O how my great liberal heart labours,
With the piss in my rivers and gall,
Before 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 and the ladies scream "Vain!"
