1. |
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All the roads are one road: you know how I feel
It's like time's wounded heel in a barefoot shoe
Treading golden splinters into the floor of Bellevue
And I have committed no crime
I couldn't banish the clocks, couldn't shut out the tick-tocks
Couldn't stop up my ears to the chime
All the kids are trembling (before the Bastille)
You see revolution: I just see spinning
You want a happy ending but all I got's beginnings
And I want no part of your fight
I couldn't banish my love to those dominions above
Where the key goes aloft with the kite
I don't care if the Angelus never rings
I don't care if the fat lady never sings at all
I don't care if the current is strong
And the eddies, they drag me below
I won't tell the river to stop its flow
All the gods are one god (he just gets around)
Like the whole damn world in a half arsed gesture
Like the taste in my mouth
When I remember how I kissed ya
Last night when I was young
Before you banished my soul to that opposite pole
Where the moon burns its feet on the sun
I don't care if I spent too long at the fair
I don't care if I never really belonged there
I don't care if the money was spent
Where it never was meant to go
I won't tell the river to stop its flow
All the seas are one sea (the beach it is blessed)
It's like Chinese whispers
Mixed with Russian vespers
In the crash of the wave on my breast
And it happens all night
Till the sheets are soaking wet
Perhaps if I'd rowed on the moon's silver road
I'd have never got caught in the net
I don't care if we fuck and never cum
I don't care if we can't finish what we've begun
I don't care if I piss off my muses
And the last line refuses to show
I won't tell the river to stop its flow
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2. |
Black Ruby Hotel
05:25
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Midnight, Black Ruby Hotel
I fall into the light and it washes my eyes so well
Smoke rings from Cygnus X1
Come floating in and dance in the stagelight
I don't know why I get it in my mind that it's all wrong
And I don't know when I'm going home, maybe never
I saw the singer by the twelve pines ten years ago
Picking buttons to blow his mind
His absinthe turns to pernod by transubstantiation
His jokes in Esperanto getting lost in the translation
We got time If you just recline and shut your eyes
You can hear the hum as they all turn on and untie their lines
And the drummer just gets on with it
And the dharma just gets lost in all of the noise
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3. |
Oranges And Lemons
07:28
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Oranges and lemons, he was the belle of St. Kevin's
He hocked his tiny arse to the whole fifth class
Kissin' them better like the lady with the lamp
Curing what ails ya in the house of the rising damp
He talks like Lester Bangs and bangs like Lester talks
1% excited, 99% just bored
He can't give head 'coz he's got thirty two left teeth
And he starts to giggle or forgets to breathe
He wants to break into your car
And fall asleep beneath your stars
Here comes the candle to light him to bed
And here comes the chopper to chop off his head
You owe me your hard on says the sweet St. Martin
You owe me to meet me at midnight in the garden
We'll scare the apples right off of the tree
And scandalize the neighbourhood
By swallowing the seeds
Me, I was entranced by the spastic way he danced
Merce Cunningham caught up in a Bob Fosse trance
Clearing the kitchen by centrifugal force
The keys to the city a-janglin' in his purse
He wants to learn all the names of God
But the minute he does, well, the whole thing stops
Here comes the candle to light him to bed
And here comes the chopper to chop off his head
With his little clouds of rock'n'roll and Brut 66
His poppers and his soda bulbs
His pockets full of teenage kicks
His thrills, pills and bellyaches
His phasers set to stun
His Oxford shoegazers left out in the sun
He tosses out one liners from St. Thomas Aquinas
Lord, make me good, but not till I'm ready
Stolen wine is sweeter & it makes the night look pretty
'Tis pity, it's so hard to be a saint in the city
He wants a glimpse of his next life
It's not promising, but in town the rumours are rife
From ice cream headaches at the crack of noon
To wet dream heartaches & brides left behind in June
He's got the radio tuned between stations
He's trying to pick up Venus or Mars
But the full moon is sapping his patience
And there's chatter going on between him & his stars
He's trying all the numbers in his pocket
But nobody's making the scene
He's dropping all his drugs on the carpet
And sighing through those old dirty magazines
He's singing with Sviatoslav Richter
As he rips through Beethoven's fourth
And Melbourne's so cold in the winter
When the beautiful people go north
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4. |
Night Train
14:04
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When you press your hand against
The frantic beating of my breast
I fall into the sinner's rest
And get on board the night train
I leave you drowsing in the gloam
As madness climbs onto her throne
And bids my sufi soul come home
Night train, night train
With Hermes' touch upon mine eye
I cross the Styx without my bride
And touch down where the bodies lie
Night train, night train, night train
And all the deaded folk I knew
Come far and near into my view
And all the tumblin' times accrued
Are crowded on the night train
Past midnight when the sirens moan
For destinations yet unknown
The maiden, nymph and sacred crone
Play rummy on the night train
The fates are hunched around their light
Play scissors, paper, rock all night
The needle, thread and sewing knife
Too dull when on the night train
John Keats is in the dining car
Smoking reefers at the bar
He's left the windows all ajar
Night train, night train, night train
And if he hears the nightingale
His tie unknots, his face goes pale
His heart beneath the clacking rail
Midnight, night train
Oscar Wilde, the émigré
The fin de siecle Queen of May
Reclines upon the empty page
Surrenders to the night train
And in the passage, knocking doors
Comes Diaghilev collecting for
The salon of the Russian whores
Now open on the night train
While Truman, Gore and Tennessee
Whose gothic Saturnalia's free
Are fucking sailors three by three
Night train, night train, night train
My porter comes, my fare unpaid
My bad side and my bed unmade
My lips uncombed, my trousers frayed
His epaulets, his gold brocade
His winning smile, his unafraid
His jacket falls, his buttons splay
He lingers on the night train
As night unwinds its gentle noose
And all the rays of dawn break loose
I lightly skip from the caboose
Sayonara, night train
With Orphic strains from far ahead
I drink the Lethe and leave the dead
I leave my bachelors unwed
My vespers and my psalms unsaid
My incubus unquenched, nor fed
My absinthe drained of all its lead
The Eastern sky is glowing red
I find the path where others fled
And crawl back in my marriage bed
Forgetting of the night train
My sufi soul is slowly drawn
My Ruth amid the alien corn
I find you standing in the dawn
Untravelled on the night train
I fall out of the sinner's rest
And comes the beating of my breast
When soon you press your hand against
The siding of my night train
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5. |
(I'm Through) Bein' Born
09:44
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I will be born in the Horse Latitudes
Where the winds are too damn quiet
And in way too good a mood
The Roaring Forties bruise my feet
The trade winds muss my hair like wheat
Into art school attitudes
I'll dot my "i"s a little queer
With stars and hearts and lightning strikes
Till my local gods appear
If they're not here by seventeen
I'll blow my chance of ever being
Teenager of the year
When I crash into the scene
I am unrescued: no one notices a thing
I try to slip in through the back
Another bust up dressed in eighteen shades of black
I'll be their dumb suburban boy
Fucked up, farting, friendless
With my charms left unenjoyed
The thin faced man will glide right in
With stars and hearts and lightning strikes
Inside his pale blue eyes
We'll be tappin' on a vein
Trying to mix the blood up
With those little bits of rain
But I'll find there's no reward
The stone clings tighter to the sword
Than before I ever came
I'll be almost destroyed
Sending my bags on ahead into the void
When I gets a bright idea
I'll make a pretty noise until those wretched gods appear
When I pick up my machine
I won't kill fascists
That's a whole other scene
Mash notes in my tambourine
From the local chapter
Of the Mattachines
I'll strum like I could make a bunch of fives
To smash the Buddha
Into his next hundred lives
Before my daemons get ya
You're just dancing about architecture
Till my time arrives
I will never be a star
I'll realize the nineteenth time I pawn my guitar
Folks may piss on my parade
But I am only the next gig away from the light
John Hammond will not walk into my show
His pockets stuffed with contracts
And a half a key of blow
A world tour, crash and coma
And a graduate diploma
From the Betty Ford, you know
I'll never make it to the crossroads for to deal
'Coz that assumes I got
A soul in here to steal
I'll be cutting corners
Hanging round in saunas
Trying to catch the devil's heel
I'll get close before I fail
My hands will slip upon the tiger's tail
And as I watch the gold and black recede
I lift my shooter but I cannot get a bead
Maybe I'll take liberties with love
Using Andrew Marvell
And that His Coy Mistress stuff
And if you should thus refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews
Well, it don't seem long enough
I'll be catching zeds until
I will awake to find
Your hand inside my till
Hey man, I say, that's okay
If you want me now to pay
Well, I'll put you in my will
I'll sell the rights to my last breath
The cards predict I'll be star-spangled to death
With a bomber up my arse, I'm ripping off Karl Marx
Once is tragedy, this time it's just farce
I'll have nothing left to do
To close the heavens down
And wipe them from my view
'Coz when the blanket's pulled up tight
The spirits keep me up all night
Too bad they missed their fucking cue
I'll be too tired to get it down
All those grand gestures
And those mock heroic sounds
Hepped up like Norman Mailer
On a Benzedrine inhaler
Can't you slow the whole thing down?
I'll be strung out and annoyed
Throwing my prayer wheels on ahead into the void
When I get's a bright idea
I'll make a racket till those wretched gods disappear
When you bury my guitar
There won't be strings enough
To play another bar
Some other trumped up troubadour
Can lead you through some other door
But nobody makes it far
Next time I think I'll come out somewhere new
Bein' born is easy
It's just hard to choose who to
Perhaps I'll be a player
In a temple in the Himalayas
Chasing down the truth
I'll be almost alive
When I hear that the master has died
Leaves me pissing on his grave
I was only a candle away from the light
The wind undresses the rose
Until the bud
Is all that shows
The dharma's in disgrace
It hides its pretty face
Until the last veil goes
And me, I think I'm through with bein' born
Just leave my stupid body
In the wastes of Forest Lawn
And if you have to wake me
Make it sunset and let me make my own way
Back into the dawn
When I slip out of the scene
I will be chuffed if no one notices a thing
Every sunrise has its back
I will be drifting into those eighteen shades of black
When will this cycle ever end
Why am I stuck inside of Mobile
With the Memphis blues again?
Those stars and hearts and lightning strikes
Can just get up and on their bikes
'Coz I won't do this again
I'm through
Bein' born
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6. |
Unready
03:08
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I wanna be crystal clear
There's more than can be seen with your eyes
So bring your whole self round here
I'll show you the tears that fell from your eyes
You didn't realize you could be as unready as me
One day you may bring the treasure home
But the more gets lost, the more you carry
The more you have to get on loan
And you ask: When will I ever be ready
To make my own way sure and steady?
I don't know, but I guess it won't come at all
There's a lightning rod in your back pocket
I bet you never knew you had
And strange desires in your mixed up heart
That'll visit the jitters on mum and dad
And your every little reflex action seems to blow out
And knock your empire down
Just when you thought you're on a straight line
You notice everything goes round & round & round
Between you and I, I don't think you're ready
To be ready for these things
That chaos quietly brings
Unready, you will always be unready
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7. |
So Long
09:42
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Goodnight, my mad city: I'm leaving you tonight
I hope you don't mind if I drink you dry
But your bars are so pretty and they're open all night
And if the jacks don't mind and my friends don't mind
I just might take me a little more time
I want to be sure of one thing:
When I fall out the door, I won't be missing anything
Fare thee well, my lovers, I'm leaving the game
The only thing that bothers me
I wish I'd caught some of your names
And if you get too lonely, just remember I'm only
One sun in a sky full of stars
I want you to realize:
When you kiss me the once
You kiss me every damn day of my life
So long, so long, I've been here so long
That I've charted every inch of the air
So long, I've been climbing to the house of song
That I've worn a half moon in the stairs
It took an hour to pack my things
And an hour to pawn my rings
An hour to buy my ticket and an hour to cry
An hour to make love to this one last guy
Before the moment I ever said hello
I was already making my goodbyes
I couldn't believe that it would every last
For so long I tried
Keep the party rolling till I get back
Just pretend I went for cigarettes
And I lost my way back in the dark
And if the music's loud and the laughter's loud
When my cab pulls out you won't hear the sound
I wish I could make up my mind
I wanna go, I wanna stay
I wanna leave myself behind
So long, so long, I've been here so long
That I've charted every inch of the air
So long, I've been climbing to the house of song
That I've worn a half moon in the stairs
It took an hour burn my mail
And an hour to paint my nails
An hour to throw all my kittens in the creek
An hour to wipe the last glitter from my cheek
Before the moment I ever said hello
I was already making my goodbyes
I couldn't believe that it would every last
For so long, I tried
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