My Smoky Muse

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