Closer To You-Momus

And maybe you're the Circle Line girl trying so hard not to let on you know I'm looking at the way your toes poke out through your sandals at funny angles to your feet and how you know it turns me on Or maybe you're the Spanish girl playing with your hair as you wait for your friend in that wild octagon of mirrors the Tate calls a coffee shop And I can smell that hair from here and I can see from eight different angles the way your nipples look through that thin black cotton top reflected to infinity And oh God, it's places like that and purple-tipped prose like this that's going to hemorrhage me, girl Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you Or maybe you're the bay window girl in Wandsworth Town, in ripped jeans and open Venetians painting the difficult corner of an empty room white under a naked bulb leaning across the bar at the top of your stepladder at the precise moment I'm passing on the steep street at the bottom of your garden in the gathering night voyeur's delight Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you Or maybe you're the foundation painter at the Central School, looking so fine-boned I could carry you home in your portfolio case laced up gently so you won't cry out on the bus and give the game away tied up lightly, because girl how could I knowingly injure someone with your perfect lips and wrists, your exquisite structure Oh, little acrylic painter, I can kiss eggshells, I can be ginger all the critics say I'm such a sensitive singer Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you And maybe you're listening to my voice now on your Walkman or your bedsit Dansette letting my songs slip into you on this quiet night in with your pads of doodles and your fingers full of pencils and low tar cigarettes And the music's light and pleasant so you hardly notice what I'm singing about in "Paper Wraps Rock" And "Murderers, the Hope of Women," my voice is just a sound that pleases you that enters you and leaves you just the same and that's how I want it to stay, because, you know Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you But some of those were bitter records records which accuse women, girls like you of using your attractiveness wantonly and willfully to trap and to paralyze men who wanted you and could never have you men who sometimes felt the perverse urge to trash the women they desired the most men who imagined they despised all those immaculate visions what adolescent crap, what kind of idiot would sing that? Oh, not me because, you know Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you But sometimes I think that every man who writes every man who paints or composes, deep soul or symphonies it makes no difference, all those men are only making do with substitutes: Solomon, Confucius, Franz Kafka they'd never have done it if they'd been as beautiful as you sitting cross-legged there with gentle music lapping around a promise, there where your thighs meet of fertility a million artists couldn't compete with Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you And all the time I see you there in the eye of my mind, and all that cheap macho stuff about de Sade and misogyny vanishes into thin air and I'm moved to tears just like any other sucker who's been bruised by all the things that weren't to be and yet who's ready to fall down on his knees in front of a woman, and say: "Whatever you may do, whatever you may be to me despite the times we disagree, your ridiculous ambitions your conventional inhibitions I want you to know that I respect you I accept you and I want you to accept me I want to kiss you, kiss your stockinged knee accept the uniquely soft flesh on the undersides of your hips," Ooo, it's true: Girl, I'm only doing it to be closer to you And when I've won you when I've fallen down in front of you, and said: "Damn Franz Kafka, damn the Thin White Duke (damn the Thin White Duke) it's you and you alone I'm doing this for," When I'm through with heroes and pastiche (throwing darts in lovers' eyes) when you've let me make love to you the slowest, deepest way that I know how (when you do that for me, baby) and it feels so good (bear with me) that's when I'll think of Paul Klee's epitaph: "Here lies the painter Paul Klee somewhat closer than usual to the heart of creation but far from close enough," And girl, here I lie far from close enough to you...