One Crowded Hour

Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen

In somebody you'd known since you were sixteen?

If love is a bolt from the blue

Then what is that bolt but a glorified screw

And that doesn't hold nothing together

Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music

It's making me sick, and I know it's making you sick

There's nothing there, it's like eating air

It's like drinking gin with nothing else in

And that doesn't hold me together

But for one crowded hour

You were the only one in the room

I sailed around all those bumps in the night

To your beacon in the gloom

I thought I had found my golden September

In the middle of that purple June

But one crowded hour

Would lead to my wreck and ruin

Now I know you like your boys who take their medicine

From the bowl of a silver spoon

Who run away with the dish and scale the fish

By the silvery light of the moon

Who were taught from the womb to believe till the tomb

That as far as their bleeding eyes see

Is a pleasure pen, meant for them, builded and rent for them

Not for the likes of me, no, not for the likes of you and me

And for one crowded hour

You were the only one in the room

And I sailed around all those bumps in the night

To your beacon in the gloom

I thought I had found my golden September

In the middle of that purple June

But one crowded hour

Would lead to my wreck and ruin

O but the green eyed harpy of the salt land

She takes into hers, my hand

She says, "Boy, I know you're lying...

O but then so am I!", and to this I said, "O well"

Well put me in a cage full of lions, I'll learn to speak lion

In fact I know the language well

I picked it up while I was versing myself

In the languages they speak in hell

That night that silence gave birth to a baby

But they took it away to her silent dismay

And they raised it to be a lady

Now she can't keep her mouth shut

And for one crowded hour

You were the only one in the room

And I sailed around all those bumps in the night

To your beacon in the gloom

I thought I had found my golden September

In the middle of that purple June

But one crowded hour

Would lead to my wreck and ruin

Yes, that one crowded hour

You were the only one in the room

Well, I played a few songs for those bumps in the night

In fact I played this very tune

But you said, "What is this six stringed instrument

But an adolescent loom?"

And one crowded hour

Would lead to my wreck and ruin

Victoria’s Secrets

O how my great liberal heart labours

With the piss in my rivers and gall

Before the gleaming ceremonial sabres

Who falls on them falls for us all

Every night I pick the locks

On that white Victorian box

Every night I pick the locks

And the gaolers say

Some nights when I look through her window

And she seems an old lover to me

There peeling off her black nylon knee highs

And yielding her breast to the sea

Every night I pick the locks

On that white Victorian box

But there's nobody home

In her telephone bones

I've kissed the green gem of the east coast

Drunk the tropical fizz of the north

Played the far flung sand castles ate at by the Indian

Froze in the broken off port

To my blue collar sprawl out the blue stony wall

Where the weather don't bother and the sea don't recall

Sometimes it's a dead man as wide as he's tall

By a blue blooded matron, and under her shawl

Every night I pick the locks

On that white Victorian box

I find buttons and bones

Tiny soldiers, toy trains and murder

Every night I pick the locks

On that white Victorian box

Every night I pick the locks

And the ladies scream "Vain!!"

The Cold Acre

There's a place I've been told

And when I grow old I may go there

I've been told that my family's bones

May lie under the snow there

And with my little bag, and with my little dog

Who sleeps on my chest

When he can't find a hole in a log

And when I go, my dog will know

To leave his old fellow and find a new pillow

Far from the chill of the cold acre

Now there's a Hillydale here and a Lilydale there

Where there's joy in the living, in voices that ring in the air

I'd stay there but sooner or later I'd have to go

Where I don't know but when a dog knows it's on him

He doesn't ask why he just goes, and when I go my bones will know

To pick up and follow the wagon that rolls on the cold acre

My heart is a cold acre, in my chest is a cold acre

I don't grow any good anymore though I've seeded my soul

With all kinds of love, that it aches so

Though I wake from them mouthing

They leave me not able to talk

All these dreams are not nightmares

But realms I've been choosing to walk

With my little bag, with my little dog

Who rests on my stomach and barks at the oncoming fog

O but when I go with my lot in tow

Like a vampire carry my piece of the earth

To the place of my death from the plots of my birth

My heart is a cold acre, in my chest is a cold acre

I don't grow any good anymore though I've seeded my soul

With all kinds of love that don't grow in a cold acre

Nothing grows in a cold acre

I don't know any good anymore from the bad

Except there's one that you have and one that you had

O grow, grow, grow, grow, grow

And plant me in the only place I know that's the cold acre

Stranger Strange

Some go high and very low

None too different or the same you know

I know cos I've seen them come and go

When summer comes the valley hums

With medicine trucks on the sidewalks

Laid out those hands could be holy

Stranger, stranger, hard earned familiar

I've got no jokes

And you hit me up for more than

Just my shrapnel and smokes

Some go high and very low

No two different or the same you know

I know cos I've seen them come and go

Stranger, stranger, strange you should be listening

Like a river to the end of my curdled song

Nobody knows what madness could come along

Now if you see a being borne into a trap you free it

They know kindness when they see it

Stranger strange would it come if you could call it?

Some go high and very low

None too different or the same you know

I know cos I've seen them come and go

It's quiet now, the streets are silent

When music out of the arms of community flies

Stranger strange I knew I knew you

Now the bug lights in the bank imbue you

With eyes like decals and a voice like an iron file

Stranger strange, though the earth be an anvil

I'm not waiting for the hammer to fall

I'm not waiting for anything at all

Mother Greer

Well versed I am in the taint of my birth

My diminishing role in this sphere

But sometimes I require a communique

From the mother to make it clear

Well England is pretty in the summer time

Boys are beautiful 'til the age of nine

And certainly women begin to pine

For usurping their leaden fear

But after making love

We hear nothing Mother Greer

But after making love

We hear nothing Mother Greer

Tiptoe, tiptoe with me

O no tiptoe of tiny feet may sound

Or tiny heartbeat pound in our ears

Waking up with the sweats and the terrors

Like some fifty five year old corporateer

Who after making love

He hears nothing Mother Greer

Yes, after making love

We hear nothing Mother Greer

Rise, rise, rise and tune your pianos

I hear the wind whistle through their teeth

You cheating sons from your deep

Your dreamless, endless, arse-facing, walking sleep

Well versed I am in the taint of my birth

My diminishing role in this sphere

But sometimes I require a communique

From the mother to make it clear

Well England is pretty in the summer time

Boys are beautiful 'til the age of nine

Certainly women begin to pine

For usurping their leaden fear

But after making love

We hear nothing Mother Greer

Yes after making love

We hear nothing Mother Greer

O why are there so many of you over there

When you can't even get over here?

Yes after making tracks we hear nothing Mother Greer

Rise, rise, rise and tune your pianos

I hear the wind whistle through their teeth

You cheating sons of deceit

While I'm breaking melodies every time I breathe

Every time I breathe

The Honey Month

This honey month I'm telling you

Don't go turning your radio on

A one and a two, should I talk to you

Like the others do?

Get yr knees up beneath the bar

I'm leaving now but I won't go far

This honey month I'm telling you

Don't go turning your radio on

And this honey month, with the wine on your breath

And singing the same stolen song

I want you to know, I want you to know

What you don't want to know

Beneath the revving of a car

The evensong of the abattoir

Moo, you bloody choir

Moo and lo, lo and moan

Moo, you huddled choir

Moo and lo, how the night arrives with a blow

This honey month, already married enough

And wondering where it went wrong

I'll make you come, I'll make you go

I'll make you come apart again

Just Passing Through

At ten o'clock is when I rise from my grave

And cast my eyes over the ideas that I couldn't save

Become regret and break upon me now wave after wave

Bid me remember what I done

A strange appeal is in the magazine zodiac

What inspiration are the women of the dog track

Now there's a wheel and there's a well and there's a big rack

The perfumed killers from the north

Collect each Saturday to brood and sally forth

I don't know enough to know not to show it

Or tell it like I know more

I'm sorry babe but your roving poet's

Just a bank balance troubadour

Who can't sing the song anymore

At ten o'clock is when you open up your apple eyes

And drink a cup into the one of earth the other skies

And out your mouth a tiny burst of tiny baby cries

"O where, O where, O where did you get into to?

A strange appeal unto a pocket where a body lay

I saw a dream of such a couple only yesterday

When the one did leave the other went to war Enola Gay

She had a halo, was a heroine

She had a halo, was a heroine

Well, I know I'm not loathe to show it

I smile like a bandsaw

I'm sorry darling but your roving poet's

Just a footloose man-whore

Who can't talk the talk anymore

We're just passing through

Just passing through

At ten o'clock is when I rise from my grave

And cast my eyes over the ideas that I couldn't save

Become regret and break upon me now wave after wave

Bid me remember what I done

When time doesn't tear you pay a fee to make it rip

The ditch witch, the back hoe, the bobcat, the tip

Soil from the hillock spilling over on that solemn lip

It covers up the cedar mirror

Do you ever see your weakness any clearer?

We were winding up the road to the site

With the windows down and the cigarettes alight

Singing some rubbish about, "My soul's alright"

I didn't know what I could do

We were winding up the road to the site

With the windows down and the cigarettes alight

Singing some rubbish about, "My soul's alright"

I didn't know what I could do, it's just you and I

And some other guy forever passing through

We're just passing through

(Like a gall stone)

Just passing through

(Like a rat through a snake)

Just passing through

(Little rubbish through a rake)

Just passing through

Thin Captain Crackers

Here on the hill above the settlement

The buildings are talking

A tower to a terrace says the word's on the street

The dead are walking

The brows are arched of the mews across the street

By a pale ocher light are made out heavy reliefs

Where all your dreams are borrowed

All your senses are thieves

And Ned Kelly won't ride past your window

Despite the freeze on your disbelief

Don't bring 'em up if you can't put 'em down

Thin Captain Crackers bowling naked

Through the centre of the town

The sun won't bake his blue skin brown

He's been too long underground

"I see," said a blind builder to his deaf daughter

As he picked up his hammer and saw

"If blood is thicker than water

Why'd you dress in the dress that you wore?"

The blind are drawn by a blank curiosity

Don't bring 'em up if you can't put 'em down

Drawn on mirrors where windows used to be

Don't bring 'em up if you can't put 'em down

Some people might say

"My desire's not the captain of me!"

And Red Barry might fly from his pedestal

At night to spook the university

Don't bring 'em up if you can't put 'em down

Thin Captain Crackers bowling naked

Through the centre of the town

The sun won't bake his blue skin brown

He's been too long underground

O tailor my bones what need new clothes

But the lower half loves what the upper half loathes

I could get around like an intellectual I suppose

Wearing the highs with the lows

But I'd sooner sing these doleful drones

By barcoo dog and lagerphones

But my hand don't write when a feather it holds

It hangs like a wren with its neck wrung

As did the bells in my quasi commode

Where I have to shift my head

To see where my pillow go'd?

Some mornings I wake up by the side of the road

Bringing it up for the gutter

After putting it down for the crowd

I said I would arrive in the capital

Don't bring ‘em up if you can't put ‘em down

After chuckin' outside the St. Augustine's purple parish hall

Don't bring ‘em up if you can't put ‘em down

And you know I can't

Bottle Baby

Your issue may walk among fine moral spires

But if they went up somebody else built them

Your store is a small one, your goods have no buyers

Your parents are raising your children

O I could have told you, the vices won't hold you

Warm in a coil where you lay

But high up they hang you, seized by the temple

And bid you obey and obey

A heinous, heinous law

Of an endless, endless love

That governs your poor heart

In its velvety chambers, where fellows foul met

Engage in exchanges

Whose ends are to put out your lights

Who know from the inside you won't put up a fight

To a heinous, heinous law

Of an endless, endless love

That governs your poor heart

It's winter in my bedroom, I stir the broken spring

And I have in my head to go crawling

When the hounds come around, I go to the bottle

Like every wet shadow before me

Now are you angry at me 'cos I'm no longer free?

I don't sound it or say it or feel it

O but out on the street somebody told me

It happens to everyone

So I don't blame you, it's my foot in my shoe

And I seem to have easily filled it

While the thing in my charge, whether tiny or large

I fear I may slowly have killed it

Obeying a heinous, heinous law

Obeying a heinous, heinous law

Obeying a heinous, heinous law

Of an endless, endless love

That governs your poor heart

Governs your poor heart

Mt. Wellington Reverie

You can't walk through the Isle of the Dead

You can't lie still in the guest house bed

There's a pair of black eyes staring down at you

From the mountain top, through yr window

The bunks are empty, your mates are gone

Breakfast lasts an hour long

O warm bread, drawn tea

The bastards'll never get to me

But somebody knows, somebody knows

Somebody always knows

Where a body goes

I were one of two, we were joined at the shoe

When we thought to make our break

So we shimmied our locks and we knocked up a box

And we rode the thing down the waterway

Now the Derwent twists and the Derwent slides

It's a moving thing with many eyes

O who'd have thought, at all or often

That vehicle would become our coffin?

So many souls, so many souls

So many souls in the water

I left me a little daughter, and I left me a girl

And I left them alone, in that tired old world

O where are they now?

I am one of a gang set to work on the land

A clearin' and fellin' and killin'

The best of us here has a conscience clear

And he goes about it keen and willin'

We're shooting them from the rocks

And we're shooting them in the water

And when they're runnin' we're shootin' them in the backs

And we do it without a thought or care?

So many lies, so many lies, so many lies been told

We'll none of us here grow old

Not gracefully, not peacefully, in this blind old land

In this dreaming land, some demon's land

The Baron Of Sentiment

Duty, who's your master?

Who gave you fingers?

Who gave you to me?

And why do we always dream of disaster

When we pay our dues to disaster with some loyalty?

And when its work is done and we ought to just pick up and run

We sleep in the place we have slept for so long

So long, for so long

So long in the place we should run from

And when I, when I have forgotten

When I have forgotten me how to stand and sing

I will raise up, raise one finger

One finger of the truth that wears no ring

And when its work is done

And the stitch of my smile has come undone

I'll tell you why I wore it for so long

For so long

So long in the place we should run from

So long, for so long

So long in the place we should run from

And I wasn't so drunk that I didn't hear you dreaming

All seized up and wretched and baying blue hell

At the ceiling of the room

We're always dying to leave... alright

Duty, who's your master?

Who gave you fingers?

Who gave you to me?

And why are we always dreaming of disaster

When we live our lives so careless and so comfortably?

O but underneath this song, I can hear another song

It tells me I'm not wrong to stay so long

(So long)

For so long

So long in the place we should run from

So long in the place we should run from

So long in the place we should run from

And I wasn't so drunk that I didn't hear you dreaming

Bolte And Dunstan Talk Youth

Blind to the charms

Of the Toecutter Arms,

My labor to the east by knit and by darn,

Looking for the world like a whelp at sea,

The discoverer's cottage had a light on for me,

I would lie on the porch and let the penny drop easy...

Duly, duly disabled,

Truly, truly lost.

When I woke up it was dark,

Lying on my side in the Parliament park,

Puking up my pay in the gerbera bed,

I could see the Premiers talking

Hear the husbands in the garden stalking,

Looking for rough love...

Duly, duly disabled,

Truly, truly lost,

Beneath the coverlet,

Beneath the blanket of the morn.

On my Exford legs, on my Exford walk,

Bury my brains in my Exford talk,

'Til there's nothing I wouldn't do

To be sitting and talking with you

Duly, duly disabled,

Truly, truly lost,

Beneath the coverlet,

Beneath the blanket of the morn.

Clockwork

It's too hot babe, pull the covers back

Don't touch me babe, I don't remember ever liking that

Don't touch me babe, roll over

O brother, you don't know what you've got

Only time flies

O brother, you don't know what you've got

Only time flies

You've gotta do some clockwork

Sometimes you hear the broken bell

Sound up on the whore's hill

The ladies clamor for the Salvo's sale

Bickering like little girls

For second hand women's things

For countless prying mans' hands

O working girl, you don't get round enough

It's like your daddy says

O working girl, you don't get round enough

It's like your daddy says

You gotta do some clockwork.

In a berth of the port wharf

The song of the penitent sailor...

Upon what stage?

A slab in the gut of a Japanese whaler...

A material blue and tailored and time is a tailor...

Both brief and slow

Now I can hear the broken bell

Now I can hear the clockwork

It has me reaching for the hidden rail

It has me listening for the song bird

But I hear it very minor

But I hear it very minor

O singer, I don't believe your song

Or your lying lines

O singer, I don't believe your song

Or your lying lines

You've gotta do some clockwork

The Pneuma, Cecilian, the Metzler

Angelus, Virtuos, Apollo

Paragon, Minerva, Stella

Clockwork, all clockwork

O but I didn't write this song with a machine

And I don't know how to stop it from its accidental purpose

Vernoona

Autumn leaves are flying

(Each a baby's brittle boat)

The season's dying

(Winter's mottled pigeon throat)

Sings the coo-cool air

The old sun's pale and rising

(Write it down in your little note)

He's pale and rising

(Fold it up your little note)

Waning, pale in the air

Autumn leaves are flying

(Time to find your winter coat)

To cease from crying

Sing instead, my little Vernoona

Lyrics by Glenn A Richards (Sony/ATV Music Publishing)