'me'

Everyone's allowed to be themself
Why do i care what they think about myself
I can never trust, it is just
So hard to be me when I am with them
Because they define what I ought to be
And I can't control myself to be me
The version they expect of me from me

The image I made, they painted
The original is lost beneath the skin
All the words that I speak and mean
I mean it different than what I say
There is another depth in me I can't display
It is kind, all well defined
Role I need to take, for their sake

The thrush called thrice for a fortunate morn
To beckon forth mists under a lowly dawn
Bewitched by brambles and branches was she
An echoing songstress departing the tree

Winter bells rang, high in the tower
Lakes became frozen and consumed the flowers
Daybreak faded amongst the hills
Forests of old became silently still

The valleys did tremble and mountains will fall
Snowflakes and sunshine flit between all
Steep is the climb to an elderly wood
Where structures of iron stand where trees stood

The thrush cried once for it’s own safe return
It beckoned forth flames that crackled and burned
Paradise lost below beating wings
The call of a bird that can no longer sing

The sky was scarred by idle hearts
They fall as heavenly rain
Seeds that grow within the ground
They climb toward home again

Now the earth is covered by
Children in the dark
Inky night, chained to soil
Shattered into stars

For all I have within my soul
These things will flourish and grow
When the dawn pierces through
Striking through the snow

The paladin will venture on
To free his captured friends
To sever the anchor to hardened ground
They can fly away again

green
blue
and the Moon

makes herself
so unmistakable

there’s
no room for you.

Have I woken from a dream?
Or does this fruitless mirage waver, like restless rain?
Do I paint with idle colours? Or watch them trickle into the drain?
I have flickered like a candle, awoken by gentle flame
Waiting for a railroad, to be built and broken again

Do I assume the world is magic? Or lost in folds of tomorrow?
Can I cast myself beneath a cloud? To shower me in sorrow?
For I sleep in changing people, personality I borrow
Masks of moving thoughts, without them I feel hollow

Now the colours are a vision, that cascade from the sky
Wondrous scars of yesterday that leave me wondering why
I woke up in the first place, my head upon the pillow
Swimming through a little stream as a silver minnow

Lords, ladies, riders of the veil
Gather at once to hear these tales
Of crackling fire, chants and cries
That take the midnight as it burns the sky

Draw back the stitched tapestries
May they flow like heavenly rain
Unhand the finest silk
For they bear no rule against the King

Stay my hand in war, my friend
For the trees have stopped me in my tracks
Horses pound across the golden plains
Into furious, blinding and untamed dawn

Once again we return to earth
For lords and ladies of sweetened rhymes
Pull on bells that are fixed to stone
Where the night calls its companions home

At once the sky cracked like glass
Revealing wounds that have long since passed
Now the falling sun blesses the beaten grain
Leaving them taller and brighter today

You can find me in the fields,
catching water bugs,
and small red beetles.
You will find me in the grass,
sifting through all of the things I have left.

sifting through dollops of honey
and gin
sifting through well-rusted lockets and tins
o’er high hills comes sweet-smelling winds
carrying over pollens from yore,
drifting from to city to city once more...

twenty years later i sit in my yard
with my cats and my children in the heart of new york,
new york
a faint, yet audible buzzing awakes me from my nap,
and as i wake i see a flow‘r on my lap.
how could this be?
how could this happen?
i’m surrounded by non-ornamental hedge plants!

i look to the sky and see a faint glisten,
for i've seen it now as i’ve seen it before
i breathe in the sweet smell of my youth from yore,
drifting from city to city once more.