Lyrics

Feel the poison in your blood
Coming over like a flood
In the salt September air

You are sitting in some bar
At the tail end of the war
And the company paid your fare

Doesn’t matter who has won
You get your pay and you are done
And you go back to your life

But there’s always something coming
Distant gears are always humming
So you sharpen up your knife

You don’t call this crooked dance you just keep your eyes askance
You don’t know who pulls the strings
You just get into a car pull your sleeve over your scar
They don’t ask about these things
This bird will never sing

There’s a waitress in the corner
Looking sullen and forlorn
So you try to catch her eye

She’s a beauty, you’re a stranger
She knows the scent of danger
And she’s giving it a try

Later on in your hotel
Drunk and blinded by her smell
Sweet as jasmine in the night
Suddenly the party’s over
Suddenly you’re stone cold sober
You know something isn’t right

You don’t call this crooked dance you just keep your eyes askance
You don’t know who pulls the strings
All this money changes hands weapons traded on the sands
From the arsenals of kings
You’re always watching from the wings
They know this bird will never sing

Exit out the nearest stair fumble forward in the darkness
Nothing but a prayer you better run before the bullets hit their mark
They are coming for you now
Yes they’re coming for you now

Down the ancient steps of marble
Past the rocks, into the harbor
To the water clear and clean

Little rowboat painted blue
Hidden somewhere out of view
In the cracks of the ravine

Cut the rope free with your knife
Slip away into the night
Three miles on the open sea

Wash up on the Turkish coast
Ragged like some sailor’s ghost
But you’re still alive and free

You have watched this crooked dance pieces captured and advanced
Papal dynasties and rings

Cops and. Robbers all the same useful idiots caught and framed
Everybody loves a sting
There ought to be a reckoning
And now this bird is gonna sing

© 2022 Jude Roberts (Robert Jude DiBennardo)