Vodka intimate, an affair with isolation in a Blackheath cell

Extinguishing the fires in my private hell

Provoking the heartache to renew the license

Of a bleeding heart poet in a fragile capsule

Propping up the crust of the glitter conscience

Wrapped in the christening shawl of a hangover

Baptized in tears from the real



Drowning in the liquid seize on the Piccadilly line, rat-race

Scuttling through the damp electric labyrinth

Caress Ophelia's hand with breaststroke ambition

The albatross courtship marrytime tradition

Sheathed with the walkman wear the halo of distortion

Aural contraceptive aborting pregnant conversation



But she turned the harpoon and it pierced my heart

She hung herself around my neck



From the Time-Life guardians in their conscience bubbles

Safe and dry in my sea of troubles

Nine to Fives, with suitable ties

While I'm cast adrift as their sideshow, peepshow, stereo hero

Becalm, bestill, bewitch, drowning, drowning in the real



The thief of Baghdad hides in Islington now

Praying deportation for his sacred cow

A legacy of romance from a twilight world

The dowry of a relative mystery girl



A Vietnamese flower, a dockland union

A mistress of release from a magazine's thighs

This magdalene contracts more than favours

The feeding hands of western promise hold her by the throat



A son of the swastika of '45, parading a peroxide standard

Graffitti disciples conjure testaments of hatred

Aerosol wands whisper where the searchlights trim the barbed wire hedges

This is Brixton chess



A knight for embankments folds his newspaper castle

A creature of habit, begs the boatman's coin

He'll fade with old soldiers in the grease-stained roll-call

Linger with the