Keepers

(album: Del Amitri - 1985)

I have overloved you and overseen you
and now you're refusing the gifts that I bring you
My hands have been clasping my hot head and asking
"If she submits to me, will she be my property?"
You may be bleeding but you're not dying
though you are dying to go
Stop teasing me
I'm not seeing you leaving me

Here is a party full of my friends
and here is a cup being filled up to be drunk again
We are just starting luxurious lives
to be drunkards and diddymen
making Gulf wars and battered wives.
Now I may be pleading
but there's no love nor fear in my eyes
Just greediness
I'm not seeing this sleeping dog lie.

I am the wild horses who will drag you away
I am the locked door who can make you stay
And I will act the man in almost anyway I can
So I can keep keep keep you.

So wake up you pretty thing to a wonderful home
Where we while away the happy Saturdays
between the television and the telephone
And I stroke your head just to feel what I own
whispering
"Will you be my property, and not my disability?"
And why are you craving
To be free from love's slavery
Stop teasing me
Love's not letting go.

I am the child calling you to come back and play
I am the concert hall in which you hear me say
I'll act a man in almost anyway I can
So I can keep keep keep you even though you may not understand
I am the bee and you are the pollen
I am the keeper you are the lion
I am the holes down which you would have fallen
If I had not been the hand who came and beckoned you

(And I'm not seeing this sleeping dog lie)

Maybe
You were born wrong
But why am I picking holes in you
when it's holes that we all come from?
Maybe I was born strong
To stop love from overtaking me
To stop love from living too long.
And you may be bleeding
and leading me to the blood flow
But sleep tight tonight lions
This keeper's never letting go.