Idiot Prayer

There are some poetically cruel words on this one.

"Love, dear, is strictly for the birds" "If you're in hell, then what can I say, you probably deserved it anyway"

I didn't think about the possibility of these words being spoken by a man about to be executed. It makes sense to me now. I thought he might be on the verge of dying, remembering his deceased lover. I feel that the narrator might be a bit short on mental sanity, all the "dears", "doves" and, even worse, that last "my little snow white dove" seem to suggest a perverse tenderness, or maybe it's a way for him to try to calm the guilt he feels for killing her. Or maybe both. I'm not sure on a possible meaning, but I love this song anyway.

Hard one to figure: It reads like a letter: an epistle from (nearly) beyond the veil to someone who was once loved and has sinced caused pain.
(perhaps the recipient is partially to blame for this person's passing?)

In the ending: "We each get what we deserve...My little...dove" "Rest assured" I sense a sinister facetiousness made all the more dark by the use of old terms of endearment.

Their wish is not good for the recipient of this plea, and the reader chides himself by calling his supplications and "Idiot Prayer". He's angry, but he knows his furor and intentions are whispers to the howling winds of life.

Nonetheless, he wonders (as he surely must!) what they might feel meeting again beyond words, beyond flesh, beyond life.

Typical Nick Cave fair, and bless him for it. I only wish he could chime in here and give some thoughts on all of our crazy interps. I know he'd dig seeing the variety of interpretations.

This is a strange one. I never did work out how this nasty little song fits into The Boatman's Call. The speaker seems to have not only killed his partner but battered her - her mouth is "dark red & big with blood". The key verse, I think, is the third, where we find weasel words of self-justification: I don't think you could say anything worse to the person you murdered than "you probably deserved it anyway" (apart from "it takes two to tango"!). At the end, he seems to imply that both of them got their just desserts. None of which explains why this works as an affecting love song! The genius of Nick Cave, I suppose.

i always thought the 'dark red and big with blood' line was referencing the many vicious 'bites' lovers take at each other with words, not literal blood. at least that seems to be the way it works at my house.

I think it fits well with The Boatman's Call. People suck. Relationships hurt. He killed her. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe she didn't but she'll forgive him. What will his fate be after he dies?

It's about a murderer about to be executed...these are his last thoughts towards his victim, a woman that he loved...he's hoping to meet her again in Heaven("if you're in Heaven then you'll forgive me, dear").

There's no murder here. it's about the dichotomy of salvation and love when your lover falls short of salvation. My reading was always that the singer is bitterly mocking his lover but recently I've become unsure.

This cool but cold song could be a companion song for "I do dear, I do". In that song the lover feels a morose sinking in his heart when he becomes aware of how he feels about his lost love. The lover is torn between yearning for a women he still hasn't given up, his well wishes for her, and sadness of the loss of the love, accompanied by some scorn.

I think this song more about scorn minus those other things. It is a candid portrayal of an ego vying to survive after being somewhat crushed and mangled. It is concerned with the vindication it's self and the condemnation of the sins those whome contributed to its sorry state. Dejected and imersed in gloom the ego condems love and the lover, and takes its revenge.

Guy on death row coming up to his execution and thinking about the victim. Bit of black humour about heaven and hell along the way.

A man threatening his partner through prayer as he awiaits execution for her murder. He's saying he'll be able to do it all over again very shortly when he is once again joined with her in the afterlife. A beautiful yet genuinely nasty song.