These are my heavens, this is my burden,
to hold the world within its bounds,
chained to the void stretching infinity.
I watch time pass and witness the birth of mountains,
observe your nations and empires come and go
like the polluted waves on a nuclear beach.
I watch as you divide your home,
borders separating each other for no reason,
the folly of men with power in their minds
and a darkness so corrupting in their hearts.
I see no artificial borders from my vantage point,
just the blending of ecological systems
in satisfying rings around this beautiful world.

I wasn’t in chains at the beginning,
you portrayed me as such and then it was so,
chains suddenly around my ankles and wrists,
disappearing into the dark maw of the universe,
and you all have the key to set me free.
These are my chains, this is your burden,
to hold my boundless soul in a confined space.
I cry out sometimes and crack the earth open,
blow tempests into your atmosphere
and watch as they spin with the Earth,
and you give them names, how cute.
You just sit there until they pass.

I suppose you’ve all forgotten about me,
too busy with big dreams at small prices
to remind yourself of the burden of being.
I am here, in my little corner of the universe,
holding you up and steady in the cold gloom,
thankless and forgotten and so ******* old now.
My shoulders have been sore for a long time now,
one ***** thought I shrugged, I just shifted my weight,
and all of a sudden, capitalism bounded to the forefront.
I must be more careful, I told myself at the time.
But at least you discovered heavy industry,
your blanket of smog keeps me warm at night.

Think of me sometimes, holding you all up,
whatever struggles you have in your lives
pale in comparison to my duty of care.
One slip of my shoulder and your world,
quite literally, comes crashing down.
Play your music, create your art, write your stories,
they are what you are here for after all,
to share your creativity with everyone else.
If you are overly concerned about being happy,
struggling to sleep as you try and figure it all out,
there’s your answer, don’t say I’m not good to you.
Goodnight, may you live better lives than me.

My soul has a spark that ignites a flame inside,
the engine room of my mind machinates a response,
and all the world’s a stage, they say, on a trembling tide,
ebbing and flowing like the metaphors of a beautifully-constructed sentence.

I act out a scene no one cared enough to write,
the other players reacting to the shadows of silent words.
Still life painted in gold, no movement in the moonlight,
dreaming of evolution and the voices of other worlds.

Was it love of life that shimmered in that ethereal glow,
or the faces of angels in the gloom that made me heart beat fast?
Never mind the silly stories I was always told,
those who live with their heads in the clouds don’t always finish last.

It’s a cold comfort knowing I’m not the only one there,
feeling the breath of a gentle wind against my reddening cheek.
The voice of a love carried from beyond the sea somewhere,
colours the dark with a splash of light and the night seems so less bleak.

The tide rushes out and the moon rides high in the dark underbelly of the sky,
and the audience has dispersed into the cold still of the night.
You and I are the only two remaining, singing songs that get us high,
hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for the first crack of morning light.

Once more, the world spins again in this dark night,
my eyes battling to find some spark of light,
but dreams of you slowly coalesce in my tired head
and suddenly this night doesn’t make me feel quite so dead.

The smell of the lavender guides me along this path
and though they and I both know little of any possible aftermath,
I will travel across the globe to see your face finally,
to watch your smile curve up your cheeks beautifully.

Until that day comes, I stare up at my dark little sky,
the weight bearing down as I now ask how instead of why.
Is this the night I finally bow down to the stars,
pray in the light that has travelled through so much dark?

Let’s create our own paths,
go where neither of us has gone before,
find love on the rocks of a foreign shore,
find life in the places struck off the maps,
plan major plot points and fill in the gaps.
Let’s walk hand in hand through a forest of pines,
travel the world in parallel lines,
gaze at the moon on a midwinter night,
make love in the grass in her pale light.

Our eyes no longer see black,
colours abound in our wanderlust.
Exploring our love with the stars on our back,
forever moving in our own little universe.

The birds stopped singing a long time ago,
long before I ended up at the shore of the lake.
The water is a single shade of blue from black,
trees hanging limp and mournful around it,
drooping branches of dead bark and dying leaves
skimming the surface, debating whether or not to fall in.

I swear the silence is so loud, the voice of the universe
reverberating through the molecules of the atmosphere.
I can feel the vibrations through my feet,
rising like the creeping ivy on a dead house,
long ago forgotten by the hands of its creator.

I’ve heard tell that the lake goes down forever,
that it fills a void of limitless proportions.
If I threw myself like a stone into that wet darkness,
where would I sink if the lake has no bottom?
Maybe it flows down into the sky of another world,
my darkness their vacuum of space and light.
Further I sink, the blue begins to brighten
and I fall into another world where I am important.

I take a step into the cold dark water of the lake.
It wraps around my foot like the gripping hug of death,
that feeling you get when you close your eyes at night
and focus on your heartbeat slowing down as you rest,
and the panic you feel when you think it will keep slowing down,
sinking into your mattress and saying goodbye to nothing at all.

I’ll find out where I will sink to,
there is so little left to explore in this vast world
but I have found one more place to go.
The water envelops me and down I swim,
and the current moves around me in a circle.
I take a deep breath and my heart fills with heaviness.
So this is how it feels to finally let go.

Lost in a forest of dead and dying trees,
listening to words of death carried by the breeze.
When I will be home I cannot say for certain,
but I will not yet allow life to close the curtain.
Separated by the distance of half a broken world,
but I will never give up on the love of my Idaho girl.

The grass used to be green but now is yellow and sick,
the magic in the universe is running out of tricks.
But one more came my way and my heart wanted more,
and you responded by knocking gently on my door.
It doesn’t feel so far now as half a broken world,
I’ve seen the mind and beauty of my Idaho girl.

Here I stand, a monument to my own destruction,
carrying on the work of an ancient construction.
Hands made of callouses designed for moving rocks,
seconds pass to minutes to hours on the clocks,
and life flows downhill through the roots of a Viking tree,
to the garden, to the sea.

Yggdrasil weaves its trunk through my history,
how it knows my life is its greatest mystery.
Its leaves reach to the heavens and caress the clouds,
through its xylems and phloems travels the worlds crowds,
and life flows downhill between the roots of this Viking tree,
to the garden, to the sea.

The gods of dark places fight their battles in the light,
and all the eyes of all the folks turn from the murky night.
Yggdrasil stands tall like a black tower ‘tween land and sky,
where the hearts of the bravest men climb towards a lie,
and life flows downhill by the roots of the Viking tree,
to the garden, to the sea.