The ghost ship haunts the sea She'll come back and marry me The rust is where her heart should be tonight Her face is where her fingers were tonight A glassy chequered engine room The speechless silence of the tomb The manuscripts inside the womb unfurl A girl Translucent as a jellyfish That palpitates upon a dish She stings you with her gently falling curl And sinking in the waters green tonight I wonder where my lover's been tonight The ghost ship changes tack And stands becalmed; her sails are slack The cabinboy lies on his back and sighs The mayonnaise is oozing down his thighs The bubbles rising from the deep Where deadmen sing themselves to sleep From oak and coral they do seep to say "OK You throw open my future like a chart See through my skin; into my heart That flutters in my ribcage like a bird" And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life The air from bottles forms into The skeletons of all the crew In white they dance against the blue and wail Their curling bodies flail around the sail The figurehead before the mast Stares back into the golden past Across the wrinkled sea so vast she mourns Forlorn She flutters 'round me like a moth That beats against mosquito cloth And tries to eat her way into my dreams And sinking in the waters green tonight I wonder where my love has been tonight The melons on the riverbank Are bulging through decaying planks Their beauty is so warm and dank and light The captain wears a headless grin tonight And silhouetted on the blue The cook, the mate, the captain, too They know not where or why or what they do at all They fall Like masonry in the abyss That opens every time we kiss I hear their laughter echo 'round the bay And the ghost ship sails on into someone's life <Alternates> (From the Balloon Man CD3) Still come back and marry me 2a The ghost ship changes course 14a And on the deck there stands a horse 15a Who's munching on sardines and gorse and hay 16a The Captain trawls a net across the bay 17a You read my future like a chart 22a Across the wrinkled sea so vast; forlorn 32a She mourns 33a The cook, the mate, the bosun, too 44a From the proto version of the song from the Gotta Let This Hen Out video (with thanks to the Robyn Songography site): Performance 1: [starts] Both times spray Both times weigh The ship of hands... [edit] ...The sound of lungs the cry of breath The carrot burns the baby’s heart To sleep To die The ship in silence sails the ghost ship Food and water, gathered up Like minerals And teddy bears and plans The wave In the dark, the truth Like biscuits form A handle to a frozen swarm Of legionnaire’s disease And heart like gold Or Spam controls I ham a ghost In sequences of red And gold and pink [ends] Performance 2: The ghost ship Piles on the coast On the coast of Spain The sounds that form again Will kiss your heart Which starts To crumble like a sponge in sea Although you’ll find so much To hide The ghost ship Lap switch Ipswich Lip kisses my tongue My hail and my brain I sigh Or an afternoon against a broken rock She sways And slips Her handbag like a hammock To a two-ton drill She slides around She crawls uphill She soaks the worms in gelignite The litmus paper turns all white She heaves a sigh like broken legs The camel calls from off her eggs The wind explodes like grandma on a... [ends]