Kickings from my Sweetheart

Kickings from my Sweetheart

Showgirls on the night-train
Share cherry-flavoured stories
About the bad old days in Holland
Eating tulip-bulbs for breakfast
    Click-clack goes the Nautilus gear
On sale, goes the bric-a-brac and glitter-craft
As Sunday morning's sun-rise
Turns the spot-light on Saturday night's riff-raff

The pockets, turned out,
Of a man who loves the company of misery
And spends his evenings making promises
To showgirls on the night-train
    About how he'll save them all from life
But you'll never wait so long
As the day you start expecting this life to start caring
About anything you think you deserve

I've had so many kickings from my sweetheart
That the bruises feel like lipstick traces
And if I follow them back sideways far enough
I can see faint evidence of love still imprinted on the dust

    Alas, there are no happy endings
Because it all happens incrementally
For the Frenchman in the gutter on Union Square
And the Spaniard who earns his pay on the electric fiddle
The English cannon-fodder, the Irishman born for slaughter, 
the Scottish communists daughter:
We're all born and die somewhere in the middle

Night-girls on the show-reel
Showcase the bow marks on their buttocks
And the caesarean scars on their stomachs
The archaic alchemy of defloriation
    As the night-train pulls into the terminal station
A suit-case full of party dresses or hospital gowns
A memory of someone else's life in Havanna
I wish I could promise you that we'll go there one day
    But you'll never wait so long

I've had so many kickings from my sweetheart
That the bruises feel like lipstick traces
And if I follow them back sideways far enough
I can see faint evidence of love still imprinted on the dust