The Laughing Song

MP3

Written : ????
Released : 2000 on 'Cupid Is A Drunkard'
Notes: Inspired by a line from Jacques
Brel's song 'Le Tango Funebre' (Funeral Tango) -
"I can already see you, as you leave my cemetery,
on the arm of your latest someone, a someone who
will make you cry very differently from me...ah ah ah"

Mother drinks and mother smokes
She's been killing herself for years
Laughing at their awful jokes
Now when she laughs you can hear the tears
Ha ha ha....

Grandad shelters on the floor
Playing with his sticky buns
Come in but don't slam the door
Grandad can still hear the guns
Ha ha ha....

The au pair is a foreign girl
Whose hair is blonde and eyes are blue
Father likes to make her laugh
But she doesn't laugh like me and you
Ha ha ha...

But the only one who really laughs
Is the leader of the band
See him waiting in the wings
With the sickle and the sand
He laughs all the way
From Moscow to the Rio Grande

The Rio Grande
He watches as your bones grow brittle
He watches as little by little
Your mouths grow thick with spittle
To spit on a few simple dreams of your children
He watches as you grow old
He watches as the years unfold
He watches from the hall
He laughs at us all
Ha ha ha...

My uncle is a military man
Who holds a gun and rides a horse
He likes to be miserable when he can
But if he laughs he laughs in morse
Ha ha ha...

My sister's nearly seventeen
She's much too old to think of fun
She's practising to be a wife
So she's cut her laughs down to one
Ha

My Auntie starved her son to death
To better drive his demons out
She locked him underneath the stairs
Saying when he's cleansed God will let him out
Ha ha ha...

My brother spent six months in jail
That he might better find a job
He went in for a parking fine
He came out driving for the mob
Ha ha ha...

But the only one who really laughs
Is the leader of the band
See him waiting in the wings
With the sickle and the sand
He laughs all the way
From Moscow to the Rio Grande
The Rio Grande
He watches as your bones grow brittle
He watches as little by little
Your mouths grow thick with spittle
To spit on a few simple dreams of your children
He watches as you grow old
He watches as the years unfold
He watches from the hall
He laughs at us all
Ha ha ha...

© Philip Jeays ????