Berlin

(music: marillion lyrics: steve hogarth & john helmer)

The mascara'd blonde from the berliner bar
Rises at twilight, gets dressed in a daze
Black leather crackles and cold water runs
As she touches the walls of memory maze

And the shadows of men she has known fill her day
She's held half the world in her arms so they say
But she wakes up without them with a hole in her heart
And she puts on her clothes lives her life behind bars

The mascara'd blonde from the berliner bar
Sighs at the skylight, gets lost in the haze
Black leader crackles and cold water runs
As she touches the walls of her memory maze

Some one got stranded in no man's land
Dancing in the spotlight to the sound of clapping hands
Nobody knows who's side he was on
It's a risk that you take in no man's land
Nobody knows what made him decide
To run for freedom and to certain suicide
When they turn off the guns and his fingers uncurl
He's clutching a photograph of a berlin party girl

Come in from your checkpoints on your lonely roads
Come in from your ditches in your silent fields
Where intensified light from a rifle sight
Makes the darkness day
And the day too bright, too bright

And we wake up without you
We wake up without you
We wake up without you
We wake up without you
With a hole in our hearts

You mad dog shaven head bottle boy freaks
In martens & khaki drunk on sake
You stare at yourself in the cruel flush of dawn
Terrified, sunken eyed, withered and drawn
The butcher, the baker, the munitions maker
The over achiever, the armistice breaker
The free-base instructor, the lightning conductor
The psycho, the sailor, the tanker, the tailor
The black market mailer
The quick an the dead
The spotlight dancer
The quick and the dead
The quick and the dead
The quick and the dead

We wake up without you
We wake up without you
With a hole in our hearts

The mascara'd blonde from the berliner bar
Rises at twilight, gets dressed in a daze