Thus I Wrote

Red Riding Hood
You are so good
I’m the big bad wolf
Baying for your blood

The world today
Does not understand
That political correctness
Has got out of hand

Red Riding Hood
Drink sweet from your cup
Sweeten your flavour
For when I eat you all up

I have to be careful
And watch what I say
Red Riding Hood is changing
The world to her way

Oh Red Riding Hood
Surely you can understand
That a world without the wolf
Would be boring and bland

I wake in the morning
My gut tense with fear
Going nowhere fast, revving hard
I’m stuck in first gear

I have a coffee
Trying to clear my head
Before my thoughts spill out
Into something I said

I then think of him
And have done since he died
His gaze unwavering
I never knew him to hide

He never seemed worried
About being left behind
And his ignorance never
Seemed to clutter his mind

Behind his kindness
And out of view
He was on praying terms
With a God I once knew

And was it by accident?
Or was it by design?
That he had a pure heart
And a calm, simple mind

When I was with him
I forgot panic and fear
And basked in the warmth
Of having love near

Immigrants arrive
And women have new roles
Rules change as midwives
For a new evolving whole

I see factions fight
To invade my space
I feel claustrophobhic
Trying to keep my place

I feel more uncertain
And fearful of my fate
The world is changing
But that’s a natural state

And I have come to trust
That the invisible hand,
Of consensus in this world
Knows better than I understand

I finished my song
To little applause
It was long past midnight
And it felt a lost cause

I packed my Martin guitar
With a Baggs pickup
She gave them to me
Long after the breakup

She took one of my names
But she spelt it wrong
But she only ever wanted
To sing her song

She seduced with sacrifice
With talent and brand
Until the world chose her
With an invisible hand

She’s famous now
And it hurts still, the calculation
And all the steps she buried
Under her infatuation

It feels lonely sometimes
This choice to be free
This fire isn’t as bright
But it belongs to me

She finds me again somehow
After going missing for a while
With a bottle of whisky
And her “kiss-me” smile

I drink my whisky
It burns all the way down
I see the dawn is breaking
Over this forgotten town

She takes off her red dress
She has new tattoos
And I was falling
And losing myself anew

I said “I loved you
But its all over now…”
She said “I tried leaving you
But I don’t know how…”

I spend a lot of time
Inside my head
Trying to find if the future
Has a golden thread

I am sensitive
I get hurt a lot
But I say many things
When I should have not

Sometimes like a bad car
I drive all over the place
But its seems the only way
That I can find my space

But I discovered no more faults
Than others show
And I discovered no less virtues
Than others know

I learned of fear and pain
Are my companions in my growth
And to look them in the eye
And stare them down both

I’m on a winding road
With no diversion or distraction
With no sex, drugs or alcohol
To replace effective action

And every day a crossroads
A chance to start again
And yet another chance
To ‘suck it up’ again

🙂

Its a stormy night
But the balcony is dry
I can hear the rain falling
I can see the clouds fly

I drink my whisky
I feel it warm my gut
Her red dress is wet
And her eyes are shut

We hear music float
From the streets below
She smiles and sways
And dances real slow

I drink and I watch
I feel my blood rise
She smiles and sways
And opens her eyes

I must be crazy
She has a troubled past
But she’s so beautiful
I forget it can’t last

“Dance with me”, she whispers
“This is our night”
She holds out her arms
In the pale moonlight

We all want our space
Created within the human race
And so far as we can see
For us, the best way is democracy

Life is a compromise
But we developed a common view
That the needs of the many
Must outweigh the needs of the few

A multicultural society
Has many minorities
And a more fragmented common view
Because they must be included too

But we all want our space
Created within the human race
And so far as we can see
For us, the best way is democracy

You want opportunity and to be free
And to choose who, the government will be
You want fairness and you want rights,
And justice to give, it all some bite

And thus is created your space
And those of everyone
And the boundaries in the race
Agreed by you and everyone

So we create our space
Within the human race
With responsibility
To others in our democracy

We want to feel we matter
To connect and serve with feeling
As we run up that hill
Looking for a meaning

How do we know we exist?
How do we know we’re alive?
How many people do we need to tell us
Before we accept we have arrived?

We’re together in this room
But only some can see the elephant
In the truth of everyday experience
We compete to be relevant

There are 14 Billion years before us
And we get 80 years or so
We stutter briefly on the stage
We flicker briefly and then we go

Wise men have worked to show us
We are leaves in the forest green
On our own we have little significance
In the playing of life’s great scene

We’re together in this room
But only some can see the elephant
In the truth of everyday experience
We compete to be relevant

Some ignorance may be a virtue
That many find unexpected
The truth is in life’s experience
And not in its meaning dissected

In the end our focus shifts
To those we love and what we’re giving
And while we’ve something to share
There’s still a relevance to our living

We’re together in this room
But only some can see the elephant
In the truth of everyday experience
While we share, we are relevant

Inspired by the Birdman film

Hey little darling
What’s that you say
Your mother’s a fish?
And she just swam away?

I looked for you
Through the veil of my tears
But I couldn’t see you
Through the smoke of my fears

As I lay dying
I thought of you,
Of all the things I wanted
And all that I didn’t do

But it’s not all about you
To be human is to share
Can you open your mind?
And see what is fair

We have desires and secrets
That we forgot we had
We tried to bury them
But they still smelled bad

As I lay dying
I thought of you,
Of all the things I wanted
And all that I didn’t do

We have desires and secrets
That buried us alive
That killed the intimacy
Our love needs to survive

In my life I have drifted
Between the earth and the sky
My life’s quest a balance
Between the us and the I

As I lay dying
I thought of you,
Of all the things I wanted
And all that I didn’t do

Inspired by As i Lay Dying by William Faulkner