Buckfever Underground The Highveld (is A Shit Place To Be In Winter) Lyrics

the highveld is a big road flanked by roads and towns
and cities and smoking chimneys and empty grasslands
which are always burnt for our pleasure
I'm always in a car hands stuck in a cubby-hole fingers
in a tape deck clothes to my seat dust and smoke the
endless flavour of winter
frozen dogshit in the suburbs where the mornings start
white and frosty and the afternoons end white and
crusty with streetlamps and Egoli
I panic when I can't see the stars I panic when the sun
is a central smog and my direction is a stoned pigeon
wrapped in a map
there's tea and milktart from relatives in cages good
people who sigh in their homes and lock their toilets
and hide their doormats under their keys
in the flat parts of the Free State the weavers flock
aimlessly under dimmed lights build their nests
dangling from concrete silos and steel pylons
even in the marshes the reeds bend and break on their
own under a heavy low sky waiting for the slime dam to
sweep them into definition
farming here is an endless wait for December rains an
endless locking of gates to keep the cattle in and the
locusts out and the violence in the paper
little kids buy ice-cream and Niknaks from the One Stop
and their stuffed cheeks full of sharp teeth clatter
and glisten and laugh at roadkill

Florida and Philadelphia and Virginia are in the states
Monte Video the capital of Paraguay or Uruguay so why
the f*ck also on the highveld
the people here are ugly in their cars and pretty in
their bars where hands are for counting money changing gears throwing signs and clenching fists
life becomes a fiddling for frequencies in between
disruptive factories for foreigners and the retracing
of daily steps to AllBran Flakes and uncomfortable sex
you're never on solid ground there are people
everywhere digging out gold and hiding places and
finding bad lungs and unexpected sinkholes in bathtubs
people think of murder when they eat in restaurants
consider rape when they go for a jog while Golden
Retrievers lounge in Northcliff and think of Alaska
the city is littered with untidy people who look at
hands on the corners of tables and buildings with the
reflection of a cloud framed by a neon triangle
the open veld is rare and littered with derelict
pigfarms and sootfilled sunflower fields with only
remote aspirations of becoming Floro margarine
the cement is a passive smoker with filters growing on
it like disorganised ticks and the red dust mixes with
smoke at sunset to become sentimental gravel
I'm never here because I want to I'm a co-pilot a
navigator a shotgun-sitter measuring the miles between
historical sites and toilets for my mom
if you sit still for long enough they'll steal your
kidneys and while a friendly nod can kill you a playful
wink can cost you a weekend
if I stay here for too long I'll become an active
abuser a topflight loser a succesful gimmick or a
professional skunk with labels and a mean piss
the Highveld is a shit place to be in winter