T-Bone Burnett Presents: The Speaking Clock Revue

If you're looking for the glory
You think that you might find
In a bullet-riddled stolen car
On a back road in the pines
If it's round just like a medal
Or a tired old man of war
Or hidden like that Burma Star
In my dad's bottom drawer

[Chorus]
Look at you in your monkey suit
Driving south, nothing left to prove
You come back here in your cowboy boots
Dressed to kill in your monkey suit
Every pose you strike, every frame they shoot
Shows you dressed to kill in your monkey suit

Build your ladder to the moon
Beat on that sacred drum
Trample on the hands of those
That cling to every rung
Every seed you crush beneath
Like stone ground in a mill
You never drew a decent breath
But you're just dressed to kill

[Chorus: x2]

Every pose you strike, every frame they shoot
Shows you dressed to kill in your monkey suit

Monkey suit
Monkey suit
Monkey suit

Third-class ticket in his pocket
Punching out the shadows underneath the sockets
Tweed coat turned up against the fog
Slow coaches rolling o'er the moor
Between the very memory
And approaches of war

Stale bread curling on a luncheon counter
Loose change lonely, not the right amount
Forgotten man of an indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
The sky is falling
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Nobody wants to buy a counterfeited prairie lullaby in a colliery town
The hip flask and fumbled skein of some stage door Josephine is all he'll get now
Eyes going in and out of focus
Mild and bitter from tuberculosis

Forgotten man
Indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
The sky is falling
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Her soft breath was gentle on his neck
If he could choose the time to die
Then he would come and go like this
Underneath a painted sky

She woke up and called him "Charlie" by mistake
And then in shame began to cry
Tarnished silver band peels off a phrase
And then warms their hands around the brazier

Forgotten man
Indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
It's finally dawning
Jimmie's standing in the rain

Brilliantine glistening
Your soft plaintive whistling
And your wan wandering smile
Died down at The Hippodrome
Now you're walking off to jeers, the lonely sound of jingling spurs,
The "toodle-oos" and "Oh, my dears" down at "The Argyle"

Vile vaudevillians applaud sobriety
There's no place for a half-cut cowboy in polite society

Forgotten man
Indifferent nation
Waiting on a platform at a Lancashire station
Somebody's calling you again
It's finally dawning
Jimmie's standing in the rain
Somebody's calling you again
It's finally dawning
Jimmie's standing in the rain