

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
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
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
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?
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
Goodbye Baby, Amen
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
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
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
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
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
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