We keep on getting there
We'll keep on until we do
I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you
Right now this could be anywhere
We keep on getting there
Will we never arrive?
And if we ever do, will we still be alive?
They say, we're beyond repair
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
Our nerves always raw as it was long ago
We've been here before
Never, never again we swear
We keep on getting there
The tribe time forgot
We can hardly wait whether we want to or not
You'll never catch us unaware
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
We're going with the flow
For the likes of us
There's nowhere else to go
We keep on getting there
There's no going back
We move from sign to sign
Ahead of attack
On a withered wing
With a one word prayer
It's more than
I thought I could ever bear
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
We keep on getting there
Can you put a price upon
Every lingering breath
Can you work it out and say
What every minute's worth
Time is always money
And you're such a very heavy spender
You're squeaky clean
You're out of legal tender
Then...
Certainty
It's so sexy
You're too cold to drop
You could be eating
Ciba Geigy goat cheese
You need to tell someone
To tell you when to stop
There's only ever been
One soft option
One blank check
One deep breath
To take you up to the neck
You need more
I'll get you some
See me okay
With Rimbaud bubblegum
So much goes to Sally
Oh brutal bimbo beauty
Nonsensically sublime
This hammy Armageddon
Turns out to be yours and mine
Your face is just the ticket to everything
I ever wanted to see
Your face is just the ticket to everything
I was ever required to be
Oh sweet subtle nothing
Flower of my will
Your physical beauty
Is making me physically ill
I turn up again fantastically resplendent
Naked, they pack them into the hilt
Funny thing is
The theater hasn't even been built
I was up to absolute beauty
Playing it by my own book
Where there's no justice in matters of beauty
It's stupid to even look
But I held on to my ticket
I'd sit in front of it and stare
Have pity on me
The window is wobbling
Rain no doubt
Four part water, one part poison
I really could do without
You can have my Picasso
Please lie down
Your funerary nakedness remains
Under your successful dress and gown
Look in the smoking mirror
You're a thinking flame
Into your silence
I'll introduce a straight rain
From Bergamot to Tonka
On a sea breeze of turpentine
A sulfur rose with hammer-dressed eyes
A little light upstairs
At a slumber party poorly lit
A Vaseline moon and would be gems
You sleep on it
You're blinding me with rescue flares
You can have my Picasso
Please lie down
Your funerary nakedness remains
The atomic structure
Of this caress
Massive, silent and numb
As light as consciousness
The past is as silent
As the present is ancient
Tirelessly evil
Weary and patient
Colorful killer, brief cafe
Real ice cream and power
Baby Mogul, mummy's back
To abhor and devour
Once upon a time
Once upon a turbine
Flying the world
I was thinking of phoning
the richest woman in the town
a radio was playing nonsense
and yes,
the cigarette machine is broken down
watch yourself now
the lino's greasy
it could surely kill
ever since they fixed the light in here
this place has gone downhill
And now I'm running
up the aisle
of an endless train
and when I try to sleep
I dream the very same
I am nothing
becoming nothing
and nothing's to be done
then I'm falling in love
with Lady 21
Press me to her tumbling beauty
oh gorgeous siren wraith
I may never know what hit me
but I'll leap with all of my faith
I'll have her way with me
and be delivered as it occurs
she'll be smiling so happily
I'll break my body on hers
I'll break my body on hers
Put out the fetch-candle
if you're coming through
and be my familiar spirit
if you want to
deliver me unto my desire
deliver me unto my desire
I'm up on the heights
";Ces quelques pas du palier a la chambre d'Albertine, ces
quelques pas que person ne ne pouvait plus arreter, je les fis avec
delices, avec prudence, comme plonge dans un element
nouveau, comme si en avancant j'avais lentement deplace
du bonheur, et en meme temps avec un sentiment inconnu de
toute-puissance, et d'entrer enfin dans un heritage qui
m'eut de tout temps appartenu.";*
A winter's night
the Northern Quay
the Isle of Dogs
the rabid one is me
you sip your drink
undismayed
and I just said
";These days my heart seems to be a kind of hand grenade";
Nothing in the air tugs at the tower blocks
as you raise your finger and pull the pin
nothing much on earth moves down these desolating docks
do you really think you just scratched your chin?
But you were never Albertine
and I was never poor Marcel
who were you that time round,
Mademoiselle?
Monsieur a peur du parfum des princesses
And now I act up
and you've a winning frown
I've contracted love
as I'm devoured down
blame my deadening intensity
and tell me how you got the part in this
my own illicit agony
I lay it on pretty thick
you spread yourself pretty thin
ducking and dividing under every skin
and my final words as you get up and leave
";If you're free as air, I don't want to breathe";
Good evening,
I am the madman in love with your daughter
we need to talk
just you and me
I saw her last in Eden
or some other Far Eastern quarter
where the river snakes its way out to sea
But you were never Albertine
and I was never poor Marcel
who were you that time round,
Mademoiselle?
* Marcel Proust - A L'Ombre des Jeunes Filles en Fleurs
Those few steps from the landing to Albertine's door,
those few steps which no one now could prevent my
taking, I took with delight, with prudence, as though
plunged into a new and strange element, as if in going
forward I had been gently displacing the liquid stream
of happiness, and at the same time with a strange feeling
of absolute power, and of entering at length into an
inheritance which had belonged to me from all time.
Translated by C K Scott Moncrieff
We sleep in the city of dreams
we have settled under the dust
we take 40,000 winks
on the threshold of
unanswerable lust
God's gone back to heaven
he's deserted us
but what the hell
he never understood us anyway
Have our souls pined away?
have we sowed our seed in vain?
has he set his face against us
and now shall we be slain?
this is the Stone Age of our desire
these are our formative years
don't let them say the devil
slaked his raging thirst
on our filthy tears
God's gone back to heaven
he's deserted us
but what the hell
he never understood us anyway
We simply may be evil
I don't care if it's true
we simply may be evil
I don't care if it's true
I'm going to try anything, try anything
because I really want you
I've got to have everything, have everything
because I really really need to
God's gone back to heaven
he's deserted us
but what the hell
Our curious leader knows what's best
How we're signal bound now to existential sex
Our curious leader has such a lovely daughter
We wash their feet and quench our thirst with the same water
Our curious leader, he's never there
He's playing second fiddle to sumptuous despair
Our curious leader is covered in deep sin
And when I grow up you know, I want to be like him
Our curious leader reads every dream
In the church of man and bomb and beast and TV and machine
The usual angels will add to your failures
Stand up, be counted, buy Bailey's Trailers
Our curious leader has ransacked the loft
He's under the impression we have all gone soft
Our curious leader has emptied the larder
Its shape tells us plainly
time inside is curved
it holds Elvis Presley's body
perfectly preserved
When Kennedy came with Monroe
late in '55
the senator carved their names
by the overdrive
it's an accident of nature
designed by architects
NASA built it from an alloy
they'd stolen from the Czechs
The Beast Box is dreaming
what you believe
The replica at Disneyland
in the big exhibition hall
it's correct to the last nut and bolt
it's nothing like it at all
if a pregnant woman touches it
the child will be shy
and if you glimpse it once
you eventually die
The Beast Box is dreaming
what you believe
In a dream I'm inside
with my kid brother
there's scenes of awful suffering
we're avoiding looking at each other
then he's pointing to the handrail
it's long, of burnished chrome
saying in that stupid voice of his
";Some of this would look good
in the bathroom back home";
Freemasons talk about it all the time
their hands at funny angles
in moonlight it resembles
a biscuit tin that dangles
The Beast Box is dreaming
what you believe
Juice in the front
juice in the back
a cardboard gothic frame
they sold it off for scrap last year
to our eternal shame
I am the public highway, baby
I'm no place for pretence or protocol
I could take you
By way of a garden city
I could run you along
The Libido del Sol
I am this street now
I am the street where you live
See me from your window
And be a fugitive
Back of beyond the horizon
I cut and stretch
The outer space of open air
If there's somewhere
You just have to be, babe
Oh let me be your thoroughfare
I am this street now
I am the street where you live
See me from your window
And be a fugitive
There is a pale swamp
A glacier
Waxy crystal car
And the smell of wood smoke
Is on the evening breeze
And your engine's humming
Like a pleasure boat
In the distance of the heat
Tearing the blossom off the trees
We pass by Pere Lachaise
And broken fences
We pass hospitals
In the San Fernando Valley
And all of my tricks
And turns and inclinations
You can't find them in your Rand McNally
Live now, live a thousand other lives
Live now, and learn the secret names of time
Live now, all at once and forever
Live now, and you'll be all mine
I am this street now
I am the street where you live
See me from your window
Candice Morganauer's gone to join
The quick and the dead clever
Tonight we're seeing her final film
Her crowning endeavor
She washed herself for years
In mouthwatering praise
But, we all know she never grew up
She just shrank sideways
Yesterday was fine, I've forgotten it somehow
Last week wouldn't even show up on radar now
Yesterday was fine, I've [Incomprehensible] it somehow
Last week wouldn't even show up on radar now
Last week wouldn't even show up on radar now
Winnie the obscure
He's weighing his own heart
He's been sleeping like Calvin Coolidge
To keep himself apart
And now he's crying
"Old Drella is dead and I, I didn't feel a thing"
And Jude the Pooh with a landslide smile, replies
"All the more power to him"
Under the roofs and the gutters up above
Even the sparrows are burning up with human love
Under the roofs and the gutters up above
Even the sparrows are burning up with human love
Even the sparrows are burning up with human love
Night of the light, it's falling over Gringley-On-The-Hill
Powders are on the plantation wind over Dallowgill
We reach the doors to the doubtful city
They close as if in pain
Out on Howard Devoto Boulevard
I remember you and me, we're kissing in the rain
And it's all so gone and this could never last
I'll stay with you, I'll stay with you against the past
It's gone, it could never last
I'll stay with you, I'll stay with you against the past
I'll stay with you against the past
I'll stay with you against the past
A massive moon
A jumped-up ape
I kiss the earth and choke
And make it to Gatwick
With a drill
And ten red roses
I slip and fall
A banana skin
Break out my heart
Only waving
This night's fine
And all is fair
In love
And the war within me raging
You kill me off in theory
Yhen you pardon me for breathing
Yhe sweet smell of the street
It was so forgiving
I threw everything at you
My misery, my joy and truth
My haemorrhaging time
You probably don't remember me
Et in Arcadia ego
My feelings did so very much for you
I threw nearly everything at you
My misery, my joy and truth
My haemorrhaging time
And my piecemeal grief
And all I was in other eyes
I described it as I did
I tried to find the words to buy you
Mut through to your pretty bones like kindness
Mou didn't love me with a vengeance
It was always coming true
Am I lucky to be alive, my friend?
I've been expecting you
You probably don't remember me
The bad old days and so on
Back when there was something wrong with love
Little room, jumped-up ape
I kiss the floor and joke
"You're not the only child round here"
In seaweed paint I dance for you
Round the ruins, round the view
The Helen & Menelaus Snack Bar
Then you killed me off in theory
Et in Arcadia ego
My feelings did so very much for you
The pain is so extraordinary
This pain in all its story tells me
Pain's the best all purpose preservative
You were one of my better creations
Everything's permitted I hereby swear
I cannot change this is how I see it
In these words not other words
Nor at other times nor otherwise
Nor otherwise nor otherwise
You didn't love me with a vengeance
It was always coming true
Am I lucky to be alive, my friend?
I copy love really badly more often than not
All too little I've wanted an awful lot
So I keep blowing you up, you keep coming apart
It's this dirty big, dirty great, dirty beating heart
Dirty beating heart, I love my love for you
Dirty beating heart, string me along
Dirty beating heart, you are like naked cable
You're stale, unstable
Dirty beating heart, my carousel
I'm on the trail of vapors, down a fancy colonnade
Where ghosts of stories parade
Accept this wanton homage, I love my love for you
I am falling off a mountain without a view
Dirty beating heart, I love my love for you
Dirty beating heart, string me along
Dirty beating heart, you are like naked cable
You're stale, unstable
Dirty beating heart, my carousel
Dirty beating heart
(I really need to carry on)
Dirty beating heart
(I know all too well)
Dirty beating heart
(Wanton homage, it's given gladly)
(You copy love so badly)
Dirty beating heart
(How you string me along)
Dirty beating heart
My dirty beating heart
My dirty beating heart
My dirty beating heart
My dirty beating heart
Love my dirty beating, dirty beating
That I'm afraid and I'm not afraid, is that
Why cut it fine in a ludicrous hat
My prick, my very spirit
My prick, my very spirit
My very stupid blood
Once lit the slow dynamite of habit
For the genius of love
Burn your bridges, burn your boats
Smell the life you never had
Why cut it fine in a ludicrous hat
Burn your bridges, burn your boats
Smell the life you never had
Oh I leave to you
The rubbish of my love
Oh my sunken love
I leave to you
The rubbish of my love
My nyktomorphic love
Today I bury my love alive
Today I bury my love alive
I bury my love alive
Under the rubble of my estate
I bury my love alive
Under the rubble of my estate
And she gained on me
As I gave up
In the distance
Out of sight
Down a valley
Where mist was hanging
In a pink and a golden light
In a pink and golden light
I bury my love alive
Under the rubble of my estate
She said
"we could try getting lonely
On an altogether higher spiritual plane"
I said
"if it's all the same to you
I can't be bothered with that again"
Oh I leave to you
The rubbish of my love
Oh my sunken love
Oh I leave to you
The rubbish of my love
My nyktomorphic love
It's opening night
Let's give them their money's worth
May this show run and run
Till it falls off the edge of the earth
Put on your make-up
Powder puff adder of mine
Dusk is upon us
Switch on that shining sign
I am a major prophet
I'm heaven and hell bent strong
I am the height of a sign
Wide of the mark
Deep as the amazon
I must impress on them
This opportunity
It'll be too late
By the time they put me on tv
I feel sharp
I feel blunt
A precision instrument
I really gleam
Watch me bite on a bullet
And spit out a limousine
I am a major prophet
I'm heaven and hell bent strong
I am the height of a sign
Wide of the mark
Deep as the amazon
Feel my wild sadness blowing down
Feel my wild sadness blowing
All the way down
I stand before you
In full possession of the facts
I make no use of effects
No use for clever counterbalancing acts
I've broken every bone of meaning
In this body and this soul
I've bought knowledge
At the cost of a complete loss of self-control
All the truth you can bear
Is yours to take away tonight
- the longer you leave it
- the more there's to leave
Like you, I once saw
Those pretty colours in black and white
- you've got to get it over with
- stop being naive
Strangers to truth and to fiction
You will remain
- if I meet you at the fountainhead
- I'll win you downstream
Walk away if you like
You've only yourself to blame
- I'm not talking eyewash
- I'm talking strychnine
I am a major prophet
I'm heaven and hell bent strong
I am the height of a sign
Wide of the mark
Deep as the amazon
And I simply may be evil
By the Egyptian Gate
I wait in my penance vest
I've never been so lost before
So I can't help myself possessed
I want to be torn through
The material of your flesh
Your husband lies unconscious
On Samuda's precipice
I drink in the dead night air
And your astringent kiss
She's slovenly lovely
He's a moth over opium
So long time stone cold sober
Now marked down for delirium
Her perfume draws his blood out
And back to this asylum slum
One man, one woman
Walk around Newington Green
The worst case of resemblance
In N16
I hate having to desire you
Hate feeling this again
I hate having to desire you
In common with other men
My fellow-creature-gods look out
To be mutually blessed
This therapeutic age leaves them cold
So fashionably distressed
But I just want to be torn through
I turned to her and I said
We'll hurl my biography
into this whirling pool
see which way the blue ink runs
on an ocean of lenses
I'm drifting like a fool
smouldering focus of those instant suns
And all of these
cause and effect motion pictures
impossible to avoid
a single image of me
it's living
on a whole subcontinent of celluloid
You'll like me
you're like me
you'll recognise my name
you'll like me
you're like me
have a picture of me
pointing out of frame
now go ...
The magnifying circus
the magnifying circus
a wealth of detail is going cheap
cause and error
trial and effect
isn't it enough to put you all to sleep?
But my likeness
it's to your liking
so I won't stay away
I'll be back long before you know it
to dazzle you again
I daresay
You'll like me
you're like me
you'll turn the page and watch
your kids are eating effigies of me
fluorescent butterscotch
There's a shimmering lake of real lives
it's a backdrop
it's an afterthought
tell rite, will there be a dressing room
and will there be shadows at the airport?
This set is hotter than the Holy Land
it all beats down from above
long golden weeks of close-ups
cool and convincing shows of love
You'll like me
you're like me
you'll recognise my name
you'll like me
you're like me
have a picture of me
pointing out of frame
You'll like me
you're like me
you'll turn the page and watch
your kids are eating effigies of me
fluorescent butterscotch
If one life has been saved
by this photography session
The beast box
The beast box
Elvis Presley's body perfectly preserved
There's a lot of stories going around
I don't think it's right
Are the neighbors really thinking
Like you and me?
I woke up this morning
As clear as a bell on Judgment Day
I think it came open yesterday
They've opened the beast box, haven't they?
They've upset the beast box, haven't they?
Beast box
Beast box
Beast box
In this dream I'm inside the beast box with my kid brother
And there are all these scenes of terrible suffering going on
And I'm starting to feel really, really ill
In a dream I'm inside
I'm with my kid brother
There are scenes of awful suffering
We're avoiding looking at each other
Then he's pointing to the handrail
It's long of burnished chrome
And saying in that stupid voice of his
Some of this would look really good
In the bathroom back home
I woke up this morning
As clear as a bell on Judgment Day
They've upset the beast box
They've opened the beast box, haven't they?
Beast box
Beast box
You keep forgetting the lines, the lines that show
Where you were bound long ago
Animal in the mirror
Live out another mise en scène
Somebody else's summer again
Animal in the mirror
And stop this pretending, there's plenty of time
All your happy endings, will they never find
Animal in the mirror?
Excited night, flickering trade
A bag of nerves on a balustrade
Animal in the mirror
Slow dissolve in tears, tears that chart
How we're the same, the same worlds apart
Animal in the mirror
Stop this pretending, there's plenty of time
All your happy endings, will they never find
Animal in the mirror?
"Oh Lord", I spoke up this morning
I had nothing to say
Above the hum of another
Raw and exquisite day
Lord, I broke up this morning
I rose in pieces and dreams
I was running late and scared in Paris
In springtime and fog juice streams
Forget your lines, the lines that show
Where you were bound long ago
Animal in the mirror
Slow dissolve in tears that chart
How we're the same, the same worlds apart
Animal in the mirror
After a fashion, after a fall
After reality, after all
Animal in the mirror
Stop this pretending, there's plenty of time
All your happy endings, will they never find
Lyin awake all night
I just can't seem to sleep these days
I hear voices call in my mind
But I can't hear what they say
Now there is a sorrow
That always comes my way
But you never really know
You never really know
Watch out. Someone's gonna get me
I know it's never gonna let me
That's just the way it tends to be these days
I try, it's never gonna let me
I wish that it wouldn't come and get me
That's just the way it tends to be these days
Now there is no simple way
To change the things that I have been
You cannot just cage a bird
And expect it to fly free
That always comes my way
But you never really know
You never really know
Watch out. Someone's gonna get me
I know it's never gonna let me
That's just the way it tends to be these days
I try, it's never gonna let me
I wish that it wouldn't come and get me
That's just the way it tends to be these days
Now it's not easy
With the things you know
To try to please me
But you never really know
You never really know
Watch out. Someone's gonna get me
I know it's never gonna let me
That's just the way it tends to be these days
I try, it's never gonna let me
I wish that it wouldn't come and get me
That's just the way it tends to be these days
These days, these days
I'm not going down on my knees,
Begging you to adore me
Cant you see its misery
And torture for me
When Im misunderstood
Try as hard as you can, Ive tried as hard as I could
To make you see
How important it is for me
Here is a plea
From my heart to you
Nobody knows me
As well as you do
You know how hard it is for me
To shake the disease
That takes hold of my tongue
In situations like these
Understand me (x3)
Some people have to be
Permanently together
Lovers devoted to
Each other forever
Now I've got things to do
And Ive said before that I know you have too
When Im not there
In spirit I'll be there
Here is a plea
From my heart to you
Nobody knows me
As well as you do
You know how hard it is for me
To shake the disease
That takes hold of my tongue
In situations like these
