The Thieving Magpie Lyrics - 1988

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(fish / marillion)

A) vocal under a bloodlight

Last night you said i was cold, untouchable
A lonely piece of action from another town
I just want to be free, i'm happy to be lonely
Can't you stay away?
Just leave me alone with my thoughts
Just a runaway, just a runaway, i'm saving myself

B) passing strangers

Strung out below a necklace of carnival lights
Cold moan, held on the crest of the night
I'm too tired to fight

So now we're passing strangers, at single tables
Still trying to get over, still trying to write love songs for passing strangers
All those passing strangers

And the twinkling lies, all those twinkling lies
Sparkle with the wet ink on the paper

C) mylo

Oh i remember toronto when mylo went down
And we sat and we cried on the phone
I never felt so alone
He was the first of our own
Some of us go down in a blaze of obscurity
Some of us go down in a haze of publicity
The price of infamy, the edge of insanity

Another holiday inn, another temporary home
And an interviewer threatened me with a microphone
'talk to me, won't you tell me your stories.'

So i talked about conscience and i talked about pain
And he looked out the window and it started to rain
I thought maybe i've already gone crazy
So i reached for a bottle and he reached for the door
And i picked up the sleeping pills crushed on the floor
Inviting me to a casual obscenity

D) perimeter walk

It would be incredible if we could retrace all the times that we lived here
All the collisions
Wasted, i've never been so wasted
I've never been this far out before

Perimeter walk
There's a presence here
I feel could have been ancient, i could have been mystical

There's a presence
A childhood, my childhood
My childhood, childhood
A misplaced childhood
My childhood, a misplaced childhood
Give it back to me, give it back to me
A childhood, that childhood, that childhood, that childhood, that childhood
Oh please give it back to me

E) threshold

I saw a war widow in a launderette
Washing the memories from her husband's clothes
She had medals pinned to a threadbare greatcoat
A lump in her throat with cemetery eyes

I see convoys curbcrawling west german autobahns
Trying to pick up a war
They're going to even the score
Oh... i can't take any more
I see black flags on factories
Soup ladies poised on the lips of the poor
I see children with vacant stares, destined for rape in the alleyways
Does anybody care, i can't take any more!
Should we say goodbye?
Hey

I see priests, politicians?
The heroes in black plastic body-bags under nations' flags
I see children pleading with outstretched hands, drenched in napalm, this is no vietnam

I can't take any more, should we say goodbye
How can we justify?
They call us civilised!