Faint-Heart and the Sermon

[Verse 1]
With my face drained of colour
And my brain of blood
Like Billy Budd
I'm lashed to the grating
With senses growing duller
And with quaking heart
I make a start
At temperature equating
And my lungs suck useless air

[Verse 2]
Like paraplegic dancers
In formation team
My understanding seems
Hidebound in its movements
Contemplating answers
That could break my bonds -
To be half wrong
Would be, in me, improvement...
But my comprehensive faculties are impaired

[Bridge]
And it seems absurd, but now all I've heard
Fades in empty words and is worthless
As the Human Laugh rocks the cenotaph
But the joke is half-true, and mirthless

[Verse 3]
Trying to trace a reason
From the spinning words
But all I've heard
Seem at odds with their meanings
Phonetically pleasing
But delivered in such haste
That in their place
My mind commences screaming

[Bridge]
On the verge of belief I crash onto the reef
And a cynical thief steals my senses
So I cling to the pew with dimensions askew
And recognition refuses present tenses
All the lives of the saints demonstrate that my faint
Is a minor complaint, but the end is
Nowhere in sight
Why can't I find me a way to go?

[Verse 4]
I don't want to die in the nave
But I know it may be with me some day
So I've got to find a way I can save up
My energies, and find a cause to pray
To something for something
To which I can give my creed

[Instrumental Bridge]

[Verse 5]
I'd gladly succumb to the wave
If I thought the water taught a way to light;
I'd gladly succumb - I'm not brave
And it's easy to believe what the preacher says
Except for the conflict raging between my head and my brain
I don't want to die, but just the same
Some day...

[Verse 6]
Waiting for a moment
That I know will come
When I'll have to run
And find another sermon
Everyman and Norman
And the talking priest--
Well, I am at least holding all the doors open
Inside me all outside is shared

[Bridge]
As the cracked bells peal it all seems unreal
But the seventh seal stays unbroken
And the Offertory plate tenders no escape -
Still I refuse to scrape up a token
Of esteem for these false
Alleyways of the course;
I must try to divorce sense from sensing
Tell me again
Tell me the way to go

[Outro]
So when I talk to myself
Although I take good care to listen
My heart grows ever more faint
There's something missing?