THE BALLAD OF JOYCE’S BAR

In Old Hong Kong near the Peel Street shrine

In the street filled with winos and connoisseurs of tea

Is a place that in truth makes little sense at all

But it has become appealing, in a strange way, to me

From the sweet down home to the plain bizarre

I’ve come to see it all down at Joyce’s Bar

There are surfers lost and hungry for a working wave

And Christian fund-raisers with the world to save

An artist taking flight from his lurid erotica

A Sri Lankan Egyptian and similar exotica

Film-makers riding their own nouvelle vague

A man who buried bodies in Estonia and Prague

From the sweet down home to the plain bizarre

You can see it all, I tell you, down at Joyce’s Bar

There’s a nurse mixing cocktails that would kill a mule

An elegant tattooist fresh from tattoo school

An African barkeeper who still drops in for the buzz

And Mark, the tennis coach – at least he says that’s what he does -

And Joyce the joyous lunatic who floats above it all

Who’d call down all the stars above, if the stars were hers to call

From the sweet down home to the plain bizarre

You can leave as you came, but come as you are

There’s always something happening down at Joyce’s Bar.