1.Death and the Maiden

You're just too, too obscure for me
You don't really get through to me
And there's no need for you to talk that way
Is there any less pessimistic thing to say?

Do you like Paul Verlaine?
Is it gonna rain today?
Shall we have our photo taken?
We'll look like... Death and the Maiden
Ah Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine...

I still choose to lose the way I like
Fool around, split my lungs out of spite
But I won't reject so long as you make sense
But I'm through with the rooms and the vague intentions

You shouldn't talk to me - find better company
There's better people to know
You'll only end up like Rimbaud
Get shot by Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine...

The way you think is oh-so-bloody stale
Your sanity looks pretty frail
You have to clutch at every tiny straw
And I can't stomach that at all

Do you like Paul Verlaine?
Is it gonna rain today?
Shall we have our photo taken?
We'll look like... Death and the Maiden
Ah Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine, Verlaine...



2. Doomsday

Yeah, well I won't change for you even if you think I talk too loud
If it wasn't for your playfulness I'd cauterize your useless mouth
When conversation is a hand grenade, the pin's on your finger
I can only try and play it down - you double the wager
Then you push me over - I hit my head on the table
Funny way to get through

Maybe it's doomed
If it's doomed
Okay, when's doomsday?

Later?
Some other time?
Tomorrow?
Yeah you're finally sick and tired of the same old ways
Sick of rolling round a piece of ground you're off to find the hay - hey hey!

Yeah well I know you hate my music and you think that I should throw it away
But I've got nothing to hold onto but the dreary shit I always play
I don't know what on earth I was seeing
I always knew it had to end - I didn't start believing
The writing's never on the wall - it covers the ceiling
I ain't gonna persuade you to say, you to say...

Later
Some other time
Tomorrow
Yeah, you're finally sick and tired of the same old way
Sick of rolling round a piece of ground you're off to find the hay - hey hey!

You've the eyes of evil, they fail to laugh.
Even trying to console they mock, they tear you in half



3. Joed Out

It's ten o'clock in the afternoon
You'd better come by here soon
Or I'll go out of my mind
The wind has been unkind
Some idiot untied all five
And locked them in my room

"Don't do anything important," you said,
"With anybody else.
They fuck it up for you my friend."

But I lie on your bed and I touch your head
And your hair is as soft as the fox fur you wear
And my head feels sweet again
Ahhhh...

I sit here skulling wine
Yeah I'm smoking all the time now.
It's hard living your life
On a knife edge
You either cut your feet and die where you bleed
Or fall of the edge

"Don't do anything important," you said,
"With anybody else.
They fuck it up for you my friend."

But I lie on your bed and I touch your head
And your hair is as soft as the fox fur you wear
And my head feels sweet again
Ahhhhh...



4. Baud to Tears

The lady does the best that she can
But she can't touch the pillars of state
I love the honesty her talent demands
The way she insists on saying

But that lady throbs between two lives
Eventually she takes the time to beautify
With blood-red dyes and drive out on the town

The artist in the idiot's clothes
You know the way they go
They go down, they drown
They go down, they drown
They go down, they drown

And that guy reads and tries to write
And talks until he bores you
He wants to know all the secrets of soul
He hasn't got a shit show

And he jumps the band-wagon before it's too late
With a head full of crap
And he never loves, he never hates
He doesn't write, he imitates - he's a clown

The artist in the idiot's clothes
You know the way they go
They go down, they drown
They go down, they drown
They go down, they drown

Boredom...
Oh captain is it time?
We must be under way, hey
Raise the anchor, world-weary sail away, hey hey
But Death, can you see our hearts are gay?
Though the sky is black, and the ocean's violent today?
You'll never spend a season in hell if you lie in bed all day
And you won't ever see anything beautiful again

The artist in the idiot's clothes
You know the way they go
They go down, they drown
They go down, they drown
They go down, they drown



5. Crisis After Crisis

The party went fine 'til you arrived
Felt a compulsion to leave my senses
I saw in your eyes, you thought that you were the great reason why
The moment you came you thought you'd butchered my evening

Well if I get drunk, well that's all right
If I sleep on the floor all night
Don't think that you're the great reason why I've got my guts in a vice

Save your sympathetic gloats
I ain't chain-smoking or drinking your toast
You ain't the one that's hurting me most, it's me that's all

First time I saw you in that cluttered room
I couldn't have run for the world, ohhhh
But don't you see it was more than you and me -
Something else was on trial to be purged

Well if something could die in an afternoon
Anything else was eventually doomed -
Just a question of just how soon it concluded

Not trying to make you feel mean
Not wearing my heart on my sleeve
Just trying to make you see what wasn't and what is...

Girls I've written poetry for before cease to exist
Your eyes just bleed before the sun
Love's slashed her wrists
So I write of a girl from who knows where
With dark brown skin and Dürer's hair
Who knows what love, what hate, what lies beyond those saddened, violet eyes?



6. Burlesque

One day you'll be dying of triple throat cancer . . . ha ha
God, the vindictive old sod, will screw you for an answer . . . ha ha
When you were young and a singer-romancer, music was forever . . . ha ha
Here's a copy of the contract you signed at the time
To say you knew what you bartered . . . ha ha

I'm writing this in case you get bitter and twisted
Coughing on your death-bed . . . ha ha
So when you're in life's last sordid process
You'll sing like Mozart . . . ha ha

This is a song for the glorious drunkards -
Li Po and J. Stone (claimed by the real world)
For anyone who doesn't like the world they were born in
Who will build a fire on main street, and shoot it full of holes



7. You Cheat Yourself of Everything That Moves

Do you know anything?
The way you move among your friends
You cheat yourself of everything that moves

Just get a mirrored room
Invite the creatures of the moon
And watch them dance the dance of love for you

You're in the mirror too
You cheat yourself of everything that moves

For all you know you're not that bad
You sell yourself for all you have
You barter all your bullshit for the truth

You ask me, "Where's the harm?"
You say:
"No-one's twisting no-one's arm."
You say:
"It's all for all so what's the hell with you?"

There's nowhere in front of you
You cheat yourself of everything that moves



8. Pyromaniac

Sitting up late
The ash in the grate
His pretty face goes prison pale
There's a shadow tapping on the window -
His old lover's come in from the wind and rain

And he dreams burning memories
The girl ain't at his door - he's just getting bored
Oh he can't refrain 'cos he's got it on the brain
Wants to see the bright lights, gonna do it again

Pyromaniac, ain't no turning back
Gonna make shralak and a heap of dead matches
Spread some on the ground, have a look around
Burn it to the ground and watch the engine's rushing, gushing
Totally written off but there's laughter at chaos

There's a white coat, traipsing up the hallway
They're gonna find a safe place for him to stay
There's a white coat, ear to the door
It's no good it's as quiet as it's ever been before

What a laugh, they think they've got him trapped -
They might as well relax, it's too late for the axe
Didn't want to be mad, didn't want to be old -
Can't see the bright lights for the smoke in the key-hole

Pyromaniac, ain't no turning back
Gonna make shralak and a heap of dead matches
Spread some on the ground, have a look around
Burn it to the ground and watch the engine's rushing, gushing
Totally written off but there's laughter at chaos



9. Wind Song

A lady combed her hair with a summer wind
I embrace a dry night for one odd time it blew like that
Songs that once I'd only dreamed about
Not many nights in your time when you see like that

A guy I knew in the wintertime
Locked away in a longing, in exile's sack
Slow sad songs from a distant time
Unlike the summer wind, he won't be back



10. Angela

You sit here all night, drink until your mind's so tight
Waiting for a better song - you won't have her company too long
Because the last time I saw you, you were out painting city central red
Last time I saw you, you were out knocking hats off people's heads
You're a saint in a world where the only cardinal sin is to be bored
You'll do what you love, you'll love what you do, you won't ask what it's for

Ohhh the angel dust.

You sit here all night, drink until your mind's so tight
What am I supposed to do with you?
If you get bored there's no telling what you might do
Because the last time I saw you, you were out painting city central red
Last time I saw you, you were out knocking hats off people's heads
Threw your bag across your back: you said you may, may not be back

Ohhh the angel dust

She said I'm a saint...



11. You Say You

Your eyes are as black as the black notes
Songs that I wish I had wrote
And I try to remember the moon
And think only one man should have met you

At night when you close your door I feel imprisoned 'til dawn
And I watch the street lamp light through the trees
And the lovers in arms underneath

You say you got it hard
You say you got it tough
You can't summon enough respect for yourself
You can't understand how I can



12. New Kind of Hero

Tell me what do you see with television mentality
Alexander the Great? Maybe Fyodor Dostoevsky?
I'm going back to my cell
I'm sorry I'm neither of those
(And the tension begins to grow)
A new kind of hero
A new kind of hero

You decided at once what I could or should be made into
Do you mean what you say?
Is that merely the way your lips move?
I'm going back to my cell
Sick of the insults you throw
(As the visions begin to grow)
A new kind of hero
A new kind of hero

You said we'd laugh and talk on the weekend
And maybe throw an image upon the bed
For you to find a new kind of hero -
The light of your mind on something wide and empty

You can follow me down
I'll go and chase my own reflection
But I'll be watching you lie
From a thousand miles in any direction
I'm going back to my cell
If any kind of hero will do
I will borrow one and send him to you
New kind of hero
New kind of hero...



13. Instrumental (live)



14. Phil Too?

How could I tell you had more than usual to say?
The day that you left I sang, "Et tu Brute?"
And your old friend was telling me today
That you were singing exactly the same

And you were sick of yourself
And everybody else

And they're as thin, as white as snow
Your eyes as clear as ice
And you looked at me, I looked at you
Why, you did what you had to

"Say ah, say ah," the doctor said, "Say ah."
You've got to kick the town
The pubs that bleed you at night
Oh your town's fully furnished
A fly trap with traffic lights

And you were stuck to bars and bass guitars
And rooms and girls (dishwater blondes)
And faces - they don't want to know you -
They just want a shoulder to get pissed on
And it happened again -
The heart inquires why I didn't know then what I know now

How could I tell you had more than usual to say?
The day you left I sang "Et tu Brute?"



15. C.D. Jimmy Jazz and Me

Saw a guy drunk where the people would dance
And men of similarity laugh out of charity
And long-faced women cast to agree
Look sideways and up, and quietly leave
And I cannot hate or despise or deplore
'Cos I've stood and watched from both sides before
I lean on the dance floor
I can't think straight any more

Asked me why I never wrote you a song
When you thought you'd given me enough to work on
And now you find that I've lost my tongue
And I turn my back on the way you get your fun
You don't know what struck me dumb
You're on the run

C.D. Jimmy Jazz and me
Fucked off to Paris to write of the sea
Too much beauty in one foul sweep
And the brilliant sun made me blind on the beach
So I made it back to confusion row
Where encased in four walls my mind could cope
We live in hope