[Verse 1]
Oh, oh, oh
This is my job
I don't come around and put out your red light when you work!
[Silence]
What's the matter?
Didn't you get enough attention at home?
[Silence]
If shit were music
La da da, la da da
You'd be a brass band
[Silence]
Know what?
You should get an agent, oh yeah, yeah
Why sit in the dark handling yourself?
[Chorus 1]
For Lavinia who goes like gynozoon
IX, I, V, IX, III, V, I
For the citizen whose joke lays in their hand
I, V, I, V, IX, IX, III
To play fugues on Jove's Spam castanets
V, IX, IX, I, VI, IX, I
[Verse 2]
Cattle are slaughtered, entrails examined
Spread out across the moon, the Tisza is rising
Topless bars overflowing, pulsing through the flumes
Drop-kicked coloraturas, fouling my ears
Bypassing an anorexic sky and acar jumping grafters
Chorion-crying, how can you stoop so high?
[Chorus 2]
For Papiria who plops the Pantheon
IV, VI, IX, V, I, IX, I
For grosse Gauls who won't leave our sheep alone
V, I, VII, IX, I, IX, I
[Bridge]
Norsemen, do not eat the big pink mint
Flush hard it's a long way to Athens
[Verse 3]
Gone from your wooden palace
The wild mice pelt clothes slipped from my toes
Where termites scribble the walls
Twisted forth and gone, "Little father"
The 'snip' off your nine-ninety-nine
From where you groomed yourself too small
No more dragging this wormy anus
Around on shag piles from Persia to Thrace
I've severed my reeking gonads
Fed them to your shrunken face
[Chorus 3]
Janus head, it's said will give good door
IX, IX, V, IX, I, IX, I
For a Roman who's proof that Greeks fucked bears
V, V, IX, VII, V, IV, I
[Verse 4]
Heard this one? This'll kill you
About the ropes of hair, care of Venus the Bald
Tugging Mercs across the plain
Those measuring road-rashed bellies
A perte de vue to me night and day
The one about the saint
Stranded high upon his pillar
Thirty summers, thirty winters
His constant visitor, his mother
But he'd stare into the distance
Ignored her calls from down below:
Did you ever throw your own mother's food back at her?
Did you ever tell her, "Take this junk away!"
What kind of an unnatural son would do that to his own mother?
The tasteless one about the bantam who couldn't climb a rung
Your Helipolis is scrapheap-gone, the brown slug of your tongue
[Chorus 4]
For eunuch Ron who sleeps at night across the emperor's bedroom door
III, V, IX, IX, I, V, I
Grostulating-Gorbi requires fresh packing
II, IX, V, I, IV, IX, I
[Verse 5]
Over, it's over
Syrinx screaming all around
BAR! BAR! BAR!
BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR!
Aquil-Aetos, Aquil-Aetos
Screaming all around
Filling up my life, screaming all around
BAR! BAR! BAR!
BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR!
Over, it's over
Your Nibelung can't be found
Their shadowless shadows wiping me
Wiping me clean away
BAR! BAR! BAR!
BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR!
[Verse 6]
Where's the scent of pine torches, the lumbering caravans
The felt covered wagons, moving like galleons?
The 'wedgie', the 'melvy' to threaten the air?
Only fledge muffled long hollow bone-drums a-beating
The dark day behind us, the dark day ahead
The wind drone across skull goblets
Then Basel-cum-Strasbourg-cum-Frankfurt-cum-Speyer-cum
[Verse 7]
I hear the only place you're ever invited is outside
[Silence]
If brains were rain, you'd surely be a desert
[Silence]
Look, don't go to a mind reader
Go to a palmist, I know you've got a palm
[Silence]
Does your face hurt? 'Cause it's killing me
[Silence]
[Verse 8]
Cut to lost Lumbago City, I am perched against the sky
A banner shoal of sparrows sways in the twilight
Down there, as ish kabibbles, schlepp the shade forever
Earth's hoary fontenelle weeps softly for a thumb thrust
A chorus of threadbare black-stockinged legs
Is fanning out into a frazzled black rose
No phalanxes fleeing like zippers of blood
Red plumes nodding between the horses' ears
[Chorus 5]
Hey buddy, give it up
Hey pal, come down, join the living
Wanted: A lisping, hobbling, noseless runt
Phone: IX-IX-IX-IX-IX-IX-I
[Verse 9]
Remember:
"Someday you'll go far if you catch the right train"
How about "You're so fat
When you wear a yellow raincoat, people scream, 'Taxi!'"
Then there's:
"You're so boring, that you can't even entertain doubt!"
[Refrain]
I'll grease this pole behind me
Grease this pole behind me
Grease this pole
Grease this pole
[Verse 10]
There's an unfinished rumour doing the rounds
It seems the storks are seen returning to the rooftops
Carrying back their children, clacking like dried palms
Loud enough to be heard from Reims to Orleans
River banks are cleared, bridges retaken
Oblivion, driven from the city street by street
So why have screams of laughter, the pissing stench of mares-milk beer
Come to bait your toad down from his toadstool?
And if I'm melancholic, and if I shed a tear
"Don't forget to blink, least your eyeballs dry up
Fall out of their sockets and dangle on your cheeks
Like Caesar's shrivelled coglione"
It's when I hear a sawed-off coffin rolls beneath the Tisza
[Bridge]
Hey BAR!
Ah, my noblest music
Hey BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR
BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR! BAR!
[Refrain]
I'll grease this pole behind me
Grease this pole behind me
Grease this pole
I'll grease this pole
[Verse 11]
Over, it's over
But where's the electrons squeezing all around?
Burning up my life, squeezing all around
Over, it's over
Only freezing all around
I grease that pole behind me, greased that pole behind me
Your Nibelung can't be found
[Verse 12]
I've looked high and low for you, I guess I didn't look low enough
Don't move, I want to forget you just the way you are
I really hope, your face clears up
You know, I think you've got nothing there
[Verse 13]
Infrared! Infrared!
I could drop into the darkness!
It's so cold! Infrared!
What if I freeze?
And drop into the darkness?
READ MORE ABOUT SCOTT WALKER
