I am not a crutch Although my knees are rife with woodworm And the mealworms I misheard for lunch Are rotting in my guts With a childhood of fingernails That ripped my throat to shreds A walk that chimes like church bells From all these loose joints in my legs
These three lions that were sitting on my chest Are clawing hard into my skin As I am gasping for my breath And as they each play noughts and crosses On the scratches they have left I have to screw up both my eyes As it goes into sudden death They whisper "Really all these noughts Are circles holed, bereft And all these crosses crucifixes Spreading guilt and sense of dread." And as we stumbled homeward up the hill To where you used to live The cold makes ice upon our cheeks From all the tears that we have shed
[Pre-Chorus] These things rattle round my head If he hasn't blown the whistle Then it isn't quite the end
[Chorus] Every defeat a divorce Although I look surprised It's par for the course I guess Every defeat a divorce Although I look surprised It's par for the course I guess
And I don't really know now What I thought I knew then You can lead a horse to water But it won't drown itself
This one family photograph Always floats to the top Like a beaming, bloated corpse Though having been made up My memories are sepia But the photograph is not An historian is fucking with them As deadly as garrotte
Where they're standing in the kitchen With his arms around her waist With no idea of what's to come And with a smile across your face And all the fittings are the same But every other thing has changed Must forget everything you know As though your mouth and tongue estranged Small comforts found in ABBA Gold And electronic chess When West Clewes was my Waterloo My most dramatic test Now I've been walking down the shortcuts And the alleys in the dark Because I'm not scared of the shadows They're no blacker than my heart
[Pre-Chorus]
[Chorus]
But how could I ever refuse I feel like I lose when I lose
And I don't even know now What I thought I knew then You can lead a horse to water But it won't drown itself