Welfare State

 

We come in pieces of 5

Our press release says we’re jive

But we are the ones

The sons of Mums

Who worked their fingers in half

So everybody could starve to make this possible

‘Cos no-one ever cared about us

 

And this song is the clarion call

And if it means we have to reform

We crashed and burned but we returned

To claim our stakes

 

From the day that we’re born

To the day that we die

We are safe in the arms of the welfare state

And that’s great

 

So everybody

Sing for your life

‘Cos the surgical knife

Will cut you down to the size

Of a single high rise in the sky

 

We’ve been away for a while

But we were never in style

We are the ones etc

 

And we’re so sorry that we’re late

But we are for the welfare state

And the unemployment rate

Just grows and grows

 

From the day that we’re born

To the day that we die

We are safe in the arms of the welfare state

And that’s great

 

So everybody

Sing for your life

‘Cos the surgical knife

Will cut you down to the size

Of a single high rise in the sky

 

We’ve been so long in the tooth

But now we’re longing for you

We curse and swear ‘cos we’re free

Like millionaires on a spree

This is the home of the slave

Decrepit, dull and depraved

We smoke like fags in the bath

We’re only having a laugh

We stand in changing rooms

Now everything is possible and

All we really care for is love

 

We are the filthy flyblown fools

We are the haunted frightened ghouls

We have no homes we have no souls

We are the greasy unwashed scum

We are the paupers on the run

We’ve never done a day’s work in our lives

We sit and watch the world on Jeremy Kyle

We all just dream

 

From the day that we’re born

To the day that we die

We are safe in the arms of the welfare state

And that’s great

 

So everybody

Sing for your life

‘Cos the surgical knife

Will cut you down to the size

Of a single high rise in the sky

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Beautiful Sadness

 

Oh broken super hero

Something in you leads you to the darker side

A church of chrome and neon

Cyborgs dancing beneath a cataclysmic sky

 

In the Beautiful Sadness

Enchanted we fall

Into beautiful sadness

Dying like swans

Deliverance comes

Takes its things and leaves

 

With Rock and roll still ringing in my ears

She sings softly

Let’s fade together you and me

Where the lonely shadows sleep

I lost my love but I did not lose my dignity

 

In the Beautiful Sadness

Enchanted we fall

Into beautiful sadness

Dying like swans

Deliverance comes

Takes its things and leaves

 

Home sweet heartbreak

 

In the Beautiful Sadness

Enchanted we fall

Into beautiful sadness

Dying like swans

Deliverance comes

Takes its things and leaves

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Twins

 

I’m leaving

This helter-skelter calls

And I’m free falling

I’m cutting all the cords that keep you stalling

On rivers of blood I keep on crawling

I’ll see you on the other side

 

I’m a cast of a man gone to sea

I’m a haunted reminder of youth

And I never wash my hands

I like to take a reminder of you when I leave

 

Leave the winter frozen far behind you

Here, take my Daddy’s guns and let fly

Shoot shoot shoot straight up into the sky

Shoot shoot shoot the scorched earth

 

Those feelings

Are they real or just glass ceilings?

Recording the gloom in your room talking

Telling you things that you knew one day

Would never really come true

 

And it’s over before it’s begun

And the bullets have dried in the sun

And the camera’s haunted tunes

Sing a song to remind me of you when I leave

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Nonsense

 

Who put all that nonsense in your head?

All those things you tell yourself

Have no rhyme or reason

Who put all that nonsense in your head?

All those stupid things you say

That you don’t believe in do you?

If you’re truthful I don’t believe you do

 

I’m useless and I’m ugly

No one understands

No one really wants me

I’m far too old to make it now

 

Who put all that nonsense in your head?

All those voices of dissent

All those savage demons

Who put all that nonsense in your head?

Now you’re wishing that you’re dead

You be careful what you wish for

We are nothing more than that that we create

 

Is it sympathy you’re after?

Pity that you crave

I could hold the mirror for you

But what we’ll see is not the same

 

Who put all those walls around your heart?

How I’d love to break them down

But they keep re-building

Who put all those barbed wire fences down?

In the prison of the self

Are you in there somewhere

Dreaming of your freedom?

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Between Two Rivers

 

Between two rivers there's a Calvary

A rolling mill that drains the hills

And did those hobnailed boots on ancient clay

Walk in endless rain and skies of grey

 

Hear the ghosts of mouldy soldiers

Marching through the rain

To find their homes again

Past the churches of the Methodists

To rest their lonely bones

On cenotaphs of stone

 

This is the land I love

Although it sounds so asinine

This is the air I breathe

The only stones I've ever known

Are the paving stones of home

 

Born between the Mersey and the Dee

All human life is here

We live and grow and die

And when I stand upon the cold white shores

I'll raise my hand and wave bye-bye

 

This is the land I love

Although it sounds so asinine

This is the air I breathe

The only stones I've ever known

Are the paving stones of home

 

Between two rivers made of rain

Made in England is their claim

From blood and bones and pain

And political campaigns

 

This is the land I love

Although it sounds so asinine

This is the air I breathe

The only stones I've ever known

Are the paving stones of home

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Goodbye Baby, Amen

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Bang…there goes another time bomb

Stuck inside the minefield of these words

They fall like fairground targets

Centred on the page they might explode

 

Was it something I said?

Sorry, but sometimes words are not enough

Never never enough

 

And now it’s over to you

Life is like a game of chess, a bore

Nothing more

And so what can you do

When there’s nothing to believe in any more

We’re very poor

 

Boom…inside these lines a war zone

As one man fights the same man writes these words

They spark like fatal fireworks

Tracers touch the paper blue for you

 

I’m having another heart attack

Sorry, it’s so pathetic, it’s a lie

It’s not a crime

 

And now it’s over to you

Pull the pin and throw it over there

Everybody beware

And so what can you do

Words can kill with no free will, the Lord’s Prayer

The nom de guerre

 

 

On this page these words will stop us going wrong

In this book one look and we can all belong lifelong

Singing a religious song

 

Christ and his insane disciples

Resting in the vestibule of

Faith and hope and blind devotion

You’ll never get to heaven without reason, doubt and Darwin Amen

 

Takes us all further from the words

Will take us nearer to the bloody truth, or George Herman Ruth

 

And now it’s over to you

Preach a sermon that only we can hear and make it clear

And so it’s over to you

Make it something we all can understand

Nothing grand

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Deux Ex Natura

 

Hearing the call of the wild world

Winding its way

Through the cracks in the pavements

That we laid

All of the brambles that strangle

Trees taken hold

In visions of Eden overgrown

 

Crawling up through the gloaming

From primordial seas

Pompeii mosaics are found within reach

 

Nothing we’re building will last

No, nothing we’ve done will survive

 

The push of nostalgia

That yearning for home

The pull of the chorus

The ebb and the flow

All possible futures we’ll never know

It ends where it ends

It goes how it goes

 

History whispers like rust in the sun

So much confusion

So much left undone

 

Nothing etc

 

In cellophane circles see the plankton dance

Their dividing chances

Fine romances

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Long Way Home

 

I've been running for a thousand years

I don't know how far we've come

Across a vast expense of universe

To leave behind a dying sun

 

The tracks of time stretch through eternity

Where did we come off the rails?

You sent me postcards from the kitchen sink

And I read them every day

 

It's a long way home

Such a long way home

It's a long way home

Won't you keep the fire the fire burning

When I'm gone

Won't you keep the fire burning

Till I get home

 

Why, the sky looks beautiful tonight

Flamingo pink and powder blue

Evoking deep and distant memories

Always coming back to you

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It's a long way home

Such a long way home

It's a long way home

Won't you keep the fire the fire burning

When I'm gone

Won't you keep the fire burning

Till I get home

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Glitter Box

 

One word from these cold lips

And the truth will scare

Death waits like a dead weight

In the clear night air

 

And did we almost lose our way

Behind the grey stone leaders

Or did we merely grab that beat

 

It seems like we always lose our way

Let down round town and crying

Plunged through a tide of blood lust

Those colonisers bed and

 

Beat me

Treat me like a lonely girl

Drill me

Then kill me

I swear I’ll never tell

 

We almost died along the way

Appearing on a game show

Could be the greatest thing we did

 

Our hands can sketch the stars but

These hands can crush your manhood

You’ve never had it so good

Be careful you might fall in

 

Love the bones of ancient London

Let fossarians remind them

Here we represent the NUM

And we were hunted by our friends and neighbours

Fences daubed with cruel intentions

We pick the scabs while scratching at the scars

And we’ve been haunted by malefic masons

Raining down on river basins

Rhododendrons lapping at their feet

And those without the means, the cash converters

Wait for news outside the flats where

Paedophiles and killers wait for us, you’ll find me

 

Out there in the night air

I’m walking home

Keys clutched

Pleading don’t touch

You know this bird can kill

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Sovereign

​

Stains grow upon a sovereign soul

It spreads down and out

And covers flesh and bones and

Brings life to the fecund few

 

Under my skin and under your skin

We smell Bad Lands and

Rotting sweat glands

 

And so the strangers come and when they leave

They leave you alone

Tramline tears tear tracing paper laces

Down your face

 

Purge your sins

Lowly stick thin things

We are unclean

 

All this mess and blood and grime and snail slime makes life

Puritans wash clean their filthy rotten souls

Nothing grows

 

God is love

Love is dirt unclean

 

Let me out

Hear me shout unclean

 

And if I fall

Please let me fall

Between your legs

Beneath your beds while you lie

I will whisper this chant while I finger your rosary

Celibate dreams

Never enough

This salacious old mind

Is aching to find

Purity

In a world left behind

 

It’s so unjust

The great unwashed

Will drip the drops of their dreams in the soil and the streams

In the hope that they’ll grow

In the hearts and the minds

Of all mankind

With sovereign souls just like mine

 

There is no good

There is no bad

Everything’s true

It’s all allowed

But I’m just a man

Dripping with sin

With legions of lesions

Ripping my skin

 

A sovereign soul

With a sovereign heart

Finding all the repetitive strains of familiar refrains

In the songs full of life

 

This malady

Is taking me over again

Like heat from a flame

It’s in the dirt

Inside your skirt

It squirts and it spurts like a vein all the sticky remains of your love

 

This is what makes us

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