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It’s bad enough the times I leave my body
But damned are the times I leave my head
Time just marches on its course without me
Only leaving me regrets and dread
Constant careless feeding of the bad wolf
A pointless idle chasing of some wind
Doesn’t seem the one I had started chasing
Did I get confused when I got round the bend?
Searching eyes for something only I’d know
As if they could know who I was way back when
Thinking I could catch up to the shadow
Of the past by running backward now and then
I can live with the times I’ve been two times wrong
But damned are the times I know I’ll never belong
I can accept there are people I could never be
But damned are the times when I wasn’t me
A wheel inside a wheel, I feel I’m moving
Against the grain of all the others here
Looking at them speed ahead just makes me dizzy
Like I should be somewhere else not here
Certainly I’m speeding now across them
Only in this way I feel alive
But could it be I’m just standing still
Or following so slow I’m far behind
If at all they should even see me
Only see them selves reflected in my eyes
And my fear they’ll see everything I’m lacking
If I look away they won’t catch me in my lies
I can live with the many times I’m wrong
But damned are the times I know I’ll never belong
I can accept there are people I could never be
But damned are the times when I wasn’t me
I can’t say why you’d come to me for answers
Though I’ll gladly tell you everything I’ve learned
It’s not a race I’m equipped for winning
Not a matter of admitting how I’ve yearned
I lie awake and listen not quite hard enough
To try and hear the fading echoes pass
From some melody slipping from my memory
As if hearing it could bring me home at last
So I try and bring about a past that never was
Does this explain the cloud inside my head?
How others do the things that they decide to
While I float through my days asleep instead?
I can live with the many times I’m wrong
But damned are the times I’ll never belong
Accept that there are people I could never be
But damned are the times when I can’t be me
I can live with the times I’ve been two times wrong
But damned are the times when I’ll never belong
I can accept there are people I could never be
But damned are the times when I wasn’t me
Increasingly cold and distant
More and more I just don't care
Where does a heart go
When it vanishes in the air?
"Great Expectations"
Become the "Things Behind the Sun"
No friends when you’re desperate and
Everybody runs
My only escape the highway
That someone else has built
The joke is, it goes in circles
Like my fear and guilt
My love is ever wrong
My thoughts are all forbidden
I trot out my sins
But keep my heart well hidden
Great expectations
God has engendered in me
Great expectations
In spite of all that's me
Between my expectations
And the things behind the sun
Am I wasting all my life
Or do I watch it run?
I'm the little girl, I'm the fallen star
I'm the rapist, but most of all
I'm the tragic zero
Who goes to write it down
My life would be a bore
If they made the movie
But if they shot the private parts
I would be ashamed
You're not getting better but
My Grace is sufficient for you
Great expectations
God has engendered in me
Against all the odds of what
I will ever be
No more expectations
I look behind the sun
I just sit and watch my past
While the time before me runs
Increasingly cold and distant
More and more I didn't care
Well, I’ve gone to take back my heart,
My past, and grow my hair
Why do these songs so quickly come,
The voices never rest
If I catch up, they move on
While I write what they confessed
Do I have to turn and face my past
Do I have to shoot it dead
I wish I’d cried, right there in class
So she’d known how much I bled
I lost my expectations
Left the boy behind the sun
Damn the past, I’ll bring them back
The mission has begun
“If you overcome, you will rise above,
Fail and you'll be cast out forever”
I wanted to be something more
And so I volunteered
I can’t believe I chose to come here
Only to find I wasn't strong enough
Just cast me down now, to the lake of fire
You prepared for Satan and his angels
Not good enough,
Don’t listen, don’t obey
Just like in school, I’m on no one’s side
And I’m poison
I’m poison – I don’t belong to you
Stay away from me, I’m poison
Don’t let me hurt the ones I love
Everything I touch turns to blood
I’m the poison in the midst of the flood
I’m the red streak in the black of the night
One pink flower in a field of blue ones
I carry your death
And I’m poison
Walk straight, hold your head up
How can I
With the weight of all these demons pressing close?
Why are they here?
Am I so beloved?
Do You have something so important for me to do
That they would hold me down
All these forty years?
Does the poison come from without or within?
Have I lost my soul or my mind?
Would I find it
Were I on my knees again?
But I’m poison – I don’t belong to you
Stay away from me, I’m poison
Don’t let me hurt the one’s I love
Everything I touch turns to blood
I’m the poison in the midst of the flood
I’m the poison in the midst of the flood
The poison in the midst of the flood
Do you still have
That picture I drew of you?
Long ago
I knew you wished
It was drawn by someone else
What right do I have
Expect you to cry for me?
I never had anything at all
That was mine to lose
What you never saw
Were the words on the other side
Covered up
Maybe then you’d seen
Just a boy who was lost
I never paid my own way
Never earned these blues
A fool feeling sorry
For himself ain’t news
What right do I have
Expect you to cry for me?
I never had anything at all
That was mine to lose
This morning the sky
Is the same as the river
There is no line
White blue
More white than blue
The sky
The fog
And the river too
Everything is wet except for me
I breathe through my skin like a salamander
I love the sun, but I love the water more
I love the moist gray day and I love our Lord
This is the day the Lord has made
This morning the trees
Don’t look the same
They don’t mourn the leaves
They could not keep
Skeleton shadows
Dance on the breeze
On this sky
On this day
This morning the sky
Is the same as the river
There is no line
White blue
More white than blue
The sky
The fog
And the river too
Everything is wet except for me
I breathe through my skin like a salamander
I love the sun, but I love the water more
I love the moist gray day and I love our Lord
This is the day the Lord has made
I never got to tell you
But I fell in love
The first time I saw you
On the first day of school
When we were just eleven
I made a little cardboard charm
And wrote your name
I wore it under my shirt
And daydreamed you did the same
You never tried to hurt me
Though I caused you trouble
And you could
You just gently took one step back
For every step I took
The brown of your eyes
Was the color of sorrow
Like sunshine refracted by rain
Sometimes I felt they were lit by your soul
When they’d flash and sparkle with pain
There was a hole in my heart
Inches wide and miles deep
And I was losing something
I had hoped I might keep
Pouring out in my chest
Making it so hard to breathe
You knew I’d survive
If you’d cut and I’d bleed
The first time the sun
Lit the gold in your hair
I thought it was magic
And couldn’t help stare
I can still hear your voice
Soft and warm like a child
Dancing like starlight on crystal
The brown of your eyes
The color of sorrow
Sunshine refracted by rain
Dazed by the flash
Transfixed by the sparkle
Haunted by a soul in such pain
A hole in my heart
Inches wide and miles deep
Losing the one thing
I had hoped I might keep
Pouring out in my chest
Making it so hard to breathe
Bleeding at best
My heart on my sleeve
I could be like the rest
You’d cut and I’d bleed
I thought I was your Heathcliff
Though I was blond and thin
And you to me my Cathy
Though you never let me in
For I knew you well from watching
And where Heathcliff’s soul had been
The moors that black my soul
The sound that thrills my heart
The ghost that sets it wild and free
So dead when we’re apart
So warm and hard to breathe
Without the chill and wuthering
words by May Sarton, 1972
If I can let you go
As trees let go their leaves
So casually, one by one
If I can come to know what they do know
That fall is the release, the consummation
If I can come to know what they do know
Love will endure, if I can let you go
Then fear of time
And the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute
If I can take the dark with open eyes
If I can come to know what they do know
Love will endure
If I can let you go
If I can call it seasonal
Not harsh or strange
For love itself may need a time of sleep
And, treelike stand unmoved before the change
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep
The strong root still alive under the snow
Love will endure
If I can let you go
If I can let you go
As trees let go there leaves
So casually, one by one
If I can come to know what they do know
That fall is the release, the consummation
If I can come to know what they do know
Love will endure, if I can let you go
I look to the clouds at night
And my heart perks up
I feel the breath of God
Blow the hair across my face
Clouds flash, the way that the sun
Lights just a piece of each wave
Like a hug on the inside
I find each star in its place
Halo round the moon
Through the trees a lake of green
On the wind you hear a tune
Something there but seldom seen
In the eyes of any child
The light of God shines through
God’s love in my children
And I’m here in His place
Halo round the moon
Through the trees a lake of green
On the wind you hear a tune
Something there but seldom seen
I look to the clouds at night
And my heart perks up
I feel the breath of God
Blow the hair across my face
We have forgotten
Our Geppetto
Giver of all good things
It could be said
We are nothing more than
Puppets made of meat
Before the womb, now I name you
I have sent my son to claim you
You are more to me than dust and clay
Sin our strings
Bound by Satan,
Lord of the air,
The puppet master
Enough strings
Tangle of lies
A web by
Another name
Not too much for you to bear
I have sent a helper there
I have sent him there to break you free
Death will sting
Meat will rot
Flesh needs blood to live
Blood was given
But the lie deceives
And leads to death
I have made the sacrifice
I came down to save your life
Now my child, you don’t have to die
Here we stand
We feel so tall
In all our glory
Darkness the light
That shines on us
Revealing corpses end to end
There’s a blood that conquers death
There’s a light that sets you free
I didn’t send you here just to die
Enough strings
Tangle of lies
Death by
Another name
One more string
One more lie
The spider
Awaits his prey
Driving home in the snow
Loving you
Thinking back
When I really felt cold
Fences guard the road on either side
They neither keep the wind in
Nor keep the snow out
I may as well have been
On the outside looking in
It looks so chaste and clean
Innocent, pristine
Like the first time I saw her
But that was summer
And the gold was just sun in her hair
And flecks in her eyes
And all we shared was sadness
And melancholy has no place in June
I stopped the car in the middle of the road
Got out and looked around
Waited out the feeling
That I should get back in
I turned around
Looked down the road
And the crossroad was behind me
And I don’t think I could find it going back
I know again but can’t chose when
Some green side road will remind me
Of the road I didn’t take
And the sad, sweet youth I left behind me
I may as well have been
On the outside looking in
Still I hang on
As if my life depended
To my past
And being twelve
And snow-covered trees
That last only a day
First grade class picture, 1968
We all lived
Right by Sharon’s street
Sharon and I were friends
Before we started school
I had long blonde hair
And liked to explore
With Sharon’s bright face
Right beside me
Linda was quiet and reserved
Pretty as a girl can be
School was tough for Dave
And it was tough for me
And Sharon only got cuter
I never knew
Dave had a crush on Sharon too
All this time with one side of the story
I had to go back there to write it
Now I know him cause I know that sorrow
There all that time unrequited
Kids, they can be so cruel
What makes you think
Sharon’d ever want you?
I don’t think they come
Any sweeter than Linda
But she says she said this too
It hurts my heart to think
What Dave must have gone through
Those years quickly passed
At ten I moved away
My life got real bad
I often thought back on that town
And how my life’d be with Sharon still around
But all that time
Dave must have carried the flame
I don’t know why I’m back in this story
I guess I’m only here to write it
I love him for staying there with my Sharon
There all that time unrequited
A tragedy with a happy ending
I came all this way just to write it
I love him for taking care of my Sharon
There all that time unrequited
There all that time unrequited
My God ties my shoes
And I’m five years old
How can I feel peace
When evil collides with innocence?
How can I feel good inside
When I know my heart?
My God, you tie my shoes
And I’m five years old
My God, you tie my shoes
And I’m five years old
You must receive your God
As a child
To inherit the kingdom
Let the children come
To me
For the kingdom is theirs
My God, you tie my shoes
And I’m five years old
When I wouldn’t give you my all
You’d always pick me up when I’d fall
Still I turned my back
When you were calling me
But every time I was in a jam
I’d call out to the great I Am
You’d reach down and rescue me
Even though it’s just me
You’d always come and make me see
You love me just the way I am
Ever since my salvation
In the Lord, a new creation
How can I live like I lived before?
Living in sin and misery
After you paid the price for me
How many times will I crucify my Lord?
I was made to love you too
But seven times seven I turned on you
And every time you took me back
Ever since my salvation
In the Lord, a new creation
How can I live like I lived before?
Living in sin and misery
After the price you paid for me
How many times will I crucify my Lord?
I was made to love you too
But seven times seven I ran from you
And every time you took me back
Fifteen
I’d sit up in my room all day
It was just me alone
With the Beatles records I’d play
Fifteen
I’d sit up in my room all day
It was such a lonely time
But not a time I would trade
There’re lonely boys
And there always will
They were lonely then
And they’re lonely still
But they couldn’t be much
Lonelier than me
Fifteen
I’d sit up in my room all day
It was just me alone
Along with the Beatles I’d play
Fifteen
I’d sit up in my room all day
Fifteen
I’d sit up in my room all day
I went deep into the woods,
Beyond the dappled light
Beneath the shadows of the oaks,
Alone and out of sight
In the scattered sun I picked
Flowers for your hair
On the clearings edge within,
Between my heart and there
I’m trapped and I’m lost
And you still hold the key
Even after these years
Only you could set me free
After all these years
Still I drown in the deep brown sorrow
Lost in the mist of your eyes
Wide muddy waters
Wildflower meadows
Under uncertain skies
Long ago I came, a child
Put my faith in your hands
Killed the fragile
And freed the wild
When you said I wasn’t part of your plans
You’ll never know the buried life
You didn’t know you buried me
You never knew you raised the knife
Or how long you carried me
Sing me your love
The starling’s dependence
Forlorn fragile freedom
And wildflower pendants
Tell me your stories
Of where we were born
And you as a child
On a shadowy morn
I’m trapped and I’m lost
And you still hold the key
Even after these years
Only you could set me free
After all these years
I went deep into the woods,
Beyond the dappled light
Beneath the shadows of the oaks,
Alone and out of sight
In the scattered sun I picked
Flowers for your hair
On the clearings edge within,
Between my heart and there
Still I drown in the deep brown sorrow
Lost in the mist of your eyes
Wide muddy waters
Wildflower meadows
Under uncertain skies
Long ago I came, a child
Put my faith in your hands
Killed the fragile
And freed the wild
When you said I wasn’t part of your plans
I’m trapped and I’m lost
And you still hold the key
Even after these years
Only you could set me free
After all of these years
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