Lyrics Horrors of the Deep - Shriekback

Horrors of the Deep

Keep from us heartless tides of time:
The currents that will wreck you
On the continental shelf the water’s warm
The harbour walls protect you
After the levee breaks
The dead man’s fingers hold you
All the mermaids sing
They want you for their own
Their drowning arms enfold you
Gimme streets of lights and wine
Gimme better thorts than mine
My scratch-card god
Vouchsafe our souls to keep
From these periscopic sorrows
And the Horrors of the Deep
Sex on the beach is fine
All up for stimulation
But down at full fathom five
-Just to survive-
You need some inhalation
What does a poor boy do
When they all drag your name round town?
What the old men and the sea all said to me
Was quite enough to drag me down
Take it like a man
Or like the little bitch I am
I feel it now
I lay me down to sleep:
Suspect morals in the corals
And the Horrors of the Deep
Sumptuously poised here in the foam
A watery quintessence
Later pitifully trailing home alone
My bio-luminescence
Beached on the Kentish Knock
-So very far from Camden Town
And while Kraken dreams
The Little Mermaid sings her song of legs and sound
Out there in the bay
Where the salt will burn away
Your landlocked pride
-Out there such thought is cheap
Watch me holler in the squalor
With the Horrors of the Deep