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, it's just begun   Begun, it's 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.      You've played this scene before