The night was raining down
On neon streets of old Soho.
Our 'macs' were buttoned tight,
We'd just been to a show.
Those glossy pictures,
Revealing much but never all;
The real thing was within, they said
"Come in and have a ball".
The girls were tired,
And not the same as the pictures on the wall.
While ladies beckoned us,
And each would tell her sorry tale;
Some promise in the rain,
Of an experience gone stale;
No better than a fruit machine,
With jackpot gone, and parts for sale.
Meanwhile on the sidewalk,
A man lay spilling out his life.
He spat on civil pity,
Wanted money and not a wife.
Then he suddenly took out a knife,
A car went by and splashed us all -
I heard that doorman call,
"Come in and have a ball".
The hookers, the bookers,
The jaded onlookers;
The search of the lonely for a billboard sky.
The streetwalk, the sleepwalk,
The fast and the loose talk;
It's a business doing pleasure,
With the meek and the shy.
There are sometimes - Don't you wish
Don't you wish that you'd never come.
I wish I could turn,
I could turn on my heels,
And run from the look in their eyes.
There was no element of surprise.
Just that look of submission,
An open admission,
That shows a decision to live their life this way.
The hookers, the bookers,
The jaded onlookers;
The search of the lonely for a billboard sky.
The streetwalk, the sleepwalk,
The fast and the loose talk;
It's a business doing pleasure,
With the meek and the shy.
