Where do you go when smiles have lost their meaning?
Where do you run when the tide of life is beating on your heart?
Where is the light when the sun's been gone for hours
And the showers of your tears tear you apart?

Someday I will run
In open fields of sunlight
Someday I will be
More than just a fading memory

Would you fight for me
If it meant that you might lose part of yourself
Would you stay with me
If -I - told - you - that I can't feel much else

Would you dare to try
If - I cannot see the sunset in the skies
Would you know my name
If what you found was I've already died
Would you bring me back to life


And all the things I see
Start to fade away without you
And all the things we've dreamed,
Or lost along the way, they call my name


Would you take the time
If time was all I had to help you see
Would you stand and stay
Beside me when my world turns grey
If I fall away


Do all the things I'd say,
With the laughter start to fade all about you
'Cause all the things I see
They start to fade away without you
And all the things we dreamed,
Or lost along the way, they scream your name
They light my way, back home

Pocket Change

Sometimes I get tired of me. Tired of the same old struggles, the same old face staring back at me in the mirror. Sometimes I feel that I am a person I'd rather not know. I'd rather see me on the street, a beggar calling for real change instead of it's counterfeit, and keep walking. Sometimes I'd like to see what it's like to be you. Maybe if I was away from these step-brother sins, I could see the real picture and never forget it. If I could see me from the outside, would I know when something is wrong? Would I have the strength to ask myself and not fear what the answer would be? Could I convince myself to embrace more than pocket change? Weariness is an unfit companion, but one who refuses to leave. He dogs your step from the beginning of the road to the end... which is sometimes the place that he choses, and no farther. I am a place that I can never vacation from. I am a never-ending project with few rewards. I am a word that never seems to look like it's spelled right, but never loses its meaning. But I am never far from hope. I will never give up on lost causes. I will not buy the neatly wrapped package of resignation. I have not given up on myself. And I never will; because I was not given up on.

Clay

Shaken and bruised,
All that's left of you
Are the pieces that you never quite could lose.
Out on your own,
All you wanted was to be alone.
But your mind keeps buying lies your heart can't own.

And someday really meant to make its way to where you are,
But in the rush and static of the day it seemed too far.

And so you wait
For wicks of hope to flame.
But that fire is the one thing you can't tame.
When colors fade
Did your blue skies change
Or did they just forget their colors on the way

And someday really meant to make its way to where you are,
But in the rush and static of the day it seemed too far.
We'll start again when the flowers that you kept for dreary days
Through the broken heart of winter on wings of color fly away
We'll begin once more where all is either faded or forgotten--
Not forgotten, just unable to be known.

Never Far

When the moon gives up its gleaming
And the sun falls from the sky
When the sunsets lose their meaning
And the stars forget to shine

When the oceans leaves it waves
On the shore as water's castaways
When the flowers cease to bloom inside your eyes

Until then I'll say, "I'll find you."
Until then, I'll say, "Don't run for long."
With all the roads you leave behind you
Know the road back home is never far

(Untitled)

The look in your eyes-- the teardrops of a world full of oceans finally run dry.
And everyone's running, but you feel you're the only one falling on the inside.
Here I am, a begger, offering all that I have, though I've not much to give.
But the light cannot reach you if don't chase the sun and it takes more than breathing to live.
I would give you my heart for a smile on your face,
Or offer my life to the wind.
I'd give the light up forever if you promised me never
To run to the shadows again.

Mirror Song

Put on your bravest face
And watch the world through glasses the color of roses
But you still can't erase this place
Or somehow unlearn the things you've known

Hide deep inside your heart
Where the world can't find you or make you bow
Or tear you apart
And you'll hold your eyes shut tight to keep them out

And you've tried to see through the mirror
And you've tried to run that far
But the lies always seem so much clearer
And the hurt leaves more than the scars


Maybe someday it will rain
Hard enough to wash me away
But until then I will wait
For You to hold me again

Let Me Listen

I want to see you from the inside. I want to lay beside you and listen to your heart beat and see what I can find. What makes you tick? What are your hopes, what are your fears? What do you daydream about? What keeps you awake at night? Or maybe it’s best not to know.

Would it hurt too much to understand and not be able to fix it? My heart’s not big enough. I’m trapped in a shell that won’t let me feel. I’m captured in a fortress that leaves me unable to rescue you. If I could, I’d break free and run until I found you, no matter how far away it is or how many times I might trip and fall.

I want to feel and not care. To stop wondering why I feel this way or talk myself out of it because it’s not the way I’m supposed to feel. I want to be your refuge—a place unlike any other. Somewhere you can run and hide and not fear the outside or the walls. A place where it’s always bright and warm, and you finally realize who you really are and smile.

But my arms can only reach so far, and my walls are sometimes cold and cracked. Sometimes my roof leaks… and lets the tears in no matter how hard I try to fight them off of you. Why can’t I be enough? Why can’t I ward off all of the things that hurt you, take them into myself and let me hurt for you instead? But I find that the enemy is much more than a beast. And the fight is waged on more than an open battlefield, with the wind slanting the pale grass. It is a battle waged outside the depths of physical strength—I cannot grapple with those things that hurt you most. And all too often I become the very thing I want to destroy. There are dragons waging war on your heart that are far too big for me to fight with a sword—with fires too hot to be warded off by armor. How can I protect you from what I cannot see? How can I save you from the things that you cannot tell me about?

So I will fight with more than a sword. I will protect you with more than armor. I will fight on my knees until they are no more. Rather than fix my cracked walls or patch my leaky roof, I will ask the Skymaker to calm the wind and stop the rain. And when there’s nothing else I can do; when all else has failed you; when my best efforts are useless…

I will be here.

A Stumbled-Upon Truth

I am lost for You, will be lost for You, can be lost for You. All that I am is a corner of Your footprint— a message to the world that You were— and are— here. I am lost for You; lost for breath, lost into the folds of life, lost from the clutches of hopelessness. I am lost for You. At a loss for words, unable to speak lest my words betray a frailty that is not Yours. Unable to move, lest I find that my footprints are out of line with Yours. I am lost to the world, unable to be a part of it any more; my heart is forever forbidden to find its resting place in the shadows of earthly things. Your cross is my pride, my joy. I am lost for You.

He sits by the old train station

He sits by the old train station—a cracked and worn hat hovering above a face more or less the same. Are those lines beside his eyes from years of smiles long past, or from squinting into the sun of another hopeless day?

People stare as they walk by. Not the open, wide-eyed stares of carnival-goers, but the furtive half-glances of people half-interested in—or only half-conscious of—his existence. They pass him and go on about their own half-lives. Yet, for those who would notice, he accepts his rank in life with a quiet dignity—a grace sometimes lacking in those fate chose to deem more fortunate. But Fate has always been closer to him than they. Never far off—in the sunshine next to the shadows—Fate has stayed, beckoning for him to face another sunset.

In his eyes is a sort of ragged nobility, and, nestled somewhere within the clear blue traces of those twin skies, is a depth that few would guess, and none could fathom. Those who pass him do not know him. He is just a glimpse in their hurried, time-torn lives. They could never guess the feelings that lie behind his eyes; nor do they realize that he, too, has lived a life. He too has felt warm breezes brush his smiling face. He too has shivered in the biting cold, and laughed and danced in the summer rain. His has been a heart both full and empty. Hopes are not something alien to him, and hunger is more than a desire to be fed.

But where did he come from, this half-glanced at mystery? Where is he going? Does his path stretch far behind him, or, as it seems, has he always been there, seeking the solace of a wall and its shadow? What are his thoughts, his hopes, his fears? What does he see in us, those who walk by and forget him the next moment? What would he say to us if we would only listen?


He sits by the old train station—a cracked and worn hat hovering above a face more or less the same. Don’t ask me much about him, though. I only saw him in a half-glance… and then I was on my way.

Your Sentence

All our lives are a sentence: One statement to the world—A solitary reminder that we were here. We are given one chance to write it; one parchment, one quill. We have all the time in the world—enough time to make our words count. But still, when it comes down to it, we are not given not all that much. We are given the vocabulary, the knowledge, the opportunity to learn what eloquence is, and put it forth in blazing words on our eternal tablet. We are sat next to the Great Author, the Inventor of Language, the Keeper of All Knowledge, and given unhindered answers to all of our questions if we only ask. We are handed the choice to produce as many copies of our work as we desire, but not the chance to recant and burn it once it is written.

All our lives are a sentence.

What will you say?

We are the wanderers

We are the wanderers. We spend our lives staring at the self-chosen few who cast their message to the world: "We have found the right direction." But few have. And even those who do find it are often filled with doubt, shaking their compasses and beseeching their unrelenting maps for ways around the mountains—or under them.

We are the hurried. Some run with reckless speed to hide from the world around them; cloaking the all-present enemy in a cloud of blurred out statements and unintelligible shapes. But their running only speeds them to the finish-line of realization and, tripping over their weakened false perceptions, they coming crashing to a halt in front of their small pile of hopes and accomplishments.

We are the fearful. Some cling to their surroundings, seeking to paint them on the canvas of permanence. But they, too, find their worlds tipped sideways; their paintings diluted and washed away by the rain that is time. Nothing stays but the wandering…

"Listen to me...
Hear what I have to say...
I can tell you something you’ve never heard before...
I can make you listen...
Stare at me...
I have found the right direction..."


...We are the wanderers.