I was a soldier in search of seashells On my way to a foreign land I was promised a piece of paradise But left with burying bayonet in the sand
There are omens and tokens and totems I carry in the colour of my skin Of leading strangers from ashes to Asphodel But leaving behind my own kin
And by this ocean of giving and forgetting I toss my morsel to the receding tide And build a mausoleum out on the seashore And pieces of my heart therein I hide
For the mountains I crossed on my way Told me that silence comes to those who seek Meaning at the end of an answer And not winning; because that’s for the weak
Now as I sit by lap of the waves And watch my bullet holes go larger around I align my irises to the horizon Till my heartbeats makes no more sound
Somewhere in between Our footsteps turned to music
I had a tendency to blink back tears To stitch myself beforehand Like a social vaccine so to say To stay rooted And choose no way For then the balance; it would break And I would have something at stake And I was afraid of being left broken Someone’s memory Another’s token So here was how I spent my hours With cold heart And long hot showers Making promises on blank, blind papers I wrote of stones that floated on vapours; Those dreams that were ruins from the start Still left so for they were born torn apart And the people they came to claim That all I could say was my own name Unaware, that all I had was my own mind That was seldom, if ever kind Thus melancholy is my poison of choice And sad smiles my go to guise For then I can claim to be Everything that isn’t me
Now the colours of life have dried And I feel like the fog of midwinter Spread across sleeping fields And quiet rivers running Like a toddler on a trail Without wisdom or any worry And no notion where to sail But as I look back at the way I have treaded I know it’s the same where now I am headed To my beginning To the end I am nosediving so I can ascend Through the little hells I have clawed in my bones From the promises I made to the unknowns Like those flowers I grew around my grave Knowing the wreaths won’t be there to save Me, from the parody called pain Watching my headstone go dry in the rain
Somewhere in between Our footsteps turned to silence
