Mind the gaps, don’t fall through cracks and leave all stones unturned.
There’s truth in lies, you won’t always get what you have earned.
Wandering in the wilderness will get you nowhere slow
if you have no place to go.
This isn’t how it is, this isn’t what we do.
The laws of gravity push down on your youth
and for every bad hangover there’s another sober thought.
Love can’t be taught.

You took the crown of thorns for which you were the heir.
A steady slow progression - employee to employer.
Hope is never far away but neither is despair
and there’s only ever going to be one way out of here.
At some point in the future you’ll face what you’ve become.
If it isn’t in the next life maybe it’s in this one.
And ramblings of the old don’t mean much to the young.

Doors that should be deadlocked spring open and display
knives of ignorance, guns of stupidity.
Another thing to box us in, bubble and protect
and then neglect
Now’s not the time to panic, the masks are wearing thin.
Drown your sorrow, drink to tomorrow, then begin again.
Feeling like you’re grieving for someone you never knew.
Could it be you?

Identity badges, expressions of despair.
Wrapped up tight against the harshest night of the year.
It’s not about right or wrong or what you’ve got to show
It’s about who you know.
All wrapped up and bundled down endless avenues
with 20 20 hindsight the past’s there to review.
While you wonder what the point is time quickly passes through
and then it’s gone.

In an existential crisis the question’s meaningless
if the meaning to existing’s to find reasons to exist.
The devil’s in the detail, dominant and dumb
and here it comes.
A symmetry of cemeteries waiting on the unwell.
Throw the dice, make a choice, straight to Heaven, straight to Hell.
Build your bricks on floodplains, foundations fail and fall.
That is all.

Something so shallow passed off as so deep.
Pseudo meditations between shopping and sleep.
The sheer brutality of the blatant lie.
A truth for an untruth - eye to eye.
Steaming up the glass with your own hot air.
Incapable of anything, shattered, sharp and scared.
Comfortably uncomfortable, wealthy, ill at ease
and hard to please.

Your conscience will not leave you though you’ll bury it deep.
You’re daydreams turn to nightmares as you try to sleep.
Diplomacy goes absent as orders grow tall.
Smoke and mirrors won’t hide your fall.
Painting pretty pictures to sense rather than see.
The taste and touch and smell of things, the sounds of misery.
Nothing’s really lost or found, everything’s a giveaway
and a cliche.

Going through a cold snap, frozen deep inside.
Complaints of yesterday are thawing and alive.
Best to keep your mouth shut, best to keep it zipped.
Protection peels off slowly when things warm up a bit.
Keep the past behind us where it all belongs.
Mirror to infinity feelings old and young.
Childhood reminiscences curdle on the tongue
bittersweet songs.

One small life, one big laugh.
Impatient for life to pass.
Knowing winks, idle chat.
Breathing in the dreaming gas.
Keep the chaos in place and make memories to recall
how you didn’t believe but still swallowed it all
and those sweets that you stole as a kind of joke
stuck in the throat.

They’re digging up the high street, the road’s been closed all day.
On the moral high ground where there’s more hole than clay.
The weeds are really blooming, spreading seedlings to survive
and how they thrive.
Cut to a lonely figure against the din and boom
lost inside a head-space playing old familiar tunes.
A standing ovation and a rapturous applause
but no encores.

Trying to keep a distance, never stopping to engage.
Resistance may be futile but for now it’s all the rage.
The illusion is collusion but more likely is just blind
when you hide behind enemy lines.
We are not war buddies, we were not best mates.
Patience grates against time and everything’s too late
if you wait for an answer that’s never going to come.
Then it’s done.

Hope and charity, holiness and empathy.
Sweet words form a sour mouth searching for some sympathy.
A glowing knowing smile from an old familiar face
puts everything back in it’s place.
But changing the location, altering the plan
won’t take away the evidence of damage that’s been done
and though all the whistle blowers are left whistling in the wind.
it’s still a sin.

Start again as you mean to go on.
Return to the place where never-ending began.
Secret rendezvous, illicit activities.
Just one small rebellion, just one small deceit.
Judgments may be premature, there’s love behind their eyes.
Ignore swift conclusions, catastrophising is unwise.
The clothes may be tatty, it doesn’t mean that they’re no good.
Just misunderstood.

Add up their achievements, take pause to celebrate.
It’s time for recognition, time to re-calibrate.
Not everything is lost, there’s still so much to do
even if you don’t want to.
And shouting at the silence won’t help the living deaf.
Turning blind eyes to refocus and hoping for the best
only means your legacy will die a thousand deaths
like all the rest.

Time for quiet, time for peace.
Time to consider the end of the lease.
No urgency, no bucket list
but it would be nice to be missed.
But voices in big heads send worlds spinning round
and imaginary friends have all gone to ground.
No one ever really came, there wasn’t anyone to come
and now it’s done.

Hits like a bullet. Sniper on the roof.
Shooting up to kill, rubber bullet proof.
Yours is a tricky smile - beguiling, misaligned
and always from behind.
Masquerading as an old friend, undercover with intent.
To the sound of tar and rubber we turn and turn again.
Years spent trying not to tread on crazy paving thoughts
then the onslaught.

Easy when you’re the taker but now’s the time to give.
Allowing deathly people to live how you’d have liked to live.
Mumble humble prayers as you reach out for a light.
Hope holds on tight.
All the colours tumble as darkness descends
to the longest night, a world without end.
The storyline continues way after we are done
there’s always more to come.

In sickness as in health, with faltering memory.
In happy times and sad we don’t need philosophy.
The sky is a tormenting blue, the clouds are steely grey
as the sun gives us away.
With all our rewards, our guilt and our shame.
Our pride and our falls, our certificates of gain.
And now you crush all your tablets on spoons of jam
because you can.

Space and time make children of us all.
The universe holds each of us both big and very small.
From up above we look like love, lonely and so blue
and almost true
with action and purpose, subtlety and poise
but when decency fails, honesty annoys.
When only trivia prevails after all is said and gone
truth hangs on.