Better

Show me the world I’m missing
The one that’s full of light
And take from me the darkness
In the fancy of my flight

Descent

Words used to flow as rivers,
Fed by a fountain of youth.
Now the luster of waters grow dimmer;
Now the head is polluted by truth.

Streams only seem to flow downward;
Life seems to trickle away.
But the ocean remains, whatever there foundered,
And there, there be dragons to stay.

Downward

Noises take on crueller life;
A fall becomes a crash,
And every word becomes a knife
As your downward drift becomes a dash.

The Only Immortal Thing

There is no translation
For the things inside my head
And no will ever know what’s missing
When I wind up dead
And all my books are empty
Because I never knew the words
And all I try is sickening
Because it’s never more than thirds
Of what might be enough
When we’re all resigned to drowning
‘Cause the ocean’s just too rough
It’s a fact of life
The only immortal thing is doubt
And if I can’t ever win
All I can do is shout
But what use is voices in a chorus
Of silent, desperate screams
And if they’re all that I can hear now
How can I not know that I can’t change things?

Phantasmal

Between the real and the unreal
There exists a thin divide
But between what I think and what I feel
I find myself on the wrong side.

Voices

There are voices coming from the dark
They’re distorted, but they make their mark
As like the Red Sea, they make the silence part
And the returning flood then drowns my heart.

Escape Artist

Today I want my kings and castles;
Or sorcery, or laser rifles;
I want a world that isn’t mine
Where I’m more me than I’ll ever be
In the world waiting for me outside.

Slamming Doors

It’s better than it was before:
Laughter drifts through open doors;
So why does my chest tighten,
And my heart so quickly frighten,
At every hint of sounds like slamming doors?

Is it my unpainted fears
On the wall, downstairs?
Or the memory of a child,
Imagination running wild,
Listening to the yelling coming from upstairs?

Is it a weakness that is beautiful?
Or a strength to shield my weary soul?
Or a laughter in my mind,
That says to treat in kind,
And insists that in the end, no one’s really saveable?

Or maybe it’s the path I choose
At the crossroads of lose-lose;
And maybe if I try enough
At the game of never giving up,
I’ll find that there’s a prize that even on that road, I cannot lose.

Alone in the Night

Thinking myself a thing of the dark
I walk out into the night,
To be alone with a tainted heart —
But no! My company is kept by fright!

In the night I find myself to be
Not a demon, or a ghost;
For such things aren’t frightened by fancy,
And my courage is no thing to boast.

In the dark I’m just a little girl
Awed by what could hide behind that tree;
In the night, I’m a small thing in the world —
And that’s okay with me.

My Part in a Cacophony

I cannot write the lyrics
Of the song I’ll never sing;
I like it so much better
When it is but a dream.

There’s a beautiful cacophony
In which I’ve hid myself too long;
An Edda which I love,
But to which I don’t belong.

It’s become my orchestra;
My wonderful distraction.
But I could never write a song
To brush the heights of my imagination.

I find it thrives much better
When it never leaves my mind;
So I will leave it there, pretending
That it’s something I will one day find.