Cover of the Peter Gabriel song - Mercy Street (from So album)

My solo acoustic cover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWkc_MvWy2k

Here's a great interpretation of the song that I found:

"Mercy Street" is the name of a play written by Anne Sexton, a poet who committed suicide in 1974 after a life marred by mental illness. The first couple of stanzas play on the difficulty she had differentiating between her successful creative life as a poet and her failings in her "real" life as a daughter/mother/wife.

As a poet, she, in effect, had a "leak at the seam," her inward thoughts and feelings that got expressed through her poetry. Many poets have commented on the pain that comes through revealing one's inner self. (Pink Floyd's whole "The Wall" album examines this theme.)

The boat references allude to her final book of poetry, "The Awful Rowing Toward God," about our inevitable journey toward death and the afterlife. "Tak[ing] the boat out" refers to her intention to accelerate her own demise. (She killed herself just after finishing the book.)

"Corridors of pale green [aka "hospital green"] and gray could refer to her stays in mental institutions during her manic episodes (which alternated with her stints of "ordinary life" in the suburbs of Boston).

"Wear your inside out" again refers to the way a poet exposes his soul to the world. That which, for most people, remains private and unknown is shown to all. The "daddy" allusions again seem to refer to God, in whose arms she might find that elusive mercy (so difficult to attain in this life, hence the reference to the moved street sign).

All of the confession allusions have double meaning, as much of Anne's life was spent "confessing" her innermost feelings to psychiatrists as well as revealing them to the public through her poetry. The shocks can doubly refer to shock therapy administered by psychiatrists as well as the shocking things a priest might hear in confession. Per Wikipedia, Sexton was the epitome of a "confessional poet."