When footlights dim in reverence, to prescient passion   Forewarned 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, eye, eye, 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 a darkness, in a 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, and the cat walks      I've played this scene before   I've played this scene before   I the mote in your eye, eye, eye, 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   You're 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 the lovers will   You, who I let hypnotize 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, a 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, begun, it's just begun      Your perimeter of courtiers jerk like celluloid puppets   As you stutter paralyzed 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   Waiting for the prompt   Waiting for the prompt   Waiting for the prompt   Waiting for the prompt   You've played this scene before