THE FATIMA MANSIONS--Lost in the Former West [Lyrics attempt]
File collated from the CD booklet by Dave Watson/SHLF. Send updates and corrections to him here.
All songs written by Cathal Coughlan and ©1994 Mucho Loco Music (ASCAP) except where indicated.
Samples are in ("round brackets and quotation marks").
Questionable phrases are in [square brackets].
To avoid an empty feeling of mild irritation and pensiveness, it is recommended that the listener refrain from reading the lyrics as the album plays. However, it's your excessive sum of money that's been paid...
SONGS:
Belong Nowhere
The Loyaliser
Something Bad [US version only]
Popemobile to Paraguay
Walk in the Woods
Night Flights
Go Home Bible Mike [US version only]
Brain Blister
Walk Yr Way
Your World Customer
Sunken Cities [UK version only]
Brunceling's Song
Humiliate Me
Belong Nowhere
No dates to miss, no home to phone
No face to kiss, no good alone
No family, no history, a permenant delinquency
No will to smile, no room to cry
No time to think
Just watch, don't flinch
Why yes, that's you in your millionth clinch
You murder every time you blink
Some flee disasters for their lives
You flee the spawn of grubby lies
At one with graveyard dust and shipyard rust
Too loose to trust
You'll heal so much faster
if your homeland is your master
No dirt-cheap Adriatic sun
No heart of gold back of the gun
No deathcamps built for less than fun
No white man's bond, no civilization
No right to more than birth and death
from the drivelling drones of the former west
Their credo dead like Brezhnev's bones
Their headless spears and special malnutrition zones
No deathcamps here, I tell you
Just grey convenience hell
Ten civil wars unended
'neath billboard signs which yell,
"You need someone pretty
Someone English and shifty......"
CHORUS:
Let the dirt cover all, cover all, cover all
Let the dirt cover all
For it's the mother of us all and our bed when we fall
We belong nowhere
And by the way, you're dirt! Dirt! You're dirt!
Always know your worth
as you roam this mirthless earth--You're dirt! Dirt!
No sleep, the 'phone, god knows what time
Just a wordless click on the end of the line
and a thud at the door out back in the dark
as some wirehair creature spins 'round the yard
Why do you run? Why do you hide?
Why do you bruise and then decide?
You didn't mean it, you didn't see
Well, now you're run to rags and so is she
You'll drink the Balkan brandy
You will forget your name
You will become a captain
and you will lose all shame
You need someone pretty
Someone English and shifty--CHORUS
Let the dirt cover all, cover all, cover all
Let the dirt cover all
From the veil to the shawl
From the flirt to the brawl
We belong nowhere
The Loyaliser
The model volcano by the giant gas tank
The street corner gun-market next to the robbed bank
The poorhouse next to the Uniroyal palace
A tower of riches, beside it the abyss
Sit in the gridlock under the stopped clock
Long for a new taste? Suck on a breeze-block
Your brain is a doughnut, your spirit's a dry cup
This place has the poison to fill them all right up
Lockdown London--
Headbutt the pebble-dash
The girl with the bit nails and fondness for blackmail
You made her a secret, now she knows she can't fail
Your weakness was known well, she earned her a bombshell
Her life's worth of grievance now hangs from your coat-tails
The little drummer-boy sadly (though eloquent) bitches
Too old for the bluff game or overnight riches
He meets with your pen friend, they speak of your badness
and compose a duet--sounds like Tarzan and Callas
I've been a victimiser and I've been victimised
I've been a sly betrayer who has been demonised
I've been an instrument of all I hate
So here's to all you absent leeches--safe
I'm not around to hear your pious speeches while you're...
CHORUS:
Waiting for a date from the Loyaliser
Waiting for a date from the Loyaliser
Crying for a sign from the Loyaliser
Time always on the side of the Loyaliser
Into thinner air with the Loyaliser
You get older, you get scared but you get no wiser
Now you must adjust your ears to the sound of trouble
getting louder and louder and louder and louder
Forget the "like-with-like," now there is only other
as the walls begin to buckle and turn into powder
Cowed figures under railway arches
wait for the coming storm
They've already seen your great provider
in his true bloodthirsty human form
Time to get criminal-minded
Take any way out when you find it
and those who stay around do so because they're blinded
No light at all when you're...CHORUS
Lockdown London...
Just a prison...
Something Bad
I was raised to expect continuity. Instead I get this...
The monster has red hair
The monster has green eyes
She laughs and bites her quarry's nose
as she pulls herself astride
Her double-jointed hips now do their tricks
and you can hear his plaintive yells
from the plane-crash craters in the Scottish hill
to the burning oil wells
CHORUS:
Something bad is giving birth
to a thing which won't melt to your touch
Something bad is giving birth
to something worse and it's going to hurt
His Reebok shoes let in the rain
and he coughs into the dawn
at he searches for space on the synagogue wall
to draw swastikas on
Job descriptions change on the firing range
All generals are friends
So it's down to the dole with the molotovs
It's problem time again--CHORUS
You built the metal birds who [shrink?] the skies
and bring [your weakness] from the other side of a world
All these birds bringing death
You find [all of our good], there's only death left
Big black hawk swinging low
over the rat-run streets of the English ghetto
[Clean] spirit of the island, home at last
Come on, come on, come on -- crash!
One man felt ashamed running guns and cocaine
for his short-term gain, so every one of us must pay
In his New World Order, you can have some nerve gas with your air
Thanks to the CIA pussy in the President's chair!
Something bad is giving birth
In the sky, its belly bursts!
Something bad is giving birth
and calls for wounds to slake its thirst
Something bad is giving birth
No more decay, no more dirt
Something bad is giving birth
In therefore's name it stalks the earth
Do you feel you can deal?
Can you fuck!*
* Yes, it's supposed to be an exclamation mark. It basically means, "There's no fucking way that you can."
Popemobile to Paraguay
The postmark read "Asuncion"...
By the foul Adriatic there can be some dramatic
variations in the temperature
so you can't recall which S.S. dress to wear
but the king of the Papists is a friend of the rapists
and the upside-down crucifixion squad
so escape from sure defeat is thus arranged
A man with your knowledge of electrical goods
should not be condemned because he's misunderstood
Trip from Zagreb to Rome, and on to Asuncion
in the clothes of a bishop, the new beard being your own
CHORUS:
You may think we look stupid, but we're paying the rent
and we won't trade our fortunes for a hippy tent
We've been all colours of angels with both wings on the right
and we've supped and we've coupled through our mystic life
Eternal City, firm and true, no naked crimson lights
Constant like an anthrax bomb, honest like a knife...
All of this must never die
Popemobile to Paraguay
It's been a while since you said "heil"
You CIA-bred necrophile
No Russkies left to rail at, not for now
but the Slavs in their millions
with their scrapheaps of children
must replace your South Americans
More skulls to keep your Mafia in the Mafia Top Ten
They'll mass when commanded, they'll hate when they're told
They'll murder their neighbours for the good of their soul
They'll punish your enemies if you'll read out their names
They'll be adorning the bridges from the Don to the Thames--CHORUS
Cleansing faces of their smiles
Butchers sheltered and praised
Meeting pain with fairytales
Dead bank-balances raised
All of this must never die
Popemobile to Paraguay
You may think we look stupid, but we're behind with the rent
How much am I bid for this real piece of Jesus' polyester tent?
Polyester tent which my dad just sent
and it's lock up the women, burn this book for me, man
Send sweeties and flowers to Teh-huh-ran
Lock up the women, burn this book for me, man
Send sweeties and flowers to my pal in Tehran
In Eye-ran
Walk in the Woods
A walk in the woods after a storm
through waves of steam and graveyard gas come overground
The unwalked path, the dimming light
Not day or night, just always while life remains on hold
Everybody's sorry, everybody's sorry
if words are to be believed
World without mercy, world which deserts me
Faces gone, just trunks of trees
Get it together, get it together-gether, yeah, yeah...
You can do and say whatever you like
I can take it, I can listen, but I've only got the one life
What am I going to do? Every year find another place?
Get out, get out, get out, get out of my face
A walk in the woods at the birth of night
where soft shapes come to fill the glowing space
And now the book in my hand is closed and sealed
To wander blind is all this walker needs
Everybody's sorry, everybody's sorry
Well, you can keep your form of words
World with an exit, I'm there and I know it
It takes me in its arms
It takes me in its loving arms
Get it together, get it together-gether, yeah, yeah...
You'll know me by the knives sticking out of my back
I'm a traitor to my friends and race, a traitor to my class
Want to see my blood? Well, there won't be long to wait
Maybe by then you'll get your cover story straight
A walk in the woods after a storm
Nite Flights
(Music/Lyrics--Scott Engel) ©1993 International Media Holdings (BMI)
There's no hold
The moving has come through
The danger brushing you
turns its face into the heat
and runs the tunnel
It's so cold
The dark dug up by dogs
The stitches torn and broke
The raw meat fist you choke
has hit the bloodlite
Glass traps open and close on nite flights
Broken necks, featherweights press the walls
Be my love, we can be gods on nite flights
With only one promise, only one way to fall
On the nite flights, only one way to fall
Go Home Bible Mike
Welcome to Apeville, now you're a citizen, too
Meet Mrs. Doreen Pompidou
She'd like to do the shimmy on top of you
The wall is coming down
The one which holds the house up
A brass band playing in a dumptruck
is visible through clouds of brick-dust
as people dressed as cows form an orderly queue
for a drug that makes you dead for a second or two
I raise myself from my punchbowl, drowning
The Yakuza are singing: it can't be true!
Go home Bible Mike, go home Bible Mike
Go home Bible Mike, go home Bible Mike
Her hand squeezes mine and I shudder
She says, "That was one shock, now here comes another
You really don't remember, do you?"
I said, "Why? Am I supposed to?
Me, the slut of dishevelled women
whom fun has made sad and careless?"
and she's knocked me onto the greasy floor
and her eunuch is barring the only door
Pilar, in her room above the farmacia,
smiles as she pictures your little thing
Imagine her surprise when she looks through the window
and sees you riddled with bullets while the cops all sing:
Go home Bible Mike, go home Bible Mike
You preach without a right
Go home Bible Mike!
You don't make me laugh, you don't make me horny,
so what the hell are we doing here?
Gasping all night in this Nazi city
You bit it, I'm bleeding, we're sliding in my blood
Fucking with my blood
Market my blood! Market my blood!
You got a tourist mind
Deaf, numb and blind to all the pain you bring
This is more than just sin
"Am I really such a nightmare? If I had a home I'd go there."
Anytime you like
This court says, "Take a hike"
The slate will not be wiped
Just go home Bible Mike
Go home Bible Mike....
Brain Blister
In rags in their normal place
where diesel machines roar by
Pale dawn, at the scrapyard gates
Fast food parks and hardware mines
Not smiling or frowning they,
the shades on the fringe of town,
unpaid, idle, lending shape
to the gravity which they say
has dragged this country down
This beautiful country down
Close off the backstreets, no-one goes
Bring on the ice, the game-shows: brain-blister
The bigger the roadside crowd
the denser the gameshow cloud
There's nothing on that churning screen
Just nonsense that might mean:
"Like it? Good. No? Tough!
Pen them in and shut them up
Slow march, eyes right
Save all your revolution for your Saturday night!"
[(Your curse)?]
You earn but you feel oppressed
The armour could do with a test
Why not betray your lover's trust?
Go ahead and push it until it bursts
You're back on the streets again
No armour, no dreams, no friends
The worst pain is behind the eyes
Where the killer of futures hides, still hides
They've closed the backstreets, you can't hide
If you feel brave, just step outside
where all tomorrows stink the same
Where night vibrates with cries of:
Brain-blister
Well, we laughed till dawn about the coming hell
[...?]
We learned to live without rest or hope
but [you'll?] never admit we live a joke
The patient is fading fast
Oh, but ignore it, it's just an act
Walk Yr Way
The days are chained like daisies
flung on some years-old grave
on ground unmarked, found on no chart
or map or minefield aid
I can only change the future
I cannot change the past
I can't recall who's on my side
I can only watch my back
Through aimless thought, through thoughtless deed
I joined with liars and thieves
but behold the only liar who's
scorned and told to leave
I will walk yr way
A soap-opera clown
stakes his place by her side
and he'll sniff, pout and frown
'til she tells him the world is wrong
and his cliches are right
Now, the season never changes
Just me and my true love
In this harbour bare, slate-grey and hushed
where slow death is life enough
You made of me an outcast
A suitcase-dwelling shell
You made of mine a heart of stone
which you dropped down a bottomless well
Well, fair enough,
but just don't call it love
when it was just lust for blood
and by the way, "get out" just means "get out" to me
I will walk yr way
Debts of the world are not mine to pay
so I will walk yr way
Your World Customer
In the bright-lit railway station, 3 A.M.
in a town whose active life is at an end
I was met by a rich man dressed in a panda fur
who said, "If I can keep smiling I can change the world."
What world?
"Lord Straight Banana, Lord Paper Twine,
Lord Biting Yo-Yo, they're all friends of mine.
Lord Trannie Dolequeue, Lord Private Zoo,
Lord Hanging Bishop and Lord Valium, too."
"I know you think you have a job
but the whole world knows it's ended.
Why do you laugh at the dying of the senile god
on whom your devilish life depended?"
Shop-soiled and broken
in a part not clearly seen
You'll have no Armegeddon, no more screams
Pleasant dreams...
CHORUS:
Your world, your world, your world customer
Your world, your world, your world, your world
I said, "I'm sure your faith in what you cannot see
has made your slumbers sounder but it won't work for me.
I am sick of fresh starts, of the promises I've heard
from my lips and others of a brighter world."
"Now I'm a punchdrunk sailor who cannot picture land,
an exhausted atom in a grain of sand.
They who can't be frozen like a teenage corpse
must be isolated and tied up in knots."
Fake chrome and a lick of paint
and a change of name announced
by some menswear dummy turned messenger
of a master whose name he cannot pronounce
You feast on bargain-basement dregs
Get your self-delusions off the well-worn peg
No new hierarchy, female or male
No Santa, Elvis or Holy Grail
Shop-soiled and clueless, too indebted to inspect
what both feeds and defets you--no respect
I'm beaten, but I still reject
this world, just like a sentence
Without crime or guilt or sin
so give the panda back his skin
and give the berries back their gin--CHORUS
Sunken Cities
Through sunken cities, blameless
Strangers now but trust renewed
Silence decades long, retreating
We'll laugh as though each joke was new
in the ruins finding treasures
Lost when life was rent in two
As the courtesan of deluge
I was hangman with a smile;
now no comforts can engage me
or sleep bring silence to my mind
Losing count of all the failures
The early graves and Judas-hounds
Soon the waiting will be over
and dead and living stand one ground
All reliving will be over
and restless peace at last be found
Brunceling's Song
James Jesus Angleton sells sunlamps door to door
in this so-called peacetime, even spooks fight to stay alive
I don't much like him, but I sit and mind his car
He says, "Brunceling, where to now?
This global suburb's ours..."
They said "adapt," and, sometime back, I think I snapped
but it's no big deal, I would not trade my luck
I have no system now, I just drift until I'm found;
"Brunceling, hand me down a new slogan", now:
PENURY HAS SET US FREE!
NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING IS TRUE
An assassin's bullet which has lodged in my neck
picks up Radio Kabul and it bores me to death--
NOTHING, NOTHING, NOTHING IS TRUE
"I know Khomeini, John Wilkes Booth and the Jackson 5,"
the old man roared as I poured him into his bed,
"Why, they control the bourbon runs from Bialystok to Brunei!
Brunceling, you're like me," he said
"They fear us cause we accept no blame
and we're too fucking old to change.
Too many hatreds for making amends.
Too many favours for friends of dead friends.
Oh, their mumbled thanks came cheap to them.
Too many marksmen on the knolls,
Too many alibis always to hold,
I'm a sad old joke; forget I spoke..."
OPEN THE VEIN, OPEN THE VEIN,
OPEN THE VEIN, WIDER THE VEIN
Let in more rain, let in more rain
SEVER THE PHONELINE, SEVER THE HEAD,
SEEING IN WHITE, GREEN, YELLOW AND RED
I think he's dead, I think he's dead
Nothing, nothing, nothing is true
Old friends now reject me for misjudgements I've made
Some are in power, some in flyover graves
Nothing, nothing, nothing is true
And tell me, stiff, whose little baby were you?
Humiliate Me
(If ever you're going hungry, there's always the graveyard...)
Be nice or strangle me, I don't care
Good times are not what's lured me here
Bad clothes and sting-in-the-eye perfume
I try to stand and confess to I-don't-know-who
& the criminal insane
look so gentle when they're being entertained
Gunsmiths and prison warders
A gallery of brain disorders
Porn stars handcuffed to their fathers
Come on: humiliate me
"...and I'll come sex with you if you pay,"
I tell a stranger who silently turns away
I strip naked and I head for the open door
The man in the tux holds it open
He's seen it all, he's seen it all, he's seen it all before
Say, I am now dressed befitting my coming death
Come on, don't be so useless
Don't I stir any juices
as I dance the dance of the seven nooses?
Lovely! Humiliate me!
Some people dress for success
They press the flesh under savage duress
Me, I stay quiet 'til the time is right
Then stand clear if you don't want a terrible night
I'm not so much about stopping the rot
I just want to see the little guy on top--
I'll pay to see the little guy on top!
[...?]
[Look at me, look at me...?]
If you run your country like a private prison
Expect the world's derision
Why, they wouldn't baptize you with a snail's emission
so come on, humiliate me...
(Get a [rose?], you can [...?] if you want!)
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