Charlotte Gainsbourg Follow

Collectors Item
The Collector 19:01
Kingdom come come kingdom go
That you may carve upon my grave stone
When confined in a six walled box
I will no longer hear the clocks
Indifferenty ticking in cold deserted mansion halls

Kingdom come come kingdom go
Mementos relics crated cargo
A million things all left behind
Relationships with humankind
Conducted as if I was buying slaves at auction
Holding court at gross parties
Where punch drunk sycophants came slobbering
To suck my cocktails ...

I escaped upstairs to my collection

Titians tits and grand Goyas
Glower through the high stone traceries
Oily smears bequeathed by thirsty souls
Studied throughout my long daze
Scumbled paint in priceless fossils
Many a sad sullen pieta -

Christ eternal held away from me
Behind a brown and ancient glaze

In my collection
Facets of ego
Gradually eclipsing mass between the nursery and now
Struggling for meaning

Walking earth insensible
Flowerings of childhood turned to stringy vegetable

Troubled at night by flashbacks flashbacks flashbacks ...
Waaa Waaa Mummy
I don't want to go potty
Training: I don't want to share my toys with the other children
They're horrid
I ...

Child that I was then when was I last young?
When did comic wood bricks become trading in con-tricks?
When did innocence shudder and die?

Adolescent I planned to take total command
Draped vision's guilt edge on the bars of my play-pen
Hoped to arrest the swift passage of time
As though by some chance I could recreate Eden

Apple pie?
Lovely!

My hopes became a statue my mouth became a gun
In the hit parade of self interest I remained at number one
I was Mozart's old piano with a special gold inlay
I was always a lover of music but I never did learn to play
I thought I'd be saved by my collection to begin with
I thought I'd be saved by my collection

Would you believe it?
I did; but then ...

Nanny - Nanny Conscience?
Is that you standing at the end of my bed there Nanny?
My word, it's a long time since you've been round here
Out in the open - you're looking dreadful
I mean, so pale and interior;
Look at your skin ... My god, the wrinkles!!!!

Nanny-nan-nanny; had her made into a table lamp for me
Because I needed light to shine
But artificially
From her prim portals ... Oooooooo!

Nanny-nan-nanny
Don't you think it's about time you started being nice to me
Nanny?
One day soon I'm going to grow up big and strong
And my ego will build me a temple
And nobody in there will make me
Wash behind my ears or eat my greens or
Share my toys with the other children who are just horrid anyway

Not me

I drank myself as dry as a desert
Still in the end there was nothing left to call my own
This freedom from pain with which I toyed
Became a gateway to a void
The only values left were relative to power

The trouble with life in ivory towers
The seconds stretch until they fit the skins of hours
The faithless mates who come and go

They run away like melted snow
A temple to ego never constitutes a home
And though it seems sad
This jangling junk we are amassed
A passing pageant passing fast
There must be something
Something that can last more than the sense of life as just
A short and pointless overture
To death
Fear debilitating fear and death turn round in circles
Turn!

Kingdom come come kingdom go
Collecting clouds before the Son light
On pain of death our presents pass
Secreting habit over insight
Human soul is fertilised
Human span it's wombing season
Ward of conscience fragile child
Aborted by unfettered reason - that candle
Both ends burning

Collecting trash collecting gold
Vampires ego drains and clutches
When cross examined by the truth
It carves the cross up into crutches
Sharpened at both ends

Some friend ...

Freedom's Ling is donkey borne
A cross
The bleeding palms on main-street

Collecting nothing but the scorn
Of those who cannot bear their eyes to meet
Except in artificial light

Who needs to star in such a cast?
I leave collecting to the past

To one last party I asked them all and One
And when it was over I found that all but One haad gone
Did Jesus have a grave stone upon which to carve His name?
When He came collecting the grave gave up it's game
Now no-one collects worthwhile living
For it is a crop that grows from His seed of giving

Diaries
Drugs
A glittering crystal ball
Cathedrals
Palaces
Sweet sugar you can keep them all

Heaven is not for sale ...

BASS : CLIVE MITTEN
DRUMS, PERCUSSION AND PROGRAMMING : BRIAN DEVOIL
GUITARS : ANDY REVELL AND CLIVE MITTEN
KEYBOARDS : RICK BATTERSBY AND CLIVE MITTEN
VOCALS, SQUEAKY TOYS AND ASSORTED NOISES : GEOFF MANN
WRITTEN BY : ANDY, BRIAN, CLIVE, RICK AND GEOFF
ORIGINALLY RELEASED ON : PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED

Collectors Item
The Collector 19:01