Against my better judgement I take these pills I’m losing my mind like I’m losing skills And I’m scared that they will wear my brain away Like I am a knot and it’s started to fray But it’s gotta be better than wandering the night They say that I’m insane and I give up, alright Allow them to ring in a decree And proclaim what they think they know of me And everyone agrees, they’ve got it all on check And what I was seeing was strange and I wreck The picture every time I seem to see People trying to frame you and me And Alan was cool like they had on the system I walked away, you could say that I missed him And everyone in their cracked portrait there We’re just examples of how people care And they say that if you go and show You’re enlightened well then you know You’ll be locked up by the brigade at sea And I think that may have been what happened to me And I fight and war with what they pronounce Only another one to denounce Like sleeves of silk and cotton up your arm The meditation room the only charm As there was music and CD’s To ameliorate my supposed disease And I made friends and I struck a light In the room for squares I was held that night And the awning gap just spells the chasm What more can I say but that she has him For now, for forever, but not with me I gulp another one down with dignity
I'm just mad coz you forced me off the land
With your masculine misunderstand
And I guess I'm emotional and female
But that don't mean I should go to jail
For a century or two
Just because I frighten you
With all you can't contain
It was love, it wasn't pain
And the winter was long but the snow
Can't stop the way the spring will grow
New green into all of the leaves
And it's not just about what you believe
And I throw shards of glass into the past
Memories of what didn't last
And your words are like daggers that cut my skin
How does he know how to hurt within
With his flagrant disrespect for all I offer
I know it's just the way you suffer
But I can't play small anymore
Or cover over what you adore
And don't want to love
It was given me from above
And you're just gonna have to get used to it
Being front and centre and your wit
Can't tear me down no more
Find another ship to sail to the shore!
I’ll be the clarion call To let the demons out The things that people suffer under The fear, my dear, self doubt And they locked me up in ashes But I still was free Coz even though they do their best They can’t get the best of me
And the clock ticked, did it go back Am I getting enough of slumber And but for the men I loved I woulda been just a number In that place where the halls have eyes And everyone walks tiptoe It’s eggshells we’re treading on So that you might not know
And I had a bed and my own room It was number sixteen And I’ve been dealing with this kind of shit Since I realized the dream As I hop on a hopscotch Afraid to cross the line Is there a difference between being here And doing hard time
And I hid out in the activity room Rifling through a storm I hope they might not find me That’s how I kept the candle warm But they did and told me so There was a place to greet But I’m moving dough with my hands Can’t make it move my feet
And the third time I was in there Barry called my name He asked if he could speak to me, if it was all the same But he was laughing sideways Out of the corner of his mouth He thinks that he might have a clue As to what I’m all about And, God love him, he was precious But he set the dial to spin So I called the shots and called it off Walked out of the room with him
And, the laughter, it was breaking like a wave upon the shore I left the card on my desk so that it might love me more And my sides they’d split with Aoibhínn coz she was such a hoot She talked me out of dangerously quiet as I stood mute
And I drew an eye on the wall in the smoking room It was a lot more like freedom than it was the bells of doom And they only scrubbed it out a year later and I see There was a part of them that loved a part of me Or with a certain fondness I recall what they say It’s not the present moment but you will be okay So I crumpled up the paper and threw it in the bin Conceded defeat coz you know I cannot win
And the monuments of time will fall beneath the sea But there’s something eternal that beats the heart of me And I can’t put my finger on it or tell you what it is Only suffice to say that being born is not to live Beyond the realms of death In the halls that I vacate I think they had me wrong Coz I love the thing they hate
And summon up a showstorm In the dead of the night The sun that is within me Can’t help but be bright As all I ever am And all I’ll ever be I can’t bring myself to regret That I asked you to dance with me
It’s easier to just tell a lie
Than to disrupt you with the truth
Because you could never handle
The tremors that take root
And maybe it’s cause you notice
I’m not attached to this place
And I could as well let go
As look into your face
And I know you want to hold me
As I dangle precipice
But you don’t need to seek my fortune
As the source of your distress
Because we all hopscotch
Along the lines and the cracks
But just because you read the future
Doesn’t mean you can get it back
Or direct the wind
As it passes through your sails
And turns into the past
As your body fails
As all are due to do
Precluding interruption
By unseasonable forces
Or a dormant life eruption
But if it’s good enough for him
Then I do not complain
And what binds me to this place
Is just light playing on my name
And distracting eyes
From the obviously true
Cause if I’m mortally wounded
Then it follows so are you
And all that you strive for
To protect and attain
Won’t stay up in the clouds
But falls to earth as rain
And you can’t command the weather
Or unblue the sky
So don’t fear it when I speak
About what is born to die
Just cause you’re young doesn’t shield you from death
It’s just a horizon you have not seen yet
And all the green grass eventually fades
There’s no guarantee of what will come with age
As they write us off as superfluously small
I don’t think they realise at all
That you can’t capture in a frame the picture generation
And it’s just insurance against our disintegration
Trying to grasp what we cannot make stay
I only want a reminder of you this way
As you are caught in the perfect suspension
Between laughter and the unspoken tension
That rests behind when you look at me
Cause you can’t capture the mystery
That propels us both down different paths
But I’ve broken the glass and I can’t go back
And we can only touch hand to hand
Separated by what we cannot understand
Is love enough to quench the flame
That longs for what I cannot name
It’s a peculiar kind of humiliation the way I’ve grown to feel
When you place your trust in someone and the way they cut the deal
And you can’t really blame them when they pull the rug away
Cause you never in your heart of hearts expected them to stay
And all your family converged on where the wound congeals
But though they profess their understanding, they can’t fathom how it feels
And should I lash out in anger and be certified insane
Or find another way that I can express my pain
As I writhe and I lose my wits end over you
They try to make me act the way I’m supposed to
As they hang my arms like puppeteers into a normal life
And I let them move my body under the vacant expression in your eyes
The complete renunciation of what you’d previously adored
Now I’m just the soundtrack someone else has scored
As the chains grow round me, like vines, I’m too weak to fight
And all that fueled me before, now I have no appetite
Cause it has lost its meaning without the love that you imbue
And what’s the point in dancing if I’m not doing it for you
Though you have got your lines that say I’m better off
In bitterness and agony I hold your memory aloft
And cave in on myself to the cracking of my ribs
Tell me I’ll find somebody who’ll be happy I am his
But I am not a man’s woman to marry and to own
I only fell for you because I was alone
In your presence and I found I didn’t have to be
An amelioration of myself or lose my liberty
And I guess I got confused and mistook what just confounded
One in an eternity the lightning bolt you grounded
But just because you had earthed me back into the source
Didn’t mean you really cared for what had taken me by force
As striking in your eyes when the connection hit
It was not in your stature a place you chose to sit
So you have me blinded, inconsequentially
And you must be reminded to extract yourself gingerly
Lest you push me over an edge I fell from long ago
You don’t have call in those who will try to soften the blow
And take me from that place as I am struggling to grasp
The meaning of a death I did not think would last
Now they tie me to a chair and chemically calm
My shaking and their supplements are suppressing the alarm
That is ringing in my head and trying to break through
The foggy overtures that are obscuring you
And my eyes they cannot see and all my speech is slurred
To think the time you spent with me was inhabited by her
And I know I should be happy but I find myself contained
Inside the strictures of a world that hasn’t changed
And all your magic prose and your incandescent stories
Are only symptomatic of how I revelled in your glories
And the ancient smorgasbord of different shades of black
Are not efforts of your urging but what is never coming back
And its institutional to be begging at their feet
But you are starving and they beat you til you give in to eat
Though it may be poison and lead to your demise
I guess I lost it all and my independence dies
As I lay down on the bed and concede to be operated on
Though they cannot fix what is already gone
Their sutures leave a scar and I will forever bear the mark
Of what it is to be consumed by the wolves out in the dark
But though they may undo me til I’m a shade of my old self
They cannot command the soul beyond their timing belt
And the pictures that they make of the architecture of my being
Are only surface breaking waves to signal what I’m freeing
And I know you want me complicit in my own subjugation
But I’m not what you can train into a pleasant conversation
There is an ocean beneath that you have not explored
I’m not what you hypothesise standing on the shore
The Poetry Book 