Stepping out again

Into the dark

With my snake skin shoes

And feeling real sharp

Got the ten thirty blues

No time to lose

It’s the midnight hour

She’s a real night flower

 

Take what you got 

Lets do it again

Looking for shelter

To keep out the rain

Some place underground

Where a girl can fall down

Some back bar paradise

In Fly Trap Town

 

You give all your money to the lady in black

You don’t turn around and you don’t look back

Give all your money to the lady in black

Everybody knows its a one way track

And none of us is ever coming back

 

Lets dance

 

He’s telling her his stories

His life stained stories

How every lover looks at him

With those credit card eyes

How everyone’s a sucker

For some lipstick lies

And don’t everything you touch

These days turn to butt ends and dust

 

Let’s dance

Let’s dance

 

She’s sitting there watching

The blue eyed boys

She can’t seem to shake

That old moon from her eyes

Got the wrinkly blues

No time to lose

It’s the red eyed hour

She’s a real night flower

 

So you give all your money to the lady in black

You don’t turn around and you don’t look back

Give all your money to the lady in black

Everybody knows its a one way track

And none of us, not one of us

Not you nor you, nor none of us

Is is ever going back

 

Lets dance

Let’s dance

 

While there’s music and wine and song

let’s carry on, Let’s dance till the morning comes.

Let’s dance, what else is there to do?

And I’m not done, not done

 

Let’s dance till the morning comes

 

Let’s dance

This town’s an outpost,

Somewhere near the border;

A small white place,

Underneath a wide sky.

 

Streets of burning dust,

A lone door swinging.

I can heart your footfall,

And a tight wire singing.

 

Every traveller passing through,

Aches for some other place.

This town just peels and flakes;

Bleaching out life like its dust and bones.

 

Everyone comes through here someday.

It’s the way, it’s the way

 

White sun, heavy air, slow, flat horizons;

There’s a storm coming, 

Pressure gonna fall.

Listen to the wind blowing,

Can you hear it call?

Gotta leave this place 

Before it swallow us all.

Run for your life!

Just shuffle and flap in your ill fitting shoes

Till I can only see you small and black 

like old bad news.

 

Everyone comes through here someday

It’s the way it’s the way.

Today you feel like

A falling star

Guttering out in the dark

 

Everything’s hard

And you can’t make a start

You don’t even know who you are

 

When the crimes of our times

Are blatant and brutal

And these days you can’t even weep

 

When there’s nothing to be done

by anyone

And you might as well go back to sleep

 

Won’t you turn your back on the crowd

Won’t you send it out to sea

Won’t you make your way 

To the edge of today

 And come sit down with me

 

When you can’t stop scrolling

And smoking and rolling

You got a mind like an angry troll

 

The rain it keeps falling

And no one comes calling

Something bad wants to eat your soul.

 

Won’t you turn your back on the crowd

Won’t you send it out to sea

Won’t you make your way

To the edge of today

And come sit down with me

Do you ever

Look through old glass

See straight lines

Bend and dance

Run your fingers

Over old glass

Like a smooth green landscape

 

Straight lines define

Man made things

The ruler’s edge

The plumb line’s fall

Yes or no

The pendulum’s swing

Straight lines hold the world in

 

You are here

The time is now

You are not the dark sky

After all

We are so small

 

Here’s every safe warm place

The outward curve

Of every living form

The eye of the storm

The swell of my belly

The beat of my heart

My mothers arms

 

The way that we dance

 

Do you ever 

look through old glass

See straight lines

Bend and dance

 

Today my scrap 

Of cool green time

Turns white lines in the car park

Into creatures from the dark

They tear the ground

As they pass

Here they come

Do you remember

When you were a traveller

And you first heard the sirens sing?

Seduced by the call of the tide

That shimmering salt sweet song

Now nothing compares

To what’s gone

 

Did they make you

Did they break you

Did they tear out your heart

Like a treasure

Throw it bleeding but free

Into the sea

To beat in their hands

For ever

 

And are those the scars

Like little white stars

Fading away with the weather

 

Do they still haunt you 

Do they still taunt you

And does it still feel

Like pleasure

 

Do you still hear them in your sleep

Are you still lost in the deep

The sun was high, the air stood still

In the last chance bar in Borderville.

In a deep dark corner sat a sister and brother

Or a pretty girl weeping in the arms of her lover

They gunned down her Papa ‘neath a cruel black star

Then ran for the border in the family car

 

Her pretty red blood stains the dust like a rose

 

Now papa was rotten as a shit filled snake

There was nothing in this world that he wouldn’t just take

Spreading himself all around the town

‘Til he turned on his girl-child so they took him down

Two souls joined with a love so pure

But he might have been her brother they could never be sure

 

Her pretty red blood stains the dust like a rose

 

Right up against it on destruction row

All busted and broke no place to go

Sister and brother planned one last run

To knock off a liquor store with Daddy’s gun

She went in quiet with a cool clear head

But when she came out three men lay dead

 

Her Pretty red blood stains the dust like a rose

 

The deputy sheriff shot her right in the eye

And her pretty lover brother left her there to die

That shit scared boy shoved his foot on the gas

And shot off like a rocket for the Freedom Pass

Her pretty red blood stains the dust like a rose

What happened to the poor boy nobody knows

 

Her pretty red blood stains the dust like a rose

We all of us dream

We all have our doubts

My brother in song

Breath in breath out

 

Maybe you’re the captain 

The pilot or the boat

Wherever you are my brother

Keep your lights afloat

 

Tell them what they need to hear

Tell them all’s well

Tell them about beauty oh

Show them krakens and hell

 

Sail on my Capitano, sail on 

With your dream and your song

Sail on for us all

 

Now we all feel like fakes

And we all have our doubts

Don’t we trade in what remains

When the tide goes out

 

But isn’t that our purpose

Shouldn’t everybody know

That there’s treasure in the waterline

Where the pirates and the children dare to go

 

Sail on my Capitano sail on

With your dream and your song 

Sail on for us all

 

And tonight you’re a tilting Don Quixote

Let’s throw all our empty glasses down

A bunch of drunken Rabalais 

Out on the town

 

And tomorrow when the petals fall

Perhaps you will sing like The General

Sweet Lorca and Baudelaire

On triumph and despair

 

Sail on My Capitano sail on

With your dream and your song sail on sail on

 

And the tide comes in and the tide goes out 

Sail on for us all

My brother in song

Dream on dream on dream on

If my heart were a garden

And you were the briar

You’d be sneaking on in

Like a wild thing

Under the wire

 

If my heart were a garden 

And you were a thorn

You’d be digging in deep 

And wrecking 

My lawn

 

If my heart were a garden

Your misbehaving

Would scramble my paths

And all my pretty

Crazy paving

 

If you think you can come around here

With your brambles and your briars

Think again

 

If you think I’m gonna come around yours

With my little watering can, and those kind of things

Think again

 

I’ve known pain

And I know the cost

Of getting myself lost

In someone else’s Dreams

 

If my heart were a garden

And you were the briar

You’d be getting your own 

damned patch

Down by the wire

 

And one of these days

When I feel like falling

I’ll come a calling

On you

Down by the wire

 

And I’ll love you so sweet

I’ll love you so sweet

All your brambly ways

All your brambly days

I’ll love you so sweet

 

If my heart were a garden

And you were the briar

We are Icebergs you and me

Floating in a freezing sea

Underneath us water flows

And dreams sink like falling snow

 

Strange sea creatures bones and shells

Are sucked down slow and cold and deep

An ocean swells in darkness

Whales dream and krakens sleep

 

Oh come home

 

You think ice might melt for me

Don’t you know that’s not my gift

You chose freezing long ago

And I can’t help you now

 

Oh come home

 

Now ice takes you to have and hold

In her arms of quiet and cold

Fishes claim you for their own 

And softly call you home

 

Oh come home

I know a guy who likes to be a girl sometimes

Lady Electra comes in lace and in pearls.

 

In finery and centre stage, in satins and in silks,

Her skin as sweet as honey and her tongue as soft as milk.

 

In leathers and in feathers so long and dark and lean

Lady Electra is an Electric guitar queen.

 

Ooooh La la la la

 

In scarlet claws and feathers like some fiery crazy bird

She’s Lady Electra and everybody’s heard.

 

Boy, she loves to sparkle and give it to the crowd,

With her guitar slung real low and the top line turned up loud

 

Oooooh la la la la

 

She’s living for the night time, to paint those pouting lips

To shimmy to the music and shake her skinny hips.

 

There’s glitter on her fingers and powder up her nose;

She’s Lady Electra and everybody knows.

 

Ooooh la la la la

 

Lady Electra fears, a teacup full of tears,

To be alone with a needle where nobody hears.

 

But in leathers and in feathers, so long and dark and lean,

My Lady Electra is an Electric guitar queen.

 

The crowd is dissipating. The night is getting tired,

But she’s Lady Electra and still completely wired.

 

Kicking off her high high heels and looking at the dark,

She’s loving how it feels, to be living like a spark.

 

Ooooh la la la la

 

In leathers and in feathers, so long and dark and lean,

Lady Electra is an Electric guitar queen.