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Misplaced Childhood |
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Misplaced Childhood |
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Huddled in the safety of a pseudo silk kimono
wearing bracelets of smoke, naked of understanding.
Nicotine smears, long, long dried tears, invisible tears.
Safe in my own words, learning from my own words,
Cruel joke, cruel joke.
Huddled in the safety of a pseudo silk kimono
A morning mare rides, in the starless shutters of my eyes.
The spirit of a misplaced childhood is rising to speak his mind,
To this orphan of heartbreak, disillusioned and scarred,
A refugee, refuge.
{Safe in the sanctuary, safe}
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, It's started raining, It's started raining, It's started raining.
It's started raining, It's started raining, It's started raining.
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!
{It's started raining}
a) Wide Boy
Wide boys, wide boys, wide boys, born with hearts of Lothian.
Wide boys, wide boys, born with hearts of Lothian.
Wide boys, we were wide boys, born with hearts of Lothian
These hearts of Lothian.
It's six o'clock in the tower blocks,
The stalagmites of culture shock, {culture shock}
And the trippers of the light fantastic, bowdown, hoe-down
Spray their pheremones on this perfume uniform.
And anarchy smiles in the Royal Mile.
And they're waiting on the Slyboys, flyboys, wideboys.
Rooting, tooting Cowboys, lucky little ladies at the watering holes.
They'll score the Friday night goals.
I was born with a heart of Lothian, I was born with a heart of Lothian.
I was born with a heart of Lothian, with a heart of Lothian.
b) Curtain Call
And the man from the magazine, wants another shot of you all curled up.
'Cos you look like an actor in a movie shot.
But you're feeling like a wino in a parking lot.
How did I get in here anyway?
Do we really need a playback of the show?
'Cos the wideboys want to head for the watering holes, watering holes, watering holes.
Let's go.
And the man in the mirror has sad eyes.
In the single version the purple coloured parts are added
to the lyrics,
but the last part b) Curtain Call is not on the single only on the album.
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.
A love song with no validity.
Pretend you never meant that much to me.
Numb, a Valium child, bored by meaningless collisions.
A lonely stretch of headlight, diamonds trapped in black ice.
A mirror cracked among the white lines.
I just wanted you to be the first one.
I just wanted you to be the first one.
Ashes are burning, burning.
Ashes are burning, burning.
A lifestyle with no simplicities.
But I'm not asking for your sympathy
Talk, we never could talk, distanced by all that was between us.
A lord of the backstage, a creature of language,
I'm so far out and I'm too far in.
I just wanted you to be the first one.
I just wanted you to be the first one.
Bridges are burning, burning.
Bridges are burning, burning.
Now, now, now, now
a) Vocal Under A Bloodlight
Last night you said I was cold, untouchable.
A lonely piece of action from another town.
I just want to be free, I'm happy to be lonely.
Can't you stay away?
Just leave me alone with my thoughts.
Just a runaway, just a runaway,
I'm saving myself.
b) Passing Strangers
Strung out below a necklace of carnival lights.
Cold moan, held on the crest of the night.
I'm too tired to fight.
So now we're passing strangers, at single tables.
Still trying to get over,
Still trying to write love songs for passing strangers.
All those passing strangers.
And the twinkling lies, all those twinkling lies,
Sparkle with the wet ink on the paper.
c) Mylo
Oh I remember Toronto when Mylo went down,
And we sat and cried on the phone.
I never felt so alone,
He was the first of our own.
Some of us go down in a blaze of obscurity.
Some of us go down in a haze of publicity.
The price of infamy, the edge of insanity.
Another Holiday Inn, another temporary home,
and an interviewer threatened me with a microphone,
'Talk to me, won't you tell me your stories.'
So I talked about conscience and I talked about pain,
and he looked out the window and it started to rain.
I thought maybe I've already gone crazy.
So I reached for a bottle and he reached for the door,
And I picked up the sleeping pills crushed on the floor.
Inviting me to a casual obscenity.
d) Perimeter Walk
It would be incredible if we could
Retrace all the times that we lived here.
All the collisions.
Wasted, I've never been so wasted.
I've never been this far out before.
Perimeter walk.
There's a presence here.
I feel could have been ancient,
I could have been mystical.
There's a presence,
A childhood, my childhood,
My childhood, childhood, a misplaced childhood,
My childhood, a misplaced childhood,
Give it back to me, give it back to me.
A childhood, that childhood, that childhood,
that childhood, that childhood.
Oh please give it back to me.
e) Threshold
I saw a war widow in a launderette,
Washing the memories from her husband's clothes.
She had medals pinned to a threadbare greatcoat
A lump in her throat with cemetery eyes.
I see convoys curbcrawling West German Autobahns
Trying to pick up a war.
They're going to even the score.
Oh... I can't take any more.
I see black flags on factories,
Soup ladies poised on the lips of the poor.
I see children with vacant stares,
destined for rape in the alleyways.
Does anybody care, I can't take any more!
Should we say goodbye? Hey
I see priests, politicians?
The heroes in black plastic body-bags under nations' flags
I see children pleading with outstretched hands,
drenched in napalm, this is no Vietnam.
I can't take any more, should we say goodbye,
How can we justify?
They call us civilised!
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.
When I hit the streets back in '81,
Found a heart in the gutter and a poet's crown
I felt barbed wire kisses and icicle tears,
Where have I been for all these years?
I saw political intrigue, political lies,
Gonna wipe those smiles of self-satisfaction from their eyes
I will wear your white feather
I will carry your white flag
I will swear I have no nation
But I'm proud to own my heart
I will wear your white feather
I will carry your white flag
I will swear I have no nation
But I'm proud to own my heart
My heart, this is my heart
We don't need no uniforms, we have no disguise,
Divided we stand, together we'll rise
(all the children)
We will wear your white feather
We will carry your white flag
We will swear we have no nations
But we're proud to own our hearts
We will wear your white feather
We will carry your white flag
We will swear we have no nations
But we're proud to own our hearts
These are our hearts
These are our hearts
You can't take away our hearts
You can't steal our hearts away
I can't walk away
I can't walk away
No more, no more, no more, no more...
