If this world had a face, it’d be bound tight and beset,
If there’s good in this place, I’ve not found sight of it yet.
Past all the blood and the hurt, and ravaged sounds of regret,
There must be good in this world, but I haven’t fount it yet.
All that ought to run deep, all that ought to come through,
That which taught men of decency all that they do,
Has been lost on the masses and torn from all trace,
So the greenest of grass is now scorned and replaced.
Those I’m forced to call friend – are a tax on my time,
With each talk I pretend an’ with each laugh I could cry,
Those of blood get me down – another taunt or a test,
There must be good in this town, but it hasn’t warmed to me yet.
With un-pleaseables I talk, in that cold name of love,
By any reasonable chalk I’ve done more than too much,
With unappeasables I stride, as I toss away time,
To their agreeable pride, I have lost all of mine.
Pour elixirs in ears, with no trace of intent,
Just a duty of peer-ship and misplaced compliments,
And all they want to hear’s their re-vented hot air,
And they’ll only keep near those with plenty to serve.
If I gave you your praise, and ten pounds of my flesh,
And waved you on your way to sounds of high address,
If I bundled and bound all the scraps of my soul,
And put them in your hand with a map you could own,
If I gave you my freedom, my voice and my keep,
Would you take of your leave and leave me to my sleep?
If I gave you my will and my weakness and wants,
Could the lands lonely chill turn from bleakness to warmth?
If I covered my face – could I finally rest?
If there’s good in this place, why was I to be left?
If I gathered all grit from the dregs of this hole,
And fashioned a gift from my old beggars bowl,
If I took all the soot and the silt of my years,
And tailored a trinket with blood, spit and tears,
If I capped it and crowned it with carvings of coin,
Could I buy passage to grounds past the hard ones I toil?
Where I’m no longer a ghost in the guise of a man,
Or bare the breathless ill-boast that I’ve lied all I can,
Where I’m no more a mark to be treaded upon,
A downpour-bound spark or a silent-said song,
Where I’m long past purveyors an’ the prospecting proud,
All the tall self-surveyors that are laughably loud.
Where these meek-minded masses are ploughed-up and purged,
And all new greener grasses feel they’d never been there?
For now people are a crowd, a winter I can’t leave behind,
And the street is just a sound, a splinter in my weary mind.
Through the fixed filter of rain, I try to keep my bearings right,
And all the tints within the frame come only by steel burning lights.
They free and they halt and they warn and they tempt,
A beaming assault on the swarms we call men.
And the laughing and loathing the swarm has within,
Wraps up my home and what warmth could have been.
It rattles and ruptures and rips it apart,
And battles for blood – all the blood of my heart.
And just as the coldness draws me into sleep,
A new day unfolds and the empty heart beats.
Yes just as the coldness draws me into peace,
A new day unfolds to the dawning of beeps.
Why must this alarm come and shake what was still?
Why can’t you be calm? You the big waking world.
I have a mind who’s only friend’s a ravaged voice of sure regret,
Which chimes of kindnesses to end this savage choice of pure neglect,
Must be an unknown soul around, although they haven’t shown up yet,
For all I know just hold and drown – and still I haven’t blown up yet,
If we could see then we could learn, our little lives need not be Hell,
If there be good within this world, why does it hide itself so well?
