Can Surveillance Detect a Bitter Heart?

If today you wake up and you think of a new direction
Don't ask questions before you slam the door
'Cause lately I don't know what you've been staying for
I get my needs through synthetic and plasma screens

We used to stay up late, dream of hover cars and new machines
Now I've got cameras that know where you've been
I don't know this person next to me
You're late for work and your boss knows just where you are

I don't think I could ever tell (I hope you never will)
I wouldn't even know how (I hope you never can)
Just be my easy answer (I knew I should have turned)
Just be my easy way out (I knew I should have ran)

And when you go out;
She's pneumatic, she's my everything
Plastics can't let me me down
Cameras will never leave
If my heart should feel no guilt then is this really happening to me?

Is there love where you go?
Once I cared, now I don't want to know
And when you sleep with her you sleep alone
You're later again, I'm already gone
You're already falling apart

AG-TC

When the frame is creaking
When the field is fallow
When the tin is empty
With nothing left to borrow

Walk ‘round the corner
Trace ‘round the bend
To the store that’s selling
Tomorrow’s never end

When the pill is taken
With gasp and sigh
Life’s lease re-written
With a new way to die

Pho Sparta!
Smorgasbord of customs meets market economy
A real hand (of progress) to mouth (of saleability) operation, kiddo
We'll assimilate your culture
As long as it's tasty enough


Streaming For Vengeance
Astride the high seas of broadband
Mouse clicks like cannonfire
Victimless crime doesn't pay
Unless the wages of sin have become free culture and freer revenge

Travel

I've been to the desert with its red red sand and seen the ghost gum white
with branches spread and branches dead and the dead ones black as night.
I've heard loud birds in dead gum trees and watched as they took flight;
Saw the morning sun through the mist and gum and marvelled at the sight.

Where the rocks are red as the hearts that bled
for the land that they once knew,
stories told of a dreamtime old
were lost and their cost is due.

But the gums were plucked,
and billabongs sucked,
and like the bounding kangaroo

they saw the whiteman’s gun in the morning sun,
and faces hard and cruel,

and the rocks ran red
and their hearts all bled
for the land that they once knew.

I've been to the desert with its red red sand and seen the ghost gum white
with branches spread and branches dead and the dead ones black as night.
I have seen old dreams in the rocks and trees when the sun is shining bright;
Saw it fading fast like a blood red past and marvelled at the sight.

ennui accept this

the winding streets are rorschach blots
and the sidewalks are all starving
and the plazas are all freezing
and the flaneurs are all dead
and the mausoleums grin a porcine grin
and my laughter is sardonic
and my footsteps are a slowing heartbeat
and my driveway is a crime scene
and my neighbours are all tourists
and the monuments are going up faster and faster and faster
and a house of cards is a house of cards is a house of cards

Passing the Bar

Nights spent touching drunken boys
who slur hungry words above the noise
and stumble
trying to catch her downcast eyes
as they roll across the floor
she dons a stifling, thick, two-mouthed disguise
with her over-bitten tongue she leaves
quivering salival promises
more often than she comes
I want to take her
away from the numb, synthetic fun
so I approach and try to return her wandering eyes
but I'm just another drunken boy
and they're too full of tears for me to hold her gaze
and I'm too full of lies

Flagpole

Dirty white shoes in the black gold
Dirty white shoes in the black gold
Sticky black sand 'round the ankles
Dirty white shoes in the black gold
Makin' new tracks in the land of old
Makin' new tracks in the land of old
Dirty white shoes in the black gold
Diggin' down deep with the flagpole

Diggin' deep with the flagpole
Diggin' diggin' deep with the flagpole
Diggin' diggin' diggin' deep with the flagpole
Dirty white shoes in the black gold

Dirty white ship full of black gold
Dirty white ship full of black gold
Sticky black sand 'round your anchor
Dirty white ship full of black gold
Sailin' back home with your belly full
Sailin' back home with your belly full
Dirty white ship full of black gold
Sinkin' down deep in the water

Sinkin' deep in the water
Sinkin' down deep in the water
Sinkin' sinkin' down deep in the water
Dirty white ship full of black gold

Dirty white shoes with the black soles
Dirty white shoes with the black soles
Sticky black sand 'round the ankles
Dirty white shoes with the black soles
Leaving deep cracks and your black holes
Leaving deep cracks and your black holes
Headin' back home with your flagpole
Dirty white shoes with the black soles

The Temptress

Well I was bumping and jumping on a saturday night
In a venue with a retinue right under the lights
Pulsating, gyrating in the thick of the sound
Tearing up the weekend with the rest of the town
When all of a sudden, well I turned around
And fortuity of circumstances parted the crowd
Before me, deplore me was a vision of grace
Too blasphemous a vision for a god to create
She looked like an angel to me
But she moved like the devil from what I could see
She slithered towards me so effortlessly
A snake in the grass, she was coming for me

She turned me away from the future
She turned me away from the past
She pulled me in close in the present
Then she pushed me outside in the dark
She touched me and stroked me
Somehow awoke me
Pulled me inside her so fast
I looked in her eyes and I was hypnotised
I wondered how long it would last

She looked like an angel to me
But she moved like the devil from what I could see
She slithered around me so effortlessly
A snake in the grass, she was all over me

...

She bagged me then dragged me back into the place
Then we scorched across the floor along the border of taste
We were indecent, mistreatment of the boundaries ensued
The doormen came a-calling when she flaunted the rules
Well all of a sudden she was out of the door
For unspeakably relieving me right there on the floor
They threw me out too in a one sided-fight
Then I ran to catch up with her out in the night
She looked like an angel to me
But she moved like the devil from what I could see
She slithered away from me effortlessly
A snake in the grass, she was hidden from me

She turned me away from the future
She turned me away from the past
She pulled me in close in the present
Then she pushed me outside in the dark
She touched me and stroked me
Somehow awoke me
Pulled me inside her so fast
I looked in her eyes and I was hypnotised
I wondered how long it would last

She looked like an angel to me
But she moved like the devil from what I could see
She slithered away from me effortlessly
A snake in the grass, she was too fast for me