Gubba Look-a-Likes

They come from underneath the stairs
Into my room but no-one cares
They’re on the bus and on the train
They’re knocking on my window pane
Oh Mother telephone the nurse
Can’t you see it’s getting worse
I close my eyes yet still it seems
Everybody in my dreams
Gubba look-a-likes
Gubba look-a-likes
I wake up screaming in the hall
I didn’t mean to wake at all
I run and lock the bathroom door
Turn on the taps and out they pour
Through all the villages and towns
A thousand sandy-coloured clowns
I try and escape down private drives
And then I reach the Readers' Wives
Gubba look-a-likes
Gubba look-a-likes
In order to fling off this curse, I spend all day drinking in diverse taverns,
with smarmy acrobats and balding senators. But after a while they too adopt
the likeness, and begin to breed like town pigs
As a drunken lump I fall into a state of blissful unconsciousness,
but the moment is fleeting, and I awake once more in despair — and in my final
agonies believe myself lost
Gubba look-a-likes…
In every film and every play
On every public right of way
On every flag I see unfurled
On all the grounds in all the world
The one armed bandits in the bar
In the back of every car
And even on my dying day
They’ll refuse to go away
When I walk towards the light
Something somewhere won’t be right
And what was once my Uncle Keith
Says there’ll never be relief
And we’ll go on and on and on and on and on
Gubba look-a-likes…