Clutching at straws

Hotel hobbies padding dawns hollow corridors

Bell boys checking out the hookers in the bar

Slug-like fingers trace the star-spangled clouds of cocaine on the mirror 

The short straw took its bow



The tell tale tocking of the last cigarette 

Marking time in the packet as the whisky sweat 

Lies like discarded armour on an unmade bed

And a familiar craving is crawling in his head



And the only sign of life is the ticking of the pen 

Introducing characters to memories like old friends 

Frantic as a cardiograph scratching out the lines

A fever of confession a catalogue of crime in happy hour

Do you cry in happy hour

Do you hide in happy hour

The pilgrimage to happy hour



New shadows tugging at the corner of his eye

Jostling for attention 

As the sunlight flares

Through a curtains tear

Shuffling its beams as if in nervous anticipation of another day

On promenades where drunks propose to lonely arcade mannequins 

Where ceremonies pause at the jewelers shop display

Feigning casual silence in strained romantic interludes 

Till they commit themselves to the muted journey home 

And the pool player rests on another cue 

Last nights hero picking up his dues

A honeymoon gambled on a ricochet

She's staring at the brochures at the holidays

Chalking up a name in your hometown 

Standing all your mates to another round 

Laughing at the world till the barman wipes away the warm wet circles

The warm wet circles



I saw teenage girls like gaudy moths

A classrooms shabby butterflies 

Flirt in the glow of stranded telephone boxes 

Planning white lace weddings from smeared hearts and token proclamations 

Rolled from stolen lipsticks across the razored webs of glass 

Sharing cigarettes with experience 

With her giggling jealous confidantes 

She faithfully traces his name 

With quick bitten fingernails 

Through the tears of condensation

That'll cry through the night

As the glancing headlights of the last bus 

Kiss adolescence goodbye



In a warm wet circle

Like a mothers kiss on your first broken heart  

A warm wet circle 

Like a bullit hole in Central Park 

A warm wet circle 

And I'll always surrender to the warm wet circles



She nervously undressed in the dancing beams of the Fidra lighthouse

Giving it all away before it's too late 

She'll let a lovers tongue move in a warm wet circle 

Giving it all away and showing no shame 

She'll take a mother's kiss on her first broken heart 

A warm wet circle, 

She'll realise that she played her part in a warm wet circle



It was a wedding ring 

Destined to be found in a cheap hotel

Lost in a kitchen sink or thrown in a wishing well

At that time of the night 

When streetlights throw crosses through window frames

Paranoia roams where the shadows reign

Oh, at that time of the night

At that time of the night 

Your senses tangled in some new perfume

Criticism triggers of a loaded room

Oh, at that time of the night



So if you ask me

How do I fell inside

I could honestly tell you 

We've been taken on a very long ride

And if my owners let me 

Have some free time some day 

With all good intention 

I would probably run away

Clutching the short straw



At that time of the night

When questions rally in an open mind 

Summon all your answers with an ice cube chime

At that time of the night

At that time of the night

Pretend you're off the hook with the telephone 

Your confidence wounded in a free fire zone

Oh, at that time of the night



So if you ask me 

Where do I go from here

My next destination 

Even isn't really that clear

So if you join me 

And get on your knees and prey

I'll show you salvation 

We'll take the alternative way 

Clutching the short straw



If I had enough money 

I'd buy a round for that boy over-there 

A companion in my madness in the mirror 

The one with the silvery hair

And if some kind soul 

Could please pick up my tab

And while they're at it

If they could pick up my broken heart



Warm wet circles...

Is it wrong to talk to myself even when there's nobody else 

I'm just checking out that I'm not gone under the water 

Thrown on the beach like a seal ready for slaughter

Can't you understand that the way things were planned 

It never worked out so I just went crazy

I took to the drink, like something says it's "maybe"



I ain't got no excuse and that's really the news

Got nothing else to say, that it's my way, it's always my way

I seem to be running away so often 

I'll try anything once and that's the way we should be 

But it's always the same getting caught up again in a habit

A habit I just can't shake off the way it always turned out

Can you understand it's the way I choose to be 

Everything seems so easy this way but I'm going under fast

Slipping away

Am I so crazy

Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways 

But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze

I'm serving a sentence to write life's sentences 

It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this



Just for the record I'm gonna put it down, down

Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around



Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym

Just a barroom dancer on my final fling 

Just another writer paying off my dues 

Just finding inspiration well that's my excuse



Just for the record I'm gonna put it down, down

Just for the record I'm gonna change my life around 

Just another empty gesture with an empty glass

Just another comic actor behind a tragic mask



But I've got no discipline got no self control 

Just a little less painful here when my back's against the wall



It's too late, I found, it's too far, I'm in two minds 

Both of them are out of it at the bar



When you say I got a problem that's a certainty

But I can put it all right down to eccentricity

It's just for the record it's just a passing phase

Just for the record I can stop any day

Where do we go from here?



Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here



They boarded up the synagogues uzis on a street corner

You can't take a photograph of uzis on a street corner

The DJ resigned today they wouldn't let him have his say 

Surface scratched where the needles play, uzis on a street corner



Where do we go from here



Terror in Rue de St. Denis, murder on the periphery 

Someone else in someone else's pocket, Christ knows I don't know how to stop it

Poppies at the cenotaph, the cynics can't afford to laugh

I heard in on the telegraph there's uzis on a street corner



Where do we go from here, where do we go from here



The more I see, the more I hear, the more I find fewer answers

I close my mind, I shout it out but you know it's getting harder

To me calm down, to reason out, to come to terms with what it's all about 

I'm uptight, can't sleep at night, I can't pretend everything's alright

My ideals, my sanity, they seem to be deserting me

But to stand up and fight I know we have six million reasons



They're burning down the synagogues uzis on a street corner 

The heralds of the holocaust uzis on a street corner

The silence never louder than now, how quickly we forgot our vows

This resurrection we can't allow, uzis on a street corner



Where do we go from here, where do we go from here



We buy fresh bagels from the corner store

Where swastikas are spat from aerosols

I sit in the bar sipping iced White Russian

Trying to score but nobody's pushing

And everyone looks at everyone's faces 

Searching for signs and praying for traces of a conscience in residence

Are we sitting on a barbed wire fence

Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home



We place our faith in human rights 

In the paper wars that tie the red tape tight

I know that I would rather be out of this conspiracy



In the gulags and internment camps frozen faces in nameless ranks 

I know that they would rather be standing here beside me 

Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home



You can shut your eyes, you can hide it away it's gonna come back another day



Racing the clouds home, are we racing the clouds home

Racing the clouds home

I'd be really pleased to meet you if I could remember your name

But I got problems of the memory ever since I got a winner in the fame game 

I'm a citizen of Legoland travellin' incommunicado 

And I don't give a damn for the Fleet Street afficionados



But I don't want to be the backpage interview

I don't want launderette anonymity 

I want my handprints in the concrete on Sunset Boulevard

A dummy in Tussauds you'll see

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado



I'm a Marquee veteran, a multi-media bonafide celebrity

I've got an allergy to Perrier, daylight and responsibility

I'm a rootin-tootin cowboy, the Peter Pan, the street credibility

Always taking the point with the dawn patrol fraternity



Sometimes it seems like I've been here before when I hear opportunity kicking in my door

Call it synchronicity call it Deja Vu I just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that I choose



But I don't want to be a tin can tied to the bumper of a wedding limousine

Or currently residing in the where are they now file a toupet on the cabaret scene

I want to do adverts for American Express cards talk shows on prime time TV

A villa in France, my own cocktail bar and that's where you're gonna find me



Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado



Sometimes it seems like I've been here before when I hear opportunity kicking in my door 

Call it synchronicity call it Deja Vu I just put my faith in destiny -- it's the way that I choose



Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

It's the only way

Incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado, incommunicado

Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks to burn a little brighter now

Something about roman candles fizzing out, shine a little light on me now

Found a strange fascination with a liquid fixation, alcohol can thrill me now

It's getting late in the game to show any pride or shame

I just burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now, yeah



Doctor says my liver looks like leaving with my lover, need another 'time out' now 

Like any sort of hero turning down to zero still standing out in any crowd

Pulling seventeen with experience and dreams, sweating out a happy hour

Where you're hiding 29 you know it ain't a crime to burn a little brighter now

Burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now, burn a little brighter now



Dr. Finlay: "And my advice is if you maintain this lifestyle you won't reach 30"



Torch: "Christ -- it's a romantic way to go really, it's part of the heritage, it's your round i'n'it?



We burn a little brighter now, yeah

Read some Kerouac and it put me on the tracks to burn a little brighter now

It was something about roman candles fizzing out, shine a little light on me now 

Found a strange fascination with a liquid fixation, alcohol thrill me now 

Getting late in the game to show any pride or shame burn a little brighter now

We burn a little brighter now, yeah



Burn a little brighter now, we burn a little brighter now

A hand held over a candle in angst fuelled bravado 

A carbon trail scores a moist stretched palm

Trapped in the indecision of another fine menu 

And you sit there and ask me to tell you the story so far

This is the story so far



Shuffling your memories dealing your doodles in margins

You scrawl out your poems across a beermat or two

And when you declare the point of grave creation 

They turn round and you to tell them the story so far 

This is the story so far



And you listen with a tear in you eye 

To their hopes and betrayals and your only reply 

Is Slàinte Mhath



Princes in exile raising the standard Drambuie 

Parading their anecdotes tired from old campaigns 

Holding their own last orders commanding attention

We sit here and listen to all of the story so far 

This is the story so far



Take it away

Take it away

Take it away 

Take me away

Take me away

Take me away

Take me away

Take me away



From the dream on the barbed wire at Flanders and Bilston Glen

From a Clydeside that rusts from the tears of its broken men 

From the realisation that all we've been left behind

Is to stand like our fathers before us in the firing line



Waiting on the whistle to blow

We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow 

They promised us miracles, and the whistle still blows 

Broken promises but the whistle still blows 

Waiting on the whistle to blow

We stand here waiting on the whistle to blow

I was flicking through the channels on the TV 

On a Sunday in Milwaukee in the rain

Trying to piece together conversations

Trying to find out where to lay the blame



But when it comes right down to it there's no use trying to pretend 

For when it gets right down to it there's no one here that's left to blame

Blame it on me, you can blame it on me 

We're just sugar mice in the rain



I heard Sinatra calling me through the floorboards 

Where you pay a quarter for a partnership in rhyme

To the jukebox crying in the corner 

While the waitress is counting out the time



For when it comes right down to it there's no use trying to pretend 

For when it gets right down to it there's no one really left to blame

Blame it on me, you can blame it on me

We're just sugar mice in the rain



'Cause I know what I feel, know what I want I know what I am

Daddy took a raincheck

Cos I know what I want, know what I feel I know what I need 

Daddy took a raincheck, your daddy took a raincheck 

Ain't no one in here that's left to blame but me

Blame it on me, blame it on me



Well the toughest thing that I ever did was talk to the kids on the phone

When I heard them asking questions I knew that that you were all alone

Can't you understand that the government left me out of work

I just couldn't stand the looks on their faces saying, "What a jerk"



So if you want my address it's number one at the end of the bar

Where I sit with the broken angels clutching at straws and nursing our scars

Blame it on me, blame it on me

Sugar mice in the rain

Your daddy took a raincheck, your daddy took a raincheck