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Birmingham |
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Just behind the mountain |
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Sparse streetlamps glow in hot half-moon haze |
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Shadows shorten into little black pools that elongate behind |
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We walk, talk some, laugh some |
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Worked hard, now wired, and hanging out |
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I'm curious what you might be all about |
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Curious, too, what that dark-shape in the hard shining cruiser might do |
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And you have no idea what you're getting |
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out of of your own curiosity and tense energy |
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Tattoo on chest like the key to the puzzle of your pumping heart |
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Wearing your shadows all over your sleeve |
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Wearing the role of young upstart |
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Birmingham shadows fall |
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You show a little, I let something show too |
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It's now or not at all |
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Out on the road, it's always instant get-to-know-you |
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Under velvet trees, towering like the sides of a well |
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Before the empty two office blocks |
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Which we're admonished not to enter |
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Policeman studies us, finds us confusing |
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More amusing than threat |
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Moves on, bemused |
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Pavement spirals down ahead like the fossil of a giant shell |
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Along the kingdom's midnight marches |
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I wear my shadows where they're harder to see |
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But they follow me everywhere |
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I guess that should tell me that I'm travelling toward light |
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I guess something you sang made me remember that |
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I guess I'm saying thanks for that |
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Birmingham shadows fall |
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You show a little, I let something show too |
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It's now or not at all |
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Out on the road, it's always instant get-to-know-you |
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Got a head full of horrors and a heart full of night |
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At home in the darkness, but hungry for dawn |
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I only remember scenes, never the stories I live |
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The good things about that is, it's easy to forgive |
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Can't make assumptions about any of this |
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We're nomads following our own songlines |
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Who knows what could strike before we meet again? |
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But if I fall down and die |
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Without saying goodbye |
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I give you this: you'll have lost a friend |
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Birmingham shadows fall |
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You show a little, I let something show too |
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It's now or not at all |
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Out on the road, it's always instant get-to-know-you |
