Another Day

Steve Kilbey, Frank Kearns

Appears On:

Lyrics (unofficial)

[rev. Dec. 13, 2016]

I crash-landed on this red desert planet
Two thousand scorching, burning days and nights wandering in my hallucination and deliria

I invented a horde of thirsty companions, who variously staggered and stumbled
Under that merciless, changeless, crimson, sun-studded sky and cruel stars scoffed at our meagre efforts
For moisture we sucked each other's blood, clotted, rotted, corpuscular essence oozed
From suppurating open wounds at our wrists, where we did graze most hideously

The most real of my imagineers was a young child of indeterminate sex
Who suckled hungrily from my veins, draining my own reality to feed its phantom flesh
However, after its feeding, the vampire child would become remorseful, apologetic
And cling to my back, kissing me on my neck with its bloody little lips
And saying, sweetly, encouragements like, "Only another day, only another day"

 

Full Version extra lyrics - Speed of the Stars Bonus Track

Another of my friends I called Niamh
A pale conjectured thing of little substance
A frightful, haunted, blistered woman
She spoke in whispers in some language I could not possibly know
And yet her mutterings were made lucid in my mind
And I understood this gibberish like a mixture of Gaelic, of Mandarin and Aztec Indian

She drooled and raved and disappeared and berated me for creating her
But she wished greatly to be released and her spirit longed for extinguishment
She lay down and tried to die But my little sexless urchin would at once leap from my back and prod her back to life
With its little talons and small sharp yellow canines that savaged Niamh's white thin arms, severely

Of course mirages tormented us, hallacies [3:25] loomed, calls of crystalline aquanova [3:29]
But when we arrived and stooped to drink the water we'd withdrawl
And we would drink deeply of dust

Once we thought we saw a caravan ??? [3:39] drift serenely ahead
Replete with princes upon camels and moveable feasts and the like
But now I realize that, too, was just another fantasy
That I was alone, I was utterly alone, I was less than alone
No one had ever never been so completely alone
And still my pack of phantoms followed me begging for my blood

I dreampt up a pantheon of horrid gods for more holy abuse
And they gazed down disdainful at me, a mere mortal man and my gang of ghosts
And I suffered from their neglect
Because with one blink they could have mitigated my circumstances righteously
And set me down in some cool Scandinavian glade, wandering to the lake with my daughters
On a soft summer evening for a swim in the refreshing grey water

Vultures circled above, but I had nothing for their beaks and claws
Which were probably more conjecture, mere conjecture anyway

One day a screaming bird found and attacked my urchin
And I was amazed to see these two locked in an embrace of savagery
The urchin pulled off the wings and tried to sew them onto my back so we could fly
But all it succeeded in doing was ravaging my sunburnt shoulders
And the wings dragged uselessly behind, inoperable
The feathers falling out, one by one, like Hansel and Gretel's trail through the forest
We left feathers to show where we had passed

By this method I realized we were tramping in circles, but still the child goaded me on
Another day, just another day
Another night, or maybe not even that

Another day, just another day
Another night, or maybe not even that

And then my heart broke with sorrow, and my clothes fell away, and my flesh skin fell away
And then there was only my spirit, still marching under the viridian hell sky
Burnt, dried out, useless, pitiful
Another day, just another day
Another mile, just another mile
Another life, just another life