I’m not what they need in the fitness clubs
theres no place for me in the smoke-free pubs
I could measure out my life in cigarillo stubs
Empty ashes in my highway shoes
So light up another for the likes of me
Light out to some place you might be free
Carry me with you or leave me be
With my Smoky Muse
Bridge: She lives at the top of an old stair well
Her house is on fire but it’s hard to tell
If that kind of fire is from heaven or hell
And it’s too late to put out the fuse
She takes me when I’m feeling like an empty shell
She wakes me in the darkness of a strange hotel
She makes me ill and then she makes me well
My Smoky Muse
The wide boys are whining with their thin white duke
Throw me down to the cooler with cool-hand Luke
It’s the plastic in my life that makes me puke
Nothing’s real enough to refuse
I Make my retreat down some shadowy lane
I Take what it takes to defeat the pain
I can still see her waving goodbye in the rain
My Smoky Muse
Celebrities stabled in a big brother house
I can see more life in a lousy little louse
I could take my life, or take religious vows
But I’m stuck with the news of the screws
Everybody wants to be a party to it all
Every body wants to be a fly on my wall
I just want to get out of here and crawl
To my Smoky Muse
Bridge: She lives at the top of an old stair well
Her house is on fire but it’s hard to tell
If that kind of fire is from heaven or hell
And it’s too late to put out the fuse
She takes me when I’m feeling like an empty shell
She wakes me in the darkness of a strange hotel
She makes me ill and then she makes me well
My Smoky Muse
She knows how I love the way she breathes
The way she shrouds me in wraiths and wreathes
And shares her favours with vagrants and thieves
And leaves them so confused
She comes to me veiled in graceful swirls
I trace the fragrance in her fingers and her curls
Her skin shines pale beneath strange black pearls
My Smoky Muse
She left me with nothing, nothing left to say
I’m gone with the others the ones that got away
Stuck in a cell block with jean genet
Singing the jail-house blues
Chain-smoked my way through the chains of night
Went out in the morning looking for a light
If she breathes on me now I know I’ll be allright
With my smoky muse
Malcolm Guite 