"The King Must Die"

No man's a jester playing Shakespeare
Round your throne room floor
While the juggler's act is danced upon
The crown that you once wore

And sooner or later
Everybody's kingdom must end
And I'm so afraid your courtiers
Cannot be called best friends

Caesar's had your troubles
Widows had to cry
While mercenaries in cloisters sing
And the king must die

Some men are better staying sailors
Take my word and go
But tell the ostler that his name was
The very first they chose

And if my hands are stained forever
And the altar should refuse me
Would you let me in, would you let me in, would you let me in
Should I cry sanctuary

No man's a jester playing Shakespeare
Round your throne room floor
While the juggler's act is danced upon
The crown that you once wore

The king is dead, the king is dead
The king is dead, the king is dead
Long live the king

The Last Song


Yesterday you came to lift me up
As light as straw and brittle as a bird
Today I weigh less than a shadow on the wall
Just one more whisper of a voice unheard
Tomorrow leave the windows open
As fear grows please hold me in your arms
Won't you help me if you can to shake this anger
I need your gentle hands to keep me calm
`Cause I never thought I'd lose
I only thought I'd win
I never dreamed I'd feel
This fire beneath my skin
I can't believe you love me
I never thought you'd come
I guess I misjudged love
Between a father and his son
Things we never said come together
The hidden truth no longer haunting me
Tonight we touched on the things that were never spoken
That kind of understanding sets me free

"The North"

Have you seen the North
That cold grey place
Don't want its shadow anymore
On my face
A man grows bitter
We're a bitter race
Some of us never get to see
A better place

In the Northern Skies
There was a steel cloud
It used to follow me around
But I don't see it now
There's a farm in the rain
And a little farmhouse
There were a young man's eyes
Looking south

The North was my mother
But I no longer need her
You trade your roots and your dust
For a face in the river

And a driven rain that washes you
To a different shore
There's a North in us all
But my North can't hold me anymore

The One

I saw you dancing out the ocean
Running fast along the sand
A spirit born of earth and water
Fire flying from your hands
In the instant that you love someone
In the second that the hammer hits
Reality runs up your spine
And the pieces finally fit
And all I ever needed was the one
Like freedom fields where wild horses run
When stars collide like you and I
No shadows block the sun
You're all I've ever needed
Baby you're the one
There are caravans we follow
Drunken nights in dark hotels
When chances breathe between the silence
Where sex and love no longer gel
For each man in his time is Cain
Until he walks along the beach
And sees his future in the water
A long lost heart within his reach

The Power

I have sold myself through and through
I have walked in the darkness too
Felt a red sun, the living proof
Washed my hands in the honest truth

I have carried this weight time after time
I have bettered the dumb and the blind
I've seen dignity fail and colours run
Seen justice denied by the voice of a gun

And we walk, yes we walk
And we walk with the power every day
Never letting the light slip away

Reaching out, reaching in
Touching truth and touching skin
Never letting the light slip away
And we walk with the power every day

If my faith is a fire then burn baby burn
We've held fire long enough to learn
Heat beneath hope is a healing light
Kept alive by the flames of night

Walk tall in the power day after day
Never, never, never lose sight of the way
See the dawn come and the dusk hang
See the power rise from an open hand

"The Scaffold"

In Orient where wise I was
To please the way I live
Come give the beggar chance at hand
His life is on his lip

Three score a thousand times
Where once in Amazon
Where Eldorado holds the key
No keeper holds my hand

Unchain the gate of solitude
The ruler says you run
Run hard unto the scaffold high
Your chance to jump the gun

Oh how high the scaffold grows
The plant life of your widow
In black lace curtains brought you near
From out the plate glass window

The Minotaur with bloody hands
Is enraged by the sun
Caged he by the corpses
Brought forth by the dawn

In Orient is as I told
The buckshee hangman swears
For open crypts to silence
Nylon knots to sway by prayer

In Orient where wise I was
To please the way I live
Come give the beggar chance at hand
His life is on his lip

"The Wasteland"

Some days I think it's all a dream
The things I've done, the places that I've been
This life of mine seemed surreal at times
Wasted days and nights in someone else's mind

Could it be I'm not for real?
I've slapped my face to check out how I feel
There's hostages to prove it's true
Who lives behind the mask was never proved

Come on Robert Johnson
Though we're worlds apart
You and I know what it's like
With the devil in our heart
You sold your soul at the crossroads
Kept a little of mine on hand
I'm wading out this muddy water
Been stranded in the Wasteland

Rattling chains all around my bed
Ghosts can laugh but they're already dead
I'm not dying and I'm far from gone
The blues man spent his candle but his pain lives on

"The Wide-Eyed And Laughing"

Are you still in control of the boat that you row
Or do you still cling to me when its sinking
I never condemned you, I only consoled you
When candlelight made me a King

For the wide-eyed and laughing
Passed like a season
Erasing a passion to sin
For no one knew better than the tealeaves and the tarots
That the wide-eyed and laughing
Were just one step ahead of the wind

And the hearts that you played on the porch swing for me
Was a song that I'd heard in the past
For I had an audience somewhere inside you
That applauded whenever you laughed

Gone is a word that I now rarely use
Though sometime in the course of a day
I go racing back like a man possessed
By the wide-eyed and laughing daughters of some different age

"They Call Her The Cat"

She threw back that shiny hair
Like the mane on a Delta queen
Gonna spend my last dime on a telephone call
'Cause she's the wildest thing I've ever seen
She was just plain mister once
Got herself fixed up real good
Just a little boy lost in the land of the free
A wiggle and a walk away from womanhood

Now they call her the cat
And that's a stone fact
They took a little of this
She got a little of that
Now Billy got a kitty
He got something to scratch
So they call her, yeah they call her the cat

She just does that double act
She got Babs and Joan down pat
She got hips like Mick, she's a Rolling Stone
Never seen a woman shake like that

She was just plain mister once
Got herself fixed up real good
Just a little boy lost in the land of the free
A wiggle and a walk away from womanhood

Now they call her the cat
And that's a stone fact
They took a little of this
She got a little of that
Now Billy got a kitty
He got something to scratch
So they call her, yeah they call her the cat

She's so fine that the water line
Don't separate hot and cold
She got stitched up bitchy by an old M.D.
Now she's headed out to Hollywood or so I'm told

Now they call her the cat
And that's a stone fact
They took a little of this
She got a little of that
Now Billy got a kitty
He got something to scratch
So they call her, yeah they call her the cat

And that's a stone fact
They took a little of this
She got a little of that
Now Billy got a kitty
He got something to scratch
So they call her, yeah they call her the cat

"This Song Has No Title"

Tune me in to the wild side of life
I'm an innocent young child sharp as a knife
Take me to the garretts where the artists have died
Show me the courtrooms where the judges have lied

Let me drink deeply from the water and the wine
Light coloured candles in dark dreary mines
Look in the mirror and stare at myself
And wonder if that's really me on the shelf

And each day I learn just a little bit more
I don't know why but I do know what for
If we're all going somewhere let's get there soon
Oh this song's got no title just words and a tune

Take me down alleys where the murders are done
In a vast high powered rocket to the core of the sun
Want to read books in the studies of men
Born on the breeze and die on the wind

If I was an artist who paints with his eyes
I'd study my subject and silently cry
Cry for my darkness to come down on me
For confusion to carry on turning the wheel