Kae Tempest
Ketamine for Breakfast
[Intro]
Now look here, in the house opposite
Black gate posts with a concrete frog squatting on top of it
Through the hallway
Ancient wallpaper, nicotine gold
Up the stairs, rickety
Loaded with history
Here, in the top flat
Flowers on the windowsill
Little breeze fluttering the petals as they stare out
At the city streets
Gemma is awake
What woke her?
Open eyes, street lights float slowly through broken blinds
She watches as the light plays across the tattered carpet
And she holds herself tight in the room's half darkness
It's cold
She wedges her hands underneath her armpits
It's 04:18
And Gemma's thinking

[Verse 1]
Before I was a adult
I was a little wreck
Peddling whatever I could get my grubby mitts on
Ketamine for breakfast
Bad girls were drinking with
I gave 'em puppy dog eyes for the acid on their fingertips
Heads in the basement
Lips without faces
Getting feisty, half-baked in a bakery
Eating pastries
Desperate for a body who could save me
But I never really wondered what they gave me
Always wanted something else
Sweating in the dole queue
Spittin' like a villain in the pantomime old shoes
Bad teeth
Drinking in the rain with my ghost
Sitting in the back of the class, comatose
Uh, villains on my back in the dark
Hold me close
But you never held
I did some things I swore I'd never
'Til that night you tried to kill me
Run me down with your car in the snow
I didn't realise I thought you would go
Every day I live lives in the day I wake up in
My dreams are all screaming and fucked
But I'm fine now
Something remains, it's still pulling me
Yeah my future is bright but my past tryna ruin me
[Chorus]
Tried to change it but I know
If you're good to me I will let you go
Tried to fight it but I'm sure
If you're bad to me, I will like you more

[Verse 2]
I saw some things when I was young
That made me who I would become
I feel them with me everyday
'Cause if you try and run away
They run beside you place for place
Trip you up and drag your face
Freedom out of every waste
They chancing every bit of taste
Heart is sprayed up with the names
Of all my friends who lost their way
Doesn't change it all remains
It takes my strength and gives me shame
All I want is someone great
To make me everything I ain't
But the only ones for me
Are the ones that shouldn't be
Even though I'm doing good
I'm working hard, my work is strong
Might be fun just for a while
To go back to where my hurt is from
Rinse myself through emptiness
And push my body close to
Anybody who can recognise the presence of my ghost
[Chorus]
Tried to change it but I know
If you're good to me I will let you go
Tried to fight it but I'm sure
If you're bad to me I will like you more

[Chorus]
Tried to change it but I know
If you're good to me I will let you go
Tried to fight it but I'm sure
If you're bad to me I will like you more