This Girl

This Girl is a stencil of a brushstroke in the rain
She’s a ghost of the city she’s a body through the windscreen
This girl is the snowfall where the spring should have been
She’s the stains on the pages of a top shelf magazine
This girl is a black eye she’s a bruise on your knee
She’s the ashes of the people that you really meant to be
This girls the resurrection she’s the comeback
She’s the absinthe and whiskey she is poetry and Prozac

This girl is taking bets this girl’s a silhouette can’t you see

This girl is the flutter of fake lashes in the mirror
She’s a ragged edged fedora or a Spanish souvenir
This girl is the clean cut the frozen ground
She’s a knife drawn down the sidestreet when there's no-one else around

This girl’s a forged ticket to a Lloyd Webber show
She’s the far end of the graveyard up where the nettles grow
This girl is the rainbows in the dewy eyed stares
She’s the name tag on the toe of your long dead love affairs

This girl is taking bets....

This girl is the wild smile the icy stare
She’s the crackle of the static she’s the curses she's the prayers
This girl is the junkie in the childrens matinee
She’s the 4 minute warning
She is hell to pay

This girl is the plunge pool she is cocaine and Kodak
Now she's out setting sail on the ocean of the soundtrack
This girl is the shaking hand the rattling cup
With a button and a note saying things are looking up


Gun Cotton

Silence in the courtyard
Silence in the street
The 'powers that be' out by the river
Are shuffling their feet
But the night is full of car alarms and sideways glances
In this land of milk and money
You don't get your second chances

Cars are burning on the sliproads
The bars are full of sailors
Spent a long time trying to fathom
Which were trips and which were trailers
And England has been bleeding
Into every police station
Into every schoolyard, every ward
And every state occasion and

We're the gun cotton
They'll blast us all in line.........this time

The children in their boxes paint the underpass red
The graffiti on the park bench
And a faded A-Z
They'll make you fat with dreams in sequence
On the silver screen
Till you're full of hope and tragedy
And crash site steam and

We're the gun cotton
They'll blast us all in line.........this time

England has been bleeding
But she can't leave it at that
Cos she's waiting round the corner
With a switchblade in her hat
So lets dance for our lives boys
In this Vaudeville show
Take your time and take a bow
This place is gonna blow

We're the gun cotton
They'll blast us all in line.........this time


You Tell Me

Well here we are then you and me
Some little joke of chemistry
With all our sun bleached history
Fading as the light gets strong and
We are brave and we are fakes of
Tortured art and higher stakes
And winters knocking at the gates
But the clocks are wrong

I am the steel I am the dare
The angry kid with mud in her hair
Setting off those warning flares til the sky got light
And you are the seasons you are the free fall
Here's the smell of tarmac here's the clarion call
Here's the reasoning behind it all
Right here tonight

Cos I’ve struggled for direction
A blank page as far as I can see
But I’m open to suggestion
So you tell me

The corner cafe got closed down
A funeral pire for the wise and the clowns
A little drunk this time around but the feeling’s there
They’re drawing out their pocket knives
Til just the singular survives
For all the currency it buys
They don't much care

Chorus

Now colours blazing through the sky
With autumn fury in our eyes
We’ll gather every battle cry and lay them at their door
Cos for all the reasons that they spent
To turn poetry to self defence
I guess that what I really meant was that’s what its for
But you tell me


Don't Set Foot Over The Railway Track

Don't set foot
Over the railway track
The Heathens and the spin-doctors
Are waiting round the back
The skies are always sullen and
Rain races to the tarmac
So don't set foot
Over the railway track

Don't set foot
Over the railway track
The grass isn't green its yellow
And the pavement is all cracks
The graveyard's in a coma
The church has got the blues
And Jesus has a nose-ring
And Mary has tattoos

Girls paint their skins like corpses
And have hair of scouring wire
And the men all look like demons
See them dancing round their fires
Every door has leprosy
Every house has got the clap
So don't set foot
Over the railway track

Don't set foot over
Over the railway track
Hope you've not been speaking
To the wrong kind of people Jack
They'll screw you soon as look at you
If you let them gain a foot
This lines God Almighty's way of saying
That you'll stay just where you're put

Cos they're all paid up party members
With a red streak like a river
They're all standing there on their side
Shouting promise and deliver
They are papering their walls
With pages of Kerouac
So don't set foot
Over the railway track

No don't set foot over the railway track


December In New York

Friday’s humming summer and the whiskey sun is running out the night sky
I am here watching your form slowly pacing in the dawn as all the stars die
Yeah you're like a hit you are tailored just to fit the changing season
Baby what is this we are two star crossed bits of an equation

Is it that you're shining
Is it you endgame talk
You're like a suntan in November
Or December in New York

I will tune in to the radio to hear some guy on some show sing like chocolate
No its not my job to be sentimental yeah
I swear it was accidental it just turned out like that

Is it that you're shining
Is it you endgame talk
You're like a suntan in November
Or December in New York

I know I should be spitting bitter just for interest its more fitting for a girl like me
But I am standing here amid politics and tears and I'm shouting loudly
The dustcart is slugging its way around the corner in the morning
And if you listen close you'll hear the fairylights and smoke of the East Coast calling

Is it that you're shining
Is it you endgame talk
You're like a suntan in November
Or December in New York