Chasing Other Cars.

I was walking into work today. passing a place where the homeless people hang out. There was the most wonderful yearning singing. Turned out it was a sixty or so year old woman in a big old pink cap. She was one of the group of homeless, singing to a young boy with an unopened cider bottle. She was singing Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol - she knew all the words. A number of us stopped to listen.

Made me think where would we be without music. This needs a chorus.

Chasing Other Cars

You sit there in your window
In your Mary Quant pink hat
I never thought I'd hear this song
Sung as beautifully as that

Your voice rubs up against me
Past your fake Lacoste track suit
Smilin like a gift of love
With the sun shinin' through it

You sing "If I lay here, Just lay here."
And your need is plain to see
For the boy way back in the shadows
With the eyes of emerald green.

Yes, other eyes are watching you
For you don't sing to me.
Cos hidin' in the bags and clothes
Are dirty bundles of humanity.

But the song still wraps the bottles
And the cardboard in a warmth
As you serenade your green-eyed boy
And yearn to have him in your arms

And there's that hint of desperation
In the next lines that you murmured,
"Would you lay with me - my darlin boy -
And just forget the world"

You hold your hands out to him
to emphasize your need
And I see him start to sing with you
With his eyes filled up with greed.

But you won't heed a warning
You're old enough to know.
You'll love his bottle and his dirty flesh
Then tell the boy to go.