Incubus

When footlights dim in reverence to prescient passion

Forwarned my audience leaves the stage, floating ahead

Perfumed shift, within the stammering silence

The face that launched a thousand frames

Betrayed by a porcelain tear, a stained career

You've played this scene before, you've played this scene before

I, the mote in your eye,

I, the mote in your eye, a misplaced reaction, reaction

The darkroom unleashes imagination, in pornographic images

In which you will always be the star

Untouchable, unapproachable

Constant in the darkness, in the darkness

Nursing an erection, a misplaced reaction

With no flower to place before this gravestone

And the walls become enticingly newspaper thin

But that would only be developing the negative view

And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic color, the public act

Let you model your shame on the mannequin catwalk, catwalk

Let the cats walk

I've played, this scene before, I've played, this scene before

I, the mote in your eye,

I, the mote in your eye, a misplaced reaction, satisfaction

You can't brush me under the carpet, you can't hide me under the

stairs

The custodian of your private fears, your leading actor of

yesteryear

Who, as you crawled out of the alleys of obscurity

Sentenced to rejection in the morass of anonymity

You, who I directed with a lover's will, you who I let hypnotize

the lens

You who I let bathe in the spotlight's glare

You who wiped me from your memory like a greasepaint mask

Just like a greasepaint mask

But now I'm the snake in the grass

The ghost of film reels past

The producer of your nightmare

And the performance has just begun, Its just begun

Begun, Its just begun

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets

As you stutter, paralyzed, with rabbit's eyes

Searing the shadows, flooding the wings

To pluck elusive salvation from the understudy's lips

Retrieve the soliloquy, maintain the obituary

My cue line in the last act, and you'll wait in silent solitude

Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt, waiting for the

prompt.