Put a Penny in the Slot

I apologise I seem to have arrived home

With items in my bag from your house

There's cutlery, a table cloth, some Hennessy

And a book on presidents deceased

I'll have them FedExed to you

It was a strange to do

I hope we can still be friends

It was not me but someone else you see twisting the steering reins

Put a penny in the slot and make an artificial light shine

Leave go my golden arm

I don't give advice but be wise and think twice

Before getting involved in a game

Where the minority face the majority

Who are faceless and born without name

Was it knock sink when we came across three men

They had church candles wrapped in newspaper

I bought two from them and lit one for you

I hope the message made its way down the wire

Put a penny in the slot and make an artificial light shine

Leave go my golden arm

The soul of a dog, he's alive and not gone

To the farm like the others said

A Rhodesian ridgeback off the beaten track

In the furniture shop down on the quays

For the loneliness you foster

I suggest Paul Auster, a book called Timbuktu

Put a penny in the slot and watch the drunken sailor boy dance

She will not let you be her lover

She goes out looking for a taxi

Her phone is ringing straight to message minder

Send out a battalion to find her

Put a penny in the slot

And make and count the swans through a telescope

I can't help from crying I wish you were mine

When I was seventeen I followed my dream

Up into a high-rise block

The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow

Was all I had for company

At night time I'd lie in Beckenham Park

With tears like flashbulbs

And recall my treasure-searching days

In the rock pools as a kid

To the remains of the chair-o-planes

Or around a bonfire in Naylor's cove

Good company and grief sit

Like a doc leaf sits beside a stinging nettle

Put a penny in the slot and make an artificial light shine

Leave go my golden arm