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

The days are chained like daisies
Flung on some years-old grave
On ground unmarked, found on no chart
Or map or minefield aid
I can only change the future
I cannot change the past
I can't recall who's on my side
I can only watch my back
Through aimless thought, through thoughtless deed
I joined with liars and thieves
But behold the only liar who's
Scorned and told to leave

I will walk yr way

A soap-opera clown
Stakes his place by her side
And he'll sniff, pout and frown
'til she tells him the world is wrong
And his cliches are right

Now, the season never changes
Just me and my true love
In this harbour bare, slate-grey and hushed
Where slow death is life enough

You made of me an outcast
A suitcase-dwelling shell
You made of mine a heart of stone
Which you dropped down a bottomless well
Well, fair enough,
But just don't call it love
When it was just lust for blood
And by the way, "get out" just means "get out" to me

I will walk yr way
Debts of the world are not mine to pay
So i will walk yr way

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....