John Cooper Clarke - Limbo (Baby Limbo)

Their lives are a mystery
They make it their career
In the single files of history
Fall and disappear
Swearing they'll get even
With all those other creeps
Philistines and Heathens
They violently sleep
Or steal from cigarette machines
Just for the change
To get back to where they've been
A doorway in the rain
Back in the confession box
Back in the slums
Desire burns like chicken pox
Underneath the thumbs
A refugee from purgatory
Wears a crown of thorns
Turns out she's a gringo
Of hard circumstance
Limbo Baby Limbo

They want to see you dance
Take the tradesman's entrance
Take it out on a tramp
Every fucking sentence
Complains about the damp
The only girl is a faint cry
In the garden of cement
Wait until the paint dries
It's a big event
Look through heaven's window
With their opalescent panes
Limbo Baby Limbo

Down the Boulevard of shame
Saint Margaret dies intact
Hardly seems alert
Her stone gaze denies the fact
Her face hurts
The extra legal image
The cold cream skin
The regal gimicks
Did you in
Look through heaven's window
You see the powder blue veil
The cover girl of limbo

The sweetheart of the jail
Gypsy babies hop-scotch
Outside the silver gates
The witch doctor's wristwatch
Is stuck at five-to-eight
A bad break, a slight ache
Is every ones compaint
Flesh flakes like angel cake
From mug-shots of the saints
Who fell from a window
Was never seen again
'Til he turns up in limbo

In a doorway in the rain
A hero rides to heaven
The public only rots
For a fraction of forever
In a designated spot
Eternally paralysed
A morbid orbit shift
Halfway to paradise
Stuck in the lifts
Some smart crackin' bimbo
Say's you can't be employed
Sends you off to limbo
On the stairway to a void