Verse 1

There are buildings and skyscrapers, monuments and homes
Shop fronts with mannequins and geodesic domes
Imports, exports, interstate and overseas
Mergers and breakups and conglomerates of companies

Cars and buses and electronic trains
Supermarkets, superstores and supersonic planes
There are alleys, motorways and street lights with solar panels
Entertainment from televisions with 500 channels

Facsimiles and thoroughfares, sadness and stress
Freedom, frivolity, boundaries and business
Dedication of delinquents, desire and disease
Polluting population engineering the economies

This is shortened fiction for short attention spans
Moped motorcycles, business cards and minivans
The machine is the city and the city is the scene
But it’s hard to live in a city when you live inside the dream



Verse 2

There are Lawyers and Doctors and Mailmen and Bakers
Cleaners, Criminals, Cooks and Cabinet Makers
Officers, and Engineers, Managers, Conductors
Inspectors, Road workers and Fitness Instructors

Secretaries, Sports Stars, Scientists and Statisticians
Programmers, Citizens and Fundamental Politicians
Drivers, Sales People, Factory Workers and Farmers
Conmen, Doomsayers, Perverts and Snake Charmers

There are Teachers and Artists, File Clerks and Librarians
Teenagers, Toddlers, Parents, and Octogenarians
Bankers and Boxers, Bureaucrats and Bums
Their Fathers, their Mothers, their Daughters and their Sons

There’s Ramadan and Honaker, Christmas and Lent
Family, Company, Organisation and Government
With Marriages, Monogamy, Infidelity and Lust
Pregnancy and Privacy, Treachery and Trust

Breakdown

With tunnels, and sewers and subways underground
Front page of the newspapers ‘another baby has been found’
The machine is the city and the city is the scene
And it’s hard to live in a city when you live inside the dream

The drone of massive turbines, the biology of the brands
This is an organism and humanity understands
That the machine is the city and the city is the scene
And it’s hard to live in a city when you live inside the dream

Verse 3

There are brokers on the stock market and gamblers placing bets
Punters are in the public house smoking cigarettes
Police are busting criminals, criminals are doing crimes
The same thing happens over a thousand million times

There are hermits and hustlers and people are having sex
Couples out on dates watching movies at the cineplex
The beauty, the brilliance, the smiling face that beckoned
Citizens die daily and are born every single second

Filth is in the gutters and garbage is on the streets
Musicians and entertainers are packing in the seats
There are people and places, mysterious faces
6 billion different souls and a thousand different races

There’s happiness and laughter, frustration and sin
And these are just the tales of the cities we’re living in
No time to slow down, keep on getting faster
(This is a city truly on the brink of disaster)