Sad Old Ram of the Mountains
Links to Lyrics
If you would travel to Africa,
Be sure to catch the high tide!
If you should make it to Africa,
Be sure to see my lady!
Tell her the White King swept the board!
Tell her the war is over!
Tell her I'm waiting by the sea,
Trying to find an answer!
CHORUS
O the days were short and the nights were free
In the Green Queen's court.
And the dancing girls brushed the tapestries
And beat their tambourines.
And then the White King made his move,
Sent in computer mercenaries,
Cut through the palace walls of oak,
Felled the green towers with laser beams
Then giant bulldozers razed meadows into dust
And the countryside was squared in barbed wire grids
And the badgers were all gassed inside their earthy lairs
Because the White King won
Meeting the Green Queen in Africa,
Take her my ocarina,
As she dances to the talking drums,
Give her my farewell story.
Tell her I live in damp sea caves,
Dodging the robot cliff patrols,
Watching the sea birds skim the skies,
Crying for peace like freezing souls.
CHORUS
O the days were short and the nights were free etc.
So now the tongues of men will shrivel in their heads,
Their twisted heads will hang with no words to tell,
Of the sea cow or the dolphin or the great blue whale,
Because the White King won.
SAD OLD RAM OF THE MOUNTAINS (instrumental)
Ain’t got time to mess around with a fake democracy
This house is just a landfill stuffed with sick plutocracy
This house is full of bullies and
sleek male
chauvinist pigs
Whips and Rods and Spin-Doctors and Pompous Gits in Wigs
Power drunk machine politicians, when sacked never missed,
Labour turns to Tory, Tory to fascist
Ain’t gonna heed it’s words
Ain’t got time to mess around with a fake democracy
This house is just a landfill stuffed with sick plutocracy
This house is just a rubber stamp
for dictatorial style
The spectre of New Labour sports a
phosphorescent smile
Attacks on refugees
and welfare boost prosperity
Concentration camps and war crimes bring
security,
Ain’t gonna heed it’s words
Ain’t got time to mess around with a fake democracy
This house is just a landfill stuffed with sick plutocracy
This house hands out the pay rise
to the pumped
up windbag ass
Whose political hothouse globally warms up green arse gas
It fights for rights for profiteers; it fights to please fat
cats
It rats on paupers, old folk, wage
slaves, green
aliens in flats
Ain’t gonna heed it’s words
Ain’t got time to mess around with a fake democracy
This house is just a landfill stuffed with sick plutocracy
(times wingèd chariot …shan’t be rahnd tommorah!)
the
runaway brain went down the hill and she blew
the runaway brain went down the hill and she blew
the runaway brain went down
the
hill
and for all I care she's running still
and she blew girls blew girls blew
the faculties flew of the rails and she blew
the faculties flew of the rails and she blew
the faculties flew of the rails
scrawling slimy trails like snails
and she blew girls blew girls blew
the left side thinks
it's nearly always
right
the right side thinks it's nearly always wrong
the wrong half is my better half
she always spares the fatted calf
and she blew girls blew girls blew
the
higher centres crumble in
the fire
the
higher centres crumble in
the fire
the higher centres are a joke
they
issue forth as holy
smoke
and she blew girls blew girls blew
frying saucer brain pan full speed ahead
frying saucer brain pan full speed ahead
the piston clangs the
whistle
screams
she roars off coupling in her dreams
and she blew girls blew girls blew
the runaway brain went down
the hill
and she blew
the runaway brain went down the drain and she blew
the last I heard she was doing well
steamed like a dragon straight to hell
and she blew girls blew girls blew
Home fires burning in the Shires
Send carbon gas up to the heavenly choirs,
And Katy takes her only child of five
To
Save the Children
in her four
wheel drive.
Shopkeepers, as the boom years fail,
Hark the hard right demons sing!
Midst toothless people one tooth man is king!
Hark the hard right demons sing!
Midst toothless people one tooth man is king!
Now children play with Christmas
zest;
No
corporate logo on small uniformed breast.
Soon the global profit ghoul
Will
haunt the future of the
sponsored school,
Will profiteer from jails, kids, mail,
From our
water, phone lines, fuel and rail.
Hark the hard right demons sing!
Midst toothless people one tooth man is king!
The smiley spin-doctors rejoice:
Democracy will lose its voice.
Give me fast food fascism to go,
With consumerism and no need to know!
Cops will arrest you if they just suspect your acts,
While our cock-eyed media blur the facts.
Hark the hard right demons sing!
Midst toothless people one tooth man is king!
Though Infinite Justice bloodily
fights,
Let’s drain a glass to Human Rights!
Right to silence? Double jeopardy?
Habeas corpus? Trial by jury?
When Freedom’s hurt by a suicide bomber,
Let’s build a police state fit for misled martyrs!
Hark the hard right demons sing!
Midst toothless people one tooth man is king!
[coda in dodgy French]
Anges Héraldiques ou sans vous ?
Anges Héraldiques chantent pour nous!
Anges Héraldiques au secours!
Diables fascistes tuent toujours !
Diables fascistes font la guerre.
Diables fascistes merde alors !
foundry labour work song
twelve hours every day
that and working week end mornings
twenty five pounds pay
early as the day breaks
bash soot from the moulds
dying daily for the tea breaks
cheese and bacon rolls
i was a young navy
innocent and green
once i left a tap on
and flooded a big machine
this man is a strong man
no weight defeats him
lifts a lamppost like a dumbbell
just to keep in trim
once a mould exploded
as we poured hot metal in
set my cap and hair on fire
the red iron burned my skin
my handkerchief was set on fire
a spark went up my nose
the strong man laughed said lift the shank
so on the pouring goes
bouncing molten red iron
strikes you eats your flesh
faded scars in shower rooms
but this burn’s bright and fresh
empty out the mouldings
bash this damp soot trough
water gas inside my lungs
i never lost the cough
heavy metal rainbow
incandescent fan
master plan how can we tell
the manhole from the man
DUSK WOMAN OF THE PRESELI MOUNTAINS
Two round cairns on Foeldrygarn, her stone
Breasts.
Now she's below the mountain, in that lone
Voice of hornèd anguish, fenced off from her calf.
See a mist pelisse on her rangy flanks, an half
Developed Preseli Isis, she flickers into flight,
Now a flash-tailed coney, lost in the phantom light.
Mother Dole I'd have no tea
without the bread you give to me
sweet culture of dependency
Brother Dole you free my soul
from living hell of sweat shop role,
to fiddle through life like Old King Cole
Sister Dole's kind milky chest
(her bosom cradles me in rest
with handouts governed by means test)
Uncle Dole leads me a dance
to sign on in a welfare trance
to cash my scrounger's inheritance
Auntie Dole brings equal pay
(for waged, unwaged, fat cat and stray,
none cheat the Planet's Judgment Day)
Father Dole rules poor means crimes
to scrounge the time to scrawl these rhymes
in trainee neo-fascist times
I’m One Finger Ellis
I can’t afford bail
I’m scratching this song
on the walls of my jail
Hallelujah I'm a bum
Hallelujah bum again
Hallelujah give us a handout
To revive us again
When spring time has come
O won't we have fun
We'll git out of jail
And we'll go on the bum
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
O why don't you work
Like other men do
How the hell can I work
When the sky is so blue
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
O why don't you save
All the money you earn
Well if I didn't eat,
I'd have money to
burn
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc
But I loved my old boss
And my old boss loved me,
The firm made a loss,
Made me work there for free.
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
I went to a house
And I knocked on the
door
The lady said `Arsehole
You been here
before.'
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
.
I called on another
And asked for some bread
The lady says `Arsehole
The baker is dead.'
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
I'll ride the box cars
And hop the fast mails
When it's cold in the winter
I'll sleep in the jails.
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc..
I went to a bar
And I asked for a drink,
They gave me a glass
And they showed me the sink.
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
Someday a freight train
Will run over my head
And the sawbones will say
`Old One Finger's Dead'
Hallelujah I'm a bum etc.
.
it never happened like they tell
you when you
read the true romances,
you spurned my poems, broke my heart and then you made me eat
boiled crow,
i couldn't take you in a car to all your films, pubs, parties,
dances,
spent all my money on you and had nowhere left to go.
her feelings are all show
unheeding fickle clay
she shuffles decks of rainbows and she only wants to play
now the shit’s hit the fan i must die like a man
and now lie on the butcher’s slab bleeding
your ivory skin, your diamond eyes
and all you
want is entertaining,
spend your days in second hand shops, dress like Venus on the
dole,
i want you badly but my face no longer fits your crowded
evening,
singing to you from the heart I guess you haven't got much
soul.
her feelings are all show
unheeding fickle clay
she shuffles decks of rainbows and she only wants to play
now the shit’s hit the fan i must die like a man
and now lie on the butcher’s slab bleeding
so now I leave you to men's
flattery and gossip
mongering friendships,
to the culture vulture movies of your drugged consumer scene,
memories o bitter sweet, a kiss from honeysuckle lips,
wise to drop me sweetheart 'cos you don't know where I've
been.
unheeding she has gone, there's
nothing left to
tell,
a pitcher must drop deeper to draw water from the well
now the shit’s hit the fan i must die like a man
and now lie on the butcher’s slab bleeding
[instrumental solo]
so i’m in her bad books
fight an oil war for crooks
and i still do not know
why my face
doesn’t
fit
let it go! let it go!
loved and lost it
