i. no answer
Walking in the night
like so many times before,
doesn’t make it any better
when you know you don’t belong.
When you don’t have the answers
and you’ve run out of time,
the promise of the future
you must leave far behind.
It doesn’t really matter
if you know the love was real,
because you know inside
it will not change the way she feels.
You just don’t understand
and have no reason why,
the love is gone forever
as she turns to say goodbye.
Goodbye...
You may call out her name
but you will get no answer.
You may call out her name
but you will never reach her.
Still you call out her name
but she gives you no answer.
There’s no way to reach her:
she’ll give you no answer,
no answer...
So you take a look around
at all the empty rooms,
as memories come to haunt you
like an open wound.
You know just where she’s going
and you realize,
the memories that haunt you
are of a love that has died.
So it doesn’t really matter
if your love is still alive,
there is nothing you can do
that can ever turn the tide.
You will drown in the love
you thought would only save,
when those cries in the night
are only turned away.
Turned away...
You may call out her name
but you will get no answer.
You may call out her name
but you will never reach her.
Still you call out her name
but she gives you no answer.
There’s no way to reach her:
she’ll give you no answer,
no answer...
ii. keys (i)
Tracks upon the wasteland
in the valley of fear,
left behind like images
of these passing finite years.
Refined in this mortality
to a crucible of cost:
I am overtaken suddenly
and in time become lost.
Chained and then freed –
bound up in the life of thee,
caught and then released
I still search for keys.
Silence is a virtue
to fools and to kings,
while violence is nurtured
by the weak and naïve.
War is a vision
to the souls of the damned:
the door to the prison
opens wide upon the land.
No forward, no reverse:
lost in the pitfalls of the absurd.
Chained and bound and terrified –
close to the edge like a caged bird.
Refined in this mortality
to a crucible of cost:
I am overtaken suddenly
and in time become lost.
Chained and then freed –
bound up in the life of thee,
caught and then released
I still search for keys.
For the moment
still free:
searching for doors and keys.
Still free,
searching for what is to be.
Still free,
searching for the life of me.
Still free,
I search for doors and keys.
Still free
I’m still free.
I’m free,
for the moment
I’m free.
You see my friend,
I am the key.
iii. corridors
Cold is the wind that blows
through the lonely wastelands of the soul,
and in its wake they ride:
the memories that stain
every aspect of my mind,
gradually leaving their mark:
a calliope of destruction
on a road ill-kept and dark.
I have walked down paths well trodden
in the years I’ve been accountable for,
where men have been broken
and washed away, to be heard from
again no more.
Down corridors filled with shadows
and somber shades of grey –
in places where dark recesses
choked with blackness
leave the mind as barren
as the tracks
I am forced to pass through.
Yet in the distance I know they wait,
those luminous beings that have
somehow made it to the other side:
to Paradise. Who with quiet patience
regard those of us on this side
who struggle with the concepts
of their own reality: always steadfast
in the notion that they are
out of place and lacking.
I walk in the dream vanquished
by the forces against me arrayed,
unable to stop this quaking passage
that no key will enable me to leave.
Lost in the pain of years
carefully counted, unassailable now
except when surrounded by
the blackness of times encountered
and thrown away – lost
in the madness of one more day.
Down corridors filled with shadows
and somber shades of grey –
in places where dark recesses
choked with blackness
leave the mind as barren
as the tracks
I am forced to pass through
once again.
iv. winds of change
It’s late October
and the leaves are brown,
soon to be carried away
on autumn breezes.
One by one falling
to the ground:
summer’s glory
deserting the trees.
Leaving them barren and lonely.
Like the leaves, love
is sometimes swept away:
the victim
of another windy day.
So the winds of change
do blow:
still you believe
that love will grow.
As you turn to let another go.
