Get Your Premium Membership

The Family And The Fishing Net - Lyrics by Peter Gabriel


Lyrics
Suffocated by mirrors, stained by dreams

Her honey belly pulls the seams

Curves are still upon the hinge

Pale zeros tinge the tiger skin


Moist as grass, ripe and heavy as the night

The sponge is full, well out of sight

All around the conversations

Icing on the warm flesh cake


Light creeps through her secret tunnels

Sucked into the open spaces

Burning out in sudden flashes

Draining blood from well-fed faces


Desires form in subtle whispers

Flex the muscles in denial

Up and down its pristine cage

So the music, so the trial


Vows of sacrifice, headless chickens

Dance in circles, they the blessed

Man and wife, undressed by all

Their grafted trunks in heat possessed


Even as the soft skins tingle

They mingle with the homeless mother

Who loves the day but lives another

That once was hers


The worried father, long lost lover

Brushes ashes with his broom

Rehearses jokes to fly and hover

Bursting over the bride and groom


And the talk goes on


Memories crash on tireless waves

The lifeguards whom the winter saves


Silence falls the guillotine

All the doors are shut

Nervous hands grip tight the knife

In the darkness, till the cake is cut

Passed around, in little pieces

The body and the flesh

The family and the fishing-net

And another in the mesh


The body and the flesh

Book: Reflection on the Important Things