Tuesday 7 June 2011

Merry-go-me

You're a child now, again,
but nothing's lost and nothing's gained, 
you're just on another side of the mountain range, 
and the weather has shifted and the animals more rare, 
but you tie the same laces and feed the same cares, 
and your acres more flattened from weaving and wear, 
but your eyes still get tired and your wardrobe still tears 
and you may be excited, 
caught up in a rush, 
where you don't need a pull and you don't need a push 
just a solid vibration to shake up the land, 
a new generation to take a new stand. 
You'll be crying again soon, you'll be bleeding to death, 
but you'll know that the end is just one more deep breath 
to help float to a surface you once skimmed upon, 
but with so many bounces presumed it was gone. 
Farewell to the highchair where once you were stationed, 
feeding your turf to a silencing nation, 
a baby in making, the face of youth breaking, 
walking a wire that's both restless and shaking. 
How fare your tools now with their splint old and deep 
in the base of the handles for warnings to seep 
as you're building your temple of vigour and pride, 
peeling the paint off the alter inside, 
there's a knock at the steeple, a wolf at the door 
and you're not quite as nimble as you were before, 
but you've sweat in the morter and bled in the brick 
and gave to the labour until you were sick, 
and you're safe in the rubble, so certain and safe, 
like the officer's daughter or prodigal waif. 
'I have spent my years building this heavenly shell,
by the boom of the waking day's monastery bell, 
not a man here can graze, 
not a soul here can jerk me from smooth, 
even peace to the wounds of the dirk'.
So take comfort, take it all, take the wishing well's walls, 
the the end of the rainbow, the head of a chainsaw, 
take care, take pride, take it easy, take off, 
take a picture of health 'til you take back your cough, 
take the ashes of gloom 'til you water your laugh, 
and see soon the co-ordinates marked on the graph 
of extraordinary swelling, 
the tornadoes of change that can pass by unnoticed 
when sheltered from rain, 
but you're not at all different 
you're not at all same, 
just a cycle that's starting all over again.

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