CLARKE, John Cooper


Evidently Chickentown

The bloody cops are bloody keen
To bloody keep it bloody clean
The bloody chief's a bloody swine
Who bloody draws a bloody line
At bloody fun and bloody games
The bloody kids he bloody blames
Are nowhere to be bloody found
Anywhere in chicken town

The bloody scene is bloody sad
The bloody news is bloody bad
The bloody weed is bloody turf
The bloody speed is bloody surf
The bloody folks are bloody daft
Don't make me bloody laugh
It bloody hurts to look around
Everywhere in chicken town
The bloody train is bloody late
You bloody wait you bloody wait
You're bloody lost and bloody found
Stuck in fucking chicken town

The bloody view is bloody vile
For bloody miles and bloody miles
The bloody babies bloody cry
The bloody flowers bloody die
The bloody food is bloody muck
The bloody drains are bloody fucked
The colour scheme is bloody brown
Evidently chicken town

The bloody pubs are bloody dull
The bloody clubs are bloody full
Of bloody girls and bloody guys
With bloody murder in their eyes
A bloody bloke is bloody stabbed
Waiting for a bloody cab
You bloody stay at bloody home
The bloody neighbors bloody moan
Keep the bloody racket down
This is bloody chicken town

The bloody pies are bloody old
The bloody chips are bloody cold
The bloody beer is bloody flat
The bloody flats have bloody rats
The bloody clocks are bloody wrong
The bloody days are bloody long
It bloody gets you bloody down
Evidently chicken town
The bloody train is bloody late
You bloody wait you bloody wait
You're bloody lost and bloody found
Stuck in fucking chicken town


I Wanna Be Yours...

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner

breathing in your dust

I wanna be your Ford Cortina

I will never rust

If you like your coffee hot

let me be your coffee pot

You call the shots

I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat

for those frequent rainy days

I wanna be your dreamboat

when you want to sail away

Let me be your teddy bear

take me with you anywhere

I don’t care

I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter

I will not run out

I wanna be the electric heater

you’ll get cold without

I wanna be your setting lotion

hold your hair in deep devotion

Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean

that’s how deep is my devotion

Beasley Street

Far from crazy pavements

The taste of silver spoons

A clinical arrangement

On a dirty afternoon

Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud

Are rendered obsolete

The legal term is "null and void"

In the case of Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds

Somebody is out of breath

Sleep is a luxury they don't need

A sneak preview of death

Belladonna is your flower

Manslaughter your meat

Spend a year in a couple of hours

On the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn't

That's where it is

State your position

Vacancies exist

In an X-certificate exercise

Ex-servicemen excrete

Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies

In a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding-houses and the bedsits

Full of accidents and fleas

Somebody gets it

Where the missing persons freeze

Wearing dead men's overcoats

You can't see their feet

A riff joint shuts, opens up

Right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash

Disaster-movie stuff

For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache

Revenge is not enough

There's a dead canary on a swivel seat

There's a rainbow in the road

Meanwhile on Beasley Street

Silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar

An inspector calls

Where the perishing stink of squalor

Impregnates the walls

The rats have all got rickets

They spit through broken teeth

The name of the game is not cricket

Caught out on Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat

Drive a borrowed car

Yellow socks and a pink cravat

Nothing, la-dee-dah

OAP, mother-to-be

Watch the three-piece suite

When shit-stoppered drains

And crocodile skis

Are seen on Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind

A one-eyed man is king

Beauty problems are redefined

The doorbells do not ring

A lightbulb bursts like a blister

The only form of heat

Here a fellow sells his sister

Down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon

The girls are on the shelf

Their common problem is

That they're not someone else

The dirt blows out

The dust blows in

You can't keep it neat

It's a fully furnished dustbin

Sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage

Betrays no kind of life

But the smell of yesterday's cabbage

And the ghost of last year's wife

Through a constant haze

Of deodorant sprays

He says retreat

Alsations dog the dirty days

Down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison

Quick as lager turns to piss

Sweethearts are physically sick

Every time they kiss

It's a sociologist's paradise

Each day repeats

On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy

Beastly Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish

Look around for laughs

If I could have just one wish

I would be a photograph

On a permanent Monday morning

Get lost or fall asleep

When the yellow cats are yawning

Around the back of Beasley Street