Coal-Train Robberies - Elvis Costello

Yesterdays coal train came to rest in the bitter cutting

And as the signals took an age to change it was easy pickings

So you go to the movies where they smash it up You want to feel your heart pumping it makes you feel good

All through the karaoke girls were squealing the hits

As another mercedes-benz gets blown to bits

While all the time in the camptown theatres of piccadilly

Theyre going to throw a black-face minstrel show for the barefoot children

That theyre always selling

Theyll say «its quaint"as the guilty ones faint and claim they aint underneath

this paint

We interrupt these liberal saints with their whips and watermelon

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

Its like another world, or it had better be So we return to whitewashed pout of his committed lips

Since he was declared the long lost fountain

Of youth that drips and drips and drips

Theyll be sending him round from door to door,

To sell you back whats already yours

«so many good deeds, so little time»

Say the advertising agency swine

When man has destroyed what he thinks he owns

I hope no living thing cries over his bones

If you dont believe that Im going for good

You can count the days Im gone and chop up The chairs for firewood

Reports are coming in of a coal-train robbery

Its like another world, or it had better be