Anne Clark - Changing Places

(1983)

CoverContact
Sleeper in Metropolis
Poem for A Nuclear Romance
Wallies
Lovers Audition
Poets Turmoil no 364
Echoes Remain Forever
All Night Party
Pandora's Box
Feel
The Last Emotion

 

   Contact (1:59)

Pauses
Are broken by statements not tenderness
I always wanted much more than this
Heartsworn misguidance
Disguised in abundance
Of thoughts of the moment
Not facts of the day
Gestures are only as loud as the words
I was tricked by the movement
All sound went unheard
Obscured by the darkness, I reach for your face
But I find a cold emptiness has taken its place
Left all alone after making that find
A silent scream starts distorting the mind

And I'm always wanting much more than this
Left breathing in hope gently passed by your kiss
But the lifeline is broken in two equal halves
One closes up slowly
The second one laughs...

Sleeper In Metropolis (4:05)

As a sleeper in metropolis
You are insignificance
Dreams become entangled in the system

Environment moves over the sleeper:
Conditioned air
Conditions sedated breathing
The sensation of viscose sheets on naked flesh
Soft and warm
But lonesome in the blackened ocean of night

Confined in the helpless safety of desires and dreams
We fight our insignificance
The harder we fight
The higher the wall

Outside the cancerous city spreads
Like an illness
It's symptoms
In cars that cruise to inevitable destinations
Tailed by the silent spotlights
Of society created paranoia

No alternative could grow
Where love cannot take root
No shadows will replace
The warmth of your contact
Love is dead in metropolis
All contact through glove or partition
What a waste
The City -
A wasting disease

Poem For A Nuclear Romance (2:47)

What will it matter then
When the sky's not blue but blazing red
The fact that I simply love you

When all our dreams lay deformed and dead
We'll be two radioactive dancers
Spinning in different directions
And my love for you will be reduced to powder

The screams will perform louder and louder
Your marble flesh will soon be raw and burning
And kissing will reduce my lips to a pulp

Hideous creatures will return from the underground
And the fact that I love you
Will die

You don't have to sleep to see mightmares
Just hold me close
Then closer still
And you'll feel the probabilities
Pulling us apart

Wallies  (4:10)
Backing vocals by The Yolvettes

So this is where the future lies
In a beer gut belly
In an open fly
Brilcremed, acrylic, mindless boys
Punching, kicking, making noise
From the cradle to the city streets
They spill out their aggression
By punching what they don't understand
And stopping all forms of expression
Teaching each other to be men
By spewing in the street
Well now I know just what to do
To make my man complete!
Against the power of their misguidance
We must learn to fight
To be just what we want to be
Morning, noon and night
Night is for the hunters
And the hunted are you and me
Hunted for just having
Some form of identity

Night is for the hunters
And the hunted are you and me
Hunted for just retaining
Some form of identity
Night is for the hunters
And the hunted are you and me
Hunted for just having
Some form of individuality

Lover's Audition (2:15)

They'll kiss you quick
And squeeze you slowly
Fall asleep
Then get up and go

Thanx very much
I'll see you sometime
Oh - you say
Ah - the pleasure's all mine!!

Fire, Earth, Air and Water
We all line up
Like cattle
To the slaughter

Give me love
Give me affection
Heterosexual, homosexual
An endless selection

Cats scream out
In the middle of the night
And you'll scream out
As they scratch and they bite

The night converges
Into the day
You get up
And force the tears away

He was your reason for living
So you once said
Now your reason for living
Has left you feeling half dead

Some recall lovers
By visits to the clinic
Those without time
For deep thinkers or cynics

Others want their lovers
Locked in a jar
While some perform best
In the back of a car

Roll up! Roll up!
Who will be
The next to promise
Love to me?

Poets Turmoil No. 364 (2:51)

Keep me back in the real world
From which we try to run
Music and words don't mean anything
Through the barrel of a gun

A poem cannot heal a wound
Books won't help you find
That something which you're searching for
But just add questions to the mind

Tell me now in black and white
What you're supposed to do
When fists and knives and boots and sticks
Come raining down on you

A painted picture on a wall
Can't justify a life
When the weak and poor cannot escape
Their ugliness and strife

The actor is a bridge of words
Leading us to nowhere
Dressed in costumes to disguise
The reality of despair

The poets turmoil strikes again
As once more words they fail me
Another bomb has just supplied
The cross on which to nail me

Echoes Remain (Forever) (3:33)

Autumn leaves that collect weight in the ashes of Summer
Are cracked and broken by my intruding step
Foreign thoughts that invade my questioning
Of deaths' cold cold waiting
No bait will deter the ancient stalker
Whose colour I'm not sure of
Who's walked between this park
And with icy fingers prepared this morbid corridor of bracken
To take my steps closer there all the time

Then your fingers - hard and comforting
Write softly through my hair
All that we're afraid of in each other
All that may die between us without death to take the blame

To play games so unprepared
To dance round fires unguarded
Tears become blood of sorrow
And my pulse keeps time so badly with the tune you play to me

My steps down streets that remain unchanged but change so many
Will just vanish like yesterday
Don't think dark throughts you tell me
Yet all our fate waits prepared in darkness
And my hand will fumble for the door
Whose handle is too high for me
Whose wood is from those mighty trees
The trees that lay down their leaves so wrecklessly

My light remains flickering in Autumn
And musky smoke from blazing bonfires
Will rise like incense from the funeral pyre
In preparation

All Night Party (4:15)

At the all night party
Standing in the corner
I am watching you
Drink in my hand
I wish it were you instead

At the all night party
You are dancing
I am watching you
My hands are empty
I dance to your direction

I wish I'd never come here
To the all night party
I wish that I were miles away

In my hand I hold empty desires
In my hand an emptying glass
Standing in the corner
At the all night party

Pandora's Box (2:39)

Love is a dangerous game to play with
A battle where only one side wins
A toy that is so easily broken
Rules that are only make believe
The loser a doll you once held so close
Now left unguarded in a forgotten room
The winner a cheat whose mind's on other things
Unrelentant from the beginning
Knowing what the result would be

Feel (3:57)

All around us hang the gallows of lost innocence
Merely time to take your name
Before I take a part of you
And you a piece of me

I rest unassured that it will last for ever
And it goes on hurting all the time
You dress so fine
But I long to peel away those shells around you
Strip away 'til it's bare and all used up

My head is burning
A hand grasps in searching
From somewhere void in you and me
But it just fumbles through the darkness

Another day comes to another ending
Another kiss seals another goodbye
We'll retrace our steps
Only seperately now

You spoke so enchantingly
Yet you let me smother your words with kisses

The Last Emotion (3:13)

Physical shutdown through emotional letdown
Destined to search through the ruins of jealousy
For some kind of reasoning in love
Possessiveness stabs me
Like a knife from my very own hand
These emotions run riot
In my only comprehension of love

I want to enter the very heart of you
Like the air that sustains your body
But my eyes just fill with ice
As I lose control in my attemps to keep you near to me
I bewilder you with my words and actions
I bar my own windows
Lock my own doors
And it's forcing you away all the time

Like a scar from ear to ear
This jealousy is slowly chocking us both to death

You can give all your love in matter of moments
But jealousy will bind all our expectations
Into a web of fear
It runs through my veins
A thunderous stream of murderous thoughts
Burning fire through the blood

Words leave an after taste
And after words so will you

All lyrics by Anne Clarke

Songs 1-6 by David Harrow, songs 7-11 by Vini Reilly