Theban Sacred
When the angels killed the heat in me
They told me I’d been blind but they could make me see.
Lord only knows,
Lord only knows where we go.
So I took their hands
And I dragged them down
One by one I watched them drown.
Lord only knows,
Lord only knows where we go.
Now my conscience lies by my side,
We got on well
But I’m glad it died.
Lord only knows,
Lord only knows
But does he know
What I know about him now?
Now I’m going away to some foreign land,
I’m going to join the Theban Sacred Band.
Lord only knows I don’t want to fight,
He also know darkness is my light
But now
Does he know what I know?
When those angels killed the heat in me
I said won’t you kindly let me be?
***
Living In The Aftermath
The light has gone out in your window.
We are perched on the brink of a dawn.
But I am outside in the shadows
And I am alone.
I am no stranger to this door,
It was built with the sweat from my brow.
I lingered awhile on its threshold
Before turning round.
For what I lack won’t be found in the looking,
What I want is to be there with you
But some houses are better as ruins,
Some people too.
So darling
Turn my picture to the wall
And do what you must do,
You say there’s shame
In the lies we tell
But there is more shame in the truths.
You have scorned all my cloistered virtues
And the vices they may have produced,
You know youth isn’t the time for seduction
It’s a time to be seduced
But when the watering holes have all run dry
Then I shall drink from the mirage
And when you meet me there I will not ask why,
I will laugh
Turn my picture to the wall
And do what you must do,
You say there’s shame
In the lies we tell
But there is more shame in the truths.
***
Woe Betide You
You and I have been here before
But this time I came prepared
You know our love is little more
Than a loneliness that we shared
I’ve been living in the shadow of a monument
To the kind of man you want me to be
Well you can cry all you like over my indifference
But you sewed the seeds of my ennui
And I am warning you girl
Just like you once warned me
Woe betide you
If you want to hurt me again
You tell me I’m hurting your feelings now
Well I was aiming at your thoughts
Certainly there’s something appealing about
The kind of happiness we sought
But what’s the use in filling pages if you can’t rip them out
I refuse to play the villain in my own life
Yes those pretty little cynicisms we can do without
But I won’t let you grind me down and I won’t go without a fight
I am warning you girl
Just like you once warned me
Woe betide you
If you want to hurt me again
You know I wasn’t hewn from heroic timber
But I’m growing tired of our little tableau
There’s a light beyond this gloom, though it’s no more than a glimmer
It’s enough to guide my way as I walk out on you
Because I am warning you girl
Just like you once warned me
Woe betide you
***
Deep Enough
I never woke up this morning,
My tether is at the end of elsewhere.
There’s a big black dog yawning
And it’s sitting in my favorite chair.
I saw my prospects portrayed before me
As a sad and solitary house,
With icicles hanging from its doorway
Like teeth in a great grey mouth.
I couldn’t bury you
Deep enough.
A strange new brand of confection
Is rotting all Wisdom’s teeth.
A dying man addresses his reflection
And says “Better you than me.”
But a breath as persistent as gravity
And corrosive as a wasted second
Unfurled from the lap of some deity
Where that abominable animal beckoned.
I couldn’t bury you
Deep enough.
I’d stolen a dead man’s wrist watch
And was living by his time not mine,
I adapted my past to suit a flimsy ideal
And laid a false floor on that fault-line.
I know all things cast a shadow
Regardless of sort or size
But the part of me I once left fallow
Now yields a tree that’s obscuring the sky.
I couldn’t bury you
Deep enough.
I no longer believe in medicine
And I’m struggling with that fourth wall
Since that animal appeared in my bedroom
Howling its territorial call.
It said there’s no flame it couldn’t douse
As it snuffed out the light over my thoughts,
It opened me up like a doll’s house
And I wept until I was hoarse.
There are some things you just can’t hide from
There are some things you just can’t push down
Deep enough.
