if you delve deep into the fray
where the truly true musicians play
keeping their words and sighs intact
their hearts and tears and words impact
the tiny masses who search them out
to warm their souls and if you doubt
the world around you doesn't hear
your broken dreams
your quiet fear
look beyond the pompous trite
the subtle muddle that holds no light
there is a world though buried deep
once heard enfolds you while you sleep
close your eyes we will walk the moon
your heart and mine will sing in tune

dedicated to Angus & Julia Stone

We live in a world where some choose to sit idle by
as a cry for help is silenced by an obsession with wealth,
as mental health concerns suffers the silent treatment
and reason categorises wounds and scars to visible marks.
Sometimes the marks are visible, the physical projection of pain,
the doctors deem them fixable, as if the pain ingested
could be cured by a pill or an injection, it's reckless
to assume pain from a broken perspective.
It is not effective to judge what should and shouldn't hurt,
sometimes it just hurts, the dirt in a wound waiting to blister
like a twister caught between an earthquake and a tsunami,
an army of different antidepressants swallowed without hesitance,
but sometimes it still hurts. It just hurts.

We live in a world where suicide is one thing countries share in common,
and often we ask ourselves 'do politicians ever think about people?'
The feeble argument between money and lives, as the night
passes its light onto different matters. When a person falls in a forest,
can their cries for help be heard. The muttered words are non existent,
but the persistent debate of what is going to be next in the budget cut,
loses touch on what is really human; 'when are we going to fund the help
that mental health concerns deserve?'.

The children is our key to the future, like candles alighting tomorrow
so why are we letting mental illness blow out the lights.
The children is our key to the future, but what future must we share
if humanly care and compassion is missing from the equation,
a new train station will not provide a shoulder for those who need it,
is human kindness disappearing?
How many more lives must we watch perish?

I don't need to see you to kiss you,
or not be with you to miss you.
No need for flowers,
speech or silence in our hours.
Or to tell you twice in a trice.
We just need to be;
to show what we both know.

It is hard to say when she started disliking the
Girl in the mirror.
It was probably about the time they gave her braces.
Surely, she began to take only glances
When she got pimples her hair wouldn’t cover
Try as she did with different lengths and styles.

The worst of it started when her friends began
To round out and she stayed all lines and angles,
Like a child among young women discovering themselves.

It drove her inside herself,
Further from her friends, one of whom
Struck a devastating blow when the Girl overheard
Herself called a pimply stick
Just so a boy of dubious morals would laugh.

She started hanging the towel on her mirror then.
She told her mother it dried better that way.
The woman accepted this
And so the Girl in the mirror locked herself away.

Mirrors cannot show the heart or wit
Or the steadfast love within.
There is only the reflection of beauty soon gone
And cast aside for that.

If only the Girl could see beyond the pale reflection.