Wild Orchids

(instrumental)

Come away O human child
To the waters of the wild
With a fairy hand in hand
For the world’s more full of weeping
Than you can understand

Fly away you stolen child
Through a magic lantern slide
Singing in the acid rain
With all those who drink from
The waters of the wild

Far away my lost child
I see your breath and your smile
On the silver frosted lawns
In the dream that came alive
At the end of nowhere

Underneath a sailing moon
Lemon lime ginger soft glow
Scale the woodland around the dale
Rising falling through hedgerows
With her train the queen of night
(Her pale window)
(Calming your fear)
(With the Earth)
Slowly turning the tide (in the lowland)
From the long arms of the sea
Set your compass by your dream (falling)
Grazing sheep have lost their way
Fifty fathoms below the bay

Windward of the sunken rock (blowing)
Faces set like gravestones (staring down)
Oarsmen pull to cleave the brine
Neath the blackcliffs their cross-bones
Under the waves and put to right
Toy armies too rusty to fight (in the lowland)
Cling to the wheel how deeply you breathe
Set your compass by your dream (falling)
Grazing sheep have lost their way
Fifty fathoms below the bay

Dear friend you’ve come at last
I wish to impart to you something of a deeply personal nature
Dare we venture off the map
And indeed between the cracks
To a private road of sorts
I presume you have a strong will
And the stomach to match the underbelly of our fair city

You’ll need this firm crowbar
Whilst I implore you to utilise no sense of smell
And to think people live down there
A rush of chill air heralds our clattering necropolis railway
Like a Transylvanian express plunging into rivers of fungi algae and eels
Ten million rats, one for each one of us
And to think people live down there

A race of wild hogs inhabit the sewers of Hampstead
A cesspool suburb superb supreme
Catacombs of Kensal Green
I know you’d like to slime away
Like those walled up under Whitechapel
But I’ve my own kind of Jubilee line out of sight and out of mind
And to think you’ll have to live down there

Strangled streams, smothered rivers, London always gives me the shivers

Forty abandoned stations and Churchill’s last bolthole
Impregnable as Hitler’s bunker
Can’t you see them dancing on the platform at Down Street

Read me a dream sighs Linda
Flying through nursery windows
Leaving a night light burning
Keep all my love beside you
Toys R Us for you dear
Chocolate Crocodile tears
Now look who’s talking
Jigsaw Junior High School
All overtime in play group

Under a railway footbridge
Primrose Hill by moonbeams
Buckle my shoe in springtime
Winter’s child grows restless
Pining for bread and roses
Somewhere she’s been before
Gazing at the farmyard
All those things adored
Only until she’s bored

Climbing the wall of China
Outside the old toy station
Wrapped in a garden glory
Read me a bedtime story
I know that you have to grow up
Leaving all this behind you
Farewell my lovely Linda
Sweet as a birdsong Linda
Once in a dream called Linda

(instrumental)

When the debs came down in their famous gowns
Jacqueline at once was the talk of the town
Launched and lunched on Society’s cream
Smiled and curtsied so gently

Toujours chercher pour quelle-que-chose
As the curtains are drawn to a close

When her Daddy’s bank sailed close to the wind
He traded it all for Gordon’s Gin
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men
Conquered elsewhere never called again

Said a discreet madam with your pedigree
A belle de jour if ever I’ve seen
The home service the French lesson round
So neatly attired costing one hundred pounds

Propped up in bed all alone at The Ritz
The Evening Star printed she razored both wrists
Dressed in her furs with her girdle and gloves
Surrounded by photos of all her old loves

(Nick Clabburn / John Hackett)

Heard you on the radio
(You) sounded very strange
Voices in the distance
Way beyond my range

Tried to call the station
Panicked and I ran
Tried to find the moment
When you and I began

Looking in the mirror
Cut off all my hair
Made myself a moment
When no one seemed to care

This room is getting smaller
My ego and my Id
Now I’m really sorry
For all the things I did

(Bob Dylan)

Crickets are chirping the water is high
There’s a soft cotton dress on the line hanging dry
Windows wide open African trees
Bent over backward from a hurricane breeze

Not a word of goodbye not even a note
She gone with the man in the long black coat

Somebody seen him hanging around
At the old dance hall on the outskirts of town
He looked into her eyes when she stopped him to ask
If she wanted to dance he had a face like a mask

Somebody said from The Bible he quote
There was dust on the man in the long black coat

Preacher was a talking there’s a sermon he gave
He said every man’s conscience is vile and depraved
You cannot depend on it to be your guide
When its you who must keep it satisfied

It ain’t easy to swallow it sticks in the throat
To give her heart to the man in the long black coat

There are no mistakes in life some people say
And its true sometimes you can see it that way
Well people don’t live or die people just float
She went with the man in the long black coat

There’s smoke on the water it’s been there since June
Tree trunks uprooted neath the high crescent moon
With a pulse and vibration and the rumbling force
Someone is out there beating on a dead horse

She never said nothing there was nothing she wrote
She gone with the man in the long black coat

I long to gaze at the Cedars of Lebanon
To breathe the air on the mountain of olives
To feast my eyes on Babylon’s gardens
To take you back to Sumeria’s glory
To set you free with a full man’s pardon

In a language as old as the whispering sands
Ever submerging the towers of silence

I long to show you one thousand golden Buddhas
I long

The street is crying its lost it’s name
Inscription washed away by the pouring rain
I long

Clapperboards sandwich hordes scavengers in paradise
Training their eyes under grey porridge skies
Magistrates Ivory gates opiates potentates
Kings of carrion badness in the blood

Its all wolfwork

Faxes from a wall of corpses
Gorging on each day in mourning
Father time squeezing the sun
For light relief they bare their teeth
And turn on their own
Rolling around on a fresh bed of nails

Come and see the show
Join in the ring
With your mouth open wide

Why must you treat me like a child
Why not join me on the prom
I’d go on singing forever
But cremation won’t be long

(instrumental)

History’s a vinyl record stuck in a groove
A hundred warring sects claiming to have the truth
Blessed robots with so much to prove
You could say so much to lose

The scorching air
The slumbering mass
Of forgotten things

Preening peacocks ignite the fuse
Trumpets and promises a turn of the screw
To have a human face we’ll have to start all over again
Back to the drawing board all the boys and men

When you lose your kite in the wind and fall on the trees
You’re sucked in bulletin blown out on T.V.
The glory of the past is really only a tomb
The thing from the crypt long ago nurtured you

(instrumental)

Alone in the crowd
Beside the big wheel
You’ve run out of luck
I know the way you feel
A dark night in toytown
Round the carousel
If you want to ride faster
It’s happiness I sell

If you can’t find heaven
I’ll show you a ghost train to hell

The pleasure principle
Is what I had in mind
I’ll make you feel invincible
Then you’ll be mine
A gorilla tranquiliser
Will help to slow you down
Monsters of the Id
Call from the underground

I know I seem sordid
Beneath you at first
I’ll pierce your defences
Take away your thirst
I hold you gently
You gasp out loud
Blood on your white cheek
The fairground closes down

(instrumental)