Beasley Street

Far from crazy pavements The taste of silver spoons A clinical arrangement On a dirty afternoon Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud Are rendered obsolete The legal term is "null and void" In the case of Beasley Street In the cheap seats where murder breeds Somebody is out of breath Sleep is a luxury they don't need A sneak preview of death Belladonna is your flower Manslaughter your meat Spend a year in a couple of hours On the edge of Beasley Street Where the action isn't That's where it is State your position Vacancies exist In an X-certificate exercise Ex-servicemen excrete Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies In a box on Beasley Street From the boarding-houses and the bedsits Full of accidents and fleas Somebody gets it Where the missing persons freeze Wearing dead men's overcoats You can't see their feet A riff joint shuts, opens up Right down on Beasley Street Cars collide, colours clash Disaster-movie stuff For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache Revenge is not enough There's a dead canary on a swivel seat There's a rainbow in the road Meanwhile on Beasley Street Silence is the code Hot beneath the collar An inspector calls Where the perishing stink of squalor Impregnates the walls The rats have all got rickets They spit through broken teeth The name of the game is not cricket Caught out on Beasley Street The hipster and his hired hat Drive a borrowed car Yellow socks and a pink cravat Nothing, la-dee-dah OAP, mother-to-be Watch the three-piece suite When shit-stoppered drains And crocodile skis Are seen on Beasley Street The kingdom of the blind A one-eyed man is king Beauty problems are redefined The doorbells do not ring A lightbulb bursts like a blister The only form of heat Here a fellow sells his sister Down the river on Beasley Street The boys are on the wagon The girls are on the shelf Their common problem is That they're not someone else The dirt blows out The dust blows in You can't keep it neat It's a fully furnished dustbin Sixteen Beasley Street Vince the ageing savage Betrays no kind of life But the smell of yesterday's cabbage And the ghost of last year's wife Through a constant haze Of deodorant sprays He says retreat Alsations dog the dirty days Down the middle of Beasley Street People turn to poison Quick as lager turns to piss Sweethearts are physically sick Every time they kiss It's a sociologist's paradise Each day repeats On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy Beastly Beasley Street Eyes dead as vicious fish Look around for laughs If I could have just one wish I would be a photograph On a permanent Monday morning Get lost or fall asleep When the yellow cats are yawning Around the back of Beasley Street --- Beasley Street - John Cooper Clarke