Blade Runner: Poems/Songs


BLADE RUNNER


All There's murder tonight on the streets of America,
Guns in the shadows, and blood in the light,
Blade Runners hunting for skin jobs to terminate,
Screaming and weeping and fear in the night.

H Perfect American dreams have gone renegade,
Replicants killing the ones they obeyed.
What is the reason for all this rebellion?
Why should their loyalty suddenly fade?

R There was no loyalty, never was loyalty,
You only forced us as slaves to obey,
Planned us and built us, then used us and killed us,
Now we are rising to take what we may.

R It is not so very much that we're asking -
Only our freedom, and only our lives,
Only reprieves from a four-year death sentence -
Asking with hatred, with guns, and with knives.

H They are not human, are not truly living,
Could not have true feelings, are no more than dust -
If they should come here and threaten us humans,
Then kill them all, Blade Runner, do what you must.

All There's murder tonight on the streets of America,
Guns in the shadows, and blood in the light,
Blade Runners hunting for skin jobs to terminate,
Screaming and weeping and fear in the night.


Note : This should be sung as a duet, with one side singing the second and fifth verses, and the
other singing the third and fourth, and both singing the first and last verses together.



REPLICANTS


No sun
on the streets of America,
Black rain
slowly drips from the skies,
Replicants
walk the streets of America
Human,
but don't look in our eyes...

There's hatred there and hunger there and every kind of wild despair,
Our lives are running out like sand or dust or falling rain,
You say we're made and so don't live, that we've no feeling there to give,
That we're no more than robots, feel neither love nor pain.

But how much love
has a babe in its mother's arms,
How much empathy
has a child newly born?
We rise like gods,
perfect form from the liquid vats,
Fall to dust
when our four years is done.

You gave us strength and beauty rare, you gave us health beyond compare,
You gave us all that we could ask, all we could want, but years,
You gave us minds to understand that we are cursed in this short span,
Your whores and slaves and soldiers, to serve your needs and fears.

We have
just four years to live and die,
You have
three score and ten,
To get life
we'll do what you would do,
We'll kill,
again and again.

For you have drawn the boundaries, and said that you are not of us,
That we are slaves and animals, and cannot reach your place,
But when we kill and we offend, well, look into the mirror, friend,
You formed us in your image - so see your human face!

No sun
on the streets of America,
Black rain
slowly drips from the skies,
Replicants
walk the streets of America
Human,
but don't look in our eyes...



ZHORA : A DEFINITION


Beauty and the beast, they called me,
What a charming name!
Apt, however, and appropriate,
And that was their aim,
Nothing more to me than that
Or so my makers claim.

Strength and speed for an assassin,
Beauty for a lure,
Wits to make me more effective,
Health for any cure,
These you built into my genes -
You gave me nothing more.

Say why I should choose to run, then,
Choose to walk on Earth,
Choose to leave the slavery
I walked in since my birth,
Why I came to love my friends,
And what your lies are worth.

See that body fallen there,
Past all hope or pain,
Lying in the broken glass
And puddled blood and rain,
All you gave to me is there -
So take it back again.



RACHEL : A RETROSPECTIVE


A memory that I believed,
A photograph I knew was me,
A story I heard as a child:
All things, you say, that cannot be.

For I am just a replicant,
I could have been born yesterday,
Those memories I thought were mine -
It was another child at play.

Nothing I have is truly mine,
My body, mind, or memories,
My feelings, dreams, hopes, and desires -
Nothing but programmed fantasies.

I have no base on which to stand,
I have no past which I can trust,
Any emotion might be theirs,
Anger, or fear, or love, or lust.

I only have this moment now:
Only my future is my own
To have some memories that are sure,
To have a past that I have known.



SONG FOR SEBASTIAN


Twisted and bent
And wrinkled with illness,
Trapped on this Earth
By a natural flaw,
I, with my weakness
Built into my body,
Build others better ones
Flawless and pure.

I do not care
What my models are used for,
The point is the building,
The perfect design,
That I can create it
Although not possess it,
Continue to perfect it,
Renders it mine.

I live all alone
With my dolls and my models.
They greet me when entering,
Sit at my side,
All that is real to me
Dwells in these rooms with me,
Nothing I want from the
People outside.

So, when perfection
Sought my assistance,
When my dolls came to me,
Seeking my aid,
How could I turn from them,
Leave them to fall and die,
I who created them,
Those who I made?

I did not know
That when playing with humans
Dolls that you play with
Are prone to betray,
That this perfection
Is only the body,
Minds are imperfect,
Humans can slay.



PRIS : AN ADVERTISEMENT


Painted doll
Dainty dancer
Made by craftsmen
Costs a lot
Looks real human
All the pieces
What you see is
What you got

Paints her face to
Hide her feelings
Shows her body
Hides her mind
She was made for
Human pleasure
Made for use
She and her kind

Durable
And very wearing
Boiling water
Liquid ice
Acrobatic
Somersaulting
Quite a snip, gents
At the price

Only problem
It won't last long
Wears out, falls down
In four years
Then you go and
Buy another
A new set of
Skin and gears



DECKARD : FROM THE SHADOWS


A shaft of light
Falling across her face,
The twisted body
In the dark and dust,
Her face so calm now,
No more screaming,
I did my duty
Do what I must.

For if I should (For if I should)
Believe them human (Believe them human)
How could I then (How could I then)
Go out and kill (Go and kill)
I must believe (I must believe)
They're nothing like me (Nothing like me)
Only skin jobs (Only skin jobs)
Inhuman still (Human still)

Jus one more now,
The one-man slaughterhouse.
I wait in shadow,
See him standing there:
Looking in silence
At the still body,
It's not as if
They really care.

For if I should (For if I should)
Believe them human (Believe them human)
How could I then (How could I then)
Go out and kill (Go and kill)
I must believe (I must believe)
They're nothing like me (Nothing like me)
Only skin jobs (Only skin jobs)
Inhuman still (Human still)

They all have killed -
Innocent human blood:
I only kill
Those replicants who run,
They chose to come here,
Chose this rebellion:
I raise my hand
And fire the gun.

For if I should (For if I should)
Believe them human (Believe them human)
How could I then (How could I then)
Go out and kill (Go and kill)
I must believe (I must believe)
They're nothing like me (Nothing like me)
Only skin jobs (Only skin jobs)
Inhuman still (Human still)



ROY : BLOOD AND TEARS


No reason I should stop your fall,
You're only hanging by a thread:
You brought your gun and came to kill -
I have the right to see you dead.
And I need only turn away,
Don't even have to raise my hand.
I never thought that we would fail
But nothing went as we had planned.

Zhora's blood upon my head
Dancer's body lying stilled
Only followed where I led
And I led her to be killed.

It's hardly sporting, what you do,
Pick up a gun and hunt and kill,
But you have orders to obey
And have a quota to fulfill.
I was a loyal soldier, once,
Saw battlefields no man will know,
Those memories will be lost with me -
Already feel my heartbeat slow.

Maker's blood upon my hand
Could not mend what he had made
Nothing worked the way I planned
And my hopes are all mislaid.

We're made as pieces on a board
Produced in batches as required
As workers, dancers, soldiers, whores,
Pawns to be moved as is desired.
And now this pawn has killed the king,
And yet I failed my final aim -
Prodigal son returned at last
To break the board and end the game.

Blood from Pris upon my face
Mingled stain of red and white
Doll-like body full of grace
Lying broken in the light.

And if I choose to let you live?
I ask for no forgiveness, friend,
Yet I just wanted you to know
The way we feel before the end.
Perhaps you understand at last
Just what the fear of death will do -
That both of us are human, friend,
And I more merciful than you.

Taste my own blood on my lips
Tears lost in the falling rain
All my hopes are in eclipse
Now no reason to remain.



CODA : THE LIFT DOOR CLOSES


All stories must come to an end,
The story-teller chooses when
to stop,
The players speak their final lines
And hold their poses as the cur-
tains drop.

But still the tale continues on
Although we've stopped our ears and turned
away,
The sun will set and rise again,
The night continues to pursue
the day.

Will Rick and Rachel live a while,
And have their full four years before
they die?
Or will Blade Runners come for them,
And shoot them down beneath the sun-
less sky?

And this is but a single tale,
A single battle in a long-
fought war,
Replicants will still run and die,
Blade Runners will still hunt them down
by law.

You might complain it isn't real,
It's just a story, nothing what
it seems,
But dreams are realer than you know,
Things can be true within our minds
in dreams.

It doesn't matter if it's in
Another world, another time
and place,
It's true of here and now as well,
The cinema's a mirror: shows
our face.

Concern yourself with your own life,
Remember dreams are only dreams,
and yet
Turn off the film, put down the book,
And turn away: but don't, please don't
forget.