Flight

<br>Flying Blind<br>I alway forget how crazy things are<br>so sometimes it catches me off my guard<br>when they make sense.<br>The line on the road trail the arrow in the sky,<br>I search for the mote in my brother`s eye<br>beneath the pence...<br>a time of blunt instruments.<br>Still uncertain when I`ve woken<br>or what constitutes a conscious mind,<br>though the thought remains unspoken<br>I know I`m flying blind.<br>Breaking into cold sweat on the white-hot coals<br>the pennies from heaven drop through my soul:<br>it don`t relent.<br>At the back end of dreams I`m amazed to awake...<br>I offer my theories but just can`t shake<br>that seventh sense<br>to which there`s no defense.<br>It seemed the time was for action,<br>it seemed so cool to be that kind...<br>my tongue writhed to form some retraction<br>but I knew <br>I was flying blind.<br>I want things to be fast, down to the power-drive;<br>I want the zero-gravity heroes to play dead,<br>but stay alive.<br>We want it to be slow, all the way to stall;<br>we talk about a thousand things that never change at all.<br>No, it never change...<br>It was then that I knew I`d been thoughtless -<br>something had slipped my mind:<br>I`d strapped myself into the Fortress<br>but the Fortress was flying blind.<br>We got full clearance, so someone down there<br>ought to know the truth of our disappearance -<br>If even that still shows it accuses and blames me,<br>but nothing was quite what it seemed.<br>Sometimes things work out so strangely<br>that it might as well all be dreamed.<br>The White Cane Fandango<br>The White Cane Fandango in Morse code,<br>try to shake through the message,<br>shake the load;<br>only venial sin, running on the spot -<br>till the dance begins.<br>Where does a man go when the muscles cramp?<br>Try to write out a postcard on a postage stamp<br>with a drawing pin punching out the Braille<br>for the whole within?<br>Upset the contango on your future stock;<br>paying backwardation, hold onto what you`ve got -<br>such a sideways grin! Some day you may need<br>to trade that in.<br>If we ride this right<br>the future will fall in our hands.<br>If we survive the flight<br>the future will work out -<br>nothing`s that black and white.<br>Control<br>The colour-coded charts are spread,<br>but we`re still gliding deep into the red,<br>the radio is dead<br>every valve blown open.<br>The radar screen flicks monochrome,<br>air traffic controller wants to get on home,<br>waiting <br>for a phone call<br>to release him from responsibility.<br>Nobody goes to see him any more<br>except for the man from the ministry.<br>He wanted to be, he wanted to be<br>the man at the helm, in command of the flightpath;<br>he`s flying a chair, quite beyond control;<br>he`s going to have just one more chance<br>at a barrel roll.<br>All in a dream, all as a dream,<br>the colours too bright, the music too deafening -<br>the black-out world has just begun to show.<br>These cracked-out words I offer...<br>but I still don`t know.<br>Cool blue suffuse the colour gun -<br>oh come in, come in number one:<br>your time`s nearly run.<br>Speed-freeze the frame,<br>the present and the past hold fast...<br>It`s too fast, the thing don`t,<br>the thing won`t,<br>the thing don`t last.<br>Cockpit<br>The rolling dice clash together never make up the score;<br>that old device, the ejector seat, glued to the floor.<br>Everybody waits for everyone to make a show -<br>no-one wants to be the first, admitting that they know<br>how anythings that`s gone down here<br>could fit into an analytic groove...<br>W<br>ait for the tactical move,<br>wait for some action we all can approve.<br>Too much to drink, for the cup reaches down to the sea;<br>too much to think, the barometer pressuring me.<br>Rolling down the weather for an Easter parade,<br>reeling out the Maydays in the hope of being saved,<br>but the radio ham`s out giving blood -<br>no, no, no, he`s not listening.<br>The cricketer knows his "Wisden",<br>the pilot has got his "Jane`s",<br>but the sum of this factual wisdom<br>don`t help us to fly the plane<br>(no, and it never will...)<br>Beneath the tartan two-piece something rips undone...<br>Wait for the ladder to run<br>wait for the snake that the ladder becomes.<br>A passenger hits the cockpit, willing to chance his game:<br>pulls out his gun and cocks it<br>in the hope that it all might change. (oh, but it never will...)<br>A fly-leaf from the library shows others have been here before,<br>tried, failed and kicked out the door;<br>the aircrew don`t care anymore -<br>not they just wait<br>for the beat of the silk-worm wing,<br>wait for the heat to come down on us<br>- full force of the law.<br>Silk-Worm Wings<br>Full force of gravity pulls me down,<br>I`ll be better off out of there;<br>aerobatic spin around,<br>I`ll take my chances in the open air.<br>Sycamore silk-worm wings<br>or Roman Candle to the ground,<br>there`s only one thing for shure:<br>when the balloon goes up<br>the aeronaut calm down.<br>He say nothing is quite what it seems,<br>he say nothing is quite what it seems;<br>I say nothing is nothing.<br>A Black Box<br>Softly, the angels sing their time and space refrain:<br>there`s something in everything if you can only pin down its name<br>Aerobatic thoughts at the back of my mind -<br>Is it nothing but the looping line we all follow?<br>Nothing but the spiral twist of DNA<br>There`ll be no looking back from tomorrow on today.<br>So the wire is tripped, split-seconds defect to their successors;<br>the umbilical cord is ripped -<br>here we all are in free fall.<br>I stall where I am, as if to see where I`ve been:<br>only running down the looping line we all follow,<br>only chasing down the spiral twist of DNA -<br>There can be no looking on to tomorrow from today.<br>Life/death/night/day - cold breath will surely fly away.<br>Is the empire of sensation locked in a black box<br>deep in me, encoded there somehow?<br>It fires the imagination to fly on a wing and a prayer<br>through my life<br> - is that how it is?<br>There`ll be no looking back on this...<br>this is now, which will be then -<br>is this the means? All I know for shure is<br>this is the end.<br>No looking back from tomorrow,<br>no, there`ll be no looking back on today;<br>better be looking on to tomorrow...<br>better think on today.<br>All lyrics by Peter Hammill<br>Published by Hit and Run Music Publishing Ltd.<br>Printed by permission.<br>S-type records, 55-59 Shaftsbury Ave., London W.I.<br>Calligraphy by Jet<br>--