Last night you said I was cold, untouchable
A lonely piece of action from another town
I just want to be free, I’m happy to be lonely
Can’t you stay away?
Just leave me alone with my thoughts
Just a runaway
Just a runaway
I’m saving myself
Strung out below a necklace of carnival lights
Cold moon, held on the crest of the night
I’m too tired to fight
So now we’re passing strangers, at single tables
Still trying to get over
Still trying to write love songs for passing strangers
All those passing strangers
And the twinkling lies
All those twinkling lies
Sparkle with the wet ink on the paper
Oh, I remember Toronto when mylo went down
And we sat and we cried on the phone
I never felt so alone
He was the first of our own
Some of us go down in a blaze of obscurity
Some of us go down in a haze of publicity
The price of infamy
The edge of insanity
Another holiday inn, another temporary home
And an interviewer threatened me with a microphone
“Talk to me
Won’t you tell me your stories?”
So I talked about conscience and I talked about pain
And he looked out the window and it started to rain
I thought maybe
I’ve already gone crazy
So I reached for a bottle and he reached for the door
And I picked up the sleeping pills crushed on the floor
Inviting me
To a casual obscenity
It would be incredible
If we could retrace all the times that we lived here
All the collisions
Wasted, I’ve never been so wasted
I’ve never been this far out before
Perimeter walk
There’s a presence here
I feel could have been ancient
Could have been mystical
There’s a presence
Childhood, my childhood
Childhood
A misplaced childhood
My childhood, a misplaced childhood
Give it back to me, give it back to me
A childhood, that childhood
That childhood, that childhood
That childhood
Oh, please give it back to me
I saw a war widow in a launderette
Washing the memories from her husband’s clothes
She had medals pinned to a threadbare greatcoat
A lump in her throat with cemetery eyes
I see convoys curbcrawling West German autobahns
Trying to pick up a war
They’re going to even the score
Oh, I can’t take any more
I see black flags on factories
Soup ladles poised on the lips of the poor
I see children with vacant stares
Destined for rape in the alleyways
Does anybody care? I can’t take any more
Should we say goodbye?
Hey
I see priests, politicians
The heroes in black plastic body-bags under nations’ flags
I see children pleading with outstretched hands
Drenched in napalm, this is no Vietnam
I can’t take any more
Should we say goodbye
How can we justify?
They call us civilised!