Valhalla Avenue

("the way to keep people in line is to scare the shit out of 'em.")

Be dead
Be dead....

("there isn't anybody left.")
("no no no!")
("everything is running out.")
("no no no!")

Be dead
Be dead....

("everything is running out.")

Greyhair fool, shoes undone
The fields ahead
Leaves black as coal
Landmark-free, no walls, no trees
To greet him on this night of his return

Chorus:
So who will love this lie on legs
Who can't change skin and is not yet dead?
The universal foreigner
The homeless greyhair son

Scrambles blind up muddy slope
Then silent shakes before rusty gates--chorus

There's a house, its roof caved in
A rusty wreck of car
A lightning-blasted tree
And a man who says, "so here you are--
The boy who broke the plough,
Who struck his father down,
Who told us to be damned
And betrayed us to the englishman!"

"who will love this lie on legs?
On paving-stones i've made my bed
Not a living soul now speaks my name
But here at least i have my shame
I thought to come and taste once more
What the priestly fables all ignore:
The un-eternal consequence," says the greyhair son

Greyhair fool, shoes undone
Hilltop at dawn
Now hews his plough
Wind blows on
The soil is poison
He sets to work, he and his plough
Final union--he and his plough

He and she, their empty house
He's awake, she sleeps
His eyes are for one sight alone--the purple window

Now his desires, his secret wish
He never lets her see
'cause he keeps it here for the shape that lives
In the purple window
The purple window

Celebrations and perspiration
And exploration are gone for good now

The end is sometimes hard to see
The way is wide and clear
But with contrition here, remission there
Well, it could take weeks or years
And there's the purple window
The purple window

You know where his love goes
And he can see the girl dance
Every move, every line
And he can see his own funeral
In the purple window

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!

("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....

A glass ravine
The low clouds which wink
The boughs burnt diesel and burning pig
Wide rutted streets
"666 park avenue", yells a big red sign
As if some anglo-saxon in love with his doom
Left such a cheeky shrine

Then all at once the daylight came
The river lay ahead
In it stood a wooden horse so tall
The water reached but half its leg
A sign nearby read "damn your law--this horse's hollow core
Contains the means for your destruction!"
This all passersby ignored

"save us, save us...."

When the great explorers, fortune hunters
Slave men, conmen set their sails
They dreamed of monsters without brains
Great hulks to block their treasure trail
Well, they got by with homicide
But here's the end to the magic spell:
Now the monsters lie in mouths, in veins
In genitals, in empty bellies

Baby, baby, won't you treat me kind?
I'm only a white man who longs to die
To end i need the power that you must give me
Send the children outside! don't resist! don't cry!"

The ray of hope as hoe of rape
Reflecting light from tractor headlamps into the victim's face

We bleat about our pain and how we lost and feel defiled
And we cry all night for santa claus to make our blizzard mild
The poor kind european white man never hurt a fly
We were friends to all the races, every woman, every child
"save us, save us...."

So back in the dirty hotel i lay in my clothes and i slept. i dreamed that i was face-to-face with an amorous dragon who wanted to kill me and beckoned. i approached, unsheathed, and said, "
S go! let's go! let's go!"

Let me be at one with my destruction
Won't you please acquaint me with your beautiful loss?
Let's go!