All Lyrics by Peter Hammill 

Ship Of Fools

(Hammill)

The captain's in a coma, the lieutenant's on a drunk;
the owner's in his cabin with his special friend, the monk;
the midget's on the bridge, dispensing platitudes and junk -
those wild and special places,
those strange and dangerous places,
those sad, sweet faces,
it's a Ship of Fools.
The nurse in black seamed stockings, she's already on patrol
for fake fur starlets panicked by the watering-hole;
everybody's waiting for the drama to unfold
in those cold and treasured places,
those old and degenerate places;
those posed, posed, empty faces
it's a Ship of Fools.

Run, rabbit, run, you're the only one that can do it;
turn, baby, turn, there's a ring of fire
and you've got to go through it.
Fun, baby, fun, when the sands have run to the limit
turn, baby, turn, there's a ring of fire and you're in it.

Looking for logic and adventure
down the dark end of the street,
open city, open season, open lips that gleam so sweet
offer kisses like piranhas
to the soft flesh of your feet,
and any man's poison is every man's meat
in those mad and special places,
those sad and desperate places,
those sad, sweet soul embraces,
it's a Ship of Fools
Those strange and special places
those wild and dangerous places,
those dead, dead, dead faces...
It's a Ship of Fools; no rules.

Still Life  

(Hammill)

Citadel reverberates to a thousand voices, now
dumb:
What have we become?
What have we chosen to be?
Now, all history is reduced to the syllables of
our name-
nothing can ever be the same:
now the Immortals are here.
At the time it seemed a reasonable course
to harness all the force
of life without the threat of death,
but soon we found that boredom and inertia
are not negative, but all the law we know,
and dead are will and words like survival.

Arrival at immunity from all age, all fear and
all end...
why do I pretend?
Our essence is distilled
and all familiar taste is now drained,
and though purity is maintained
it leaves us sterile,
living through the millions of years,
a laugh as close as any tear;
living, if you claim that all
that entails is breathing, eating, defecating,
screwing, drinking,
spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down
and ultimately passing away time
which no longer has any meaning.

Take away the threat of death and all you're
left with is a round of make-believe.
Marshal every sullen breath and though you're
ultimately bored by endless ecstasy
it's still the ring by which you hope to be
engaged
to marry the girl who will give you forever-
it's crazy, and plainly
that simply is not enough.

What is the dullest and bluntest of pains,
such that my eyes never close without feeling it
there?
What abject despair demands an end
to all things of infinity?
If we have gained, how do we now meet the
cost?
What have we bargained, and what have we
lost?
What have we relinquished, never even knowing it
was there?

What thoughts now of holding fast the line,
defying death and time?
Everything we had is gone,
everything we laboured for and favoured more
than earthly things reveals the hollow ring
of false hope and false deliverance.

But now the nuptial bed is made,
the dowry has been paid:
the toothless, haggard features of eternity
now welcome me between the sheets
to couple with her withered body - my wife.
Hers forever,
hers forever,
hers forever
in still life.

Last Frame

(Hammill)

Pretty keen - yes, my hobby keeps me busy
and if I talk to myself, what's the crime?
In the darkroom I am a dealer in space and time...
When all memory is mellowed,
when the photograph is yellowed,
still it never lies.

There you are, your eyes laced with secret pleasure,
saying that you're on the way to change,
devouring in inordinate measure
every diversion that's arranged.
For every appetite, a cruel attraction,
but there's a panic in your actions...
oh, I never saw you look so strange.

Fixing memory chemically,
holding time on the stop-clock,
hanging back from that last frame
just in case it didn't show you
in the way I used to know you...
I thought you'd always stay the same.
(But you won't.)

Oh, the red light, the silver, the black and the bromide;
the silence, the waiting for overview...
The past seems under-exposed, low tide,
but still the images ghost through.
And you're there in the bath,
which is all this has led to,
and I can't say your path
is a right one to choose...

But then I only have a negative of you.

Mirror Images

(Hammill)

If I'm the mirror and you're the image
then what's the secret between the two,
these 'me's and 'you's, how many can there be?
Oh, I don't mind all that around the place,
as long as you keep it
well away from me.

I've begun to regret that we ever met
between the dimensions.
It gets such a strain to pretend that the change
is anything but cheap...
with your infant pique and your angst pretensions
sometimes you act like a creep.

And now I'm standing in the corner,
looking at the room and the furniture
in cheap imitation of alienation and grief.
And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or thief.

Still, I reflect, this nervous wreck
who stands before me can see as well,
can surely tell that he's not yet free;
he can turn aside, but can no more ignore me
than know which one of us is he,
than tell what we are going to be,
than know which one of is me.

And now we're going to the kitchen,
fix ourselves a drink and a cigarette,
getting no closer to being the joker or thief.

These mirror images,
these mirror images
won't stay, go away, are no help.

In these mirror images of myself
there are no secrets.

(i) A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers

(i) Eyewitness

( Hammill )

Still waiting for my saviour, storms tear me limb from limb
my fingers feel like seaweed, I'm so far out I'm too far in.

On the table lies blank paper / and my tower is built on stone /
I only have blunt scissors / I only have the bluntest home.
I've been the witness, and the seal of death
lingers in the molten wax that is my head.

I prophesy disaster and then I count the cost
I shine, but shining, dying, I know that I am almost lost.

(iii) Eyewitness

( Hammill )

No time now for contrition; the time for that's long past
The walls are thin as tissue and if I talk I'll crack the glass
So I only think on how it might have been
locked in silent monologue, in silent scream.

I'm much too tired to speak
and as the waves crash on the bleak
stones of the tower I start to freak
...and find that I am overcome...

(viii) The Clot Thickens

( Hammill - Band )

Where is the god that guides my hand?
How can the hands of others reach me?
When will I find what I grope for?
Who is going to teach me?

I am me / me are we / we can't see
any way out of here
Crashing sea / atrophied / history:-
Chance has lost my Guinevere.

(ii) The Sleepwalkers

(Hammill)

Tonight, before you lay down to the sweetness of your sleep 
do you question your surrender to the drop from Lover's Leap 
or does the anaesthetic darkness take hold on its very own? 
Does your body rise in service with not one dissenting groan? 
These waking dreams of life and death 
in the mirror are twisted and buckled, 
lashes flicker, a catch of breath, 
skin whitening at the knuckles. 
The army of sleepwalkers shake their limbs and are loose 
and though I am a talker, I can phrase no excuse 
not to rise again. 
In the chorus of the night-time I belong 
and I, like you, must dance to that moonlight song 
and in the end I too must pay the cost of this life. 
If all is lost none is known 
and how could we lose what we've never owned? 
Oh, I'd search out every knowledge that I could find, 
unravel all the mysteries of mind, 
if I only had time, 
if I only had time, 
but soon my time is ended... ended, soon my time is ended.

Pioneers Over C

(Hammill)

We left the earth in 1983, fingers groping for the galaxies,
reddened eyes stared up into the void, 1000 stars to be exploited
Somebody help me I'm falling, somebody help me, I'm falling down
Into sky, into earth, into sky, into earth .....
It is so dark around, no life, no hope, no sound
no chance of seeing home again ...
The universe is on fire, exploding without flame.
We are the lost ones; we are the pioneers; we are the lost ones
We are the ones they are going to build a statue for
ten centuries ago or were going to fifteen forward .....

One Last brief whisper in our loved ones' ears
to reassure them and to pierce the fear
standing at controls then still unknown we told the world we were
about to go
Somebody help me I'm missing, somebody help me I'm missing now
touch with my mind, I have no frame,
touch with my mind, I have no frame ...
Well now where is the time and who the hell am I,
here floating in an aimless way?
No-one knows where we are, they can't feel us precisely ..

There is no fear here.
How can such a thing exist in a place where living and knowing
and being have never been heard of?

Doomed to vanish in the flickering light,
disappearing to a darker night,
doomed to vanish in a living death, living anti-matter, anti-breath
Somebody help me I'm losing, somebody help me, I'm losing now
people around, there's no-one to touch,
no people around, no-one to touch.
I am now quite alone, part of a vacant time-zone,
here floating in the void,
only dimly aware of existence, a dimly existing awareness,
I am the lost one, I am the one you fear, I am the lost one,
I am the one who went up into space, or stayed where I was,
or didn't exist in the first place .....

Sci-Finance

(Hammill)

You got some shares in a speculative venture,
you got some stock in a gilt-edged bond,
you stretched out tight by the terms of debenture,
the game is on...
You chase the bulls in eternal corrida,
the thought of loss is more than you can bear,
you scan the index for a market leader,
a tip and a prayer,
You better see daylight:
night comes on the City so soon.
You say you are a christian capitalist,
but you dance to a different tune.
Jobs for the boys and dole for the shop-floor;
rationalize, strip the assets and run
If the contract stalls, then you've just got to cop more, ain't Monopoly fun?
You made some pretty deals along the way,
Judas and Faust are in accord.
When the revolution comes you may be blown away,
but I bet you'll end up on the board...

Only the money.
Only the money.

Sometime in the future you may realize that the day
you made your decision to follow money as a goal was
you darkest dawn--and that, since then, you have
venerated figures as deities; and, for you,
people are just pawns.

But that deal includes you:
you're just an asset like the rest,
and you, too, stripped naked, beg the Money-God
not to put you to the test
He's got no further use for you
Now, there is silence on the floor.

Clever money-computers chatter privately.
No people any more.

Only the money.

Door

(Hammill)

He's a blind man, crouching by the pavement,
only seeing with his third eye,
and clutching at the astral shadow
of every passer-by.

He's a wise man, trumping all the answers;
she's a wild girl, trying to keep his feet on the floor
in whispered physical litanies:
"Stay away from the door."

"Oh, but we're all in this together," he says,
"three-legged race across the floor;
if only you'd loosen the handkerchief
then I'd forget the door."

"Ooh, that feels so much better," he says,
"now you forget everything that I've said before
and sit there all by yourself
while I walk through the door." 
They're a blind man, crouching by the pavement,
only seeing with his third eye,
and clutching at the astral shadow
of the door of a room
called 'I'.

Urban

(Hammill)

Sometimes living for the moment
sometimes going with the flow
sometimes professing to be an exponent
of the quiet life
while night life
surrounds me I sit
and go crazy alone
too many people and too little action
too much exterior acting too little inside.
Oh, yet I still feel that manic attraction
I've lived in the city for most of my life
and suppose
I'll be there when I die
still going through the frantic motions
still qualifying everything I say
responding urbanely to every emotion
the city life freaks me
the city life feeds me
the city life blows me away

Nadir's Big Chance

(Hammill)

I've been hanging around, waiting for my chance
to tell you what I think about the music
that's gone down
to which you madly danced - frankly,
you know that it stinks.
I'm gonna scream, gonna shout,
gonna play my guitar
until your body's rigid and you see stars.
Look at all the jerks in their tinsel glitter suits.
pansying around; look at all the nerks
in their leather platform boots,
making with the heavy sound...
I'm gonna stamp on the stardust
and scream till I'm ill -
if the guitar don't get ya, the drums will.

Now's my big break - let me up on the stage,
I'll show you what it's all about;
enough of the fake,
bang your feet in a rage,
tear down the walls and let us out!
We're more than mere morons, perpetually conned,
so come on everybody,
smash the system with the song.

Smash the system with the song!