Valentino // Valentina

Valentino // Valentina

We could be standing on the gallows
As we wait for the last train
Drunk as the barmaid is fed-up
I say, "Maybe we should sleep it off in the alley-way
and make a new plan in the morning"
You snorted and whispered in vibrato,
"Michael, don't be boring"

Our pale, pubescent fluorescent dreams were shallow
Petty as prada, pink and pasty and vain
With no concept of wrong or right
She loved rebel men who had failed in the system of correction
But for me, on a rainy Tuesday night, she made a quiet exception

That night, she harrowed, found I looking gaunt
A barrier-hopping menace and a quick one all the same
There were pipe-bombs exploding in the cosmopolitan district of her mind
And with the reverberations came euphoria and trains flowing concertina
So she slurred, "I love you, my Valentino",
And I suppose I love you too, my Valentina

The Alberti Bass, the swollen tabs
And my words each weigh a tonne
Five tonnes are thrown to the wind, "How far to the sun?"
I'm swaying untimely from this, that and the other
Don't tell your mother I nicked your father's Scotch
And I won't tell your sister you had your hand on my crotch
Because cathartic, tonight, as it all may seem
The morning will dissolve and this will all be a dream
Just one more subverted sea of burning coal
That'll ask me to start eking out a new song, but on the whole,
All I can say for certain this time
Is that your haircut males me pine
For a life someone else lived in the winter of 1969

I'd love to leave you with something more
Than the morning after the night before
How would you feel if I fell beneath the wheels?
Would your world pass by in a flow, slow concertina?
    But all she replied was, "I love you, my Valentino"
    And, yes, I love you too my Valentina