Jonathan Fire*Eater Album

Oh what do children do with these colours so hallow
Yes I know their will is true but their throats hurt to swallow
An orphan will his gruel in a theatre oh so cruel
What do children do

I saw some faces today, they smiled yeah they smiled at me and you
And the bay in the maple trees
Nothing in their faces looked real real real to me and you
I'm gonna keep it with me anyway

What do children do do do
What do children do do do

So when the curtain parts for you
The tiers are full of the laughter
You will come in bloom
I'll be up there somewhere
Just a-hanging from the rafters
I'll be swinging from the rafters for you

And we'll make the movie with Victorian steeples
My heart under all these people
Like a sugar cake can look so good on a china plate
It makes the world seem sweeter now
Mary's on the swings but I'm on the grass
Nothing will pass forever
So give me my coat and hand me my camera

And we'll shoot the film, with the lighting right
A beautiful hymn how I like to remember
The perfect pretender whose movie is about 'bout to begin
Another lovely hymn
And I'm ready now and the show was oh so precious
Oh so precious tonight

Well now the pelicans sleep in the golden mangroves
The fruit bats are sucking on the mangos
And the end will come
But the end will come slow
We'll take our tea and our coffee coloured clothes

There will be no screenplay in our hands
No you can't go home again
And there are no more lines, to be read
And it's time
Time to begin, little darling

I go to the cathedral on Christmas
Yeah the candles and the gilded robes
All the girls with cheeks red, red from kisses
The incense smells a thousand years old

A magazine party in an old train yard
A girl had a seizure there
She was putting on the make up in a club car
There's make up everywhere, you little princess

Well theres a look in your eyes when all your lines go slack
I know you had to drink but you took a cab back
Go!

And now we tried to be strong, and carry on
But somehow the party seemed doomed
There was a girl on the floor with the heart beat gone
And death so kills the room

And now we tried to be strong, and carry on
Throw our head back and howl
But the water is warm and the currents where strong
And its time to throw in the towel, little darling

Oh!

Tonight
Never been apart
Shining like the city
Here inside of your heart
I will try
Living on my own
We will grow old
Take our tea and our coffee coloured clothes

[No lyrics]

I live above a cafe on a shady street
My landlady treats me like a Son
I can hear her family laughing when I'm in the sheets
Over wine when the day is done

See how they interact
As though they made a pact
To be tender when the world is coarse

No love like that
No love like that
No love like that at my door anymore
Oh no

Cassis sorbet, the Barcelona bay
You were sick and it was your last spring
But we stayed in the play for the better part of May
I brought the kids by to hear you sing
You help me understand my luck went out of hand
I don't do that anymore

I don't care what you may do
Just as long as you are true

No love like that
No love like that
No love like that at my door anymore
Oh no

Sit around here, look how we all behave

There's no love like that
No love like that
No love like that at my door anymore

I dreamed a dream of a creaky booth as they all went by me on a snowy rooftop
Yeah

Well there's a hole in my sofa from smoking and sleeping
It's the symbol of a memory quietly creeping
Through these empty cars of this train of thought
Well they're drinking in the aisles to the good friends they've lost
And the conductor with the voice so true
Says "I once had a friend who looked a lot like you"
Well I did too

Tonight I saw that friend in the bathrom mirror
We will do what we can just to keep him near
Let the bones of the wolf be gnawed by lambs
I'm think I'm beginning, man, to understand

That we're all some mothers babies once
We're all some mothers babies
And the pigeons climb down over us
In the sun in the sun so shady

And if I fly first class on a 747
Oh I got magazines and gin
I read a clubbers guide, baby to Berlin
Oh I can see the glaciers and the dorsal fins

Out here on the tundra there aint no thunder
The ink-spot sky pulling me under
Under we go

We're all some mothers babies once
We're all some mothers babies
And the pigeons climb down over us
In the sun in the park so shady

There's a stove in the back of a rotten little flat
In the afternoons we'd meet
We'd huddle together, stick close together
The daylight makes us weak I know
But it's dark in the kitchen and I don't mind the itching anymore

Now there's thirty-nine dead lying prone in their beds
With one voice in their heads
We've all heard it once so to hell with those cunts
They they all seem so proud

A crow was born in the orchard
A kid is crying on the carousel
Who wants to get off?
Please stop, I want to get off

It's a cabaret and I want to play
From my window I can see moon coming up with a
Here comes another day

Now I've changed my hotel
No-one knows me well
I don't think I can sleep
Tomorrow I'm walking through the crowds
They look so proud but it hurts to look at the clouds

A crow was born in the orchard
A kid is crying on the carousel
Oh

I'm coming out of a cedar closet
To make another deposit
I've grieved at your feet, I'm back on the street
One day my conscience will be so free

They say that good is too often the enemy of the best
I think of Peter in his cowboy vest
Under the Marble Arch way down in the square
He was yelling at the mimes for them to beware
He said "you're nothing so precious, you're nothing so rare
You're quite common I can see you everywhere
I see you in my church when you mime your prayers
You're wearing pearls and your hair is grayer"

Hey everybody plays the mime sometimes

Are you married to an unfaithful world where you carry the flags if they come unfurled?
Are you locked into a projection booth that shows the films of your troubled youth?

Hey everybody plays the mime sometimes

So don't start to pout or I will take you to task
Your sailor stripes and your white powder mask
You mimic the wino with the silver flask
It's the transient child and his eyes that you lack
Your world is a tundra so painfully, painfully bare

Are you married to an unfaithful world where you carry the flags if they come unfurled?
Are you locked into a projection booth that shows the films of your troubled youth?

Hey everybody plays the mime sometimes

Yes your world is a tundra so painfully bare
Of the roses in the silk scarves they wear in their hair
Have they turned you to the German, German au-pairs?
They spoon-feed their princes apples and pears
Yeah they spoon-feed their princes cooked apples and pears
Oh they spoon-feed their princes apples and pears
Oh they spoon-feed their princes cooked apples and pears

Hey everybody plays the mime sometimes

It's you and me down here on the floor of your mother's room
I played a tune from her old bassoon

And if you pull up your dress
We'll make children that cry every time it rains
And scream at the sound of passing trains

Ah these little monkeys are crawling around
These little monkeys are breeding again
These little monkeys are crawling around
These little monkeys are breeding again

And it started off the way a monkey behaves
When you take him from the moonlit sugar cane
Oh the patterns and ways that flood his brain
When he finger-paints a world so beautifully strange

Take it to the rooftop all alone
The world is closing from up above
It's a whole new place I've never been before
?????????????

In an afternoon bath oh a friend bit me
The pain on the cheek will make a good memory
Venetian blinds they are easy on the eye
A panic attack oh your eyes go wild

With my hands in my lap like two dead birds
Night after night oh how my chirps go unheard
If I had the chance I'd do it all again
Alone in the room I never knew it was a sin

These little monkeys are crawling around
These little monkeys are breeding again
These little monkeys are crawling around
These little monkeys are breeding again

There's a still animation
Edward Hopper gas station
And it's buzzing just like a bee

I don't know, but if you look real close
Maybe this station coffee makes us comatose

But I can see the treelines, I can see them sway
Oh to the night time and the stars
I see them hurling, hurling through space

Yes I'd romp with you on the forest floor
We'll put them all in another state
Well it's the state that I'm living
Unaware of my audience
My neighbours all say it's a sin
Because they live somewhere - oh man - that you, you ain't never been

I broke a glass on the asphalt, behind the Masquerade Ball
And now I'm in some white hall
Waiting on a phone call, yeah

From little Walter, Mr Thomas, Matthew, Matthew and Paul

Come a-hither come a-hither to me under the canopy
Pull the sheets up high another milky sky
There are oranges and bananas and coffee with cream
Try to be patient now while your bother tells his dream
I remember a storm and a picnic by the lake
I remember the mess a little anger can make
I eat my breakfast like the food at a wake
Like a little lamb

Put me in the car and take me to my bed
There's a train in my blood and it's ringing in my head
In a bedroom so dark, a friend is a-napping
In the hallway there's a bar and a cane is a-tapping
On the floorboards

Carriage lamps flicker past the docks
And the crooked masts
And the palsied and the plagued and the streets of the ash
There were children they were singing all the sailors carols
Now they're hardluck faces round the fire

So put me in my car and take me to my bed
There's a train in my bloodstream and it's ringing in my head
It's the sun through the slats that keeps us coming back
In the morning there's an overripe meloncholy dog by the fireplace

A cradle the cradle a kiss and a fable
The den mothers hover all around you
The belle of the ball
The wines turned to gall

Amongst the motes of dust I can see them dance in the window now
On the city bus that we ride into this new life like a naked child
They're gonna hear from me

At the Academy, there was no-one home anyway (OK)
I used to walk the ceiling try to coax a little feeling out of my voice
Oh it was so unsteady but not a repertoire
I do think it's ready
They're gonna here from me

I will climb the crooked stair past the crochet prayer
That your Grandmother hung on your wall so plumb
Oh the scuff marks we made in the dark
I know who took the stuff hey hey hey hey
So put out the lights I can hear you better
Undo your hair, let it fall on your sweater

Oh tomorrows news tonight, tomorrows news tonight
Tomorrows news, come, stagger into the light