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It's a one-horse race,
still I'm ready to place my bet.
I'm a pretty slow starter,
and I haven't quite caught up with it
yet...
It seems so extraordinary
that you should care for me.
You're my favourite - how lucky can any
man be?
You're my favourite - will you stay the
course with
me?
You're my favourite of all time.
You're my favourite, can't you see?
You're my favourite of all time.
Say you'll stay the course with me.
Careering, simply day to day,
engineering everything I say.
Careering for the work and the pay.
I'm just a passenger passing through.
I'm just an average chap.
If I said I hadn't got a clue
there'd still come the questions.
I don't know, can't you see
I'm just another case of wasted space
so don't ask me.
Careering, my apprenticeship no waves
than my pension slip;
Careering down the Cresta Run,
I screw it up just like anyone.
Careering - pointless anyway
to do it just for the work and the pay....
Look here: I don't know, can't you see
I'm so near the end, get it straight,
friend -
don't ask me, don't ask me, don't ask
me.
Quite right to be worried about the proliferation
of nuclear bombs and power stations,
but there's a deterrent that's going to
unearth us
yet...
Hurry on round about Porton Down,
a quick glimpse of the future warfare
hidden under ground at Porton Down;
far too frightening to alter what you
saw there.
They got bacteria to drop us where we stand,
they got diseases still unknown to man,
they got the virus and the microgram's
enough to do in a continent.
The ultimate madness.
Just one shattered test-tube to wipe out
the world.
It begins with the mustard gas,
it proceeds to Hiroshima;
The culture moves on - now it's bacterial.
Truly insane -
Porton Down waits to fever the brain.
Won't hear a sound at Porton Down,
the clear liquids keep their silence
buried underground at Porton Down,
the fast form of the final violence.
Hurry on round about Porton Down
the quick glimpse of the future warfare,
hidden underground at Porton Down,
far too frightening to say what you saw
there.
No sound at Porton Down,
from Porton Down,
after Porton Down.
I've begun to regret that we ever met
between the dimensions.
It gets such a strain to pretend that
the change
is anything but cheap...
with your infant pique and your angst
pretensions
sometimes you act like a creep.
And now I'm standing in the corner,
looking at the room and the furniture
in cheap imitation of alienation and grief.
And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or
thief.
Still, I reflect, this nervous wreck
who stands before me can see as well,
can surely tell that he's not yet free;
he can turn aside, but can no more ignore
me
than know which one of us is he,
than tell what we are going to be,
than know which one of us is me.
And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or
thief.
These mirror images,
these mirror images
won't stay, go away, are no help.
In these mirror images of myself
there are no secrets.
If Christ had been born defective to fulfil
the
Father's plan
would he be as easily accepted as God
made man
or does the human value alter
in the crippled human frame?
Though the tongue and fingers falter
must we shut them out and shut them up,
and shut the case and whisper 'such a
shame...'
That's how we shut them away.
Most of us are lucky, free from accidents
at birth
but their victims share our right to the
inheritance
of earth.
For all their grunts, their stumps,
their tumours, their eternal wheelchairs,
we're the freaks, we're the inhumans,
if we close our eyes and turn aside, pretend
that if we do they'll not be there....
They've got to face it, so we've got to
face it.
Still they've got to live with it
in a world we supposedly share.
He'd have laughed in my face if he saw
it get
mournful,
he'd pull me up short and say "Life carries
on"
in that gentle way of being cruelly scornful...
now he's gone.
"I want to see it all, and eat it"
was as close to ethos as he came;
though he knew he couldn't beat it,
he never gave of himself anything less
than best
in the game.
Oh, one of the game...
I never did say, I never quite found time:
he taught me a lot, and I carry it still.
Never thanked him at all for his friendship
and now I never will.
The diaries we write are those that we
crave for,
we never put the P.S. at the foot of the
final page.
He deserved more time, but he never was
made for
middle age, not for middle age.
Not for Keith.
Come from every side, noses Pinocchio clean;
Lock in synchromesh, oil the wheels and
the gears
of the party machine.
And the final goal is a cabinet seat...
in the trappings of power, the presumption
to speak
for the man in the street.
Once they move in, they're in for good;
Yeh, once they get that bed made it's
a
safe home in politics.
Jobs for the boys: look at them run.
There's just one thing none of us should
forget:
a political man is just in it for the
power
and the smell of sucess.
Sure, some start out as idealists -
pretty soon they all cop for ideal careers
and
a safe home in politics,
a cusky job in politics;
look at them run.
The politicians fight it out on the couning
tower
but they all agree not to rock the boat.
A safe home in politics
It's built on your vote.
"Well, young man, when you grow up
what do you want to be?"
"Please, sir, if that's alright
I'd really rather like to learn how to
be me."
Switch on the light,
getting late, almost night.
A shilling puts you right,
you can switch off the night.
The world was looking stretched and tight,
it's an overblown balloon.
I've got the feeling something big
has got to happen soon.
Oh, time for a change,
out of reach, out of range.
Go and tell Doctor Strange
that it's time for a change.
The strongholds are burrowed
the work of giants decaying
the roofs are fallen
the towers are tottering
mouldering palaces roofless
weather-marked masonry shattering
Shelters time - sacred tempest - marred
undermined of old
Earth's grasp holdeth
its mighty builders
tumbled, crumbled,
in gravel's harsh grip
till a hundred generations
of man passed away
Attention tuned to the satellites,
looking down for an overview.
In the chapel of space we are acolytes.
In the battle of time we're all soldiers
too
and the relative choir
push the energy higher
Under fire.
The sliding show in the macroscopic
finger on the button pointing to progress.
The apparatus roll, no-one here can stop
it,
too busy learning more - always knowing
less.
Soon turkey - wrapped in the spaceman
blanket
we'll offer up lame duck apologies
and settle down for the final banquet,
the gourmet dish of technology,
cryogenic device
catches all human life
Under ice.
The current affair gets to be all out businness.
It's filtered in through the T.V. screen.
The norm, the average... what is this,
when it goes blank what does that all
mean?
And what's the drive of each individual?
And what's the way that the story ends?
Is it Mr. X left as the last residual
holder of the flame, conscience of all
men?
But he's so tense to expire
he throws himself on the wire
Under fire.
Is this the way the world ends?
Under ice. Under fire
Has there been some mistaken design?
Under ice
Got to find the human voice.
Lord, deliver us from Babel.
Explosions in the brain attest to it
Evolution down the drain - let all the
rest do it...
Oh yeah, the only result is cumulative
drek
It won't be the drug
it won't be the sex
it's got to be the Faculty X
Looking for a method, I play a straight
bat,
throw away the chances to slip.
Yeah, you talk about the average -
I don't care about that
and my words are only giving me lip
When I know that the change has got to
come
Or what am I living for? or why am I here?
I'm running, I give in more,
far away from the near
Go meta-physical world, the sign that protects
It wasn't the last
it won't be the next
It's Faculty X
Reading seeks, sages. prophets and obscurantist
tracts,
draining the elixir to the dregs...
active yeast in the bottom is on the attack
and it leaves me without any legs to stand
on
Still I hope that the change will come
Meanwhile I don't know
I think I'll have to go
Yeah, go for the governing body my consciousness
elect
It won't be so clear, it won't be direct.
it's all that I fear, it's all I suspect
and I'll disappear in Faculty X
I pluck all these characters out of thin
air,
I push them down into the lungs;
I infuse them with meaning as much as
I dare.
Stretch out for the shoreline and wait
for the wave....
I say "It only takes a minute for this
thing to
develop."
She says "I'd better push off now or me
feller'll be
jealous."
Just then I felt a hand on me collar,
and it was a
Boy in Blue.
He says "You can't take nude photographs
on this
beach,"
and "I'm arresting you."
I protested me innocence,
but it was no use, the picture was forming;
he gave me the official warning that day.
He'd seen me Polaroid,
so what could I say?
I got me Polaroid
She got away.
I looked around, but she'd disappeared,
I say "You don't understand, this was
all her idea"
but the copper says "Don't worry son,
I get the
picture OK."
He took me Polaroid
and I got ten days.
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