She didn't answer the letters
She didn't return my calls
All the sweet nothings, deep meaning and pleadings
still whisper around in the lines running north

She didn't come to the playground
She didn't pick up the phone
So all that I think about coming to England
is lost in the heartaches of lines running north

Can't you hear?
Can't you hear?
Can't you hear?
Can't you hear?

She's in a car in the country
I'm in a house in the town
She doesn't know of those telegram notes
Of yelling and swearing and crying

Can't you hear?
Can't you hear?
I'm talking to nothing but time
I'm talking to you in the lines running north

Heard Through A Wall

Like it or not you'll see my face soon
I'll force my way up into your room
the things I say will soon make you swoon
I'll point to the sun and say it's the moon

So you needn't fret, I'll get in your life yet
Make you sit back and enjoy the touch of a boy
Lie over relaxed with your hand on your lap
Just give me some time so I can work on your spine.

I'll turn into jelly by being so kind
I'll love you to death before your first grasp for breath
I'll open your doors and take what I find
Your heart is gold it's just a matter of time

Give me that gold and I'll melt it down
Give me the tears that I took from your eye
You are not getting so far or going back home
Without regretting that I got your backbone
I'll turn you into a lovelump chum
Come on submit, why not become one
It's just a matter of time

Hammering Heart

I suppose love lives in a dustbin behind the garden wall
you have to grovel on the ground and be pretty disgusting
to find it at all
And I suppose that it grows on you
standing there with no clothes on,
and I suppose because there's beautiful girls in this town
I'll stay here till I've chosen one.
I suppose life's like a hunt, really: the hounds have fun
until the fox gets bagged
And not one girl in this town will ever fall in love with me
they'll get dragged

Her heart speaks to me; says the room the room the room
beneath her dress, and I suppose that it beats for me
like a hammering moon pulling tides through her chest
suppose she says that she owes me
all that she owns and all that she is
it seems to me I suppose that her heart's not enough
and her love is a swizz

So suppose love lives in a mansion
how the hell do I get over the wall?
And if my rope's not stretched the right tension
I won't cross this grand canyon at all
And I suppose that it grows like a tumor, spreads like a rumor
like the grass grows and inch every day
And I suppose that before I even know it, the tide will start flowing
and the drum beneath my jacket will say

You know you need her everyday
She is the moon and she showed me her face
She is the house and she opened the gates

Former Owner

So who was first? Obviously not me
She's locked up inside herself
and I can't get anything free
So won't somebody tell me please
why the former owner always keeps the keys

There's no bubbles to burst
No bursting out crying nor dying of thirst
She's utterly tied to somebody else
and it seems he got there first
And No, I'm not untying
the reins around her neck that she feels
and I won't try to prise out of her the truth anymore
when she lies about the things that she sees
Because the former owner always keeps the keys

There's no calling
"Come here, you're necessary to me."
There's no excitement in her face when I implore
"Corrupt me and confess to me some more."
And when we hear trees falling or see people disappearing
Her emotions won't be reached or released,
Because the former owner is keeping the keys

Like a ticket inspector running for a bus
Irony's revenge surrounds us And it's ironic that he promised you he'd never let you go
When he's left you used-up and disturbed
And I said "Just as the early bird catches the worm
The early cat catches the bird"
But that former owner is keeping his word

Sticks And Stones Girl

Here I am, hardly breathing in at all
I cough when I can and that's about all
I am this man and though I turn the tape
To a happier song, my face can't find a smile
because it's been looking too long

You arrive like a locust swarm
You devastated me and now when you leave the room
My heart, head, hands and all forms
go from red hot blood to bone dry and lukewarm
You're the sticks and stones, girl
You're the fire and flames
I might be half-dead and half-born girl
but whales start singing when I hear your name

I'm heaped with hate like acid rain, nothing can
restrain the loathing and disgust I have and
there is no one I distrust more than the happy
whores who buy and trade, crawling on all fours
backwards into holes and fires that wealth and
self-congratulations made

You're the sticks and stones, girl
You're the fire and flames
you're the punishment, the pleasure
the employment and the leisure
You're the sweet conversation and the cutting names

Heart, head, hands and all forms
went from red hot blood to bone dry and lukewarn
Whales stopped singing and the ships were bringing in
Toadstools and moss instead of sugarbeet and corn
And all the girls in the world were distorted and deformed
when the first leech was let loose
and my jealousy was born

You're the sticks and stones girl
You're the fire and flames

Deceive Yourself (In Ignorant Heaven)

The world and the surrounding stars
might change completely in the space of an hour
but not an eclipse of the sky nor a colliding car
will turn me back now that I've come this far
Not a shotgun blast nor a shooting star
will bring her down from her stubborn tower

It's a kind of madness, it's a kind of sin
To live in the state of mind I've been living in
Her face imprinted on my sight
Her voice resounding in my skull at night
If there is a living goddess on Earth
It must be her from the heaven highlife
It takes this girl to realise what you're worth
and I'm worth nothing if she's worth more than my life

But there's more to me than simple devotion
I won't just crawl at her feet and utter a plea
And if she refused I wouldn't walk into the ocean
Just because my world was left all out at sea

So it was in this cafe when we eventually met
And I wished I had sunglasses and smoked cigarettes

The world and the surrounding stars
They change completely in the space of an hour
When over the table and two cups of tea
She told me she felt the same way about me
And not an eclipse of the sky nor a colliding car
could have shaken our attention from each other's face
As we both stepped down from our stubborn towers
We jump into the ignorant heaven that is the lover's place

I Was Here

Though the coffins are calling I'm not coming
I'm too young to listen and I'm still scrawling on
see-saws and slides, skipping ropes and swings,
Toothpaste and trousers, watches and wedding rings
She shouted to me under the juggernaut roar,
"This is the Bad Life, what are we here for?"
And wonderful world why are you full
of endless monotony and tiresome fools?
These people that surrounded me were damaged and done
and we were as compatible as swimming pools and slums
And why are you grinning from ear to ear,
Isn't this the Bad Life?

Though there was leads in the petrol and bacteria in the beer
Though she moved away and left me hopeless,
I was writing I Was Here

She said this Bad Life that I'm leading is deceiving and depriving me
I said why don't you try relieving me, while she was reading
I was stealing from the library

And sweetness and sadness lived in sin
with built-in indigestion the new buildings held their stomachs in
Goodness and Badness were hardly anything
I wanted to love her but she was never in

Though they were taking out tongues in the land of the gun
though the sweating was getting near Though her head was hung saying I did not become her,
I keep writing I Was Here

Though the dusts were growing in my lungs and some
were turning backs on the babies turning blue
And I adore you but before you say "I adore you too"
Say I Was Here, and so were you

Crows In The Wheatfield

Making your way through an orangepeel orchard
Tracing your day from disillusioned to debauched
and Spring passed quickly below the rotten elm tree
You weren't kissed there you were pissed in the lavatory
And shaving is something that you grew out of
and it would take a heat wave to get you to take your jacket off

You hang around the square watching someone kick the boys in
With a hand through your hair as if to comb out the poison
Sing some stupid song about crows in the wheatfield
It's been so long since you saw crows in the wheatfied

And don't forget that day you remembered
When you saw fish swim in the sewage system river
And keep revising that picture in your mind
When you left home and the crow's behind
and the Apples were sweet and summers were long
digging in your bare feet on a short yellow lawn
You used to stifle a smile or forget not to yawn
Do all the things that men do when they're To the River Born

With fifty-five pense between his two fingers
And a swirling head as the feeling of hunger lingers
Sing some stupid songs about crows in the wheatfield
It's been so long since you saw crows in the wheatfield
Sing some stupid song about crows in the wheatfield
You knew all along you were a crow in the wheatfield

Keepers

I have overloved you and overseen you
and now you're refusing the gifts that I bring you
My hands have been clasping my hot head and asking
"If she submits to me, will she be my property?"
You may be bleeding but you're not dying
though you are dying to go
Stop teasing me
I'm not seeing you leaving me

Here is a party full of my friends
and here is a cup being filled up to be drunk again
We are just starting luxurious lives
to be drunkards and diddymen
making Gulf wars and battered wives
Now I may be pleading
but there's no love nor fear in my eyes
Just greediness
I'm not seeing this sleeping dog lie

I am the wild horses who will drag you away
I am the locked door who can make you stay
And I will act the man in almost anyway I can
So I can keep keep keep you

So wake up you pretty thing to a wonderful home
Where we while away the happy Saturdays
between the television and the telephone
And I stroke your head just to feel what I own whispering
"Will you be my property, and not my disability?"
And why are you craving
To be free from love's slavery
Stop teasing me
Love's not letting go

I am the child calling you to come back and play
I am the concert hall in which you hear me say
I'll act a man in almost anyway I can
So I can keep keep keep you even though you may not understand
I am the bee and you are the pollen
I am the keeper you are the lion
I am the holes down which you would have fallen
If I had not been the hand who came and beckoned you

(And I'm not seeing this sleeping dog lie)

Maybe you were born wrong
But why am I picking holes in you
when it's holes that we all come from?
Maybe I was born strong
To stop love from overtaking me
To stop love from living too long
And you may be bleeding
and leading me to the blood flow
But sleep tight tonight lions
This keeper's never letting go

Ceasefire

Good luck and lost love's knife
cut a path leading through my life
I weave through the gusts of change
as a kite might through the sky
I feel down and degraded
like I felt when you and me began to tire
And we stopped long ago
But I thought it was just ceasefire

I can leave the past behind like any normal man can do
But what I find most of the time
Is that I have been left behind you
I can feel time pushing me forward
so what does it matter what direction I'm pointed in?
No one else used to sing my sad chorus
Now I feel that they too have joined in

Bad luck and lucky breaks
cut paths right through our lives
We follow the blind man's bluff
like lorrys follow white lines in the night
And by our nature we are kept alone
No matter haw long your nails
you can't cut out of the womb
And if I can't crash off-course
You must be marooned
and we will not be able to go back to
the source of this wound

Breaking Bread

All day long, sweeping up the dead pigeons from the pavement
After the long dim dawn
He remembered how she pulled him from disaster into laughter

Well it didn't take long for him to be consumed
and he turned around and said as her caressing resumed
"We once were close but now we're both marooned,
and what was once a stirring melody is now a distant tune."
She said "You angel, you flower, you're powerful."
but he felt no feelings but his head hot and belly full
and basking in the sun he only feels a gas fire
and he sees no apparent difference between the chimney and the church spire
He says: "This garden of roses, is overgrown with weeds,
and where the great west river flows I can see nothing but pebbles and reeds."

All day long she stuck his nose into Siberia
and dragged him through Hong Kong
till she said "You carrier, you coward, you're pitiful,
feeling less and less is just an easy way of doing more wrong."

Out In The Wind

All I know, is that the globe is flat not round
And we are fenced in
Between these horizons lie a hundred houses
Crowded round the moon
And it seems you're in my dreams but I haven't seen
You in my room
And you and I out in the wind
Between the horizons that fence us in

And all I know that if to pray is not proud
I should be screaming out loud for you
Like the slow rolling clouds that bring the thunder From the ground beneath
But my shaking hands which were not planned gave me away
Before I could speak
So, if I could I know what I should do
I should be screaming out loud for you

All I know is that on an earth that's flat
Lost people will come back
And on top of that there's the fact
That history repeats itself
Like new clouds bring the same old rain
And I must forget how my hand shook
When I scribbled down your name
So, all I know is that on an earth that's flat
We'll meet again

So while you're stealing your wages
And doing your time
Remember, I'm stealing kisses from a bottle of wine
I know the darkness running down on me
With a fake sarcastic grin
You and I are still out in the wind
Out in the wind

So someday, where'll I be, smiling at a wife
Like she's a stranger to me
And looking back, still fenced in
We're likely wishing we were both out in the wind again
Where a star could get stuck on a mirror
Where the moon might get caught in a tree
Well anything can happen
And where everything must be
Where the thunder will go over and you'd be screaming
Out loud for me

All I know is that on an earth that's flat lost people will come by
And on top of that there's the fact that history repeats itself
Like new clouds bring the same old rain
And I just regret missing that waiting train
That someone had uncoupled again
All I know is that on an earth that's flat
We'll meet again

So while you're stealing your wages
And doing your time
Remember, I'm stealing kisses from a bottle of wine
I know the darkness running down on me
With a fake sarcastic grin
You and I are still out in the wind
Out in the wind

Charlie's Bar

There will be snow on the highway tonight
Gonna be hard to keep them steers alive
Besides the cold I don't know
What's so special bout tonight
Just one more December 25

They call it Christmas in Milwaukee
They call it Yuletide in Oyster Bay
But right here in Charlie's Bar
We don't give it a name
Because in Charlie's it is Christmas everyday

And through the glow of my whiskey glass I see
Fairy lights and tinsel round a tree
But that child in the manger's a stranger to me
My sweet lord ain't as sweet as bourbon tastes to me

They call it Christmas in Milwaukee
They call it Yuletide in Oyster Bay
But right here in Charlie's Bar
We don't give it a name
Because in Charlie's it is Christmas everyday

And if you're tired of life
Charlie's is the place
Where you can wipe that frown away

[Merry Christmas everybody]

They call it Christmas in Milwaukee
They call it Noel in Critters Creek
But right here in Charlie's Bar
We don't give it a name
Because in Charlie's we are all too drunk to speak