I am not a crutch, although my knees are rife with woodworm,
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And the meal-worms I misheard for lunch are rotting in my guts,
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With a childhood of fingernails that ripped my throat to shreds,
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A walk that chimes like church bells from all these loose joints in my legs.
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These three lions that were sitting on my chest,
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Are clawing hard into my skin as I am gasping for my breath,
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And as they each play noughts and crosses on the scratches they have left,
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I have to screw up both my eyes as it goes into sudden-death,
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They whisper really all these noughts are circles holed, bereft,
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And all these crosses crucifixes, spreading guilt and sense of dread,
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And as we stumbled homeward up the hill to where you used to live,
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The cold makes ice upon our cheeks from all the tears that we have shed.
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These things rattle round my head,
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If he hasn't blown the whistle then it isn't quite the end.
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Every defeat a divorce,
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Although I look surprised,
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It's par for the course I guess,
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I don't really know now, what I thought I knew then,
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You can lead a horse to water, but it won't drown itself.
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This one family photograph always floats to the top,
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Like a beaming, bloated corpse, though having been made up,
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My memories are sepia, but the photograph is not,
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An historian is fucking with them, as deadly as garotte.
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Where they're standing in the kitchen with his arms around her waist,
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With no idea of what's to come and with a smile across your face,
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And all the fittings are the same but every other thing has changed,
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Must forget everything you know as though your mouth and tongue estranged,
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Small comforts found in ABBA, Gold and electronic chess,
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When West Clewes was my Waterloo, my most dramatic test,
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Now I've been walking down the short-cuts and the alleys in the dark,
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Because I'm not scared of the shadows, they're no blacker than my heart.
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These things rattle round my head,
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If he hasn't blown the whistle then it isn't quite the end.
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Every defeat a divorce,
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Although I look surprised,
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It's par for the course I guess,
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But how could I ever refuse?
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I feel like I lose when I lose,
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And I don't even know now, what I thought I knew then,
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You can lead a horse to water, but it won't drown itself.
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Every Defeat A Divorce
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| Los Campesinos! |