu
And you sit there and ask me to tell you the story so far
This is the story so far
Shuffling your memories dealing your doodles in margins
You scrawl out your poems across a beer mat or two
And when you declare the point of grave creation
They turn round and you to tell them the story so far
This is the story so far
And you listen with a tear in you eye
To their hopes and betrayals and your only reply
Is Slainte Mhath
Princes in exile raising the standard Drambuie (1)
Parading their anecdotes tired from old campaigns
Holding their own last orders commanding attention
We sit here and listen to all of the story so far
This is the story so far
Take it away, take it away, take it away
Take me away, take me away, take me away
From the dream on the barbed wire at Flanders and Bilston Glen (2)
From a Clydeside that rusts from the tears of its broken men (3)
From the realisation that we've been left behind
Is to stand like our fathers before us in the firing line (4)
Waiting on the whistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow
They promised us miracles, and the whistle still blows
Broken promises but the whistle still blows
Waiting on the whistle to blow
We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow
(Oyster Bar, Edinburgh, County Bar, Dalkeith)
SUGAR MICE
I was flicking through the channels on the TV
On a Sunday in Milwaukee in the rain
Trying to piece together conversations
Trying to find out where to lay the blame
But when it comes right down to it there's no use trying to pretend
For when it gets right down to it there's no one here that's left to blame
Blame it on me, you can blame it on me
We're just sugar mice in the rain (1)
I heard Sinatra calling me through the floorboards
Where you pay a quarter for a partnership in rhyme
To the jukebox crying in the corner
While the waitress is counting out the time
For when it comes right down to it there's no use trying to pretend
For when it gets right down to it there's no one really left to blame
Blame it on me, you can blame it on me
We're just sugar mice in the rain
'Cos I know what I feel, know what I want I know what I am
Daddy took a rain check (2)
' Cos I know what I want, know what I feel I know what I need
Daddy took a rain check, your daddy took a rain check
Ain't no one in here that's left to blame but me
Blame it on me, blame it on me
Well the toughest thing that I ever did was talk to the kids on the phone
When I heard them asking questions I knew that you were all alone
Can't you understand that the government left me out of work
I just couldn't stand the looks on their faces saying, "What a jerk"
So if you want my address it's number one at the end of the bar
Where I sit with the broken angels clutching at straws and nursing our scars (3)
Blame it on me, blame it on me,
Sugar mice in the rain,
Your daddy took a rain check, your daddy took a rain check
(Holiday Inn, Milwaukee)
THE LAST STRAW
Hotel hobbies padding dawns hollow corridors
A typewriter cackles out a stream of memories
Drying out a conscience, evicting a nightmare
Opening the doors for the dreams to come home
We live out lives in private shells
Ignore our senses and fool ourselves
To thinking that out there there's someone else cares
Someone to answer all our prayers
Are we too far gone, are we so irresponsible
Have we lost our balls, or do we just not care
We're terminal cases that keep talking medicine
Pretending the end isn't quite that near
We make futile gestures, act to the cameras
With our made up faces and PR smiles (1)
And when the angel comes down, down to deliver us
We'll find out that after all, we're only men of straw
But everything is still the same
Passing the time passing the blame
We carry on in the same old way
We'll find out we left it too late one day to say what we meant to say
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the water
Those problems seem to arise the ones you never really thought of
The feeling you get is similar to something like drowning
Out of your mind, you're out of your depth, you should have taken soundings
Clutching at straws, we're clutching at straws (2)
And if you ever come across us don't give us your sympathy
You can buy us a drink and just shake our hands
And you'll recognise by the reflection in our eyes
That deep down inside we're all one and the same
We're clutching at straws, we're still drowning
Clutching at straws, we're still drowning
Clutching at straws, I'm still drowning
(Greyhound Tour Bus, North America)
HAPPY ENDING
If a person were to try stripping the disguises from actors while they play a scene upon the stage, showing to the audience their real looks and the faces they were born with, would not such a one spoil the whole play?
And would not the spectators think he deserved to be driven out of the theatre with brickbats, as a drunken disturber?... Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and each play their part, until the manager waves them
off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume,
so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes.
Thus all things are presented by shadows.
(Erasmus, The Praise of Folly) (1)
