I'm not a sailor but I'm all at sea
swept away on a flood of memory
carried back to the place that tore us apart
(impressions as muddled as poor abstract art)
I can make out the image of old New Street,
(corner of close and soon) where dreams meet
the spirits we might have been before the fall
(that which comes after what comes after all)
I'm struck by the buoyancy of regrets
(can't be drown in vodka and cigarettes)
that fight against forgetting tirelessly
and never content to just let me be
a story without incongruency,
a language I once spoke with fluency
(what I'm saying only you understand,
so you walk beside me, you hold my hand)
But we are not here as one might presume
to see the remains of childhood exhumed
We are not avengers of injustice
but sojourners on the path life thrust us
something like Kerouac, but more like Frost
(only not as peaceful and far more lost)
with promises, if nothing else to keep
(even these don't keep us safe while we sleep)
There was no real world, we lived side by side
where only fear and apathy abide
Normalcy is an aberration
(a figment of my imagination)
which I invent for the sake of striving
(no reason exists without contriving)
for days when I couldn't fight anymore
(I sometimes forget what fighting was for)
like the day I spent -dreaming of dying
(and not only dreaming, but also trying)
days that now we don't dare even mention
when we were still strangers to convention,
wild, running barefoot, against the grain;
(running from a fear we couldn't name)
endless days, when nothing came to nothing
(potential was a phone that wouldn't ring)
just straw on a back that could take no more
(but wasn't it worth sticking it out for?)
How many do you suppose stood close by
ten or more years never batting an eye
left it all to 'divine intervention',
left us to starve and bleed our redemption.
swept away on a flood of memory
carried back to the place that tore us apart
(impressions as muddled as poor abstract art)
I can make out the image of old New Street,
(corner of close and soon) where dreams meet
the spirits we might have been before the fall
(that which comes after what comes after all)
I'm struck by the buoyancy of regrets
(can't be drown in vodka and cigarettes)
that fight against forgetting tirelessly
and never content to just let me be
a story without incongruency,
a language I once spoke with fluency
(what I'm saying only you understand,
so you walk beside me, you hold my hand)
But we are not here as one might presume
to see the remains of childhood exhumed
We are not avengers of injustice
but sojourners on the path life thrust us
something like Kerouac, but more like Frost
(only not as peaceful and far more lost)
with promises, if nothing else to keep
(even these don't keep us safe while we sleep)
There was no real world, we lived side by side
where only fear and apathy abide
Normalcy is an aberration
(a figment of my imagination)
which I invent for the sake of striving
(no reason exists without contriving)
for days when I couldn't fight anymore
(I sometimes forget what fighting was for)
like the day I spent -dreaming of dying
(and not only dreaming, but also trying)
days that now we don't dare even mention
when we were still strangers to convention,
wild, running barefoot, against the grain;
(running from a fear we couldn't name)
endless days, when nothing came to nothing
(potential was a phone that wouldn't ring)
just straw on a back that could take no more
(but wasn't it worth sticking it out for?)
How many do you suppose stood close by
ten or more years never batting an eye
left it all to 'divine intervention',
left us to starve and bleed our redemption.
