All Time Loser

You're searching for the sanctuary of another hit,
The silver girl causes your veins to fluctuate,
And you look on mystified, as your pupils dilate,
As the pied piper, social worker, leads your children away.

You're the all time loser, an habitual abuser,
Lying among the ancient manuscripts of yesterday's newspapers,
And you'll never find sanctuary behind that blank stare,
You're a shadow of a lost cause, a shadow of what you once were.

And a solitary picture holds a memory of a yesterday,
Far back in a time when you could have sold anything,
You'd have come up smelling of roses if you had fallen in the shit,
And you long to get back there, you long to revive it.

You let a careless tear roll down from your eyeball,
As your mind wanders aimlessly in its labyrinth of canals,
Misguided by the spectre of a long-lost happiness,
It reaches another deadend cul-de-sac of loneliness.

You lay there, paralyzed on the carpet, numb of all feeling,
As patterned imitations of life evolve on the ceiling,
Lost in a falsehood of contented, temporary nirvana,
A prearranged rendezvous with poisoned hysteria.

And you find yourself on the verge of historic decision,
A notion, an idea, the patented property of illusion,
Hope on a rope, a fleeting glimpse of reality,
A useless concept that won't even remain in your memory.

The minstrel sings his last farewell from the gallery,
As the curtain falls on the very last showing of your passion play,
And you think the angels are calling for you to slip away,
But it's just the undertaker, measuring you up for a cold grave.