Your bleach blonde hair and kohl black eyes
Got on the bus at Barking Station
I was lost, you heard my cries
Drowning in a sea of trepidation
First threads of friendship recognised
A unique and wondrous combination
Out of our depth and unaware
What beliefs and hungers we would share
With no one else. They’d never know
How our strange bond could ever grow
This special bus down the A13
Went to the swamp, know what I mean?
To the Thames, not where the aspens quiver
But where simple life crawled from the river
Slid through mud and left skid marks
Evolved into export shipping clerks
Incessant chatter, Cockney patter
Perhaps an absence of grey matter
People buying council houses
Cinzano Bianco, chiffon blouses
Off down Madison’s Friday night?
Don’t go no more, got in a fight
Billy Bonds or Samantha Fox?
Weren’t it great when we worked at the docks?
A very extra special bus
Alright for them but not for us
We talked each day of Siouxsie Sioux
Of colleagues let out from the zoo
Of Thatcher’s evil shades of blue
Of bills of lading for Kinabalu
Not knowing what the hell to do
To escape this place or go cuckoo
Up shit creek without a canoe
A smile to launch container ships
Bursting from your cherry lips
So, so easy to make you laugh
Always making me laugh too
I loved the way we shared that laughter
No other made me laugh like you
And you sang
Songs I’d never heard before
My goth and punk music mentor
Wonderful records that are stored
In this old head for evermore
Eventually we both jumped ship
To sail off on some other trip
An end to awful office days
We each went our own separate ways
Something I said and something I did
That left me wondering…
For four decades I wondered
Some nights I dreamed about you
Dreams in which you dreamed of me
And I searched
And I searched
And when I found you
You had gone
Oh, my heart
Torn apart
By this hopeless sorrow
