Fish
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Fish |
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Internal Exile |
Hunched foetal in the corner of my soul
My fingernails are bleeding
From climbing up the wall
This time you really hurt me right down to the core
And I'm desperately trying to find a reason
To forgive you for it all
I saw your life as a shadowplay
In a trance I was held by the shadowplay
In the spell of the shadowplay
From Celtic illumination
I see the Celtic illumination
The Celtic
I never realized just how far we'd gone
I turned around and all that I saw was distance
Through an anger that burned everytime
That someone mentioned your name.
I should have noticed, should have read the signs
We could have talked it out if there was a problem
It wasn't obvious then
But then it isn't really obvious now
I saw your life as a shadowplay
In a trance I was held by the shadowplay
In the spell of the shadowplay
From Celtic illumination
I see the Celtic illumination
The Celtic
I could have changed I could have settled down
I could have been whatever you wanted me to be
If you gave me the chance
But it seems that it's too late for that now
I thought I knew you thought we had it made
I'd thought it out, thought I had the answers
After all is said and done
The only thing I really know is your name.
I sit and wait for the shadowplay
Let me in into the world of the shadowplay
I'll follow you to the shadowplay
Through Celtic illumination
Give me the Celtic illumination
Illumination.
CREDO
(Dick/Simmonds/Boult/Usher)
I watch the TV every night,
I stay awake by satellite,
I hope and pray the nightmares,
Stay away today.
An oily shroud on a coral reef,
A black cloud's hanging over me.
When I hit on the remote,
The programmes stay the same.
Credo, credo, credo, credo.
An assegai slick with sweat and blood,
A shotgun barks at a rabid dog,
A shallow grave hugs a highway,
Beneath a bleaching sun.
chorus:
Credo, credo, credo, credo,
It don't mean nothin'; it don't mean nothin'
It don't mean nothin'; it don't mean nothin' to me.
When cancer sucks a young girl's breast.
When a company chains a young man's soul
When the coal dust stole
My grandad's breath away.
(chorus)
A tattered tramp tacks a windy wynd,
To close a crowded circle a brazier's light,
A man becomes a mountain, in the falling snow.
A mother screams and a baby cries.
The memory gone before the blood has dried.
A needle pricks the conscience,
To help it fade away.
(chorus)
The more you scream, the less you hear,
Or that's how it used to be.
But I just can't tell the difference
Anymore these days.
The open lips of an alter boy,
A planet spins in a silent void,
The options are ever fewer
On the ground these days
(chorus)
JUST GOOD FRIENDS (CLOSE)
(Dick/Usher/Boult/Simmonds)
There's something I want to ask you
Before it's too late,
It's been on my mind since the first time we met
It scares me now more, now there's more at stake,
It seems we're so close yet so far away.
Could you turn me down gently would I
Be out of order,
If I declared my true feelings or do I
Act out the part,
Of the father confessor of the shoulder to cry on
We're always so close yet so far away
chorus: What would you do if I got down
On my knees to you
Would you hold it against me,
Would you stand in line?
What would you do if I
Opened my heart to you,
Would I be another who's wasting his time,
Darling are we just good friends?
Do I really need to ask you
I'm sure that you know by now,
Do we just play a game where we try to pretend,
That all that's between us is all that's between us,
And all we can rely on is just being good friends.
(chorus)
So are we left to chance meetings,
Is that all we can depend on?
Resigned to raise glasses in anonymous cafes,
Reciting our failures as if we needed
Proof or regret,
Over what might have
And what should have been, Darling, are we just good friends?
FAVOURITE STRANGER
(Dick/Usher)
Some times I feel I lost something
In gaining everything,
But I can't put my finger on what it was,
It's just one of those nagging feelings,
Like sitting with your back to an open door
Waiting on a favourite stranger.
I find it hard to talk about, its not easy
As you might expect
Just sitting here waiting, trying to accept
That there's something missing,
That there's something not quite there
And that's why you're sitting there.
Listening to me as I try to explain that
chorus: You're my favourite stranger
But don't read between the lines,
I could say that I love you at this moment
In passing time,
But I could honestly tell you
I don't know why I'm here,
Sharing all my problems with you
When you've already got your own share,
From favourite strangers.
Maybe it's just I need an audience to
Pretend it's all an act,
But all I gain is your confidence
And a number in a filofax
On the terms that it's a first name
That'll run one day in split champagne
And I'll recollect and just accept
That you were one of my favourite strangers.
(chorus)
Sometimes I know I lost everything
In gaining something,
But I can't put my finger on what it was
Its just one of those nagging feelings
like sitting with your back to an open door,
Expecting favourite strangers.
He met the world as a Dalkeith boy,
raised from a shaft at Monktonhall
In a well oiled cage,
That locked away his dreams,
An '85 veteran face from the gallery,
A ghost from the civil war in the family
He stood his ground on the picketline
'Til all that he was left with
Were his father's cough
And his mother's eyes
That would hold a tear
For the very first time
When the government took his job away.
Now fist in hand he'll stand in line
Declare his name and mark his time
To some the only proof that they're alive
He could have been you
He could have been me
He could have been anybody
But he was born lucky
He made his first down payment
On a sharp Italian suit
He sewed razor blades into the lapels,
See him sweating on the dance floor,
Cool dust oozing out of every pore
A hard man with a hard life,
And that's a story that he'll tell you
Down at Easter Road till his throat is raw
On a Saturday, he knows the score
Till the whistle blows and,
The colours with their tempers fade away.
He could have been you
He could have been me
He could have been anybody
But he was born lucky
On the helipads at Aberdeen,
Bound for platforms drilling oil rich seas,
Where the trawlers are getting fewer every year.
By the furnaces at Ravenscraig,
By the padlocks holding John Brown's gates,
In the desert, in the fields of South Armagh,
Where the poppies grow,
Behind the Hampden roar,
Behind the drums in Genoa.
On the deck that rides a South Atlantic swell,
Born to figh tout of the tightest corner.
You can bet on him with the odds against you.
They'll not put him down
No matter how they try.
DEAR FRIEND
(Dick/Boult/Simmonds)
Dear friend, it's been a long, long while
I've been meaning to write you
But it was never my style
But what is these days now I'm a family man.
Do you blow sincere kisses to mistresses
Secrets in afternoons?
Do you wear your disguises, feign the surprises,
At the questions she asks when she dares to accuse?
Does your past lie under a dustsheet,
In the corner of a musty garage?
That's where I keep mine, now I'm a family man.
Are your horses still running when
The bookies shop close?
Is the band still together, did you ever
Get on the road?
We chased the same women, we drank
The same beer.
We came as a pair when we ran around here
How are you these days, now you're a family man?
Buy a drink for the boy in my place
At the end of the bar
Give my regards to Nina, slam a tequila,
I'll write you at Christmas or I'll send you a card,
And if you pass by you're welcome to drop in
And see me 'cos it's unlikely
I'll be round your way, 'cos I'm happy to be,
Where I am, living life as a family man
Do you still have your leathers,
Or did you give them away?
Do you still dream of Joni and sidewalk cafes?
Is your Norton still running, is the old man still alive?
Do you still get to Dalkeith, is your rent still as high?
But I suppose you've a mortgage, now you're a family man.
Dear friend, it's been a long, long while
I've been meaning to write you,
But it was never my style.
But what is these days, now I'm a family man.
SPEAKING IN TOUNGUES
(Dick/Simmonds/Usher/Boult)
If you really knew how I felt,
You wouldn't need to be here asking
Those questions,
Those irritating questions, moving in metaphors,
Speaking in tongues.
your gunboat diplomacy,
You accuse me of heresy, of being irreverent,
My opinions irrelevant, when I smile at your smiles,
When you're speaking in tongues.
As we move to a stalemate,
you say a contract's a contract
& this is unnegotiable,
I question your morality, you question my reality
You're speaking in tongues
We are speaking in tongues,
Am I deaf because I cannot comprehend?
Though I try I just cannot understand.
Your entrenched opinions,
On the border of arrogance,
Dug in against the compromise.
A position indefensible, your actions illogical
You're speaking in tongues
You swear contradictions
your tedious monologues, wielding authority,
Demanding subservience, demanding
I make your sense.
Demanding speaking in tongues.
INTERNAL EXILE
(Dick/Boult/Simmonds)
I saw a blue umbrella in Princes Street Gardens
Heading out west for the Lothian Road
An Evening News stuffed deep in his pocket
Wrapped up in his problems to keep away the cold
Grierson's spirit haunts the dockyards,
Where the only men working are on
Documentary crews,
Shooting film as the lines get longer,
As the seams run out, as the oil runs dry.
chorus: Hey there laddie, Internal Exile!
When will you realise we've got to let go?
Hey there lassie, Internal Exile!
When will you realise we've got to let go?
Starlings wheeling round Georgian spires,
And the fires of Grangemouth burn the skies.
A lion sleeps in a tenement close,
In a country that's tired and deaf to his roar
(chorus)
They bury a wasteland deep in the wilderness
Poison the soil and reap the harvest,
Of blind indifference, greed and apathy
Sowed way back in our history
The fish are few the harbours empty
The keels now rot on our oil slicked shores
The sheep are gone, the farms deserted
We're out of sight and we're out of mind.
(chorus)
Like our fathers before us,
We've eyes for America.
Dream of a new life on foreign shores.
But wherever we go, we'll always know,
That the land we stand on, is never our own.
(chorus)
SOMETHING IN THE AIR
(Speedy/Keen)
Call out the instigators because there's something in the air,
We got to get together sooner or later because the revolutions here,
And you know it's right and you know that it's right.
We have got to get it together.
We have got to get it toggether now
We're together now.
Knock up the streets and houses because there's something in the air,
We got to get together sooner or later 'cos the revoluttions here
And you know it's right and you know that it's right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now
Hand out the arms and ammo
We're gonna blast our way through here
We've got to get together sooner or later becaue the revolutions here
And you know it's right and you know that it's right
We have got to get it together
We have got to get it together now
We have got to get it together now
Now, we're together now, the revolutions here,
It's here, the revolutions here now.
