Smoke and mirrors was his trade;
He traveled near, he traveled far,
In a manner most bizarre;
And Mark the Knife was his good friend;
He was with him till the end;
You never know what life intends,
But that's the way it goes.
Chorus:
And still the Time-Policemen say
"We could have had them any day;"
They only let them slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.
One day when they was working shift,
They heard about a time line rift;
The past was leaking like a sieve,
Would there be a future left to live?
Charley cranked up the Wayback Machine,
Mark set the dial for 1013,
The present faded like a dream;
They was on the trail once more!
Waves of time went swirling by,
A kaleidoscopic tumble-dry,
Then they heard that pinging sound,
And with a jerk the Machine shut down;
Charley sprung the hatch, stepped outside,
With trusty Mark close by his side,
They gazed about all wild-eyed,
At a world beyond belief!
The landscape was in constant flow,
Ridge and valley vertigo;
Rivers 'long the ridge-tops raced,
Then shot off into misty space;
Trees sprung up full-grown, then died,
Dead branches stretched across the sky,
That wind from out of time screamed by,
Swirling tree trunks into dust.
Now somewhere in that surreal place,
The Great Time-Rift they had to face,
With their caulking guns deployed
They would conquer or be destroyed;
And sure enough around a bend,
They spied the Rift that they must mend;
To save the world from a sorry end,
They injected Super-Glue.
And still the Time-Policemen say
"We could have had them any day;"
They only let them slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.
Mark was the one who made it back,
But Charley slipped, fell through a crack,
As it opened wide in a burst of steam,
He disappeared with one long scream;
So now Mark's left to sing the blues,
While Charley's joined that cosmic stew;
There's still a future for Mark to chose,
If he can find his way.
And still the Time-Policemen say
"We could have had them any day;"
They only let them slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.
And still the Time-Policemen say
"We could have had them any day;"
They only let them slip away
Out of kindness, I suppose.
Painting titled "The Persistence of Memory" by Salador Dali, 1931.