Fugazi

Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in my private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the license
Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule
Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience
Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover
Baptized in tears from the real

Drowning in the liquid seize on the piccadilly line, rat-race
Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress ophelia's hand with breaststroke ambition
The albatross courtship marrytime tradition
Sheathed with the walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation

But she turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart
She hung herself around my neck

From the time-life guardians in their conscience bubbles
Safe and dry in my sea of troubles
Nine to fives, with suitable ties
While i'm cast adrift as their sideshow, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm, bestill, bewitch, drowning, drowning in the real

The thief of baghdad hides in islington now
Praying deportation for his sacred cow
A legacy of romance from a twilight world
The dowry of a relative mystery girl

A vietnamese flower, a dockland union
A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs
This magdalene contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat

A son of the swastika of '45, parading a peroxide standard
Graffitti disciples conjure testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is brixton chess

A knight for embankments folds his newspaper castle
A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin
He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease-stained roll-call
Linger with the heartburn of good friday's last supper

Son watches father scan obituary columns
In search of absent school friends
While his generation digests high-fibre ignorance
Cowering behind curtains and the taped up, painted windows
Decriminalized genocide, provided door-to-door belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts
Gracefully cruising satellite-infested heavens
Waiting, the season of the button
The penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes for the fashionably
For the terminally insane, insane

Do you realise, do you realise, do you realise
This world is totally fugazi

Where are the prophets, where are the visionaries
Where are the poets, to breach the dawn of the sentimental mercenary?

When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion
Forwarned my audience leaves the stage, floating ahead
Perfumed shift, within the stammering silence
The face that launched a thousand frames
Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career

You've played this scene before, you've played this scene before
I, the mote in your eye,
I, the mote in your eye, a misplaced reaction, reaction

The darkroom unleashes imagination, in pornographic images
In which you will always be the star
Untouchable, unapproachable
Constant in the darkness, in the darkness
Nursing an erection, a misplaced reaction
With no flower to place before this gravestone
And the walls become enticingly newspaper thin
But that would only be developing the negative view
And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic color, the public act
Let you model your shame on the mannequin catwalk, catwalk
Let the cats walk

I've played, this scene before, i've played, this scene before
I, the mote in your eye,
I, the mote in your eye, a misplaced reaction, satisfaction

You can't brush me under the carpet, you can't hide me under the stairs
The custodian of your private fears, your leading actor of yesteryear
Who, as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity
Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity
You, who i directed with a lover's will, you who i let hypnotize the lens
You who i let bathe in the spotlight's glare
You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask
Just like a greasepaint mask

But now i'm the snake in the grass
The ghost of film reels past
The producer of your nightmare
And the performance has just begun, its just begun
Begun, its just begun

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets
As you stutter, paralyzed, with rabbit's eyes
Searing the shadows, flooding the wings
To pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips
Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary
My cue line in the last act, and you'll wait in silent solitude
Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt.

You've played this scene before

Sheltering her ego on the edge of the floodlight's arc
She'll contemplate seduction, calculate the catch
When she moved her presence speared me
When she spoke her words ensnared me
Watch the lizard, watch the lizard
Watch the lizard with the crimson veil.

She crucified my heart in the depths of a satin grave
As i lay in sweating monologue i sensed the lovelight fade
Within the spiral of the cigarette
You betrayed your bedside etiquette
I saw the lizard, i saw the lizard
I touched the lizard with the crimson veil

I've seen a different doorway shut a million times before
Smilng she-chameleons, smiling vinyl whores

They know what they want, they sing your name and glide between the sheets
I never say no, in chemical glow we'll let our bodies meet

Degraded and alone, raped and still forlorn
Betrayed upon a lizard's bed.
We chameleon, we chameleon, we

To be the prince of possession, in the gallery of contempt
Suffering your indiscrete discretions, and you ask me to relent
As you accumulate flirtations, with the calculated calmness of the whore
I am the harlequin, with diamonded costume dripping shades of green
I am the harlequin, sense strangers violate my sanctuary, prowl my dreams

Plundering your diaries, i'll steal your thoughts - innocence
Ravaging your letters, unearth your plots - innocence

To don the robes of torquemada, to resurrect the inquisition
And in that tortured subtle manner inflict questions
Within questions within questions
Looking in shades of green through shades of blue
I trust you trust in me to mistrust you
Through the silk-cut haze to the smeared mascara
A forty-watt sun on a courtroom drama

And the coffee stains gather till the pale kimono
Set the wedding rings dancing on the cold linoleum

And accusation's moths that circle around the light
Char their wings in spiral senseless, suicidal flight
Pack our world within a suitcase, hot tears melt this icy palace
And dissolve a crystal swallowed by the night
Looking in shades of green through shades of blue
Looking in shades of green through shades of blue