John Cooper Clarke Album

The bloody cops are bloody keen
To bloody keep it bloody clean
The bloody chief's a bloody swine
Who bloody draws a bloody line
At bloody fun and bloody games
The bloody kids he bloody blames
Are nowehere to be bloody found
Anywhere in chicken town

The bloody scene is bloody sad
The bloody news is bloody bad
The bloody weed is bloody turf
The bloody speed is bloody surf
The bloody folks are bloody daft
Don't make me bloody laugh
It bloody hurts to look around
Everywhere in chicken town
The bloody train is bloody late
You bloody wait you bloody wait
You're bloody lost and bloody found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

The bloody view is bloody vile
For bloody miles and bloody miles
The bloody babies bloody cry
The bloody flowers bloody die
The bloody food is bloody muck
The bloody drains are bloody fucked
The colour scheme is bloody brown
Everywhere in chicken town

The bloody pubs are bloody dull
The bloody clubs are bloody full
Of bloody girls and bloody guys
With bloody murder in their eyes
A bloody bloke is bloody stabbed
Waiting for a bloody cab
You bloody stay at bloody home
The bloody neighbors bloody moan
Keep the bloody racket down
This is bloody chicken town

The bloody pies are bloody old
The bloody chips are bloody cold
The bloody beer is bloody flat
The bloody flats have bloody rats
The bloody clocks are bloody wrong
The bloody days are bloody long
It bloody gets you bloody down
Evidently chicken town
The bloody train is bloody late
You bloody wait you bloody wait
You're bloody lost and bloody found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

Satisfaction, comes and goes
Biological action, cannot be froze
A sexual recharge, a plug in a socket
Conditional discharge, a sticky deposit

More on the sick, down in the dumps
Visit the clinics, where the stethescopes jump
On the love-sick side effects
Tell me "what was it"
Conditional discharge, a sticky deposit

The memory lingers, in the clean routine
Another man's fingers, under my jeans
They give me a card, some antibiotics
Said "conditional discharge," a sticky deposit

Satisfaction, comes and goes
Biological action, cannot be froze
A sexual recharge, a plug in a socket
Conditional discharge, a sticky deposit

A random fuck, dirty sheets
A crack in a cup, a lavatory seat
I'm in the dark about where I got it
Condtional discharge, a sticky deposit

Sexual freedom, left me alone
In a garden of eden, syndrome
It's on the cards, you'll come across it
Condtional discharge, a sticky deposit

The up's and down's, of times like these
Fuckin' around, is a social disease
When the public-at-large don't know they got it
Conditional discharge, a sticky deposit

A problem of leisure, measured in turns
Of pain plus pleasure, plus poisoned sperm
Take this diagram, keep it in your pocket
Conditional discharge, a sticky deposit

I can wriggle out of arrangements
You can't pin me down
I tend to dodge engagements
I'll see you around
Am I ok?,
Not really, no
I seem to stop and start

Anything I can do let me know
I think I'll sleepwalk out of my heart
Sleepwalk in the daytime
Access to all fours
Sleepwalk in a straight line
Leading out of the door

Shop through city on a world of eyes
Marvelously dead
These friends of mine need exercise
They sleepwalk instead

No guardian angle intercepts the
Sleepwalkin' kid
Who sleepwalks the fractured steps
To the sleepwalking skids

The way the private eye goes
About his ancient art.
I can do it with me eyes closed,
Sleepwalk out of my heart

Stop, look, listen to the zombie
The hoochie coochie blues
Black slacks and a crombie
Gucci shoes

A psycho stud and his steady girl
Are heading right this way
When all the footsteps in the world
Sleepwalk away

A victim of ambition
Loitering with intent
The human condition
But who knows what percent

Goodbye from me till now
I never really care
Sleepwalk anyhow
Anywhere

Sleepwalk, talk
Faster and faster
One of these talking birds
Sleepwalk away from disasters
Like they never occured

Too much devotion
Keeps me apart
Sleepwalk in slow motion
Out of my heart

In the creepy zilch of subways
The sub pedestrian plod
Sleepwalk on Sunday
Beneath the domes of God

Such a hazardous pastime
I'm gonna be smart
Sleepwalk for the last time
Out of my heart

Sleepwalk on duty
See myself in a pool
A sleepwalking cutie
Sleepwalking fool

Stuck in the afternoon
They do go on
When normal service is resumed
I'll be sleepwalking young

You can count on him.
He'll always let you down.
While you hang about for him.
He's in another town.
He gets from A to B,
He can't see eye to eye,
With anyone... If you ask me...
He doesn't try

Check his empty pockets
Check 'em more than once
He hasn't got it,
Whatever it is that you want.
Energy is a four letter word
He doesn't buy
Here he comes now - 23rd
He doesn't try

Compassion, it isn't necessary
His sickness is an act
He'll make you an accessory
After this obvious fact
You must excuse him
Ask his Mother why
You can't abuse him
He doesn't try

It doesn't pay to help him
he's somewhere else
Tell 'im - you can't tell him
He's a fool to himself
"What's in it for me" - you know the kind
Always saying "Why?"
Two weeks behind
He doesn't try

Bikes, buses, trucks, and trains,
Gangways, ladders, and ramps
A seemingly endless chain
of pickpockets and tramps
He wears the look of false
alarm like an old school tie
Somone ought to twist his arm
he doesn't try

Laugh? It isn't funny
No respect for pain
If you give him money
He slings it down the drain
You're looking for Mr. Right
His type need not apply
He won't play the white man
He doesn't try

Far from crazy pavements -
The taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
On a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
Are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
In the case of Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
- a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn't
That's where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men's overcoats
You can't see their feet
A riff joint shuts - opens up
Right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There's a dead canary on a swivel seat
There's a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
An inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
Impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing La-di-dah
OAP, mother to be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shit-stoppered drains
And crocodile skis
Are seen on Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
A one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
The doorbells do not ring
A lightbulb bursts like a blister
The only form of heat
Here a fellow sells his sister
Down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
That they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin,
Sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
But the smell of yesterday's cabbage
And the ghost of last year's wife
Through a constant haze
Of deodorant sprays
He says retreat
Alsations dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss.
It's a sociologist's paradise
Each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
Beastly Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street

36 hours in the mystery chair
36 hours in the quizzical glare
Of the naked lights and the visible hardware

Another bloke is leaving in a wheelchair
No joke, here comes the punchline
Lights out... sack time

Steel shoes on the stone cold floor
I hear the screws screaming in the corridor
The bad news and the slammin' of the door
The "what did i do's" and the "what am I here for's"
Shades of doubt fall deeper than the slag mine
Lights out... sack time

Hard cheese and a chest complaint
One man sneezes, another two faint
Sufferin' jesus, this ain't my venue
The man through the mesh says it's time to crash
The creeping flesh of a nervous rash
The last man to make a dash
Is on the menu

Here's the boss with a mouthful of emeralds
A maltese cross and a pocket full of chemicals
Jack frost snappin' at the genitals
Wash my cosh it's a visit from the general
Rule out sub section nine
Lights out... sack time

The killer gorilla with the perspex hat
Says I say so... and that's that
Take out the dog bring back the cat
Scrape out the cafeteria rats
Stab the rabbit feed the swine lights out... sack time

Time flies ... slides down the wall
Part of me dies under my overalls
I close my eyes and a woman calls
From a nightmare
The chronic breath of the dead collides
With a rattle of the waste disposal slides
No flowers for the man who dies
In the bombscare
He's in the frigidaire

Freezing in these paper jeans
Standing stiff in a dead man's dream
Tobacco barons and the closet queen
Walk on the walls... wank in the beans
Shave... shit... a shower and a shoe shine
That's it... sack time
Everybody looks like ernest borgnine
That's it

36 hours on the battery farm
A blindfold and a broken arm
I got the cold shoulder sleepin' in the barn
Whose barn... what barn... their barn
The old soldier and his old-world charm
Lift that weight, drag that woodbine
Lights out mate sackarooni time
Lights out... sack time

No falling chimes, no call to arms,
No siren whines, no false alarms,
Down the telephone lines
At the side of the farms
Arm in arm, down hemlock row
Where the flowers of evil... never grow
Under one heartbeat, heavy but slow
Walking together in the purple snow charming breezes, bring the rain
It's gonna run like rats down the gutters and the drains
It's gonna run like a river
Down the window panes
Down a web of cracks, like twisted veins
A stranger... calls my name between the rollerama and the junk yard
Where the panorama looks like Mars
And the belladonna looks like stars
Behind the Panamanian bars
In the dying gardens... down below
Walking together in the purple snow.

Look who it isn't, it's, the 'It Man' maybe.
The physical description fits, 'It Man' baby.
You had a Julia Caeser haircut,
Middle market leisure wear,
But don't let him be your teddy bear...
Could be 'It Man' ...baby

You want women, wall-to-wall
'It Man' got.
Meet the man who started it all,
'It Man' got.

What's it to to be then John?
A brunetto, or a bleeding blonde?
The tell-tale tongue of a two-ton taste bomb,
Is the kiddy coming on?
Like the 'It Man' baby.

Take the sugar. Dump the crumbs.
It's a mugs game.
Take some bugger for a lump sum,
And bugger off to Spain.

An endless stream of fizzy drinks for 'It Man.'
Who's dentures gleam like sovereign cuff-links,
'It Man' baby

Who drove the van?
Some all purpose also ran.
When the shit hits the fan,
Who's gonna carry the can?
For 'It-man.'

He's after all your stuff
His motto is... 'receive.'
Too much is not enough now,
Let's not be naive

Drip-dry, zip-fly, 'It Man.'
Kiss the girls and make them die, 'It Man' baby
Underneath that yellow shirt,
Beats a heart of solid dirt
The most disgusting man on earth, 'It Man' baby.

No back chat was ever written
For It Man's 'tart.'
The cute cat or the stiff kitten,
'It Man' took her apart.
He shook away the poison pen,
Next thing... 'News-at-Ten.'

Ladies and Gentlemen... 'It Man'

Well well, bloody hell, 'It Man.'
Checking you out and ringing your bell,
You better quit man.

He's walking around, taking names
Looking for money in the burnt remains,
All stories finish in flames for 'It Man.'

'It Man.'

'It Man' baby

Their lives are a mystery
They make it their career
In the single files of history
Fall and disappear
Swearing they'll get even
With all those other creeps
Philistines and Heathens
They violently sleep
Or steal from cigarette machines
Just for the change
To get back to where they've been
A doorway in the rain
Back in the confession box
Back in the slums
Desire burns like chicken pox
Underneath the thumbs
A refugee from purgatory
Wears a crown of thorns
Turns out she's a gringo
Of hard circumstance
Limbo Baby Limbo

They want to see you dance
Take the tradesman's entrance
Take it out on a tramp
Every fucking sentence
Complains about the damp
The only girl is a faint cry
In the garden of cement
Wait until the paint dries
It's a big event
Look through heaven's window
With their opalescent panes
Limbo Baby Limbo

Down the Boulevard of shame
Saint Margaret dies intact
Hardly seems alert
Her stone gaze denies the fact
Her face hurts
The extra legal image
The cold cream skin
The regal gimicks
Did you in
Look through heaven's window
You see the powder blue veil
The cover girl of limbo

The sweetheart of the jail
Gypsy babies hop-scotch
Outside the silver gates
The witch doctor's wristwatch
Is stuck at five-to-eight
A bad break, a slight ache
Is every ones compaint
Flesh flakes like angel cake
From mug-shots of the saints
Who fell from a window
Was never seen again
'Til he turns up in limbo

In a doorway in the rain
A hero rides to heaven
The public only rots
For a fraction of forever
In a designated spot
Eternally paralysed
A morbid orbit shift
Halfway to paradise
Stuck in the lifts
Some smart crackin' bimbo
Say's you can't be employed
Sends you off to limbo
On the stairway to a void

A family affair.
We get the picture,
We're in it somewhere.
Permanent fixtures.
People who care.
Stranger beware,
This is a family affair

All of our yesterday's.
Familiar rings,
I have to get away,
Its breaking my heart strings.
We have a drink,
On special occasions,
It makes me think,
About distant relations,

A family affair.
Always a mixture.
Of people in chairs,
Permanent fixtures,
With pressure to bear.
People who care.
This is a family affair.

Holiday snapshots.
Of you and myself.
Acting the crackpot,
Like everyone else.

The Bermuda shorts,
and the summer creations,
Bringing thoughts,
of those distant relations.

A family affair.

We brake ornaments, and get them repaired,
We bring up past events that hang in the air.

This is a family affair.

All our yesterdays.
Familiar rings.
I have to get away, from some sourroundings.
Weddings and funerals, special occasions,
And all the usual distant relations.

A family affair.

Look at this picture.
We're in there, look there.
Permanent fixtures.
People who care,
Whisper who dares,
This is a family affair.