Marillion - Incubus lyrics

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 played this scene before, you played this scene before

I the mote in your eye, I the mote in your eye

A misplaced reaction

The darkroom unleashes imagination in pornographic images

In which you will always be the star, always be the star, untouchable

Unapproachable, constant 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 be developing the negative view

And you have to be exposed in voyeuristic colour

The public act, let you model your shame

On the mannequin catwalk, catwalk

Let the cats walk, and the cat walks

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 lovers will, you who I let hypnotise the lens

You who I let bathe in the spotlights 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

I'm the producer of your nightmare and the performance has just begun

It's just begun

Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets

As you stutter paralysed with rabbits 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 wait in silent solitude

Waiting for the prompt, waiting for the prompt

You've played this scene before