(i) A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers: Eyewitness
Still waiting for my saviour,
storms tear me limb from limb;
my fingers feel like seaweed...
I'm so far out I'm too far in.
On the table lies blank paper
And my tower is built on stone
I only have blunt scissors,
I only have the bluntest home...
I've been the witness, and the seal of death
lingers in the molten wax that is my head.
I prophesy disaster
and then I count the cost...
I shine but, shining, dying,
I know that I am almost lost.
No time now for contrition:
the time for that's long past.
The walls are thin as tissue and
if I talk I'll crack the glass.
So I only think on how it might have been,
But I'm locked in silent monologue, in silent scream.
I'm much too tired to speak
and, as the waves crash on the bleak
stones of the tower, I start to freak
and find that I am overcome...
(ii) A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers: The Clot Thickens
Where is the God that guides my hand?
How can the hands of others reach me?
When will I find what I grope for?
Who is going to teach me?
I am me / me are we / we can't see
any way out of here.
Crashing sea - a trophied history:
Chance has lost my Guinevere...
(iii) The Sleepwalkers
Tonight, before you lay down to the sweetness of your sleep
do you question your surrender to the drop from Lover's Leap
or does the anaesthetic darkness take hold on its very own?
Does your body rise in service with not one dissenting groan?
These waking dreams of life and death
in the mirror are twisted and buckled;
lashes flicker, a catch of breath,
skin whitening at the knuckles.
The army of sleepwalkers shake their limbs and are loose
and though I am a talker, I can phrase no excuse
not to rise again.
In the chorus of the night-time I belong
and I, like you, must dance to that moonlight song
and in the end I, too, must pay the cost of this life.
If all is lost none is known
and how could we lose what we've never owned?
Oh, I'd search out every knowledge that I could find,
unravel all the mysteries of mind,
if I only had time,
if I only had time,
but soon my time is ended.
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