The Thieving Magpie

(fish / marillion)

A) brief encounter

A spider wanders aimlessly within the warmth of a shadow
Not the regal creature of border caves
But the poor, misguided, directionless familiar of some obscure scottish poet

The mist crawls from the canal
Like some primordial phantom of romance
To curl, under a cascade of neon pollen
While i sit tied to the phone like an expectant father
Your carnation will rot in a vase

B) lost weekend

A train sleeps in a siding
The driver guzzles another can of lager, lager
To wash away the memories of a friday night down at the club

She was a wallflower at sixteen, she'll be a wallflower at thirty four
Her mother called her beautiful
Her daddy said, "a whore"

C) blue angel

The sky was bible black in lyon, when i met the magdalene
She was paralyzed in a streetlight
She refused to give her name

And a ring of violet bruises
They were pinned upon her arm
Two hundred francs for sanctuary and she led me by the hand
To a room of dancing shadows where all the heartache disappears
And from glowing tongues of candles i heard her whisper in my ear
'j'entend ton coeur', 'j'entend ton coeur'
I can hear your heart, i can hear your heart, i can hear your heart
Hear your heart
I hear your heart

D) misplaced rendezvous

It's getting late, for scribbling and scratching on the paper
Something's gonna give under this pressure, and the cracks are already beginning to show
It's too late
The weekend career girl never boarded the plane
They said this could never happen again
Oh, so wrong, so wrong

This time it seems to be another misplaced rendezvous
This time, it's looking like another misplaced rendezvous
With you
The parallel of you, you

E) windswept thumb

On the outskirts of nowhere
On the ringroad to somewhere
On the verge of indecision
I'll always take the roundabout way
Waiting on the rain
For i was born with a habit, from a sign
The habit of a windswept thumb, and the sign of the rain
Rain on me, rain

It's started raining

(derek dick, steve rothery, mark kelly, pete trewavas, ian mosley)

I was walking in the park
Dreaming of a spark
When i heard the sprinklers whisper
Shimmer in the haze of summer lawns.
Then i heard the children singing
They were running through the rainbows.
They were singing a song for you
Well it seemed to be a song for you
The one i wanted to write for you


Lavenders blue, dilly dilly, lavenders green
When i am king, dilly dilly
You will be queen
A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I.o.u. for your love
I.o.u. for your love

Lavenders green, dilly dilly, lavenders blue
When you love me, dilly dilly, i will love you
A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I.o.u. for your love
I.o.u. for your love

Lavender dreams dilly, dilly lavender true
When you miss me dilly dilly, i did miss you
A penny for your thoughts my dear
A penny for your thoughts my dear
I.o.u for your love
I.o.u. for your love
For your love

Blue angel

The sky was bible black in lyon
When i met the magdalene
She was paralyzed in a streetlight
She refused to give her name

And a ring of violet bruises
They were pinned upon her arm
Two hundred francs for sanctuary and she led me by the hand
To a room of dancing shadows
Where all the heartache disappears
And from glowing tongues of candles i heard her whisper in my ear
'j'entend ton coeur', 'j'entend ton coeur'
I can hear your heart, i can hear your heart, i can hear your heart
Hear your heart. i hear your heart

(fish, steve rothery, mark kelly, pete trewavas, ian mosley)

I'd be really pleased to meet you if i could remember your name
But i got problems of the memory ever since i got a winner in the fame game
I'm a citizen of legoland travellin' incommunicado
And i don't give a damn for the fleet street afficionados

But i don't want to be the backpage interview
I don't want launderette anonymity
I want my handprints in the concrete on sunset boulevard
A dummy in tussauds you'll see
Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

I'm a marquee veteran, a multi-media bonafide celebrity
I've got an allergy to perrier, daylight and responsibility
I'm a rootin-tootin cowboy, the peter pan, the street credibility
Always taking the point with the dawn patrol fraternity

Sometimes it seems like i've been here before when i hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it deja vu i just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that i choose

But i don't want to be a tin can tied to the bumper of a wedding limousine
Or currently residing in the where are they now file a toupet on the cabaret scene
I want to do adverts for american express cards talk shows on prime time tv
A villa in france, my own cocktail bar and that's where you're gonna find me

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

Sometimes it seems like i've been here before when i hear opportunity kicking in my door
Call it synchronicity call it deja vu i just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that i choose

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado
It's the only way
Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

(fish, steve rothery, mark kelly, pete trewavas, ian mosley)

Do you remember chalk hearts melting on a playground wall
Do you remember dawn escapes from moon washed college halls
Do you remember the cherry blossom in the market square
Do you remember i thought it was confetti in our hair
By the way didn't i break your heart?
Please excuse me, i never meant to break your heart
So sorry, i never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh is it too late to say i'm sorry?
And kayleigh could we get it together again?
I just can't go on pretending that it came to a natural end

Kayleigh, oh i never thought i'd miss you
And kayleigh i thought that we'd always be friends
We said our love would last forever
So how did it come to this bitter end?

Do you remember barefoot on the lawn with shooting stars
Do you remember loving on the floor in belsize park
Do you remember dancing in stilettoes in the snow
Do you remember you never understood i had to go
By the way, didn't i break your heart?
Please excuse me, i never meant to break your heart
So sorry, i never meant to break your heart
But you broke mine

Kayleigh i just wanna say i'm sorry
But kayleigh i'm too scared to pick up the phone
To hear you've found another lover to patch up our broken home

Kayleigh i'm still trying to write that love song
Kayleigh it's more important to me now you're gone
Maybe it will prove that we were right
Or ever prove that i was wrong

(fish / marillion)

Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a blackheath cell
Extinguishing the fires in a private hell
Provoking the heartache to renew the licence
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
Baptised in the tears from the real
Tears from the real

Drowning in the liquid seize on the piccadilly line, rat race
Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth
Caress ophelias hand with breathstroke ambition
An albatross in the marrytime tradition
Sheathed within the walkman wear the halo of distortion
Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation
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 five with suitable ties
Cast adrift as their sideshow, peepshow, stereo hero
Becalm bestill, bewitch
Drowning in the real

The thief of baghdad hides in islingtown 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
Magdalenes contracts more than favours
The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat

A son of a swastika of '45 parading a peroxide standard
Graffiti disciples conjure testaments of hatred
Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges
This is brixton chess
A knight for embankment 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
And 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
Decriminalised genocide, provided door to door belsens
Pandora's box of holocausts gracefully cruising satellite infested heavens
Waiting, wai-wai-waiting, the season of the button
The penultimate migration
Radioactive perfumes
For the fashionably
For the terminally insane, insane
D-d-do you realise?
D-d-do you realise?
D-d-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

(fish / marillion)

And it was morning
And i found myself mourning, for a childhood that i thought had disappeared
I looked out the window
And i saw a magpie in the rainbow, the rain had gone i'm not alone
I turned to the mirror, i saw you, the child, that once loved
The child before they broke his heart
Our heart, the heart that i believed was lost

Hey you, surprised?
More than surprised, to find the answers to the questions, were always in your own eyes
Do you realize that you give it on back to her?
But that would only be retraced in all the problems that you ever knew
So untrue
For she's got to carry on with her life, and you've got to carry on with yours

So i see it's me, i can do anything
And i'm still the child
'cos the only thing misplaced was direction
And i found direction
There is no childhood's end
There is no childhood's end
Cos' you are my childhood friend
Cos' you are my childhood friend
Oh lead me on

Hey you, you've survived
Now you've arrived, to be reborn in the shadow of the magpie
Now you realize, that you've got to get out of here
You've found the leading light of destiny, burning in the ashes of your memory
You want to change the world
You'd resigned yourself to die a broken rebel
But that was looking backward
Now you've found the light

You, the child that once loved
The child before they broke his heart
Our heart, the heart that i believed was lost
So it's me i see, i can do anything
I'm still the child
'cos the only thing misplaced was direction, and i found direction
There is no childhood's end
There is no childhood's end
There is no childhood's end
I am your childhood friend
Oh, lead me on

(fish / marillion)

Punch
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch and judy

Washing machine, pinstripe dream
Stripped the gloss from a beauty queen
Punch and judy, judy
Found our nest, in the daily express
Met the vicar in a holy vest
Punch and judy
Punch and judy

Brought up the children church of e
Now i vegetate with a colour tv
Worst ever thing that ever happened to me
Oh, for d.i.v.o.r.c.e.
Oh judy

Whatever happened to pillow fights
Whatever happened to jeans so tight, friday nights
Whatever happened to lover's lane
Whatever happened to passion games
Sunday walks in the pouring rain

Punch
Punch
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch
Punch
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch and judy

Curling tongs, mogadons, "i got a headache baby, don't take so long"
Single beds, middle age dread
Losing the war in the waistlands spread

Who left the cap of the toothpaste tube
Who forgot to flush the loo
Leave your sweaty socks outside the door
Don't walk across my polished floor, oh judy

Whatever happened to morning smiles
Whatever happened to wicked wiles, permissive styles
Whatever happened to twinkling eyes
Whatever happened to hard fast drives
Complements on unnatural size

Punch
Punch
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch
Punch
Punch and judy
Punch and judy
Punch and judy

Propping up a bar, family car
Sweating out a mortgage as a balding clerk
Punch and judy, judy
World war three, suburbanshee
Just slip her these pills and i'll be free.

No more judy
Judy, judy no more!
Goodbye judy!

(fish, steve rothery, mark kelly, pete trewavas, ian mosley)

Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

They boarded up the synagogues uzis on a street corner
You can't take a photograph of uzis on a street corner
The dj resigned today they wouldn't let him have his say
Surface scratched where the needles play, uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here

Terror in rue de st. denis, murder on the periphery
Someone else in someone else's pocket, christ knows i don't know how to stop it
Poppies at the cenotaph, the cynics can't afford to laugh
I heard in on the telegraph there's uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

The more i see, the more i hear, the more i find fewer answers
I close my mind, i shout it out but you know it's getting harder
To me calm down, to reason out, to come to terms with what it's all about
I'm uptight, can't sleep at night, i can't pretend everything's alright
My ideals, my sanity, they seem to be deserting me
But to stand up and fight i know we have six million reasons

They're burning down the synagogues uzis on a street corner
The heralds of the holocaust uzis on a street corner
The silence never louder than now, how quickly we forgot our vows
This resurrection we can't allow, uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

We buy fresh bagels from the corner store
Where swastikas are spat from aerosols
I sit in the bar sipping iced white russian
Trying to score but nobody's pushing
And everyone looks at everyone's faces
Searching for signs and praying for traces of a conscience in residence
Are we sitting on a barbed wire fence
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home

We place our faith in human rights
In the paper wars that tie the red tape tight
I know that i would rather be out of this conspiracy

In the gulags and internment camps frozen faces in nameless ranks
I know that they would rather be standing here beside me
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home

You can shut your eyes, you can hide it away it's gonna come back another day

Racing the clouds home, are we racing the clouds home
Racing the clouds home

(derek disck/steve rothery/ pete trewavas/ micheal pointer/mark kelly)

Catalogue princess, apprentice seductress
Hiding in her cellophane world in glitter town
Awaiting the prince in his white capri
Dynamic young tarzan courts the bedsit queen

She's playing the actress in this bedroom scene
She's learning her lines from glossy magazines
Stringing all her pearls from her childhood dreams
Auditioning for the leading role on the silver screen

Patience my tinsel angel, patience my perfumed child
One day they really love you, you'll charm them with that smile
But for now it's just another chelsea monday
Chelsea monday

Tju
In the city of dreamers...
Drifting with her incense in the labyrinth of london
Playing games with faces in the neon wonderland
Perform to scattered shadows on the shattered cobbled aisles
Would she dare recite soliloquies at the risk of stark applause
To chelsea monday

She'll pray for endless sundays as she enters saffron sunsets
Conjure phantom lovers from the tattered shreds of dawn
Fulfilled and yet forgotten the st. tropez mirage
Fragrant aphrodisiac, the withered tuberose
Of chelsea monday
Sweet chelsea monday

Patience my tinsel angel, patience my perfumed child
One day they really love you, you'll charm them with that smile
But for now it's just another chelsea monday
Sweet chelsea monday

Voice: "hello john, did you see the standard about four hours ago?
Fished a young chick out of the old father
Blond hair, blue eyes
She said she wanted to be an actress or something
Nobody knows where she came from, where she was going
Funny thing was she had a smile on her face
She was smiling
What a waste!"

Catalogue princess, apprentice seductress
Buried in her cellophane world in glitter town
Of chelsea monday
Chelsea monday
She was only dreaming

(fish / marillion)

When the taxis gather in mock solemnity
Funeral hearses court the death of virginity
Was it paradise lost or paradise found?
Did we gain respect or were we holding ground?
You had found true love, or so you believed
And the wideboys tattooed your hearts upon their sleeves

So when you think it's time to go, when you think it's time to go
Don't be surprised, the heroes never show

And the patter merchants selling false impressions
Tipping eyes at the waitress with american expressions
Tie angels to the bar with sweet martini's and their charms
They're lying on every word and every arm
They're turning down their noses to the best lines
And the cheap wines

And the wideboys
They wear their lovebites for their crimes

So when you think it's time to go, when you think it's time to go
Don't be surprised, the heroes never show