were it easy, we would be so lucky
but, alas instead, here we're found
where our ground is scaffold
its tarrish glue fractured
the brown boards we walk, cracked
the whole thing creaking under its own weight
poised for collapse

Grab the child of the forlorn place
Liberation paints their heads
The gun is held as the bible mace
Freedom lives in lead

Father watches Capetown port
Batons whip their tattered cross
Yellow tags on scarred cohorts
Happy children, born of loss

Kings feast on country plates
Satiated, complacent
Place the stone on people’s fate
And bless the nation nascent

On the evening of August 6th
The body is separated, eviscerated
Stone walls
Lost thralls
A family takes their evening stroll
And finds themselves imprisoned
Their umbilical cord, cut down the half
Microwave oven
Searing monsoon shower
Vagrant feet are shackled
Eyes are blinded with exhaust pipes
The East is not allowed to cry alone
Decay, wail on
Wail on
Contain us
Dear Marcus, free me
From these Pyrrhic victories
Clean this dusky mall
I feel safe under phosphoric lights
Guerillas swing on electric wires
Transatlantic conversations
Acquired on paper
Perverse
Desecrated
Red cloth seizes everything
Stray, running felines
The impassioned, waving flag
Kept in a velvet pocket
Stay here, stay a while
This cold era is a rising draft
The Bermuda Triangle
Quarantined
No more ships crawl along the winded shore
A time capsule
The nation sinks into antiquity
The brink of armageddon
Cusp of oblivion
Crimson hand of eternity
An old, whittled clock
Last minute
Cold Turkey!
God almighty
Peace is never promised
But we may yearn again
Nobody is free
But we are safe for another hour
God almighty
Leases on the lands
Paid in thorns
Nations playing circles
Mr. Versus Mr.
An ever-changing world
Stagnant and tightly oiled
Save this soil
It will cave in silence
The clockmaker sits in the backdrop
Readying her tools

Before the world calls again
We must make amends with the wind
Look not towards, turn around
Learn to challenge your mound
The world is erupting in earnest
Pearls rim the bulletproof vests
Another bay of mammals
Stripped of their enamel

Watchful eye, clockmaker
***** hands on blood bakers
Stagnant relics of the past
Wailing worms on salted masts
Crowded church, bullet tears
Limping for the flaking fears
Mountains bring a gilded path
For the saints, a shallow bath

Handcuffed legs, boarded hands
Folded on a calm command
Rotting hope, livid arms
For the magnate, no alarm
Bracket helm, grainy green
Swords are drawn on gabardines
No God will eat a tear
And dead they flow, winded pier

Dead they crow, winded pier

Billowed fire, riverside
Cower under thickened hides
Excess arms upon the dock
Sandinista on the rock
Triggers sold in tragedy
Lilting light, youth will cease
Leaders sleep in padded wells
Suffer mother, drink from hell

Here’s the hero, banner flown
Ruby paper, nature grown
Skeptic in the eye of rhye
Naked comics sing to die
The site is exiled from the shore
Stricken by a fiery pore
Steel-laced curtains, hesitance
Infidels in happenstance

Here is fortune, there lays war
I have sold a solid car
Husband creaks, mother moans
Children bred to take a bone
With a blonded, slanted eye
Astronauts will learn to fly
All the while, a preacher seeks
A pinstriped caddie and a freak

I am born and I am weak

"Democracy is the lesser of all evils."
Says the Liberal.
The Libertarian.
The Corinthian.
The Macedonian.
The Farrier.
The Squire.
The Stoic.
The Astronomer.
The Ornithologist.
The Eschatologist.
The Augur.
The Retiarius.
The Hoplite.
The Centurion.
The Governor.
The General.
The Senator.
The Orator.
The Assassin.
The Emperor.
The Ferryman.

New mildew mania, oh man-of-war
Live by the letter, and **** for the car
The dreamers, constrained by the fog they can’t see
I uttered this song in Breakaway Alley

A wandering blonde in the restless air
Their kids, half-afraid that they’re halfway to nowhere
Think what you may, they are not in a trance
Wield what they say and you’ll find that you dance

Upon every row, lies a flag waving by
Apartment gravestones kissing up to the sky
Now, must we try so hard for fake jubilee?
The happy ones live in Breakaway Alley

In Breakaway Alley lies the sun
Breakaway Alley is on the run

All the country crows, they’ve committed a crime
Each of their wings, flapping mad out of time
To fly with such freedom yet stay so cloudbound
Cacophonous sounds fighting for our own ground

The buds only look up for leviathans
To take them to the realm they misunderstand
To pity the fool that does not try to flee
We sit on our stools in Breakaway Alley

In Breakaway Alley lies the sun
Breakaway Alley has emptied the guns

The youth do not stir at the visage of hell
There is no romance in the streets’ calling bells
And while we may treat such a threat to be shown
The dagger of a mind is dull while unknown

The ravaged pretender spoke of the Romans
His gauntlets of gold, earned from fate’s happenstance
To escape his blood, he would face down the sea
The velvet hands shook in Breakaway Alley

In Breakaway Alley lies the sun
Breakaway Alley is due to be shunned

The eye of childhood feared the forgotten paint
They lay, unencumbered, on secular saints
The falsified folly in full leopard print
The troops in their trollies with pockets of lint

The radio is silent in time’s aging vice
We hear and don’t listen, bats spliced with mice
But maybe, you will see this sweet harmony
Remember the words of Breakaway Alley

In Breakaway Alley lies the sun
Breakaway Alley has finally gone

When the baby screams for the first time, aged five
Will it lament the loss of its life?
When the kids rear for a solution wherever you go
How much will it take to say “God, I’ll never know”?

Remember the words of Breakaway Alley
It’s not all you see, it’s not simply me

Piercing screams that go unheard

Shattered dreams and empty words

All these things and so much more

Are what make life a tragic chore

They cry, and sob, and weep, and mourn

And pray for hope to be re-born

It's a struggle for survival, and justice, and peace

Or at the very least, for the pain to cease

"But it's their choice," as some may say,

"It's not our fault they live this way."

As society crumbles, cracks and decays

As they break their backs throughout the day

Will they ever be free?

Not one truly knows

But their wills extend as far as the wind blows