She'll be sitting in her drawing - room,
playing the piano,
a melancholy piece by Chopin
that I always loved to hear
And I’m in a downtown drunk-house
Talking to some painted beauty
but the sound of music makes me
wonder what am I doing here

And always my thoughts return
To that educated lady,
as she looks down like a work of art
in her mansion on the hill
In every thought an orphaned dream
In every dream a disappointment
And the painful realisation
That I'm yearning for her still

I never did belong among
the antiques and the silver
all the worthless precious things
with which her empty life is filled
Perhaps sometimes she thinks of me
and hesitates a moment
as she polishes the image
her friends believe in still.

I have seen her stripped
of all conciets and artifices,
designer labels mingled with
my roaches on the floor
as she lay down to devour me,
naked in her bitch - heat
she was not so different then
to any fifty dollar whore

In the morning she'll drink coffee,
Ask for some chilled melon
And try to hide the signs
That she was crying half the night
And I'll be in my cheap room
With an empty glass for company
Asking why I'm still too proud
To try and put things right

Should it be me that crawls
I already tried to swim the ocean
fought a thousand demons
And tasted ecstasy
I have known love in a mansion
and also in a whorehouse
no matter where I die the future
cannot take those things from me.

I dined with her on venison
We drank the finest vintage
The goblets were of silver
And the platters porcelain
But though this wine is cheap
Freedom makes it taste as sweet
As any gift with a price attached
Or the kind of love that binds

If the painted lady likes me
I might buy another bottle
To help me drown another sorrow
And baptize another sin
But in the lifeless mansion,
While pretending she is happy
My lover wears her mask
While emptiness devours from within