German Overalls

Peter Hammill

Manheim; rainy Saturday with no money nor friend,
Only Tequila can end the boredom.
Try to reach London for a pocket of hope;
We're children, we grope in the dark.
Hugh spends his last Mark on coffee and cheese...
I feel just like a refugee...
Rathaus-keepers and traffic police,
Middle-aged maids with rotting teeth
Industrial magazines and old Sunday Times;
Reading material/bleeding lines.
What are we doing here?
Memorial manace, eager for revenge,
Has begun to bend our minds.
Shower-curtain imperative in the presence of acid;
Now, feeling placid is death.
I try to hold my breath as the P.A. comes down...
Here we all are in Ktown!
The Big Wheel never fails to grind around;
It drags me up/drags me down
Seven sentences wonder 'Can this be real,
Or am I become a performing seal?'
Why are we dying here?
I walk the streets alone, try to find a sign of love,
I've crushed the plaster-bone in the freaky clubs,
I have bit the fruit
But all I live for is to play
And I'm tired of the nights and the days
Of airports, taxis and motorway showers,
Grooping for a key in the after hours.
David takes to traveling in the van,
He knows that we all can understand;
We're at the mercy of the Kosmos Tour,
Making a pilgrimage to the German Lourdes...
But we're still crippled here.
Cathedrals spiral skywards, I think I'm getting vertigo,
I think I don't know what is real.
On a more sudden spotlight, one more madness is over...
I must not show a sign of fear.
Words echo round my ears, I think I'm going to laugh...
Think I'll just go and take a bath, Guess I'll wash my clothes,
Don't you know I'll grow to go and make my name,
Maybe a servant in the Fame game;
Stake my sane and rest my life on the line...
Now lay me asunder and rend my mind;
At the fall of the curtain let this be my ghost...