I. Brief Encounter A spider wanders aimlessly within the warmth of a shadow Not the regal creature of border caves But the poor, misguided, directionless familiar Of some obscure Scottish poet The mist crawls from the canal Like some primordial phantom of romance To curl, under a cascade of neon pollen While I sit tied to the phone like an expectant father Your carnation will rot in a vase. II. Lost Weekend A train sleeps in a siding The driver guzzles another can of lager To wash away the memories of a Friday night down at the club She was a wallflower at sixteen She'll be a wallflower at thirty four Her mother called her beautiful Her daddy said, "A whore". III. Blue Angel The sky was Bible black in Lyon When I met the Magdalene She was paralysed in a streetlight She refused to give her name And a ring of violet bruises They were pinned upon her arm. Two hundred francs for sanctuary and she led me by the hand To a room of dancing shadows where all the heartache disappears And from glowing tongues of candles I heard her whisper in my ear "'J'entend ton coeur" I can hear your heart IV. Misplaced Rendezvous It's getting late, for scribbling and scratching on the paper Something's gonna give under this pressure And the cracks are already beginning to show It's too late The weekend career girl never boarded the plane They said this could never happen again So wrong, so wrong This time it seems to be another misplaced rendezvous This time, it's looking like another misplaced rendezvous With you The parallel of you, you V. Windswept Thumb On the outskirts of nowhere On the ringroad to somewhere On the verge of indecision I'll always take the roundabout way Waiting on the rain For I was born with a habit, from a sign The habit of a windswept thumb And the sign of the rain It's started raining