Lost In The Former West

In rags in their normal place
Where diesel machines roar by
Pale dawn, at the scrapyard gates
Fast food parks and hardware mines
Not smiling or frowning they,
The shades on the fringe of town,
Unpaid, idle, lending shape
To the gravity which they say
Has dragged this country down
This beautiful country down
Close off the backstreets, no-one goes
Bring on the ice, the game-shows: brain-blister

The bigger the roadside crowd
The denser the gameshow cloud
There's nothing on that churning screen
Just nonsense that might mean:
"like it? good. no? tough!
Pen them in and shut them up
Slow march, eyes right
Save all your revolution for your saturday night!"

[(your curse)?]

You earn but you feel oppressed
The armour could do with a test
Why not betray your lover's trust?
Go ahead and push it until it bursts
You're back on the streets again
No armour, no dreams, no friends
The worst pain is behind the eyes
Where the killer of futures hides, still hides

They've closed the backstreets, you can't hide
If you feel brave, just step outside
Where all tomorrows stink the same
Where night vibrates with cries of:
Brain-blister

Well, we laughed till dawn about the coming hell
[...?]
We learned to live without rest or hope
But [you'll?] never admit we live a joke
The patient is fading fast
Oh, but ignore it, it's just an act

I was raised to expect continuity. instead i get this..

The monster has red hair
The monster has green eyes
She laughs and bites her quarry's nose
As she pulls herself astride
Her double-jointed hips now do their tricks
And you can hear his plaintive yells
From the plane-crash craters in the scottish hill
To the burning oil wells

Chorus:
Something bad is giving birth
To a thing which won't melt to your touch
Something bad is giving birth
To something worse and it's going to hurt

His reebok shoes let in the rain
And he coughs into the dawn
At he searches for space on the synagogue wall
To draw swastikas on
Job descriptions change on the firing range
All generals are friends
So it's down to the dole with the molotovs
It's problem time again--chorus

You built the metal birds who [shrink] the skies
And bring [in weakness?] from the other side of a world
All these birds bringing death
You find all of our good, there's only death left
Big black hawk swinging low
Over the rat-run streets of the english ghetto
Clean spirit of the island, home at last
Come on, come on, come on--crash!

One man felt ashamed running guns and cocaine
For his short-term gain, so every one of us must pay
In his new world order, you can have some nerve gas with your air
Thanks to the cia pussy in the president's chair!

Something bad is giving birth
See, in the sky its belly bursts!
Something bad is giving birth
And calls for wounds to slake its thirst
Something bad is giving birth
No more decay, no more dirt
Something bad is giving birth
In therefore's name it stalks the earth

Do you feel you can deal? can you fuck!

No dates to miss, no home to phone
No face to kiss, no good alone
No family, no history, a permenant delinquency
No will to smile, no room to cry
No time to think
Just watch, don't flinch
Why yes, that's you in your millionth clinch
You murder every time you blink

Some flee disasters for their lives
You flee the spawn of grubby lies
At one with graveyard dust and shipyard rust
Too loose to trust
You'll heal so much faster
If your homeland is your master

No dirt-cheap adriatic sun
No heart of gold back of the gun
No deathcamps built for less than fun
No white man's bond, no civilization
No right to more than birth and death
From the drivelling drones of the former west
Their credo dead like brezhnev's bones
Their headless spears and special malnutrition zones

No deathcamps here, i tell you
Just grey convenience hell
Ten civil wars unended
'neath billboard signs which yell,
"you need someone pretty
Someone english and shifty......"

Chorus:
Let the dirt cover all, cover all, cover all
Let the dirt cover all
For it's the mother of us all and our bed when we fall
We belong nowhere

And by the way, you're dirt! dirt! you're dirt!
Always know your worth
As you roam this mirthless earth--you're dirt! dirt!

No sleep, the 'phone, god knows what time
Just a wordless click on the end of the line
And a thud at the door out back in the dark
As some wirehair creature spins 'round the yard
Why do you run? why do you hide?
Why do you bruise and then decide?
You didn't mean it, you didn't see
Well, now you're run to rags and so is she

You'll drink the balkan brandy
You will forget your name
You will become a captain
And you will lose all shame
You need someone pretty
Someone english and shifty--chorus

Let the dirt cover all, cover all, cover all
Let the dirt cover all
From the veil to the shawl
From the flirt to the brawl
We belong nowhere

In the bright-lit railway station, 3 a.m.
In a town whose active life is at an end
I was met by a rich man dressed in a panda fur
Who said, "if i can keep smiling i can change the world."
What world?

"lord straight banana, lord paper twine,
Lord biting yo-yo, they're all friends of mine.
Lord trannie dolequeue, lord private zoo,
Lord hanging bishop and lord valium, too."

"i know you think you have a job
But the whole world knows it's ended.
Why do you laugh at the dying of the senile god
On whom your devilish life depended?"

Shop-soiled and broken
In a part not clearly seen
You'll have no armegeddon, no more screams
Pleasant dreams...

Chorus:
Your world, your world, your world customer
Your world, your world, your world, your world

I said, "i'm sure your faith in what you cannot see
Has made your slumbers sounder but it won't work for me.
I am sick of fresh starts, of the promises i've heard
From my lips and others of a brighter world."

"now i'm a punchdrunk sailor who cannot picture land,
An exhausted atom in a grain of sand.
They who can't be frozen like a teenage corpse
Must be isolated and tied up in knots."

Fake chrome and a lick of paint
And a change of name announced
By some menswear dummy turned messenger
Of a master whose name he cannot pronounce
You feast on bargain-basement dregs
Get your self-delusions off the well-worn peg
No new hierarchy, female or male
No santa, elvis or holy grail

Shop-soiled and clueless, too indebted to inspect
What both feeds and defets you--no respect
I'm beaten, but i still reject
This world, just like a sentence
Without crime or guilt or sin
So give the panda back his skin
And give the berries back their gin--chorus

("one was taking the gate down today and one reads the bible.")

Welcome to apeville! now you're a citizen, too
Meet mrs. doreen pompidou
She'd like to do the shimmy on top of you
The wall is coming down
The one which holds the house up
A brass band playing in a dumptruck
Is visible through clouds of brickdust
As people dressed as cows form an orderly queue
For a drug that makes you dead for a second or two
I raise myself from my punchbowl, drowning:
"the yakuza are singing--it can't be true!"

Go home, bible mike!

Her hand squeezes mine and i shudder
She says, "that was one shock, now here comes another
You really don't remember, do you?"
I said, "why? am i supposed to?
Me, the slut of dishevelled women
Whom fun has made sad and careless?"
And she's knocked me onto the greasy floor
And a eunuch is barring the only door
Pilar, in her room above the farmacia,
Smiles as she pictures your little thing
Imagine her surprise when she looks through the window
And sees you riddled with bullets while the cops all sing,

"go home, bible mike!
Go home, bible mike!
You preach without a right
Go home, bible mike!"

You don't make me laugh, you don't make me horny,
So what the hell are we doing here?
Gasping all night in this nazi city
You bit it, i'm bleeding, we're sliding in my blood
Fucking with my blood
Market my blood! market my blood!

You got a tourist mind
Deaf, numb and blind to all the pain you bring
This is more than just sin
"am i really such a nightmare? if i had a home i'd go there."

Anytime you like
This court says, "take a hike"
The slate will not be wiped
Just go home, bible mike
Go home, bible mike....