You can have my heart
You can break and bend it as you will
But I'll need something in return
I'll need the way your eyes sparkle in the light
And the way you run your hands through your hair when we fight
If you could leave your fingers intertwined with mine
Well, that would be more than fine

You can keep my dreams,
Throw them away  with us
But I want something too
I want the way you feel, flush against skin
And the way you say my name, over and over again
If you could give me your smile upon my lips
Maybe I can live with this

And you can move on
And I'll sit surrounded by the pieces you left me
Spending my time thinking about what should be
And you will find your second and third someone new
But I'll be happy here if you leave me the memories of you

All I want to do is make You proud
  but I am stuck sitting on fences.
I can't seem to stand fast in the straight
  So I stay, just getting splinters

I'm stuck somewhere between
  who I am and who I want to be
And the answers are so clear
  but they always seem out of reach

So I grasp at indecision
   all the while my choices break Your heart
And every day I stay in the middle
   the further we are...apart

But You never leave me
   even though it kills You to watch me live
And when I come crawling back
   all Your love You'll give

You'll coax me into restfulness
   and I'll be rebuked by Your perfection
And my bruised and broken spirit
   healed and resurrected

But again and again I let You down
   living in foolish pride
While all the time you watch
   my sin, in vain, I try and hide

I keep making my mistakes
   and You keep picking me up off the floor
And how wretched I can be won't matter
  Because You'll always love me more

"Old man, please listen to my tale
   for someone needs to hear
The store of a girl with lies so dark
    and oh so many fears.

Old man this is important
    not just to me but to you.
I know you don't understand
    but trust me you will soon.

You is started with broken homes,
    which leads to single lives.
And judges and courts and child support,
    well, you knows as well as I.

The woman, she had a temper,
    and her fists and words did fly.
But she did her best with what she had,
   Boy did she try.

To fill the shoes that were much to big,
    when her feet were much too small.
Her frustration needed venting,
    call me the punching wall."

"Well little girl where was your dad,"
     he tenderly said to me.
"Well old man, I couldn't tell you,
    but maybe you could tell me."

A puzzled look did grace his face
    his features stiff and tall
So finally I asked the man
    "Do you recognize this at all?"

And I held out a picture of a babe,
    fresh from her mothers womb.
And a sign saying "Dear daddy,
    please come home from war soon"

"The war has messed me up dear child,
     for I am no one's dad."
I smiled as I said to him,
   "I know sir, I understand.

But you can't blame this on the war
   for we did meet again
Because I used to visit
   until you left to follow another ***** hen."

A knowing look graced his face,
    as he remembered me.
"Dear child I am sorry,
      I should have remembered thee."

"Oh it's okay old man," I say,
     "I just wanted you to know.
I have a husband now you see,
     and a family of my own

My husband, he adores the kids,
    of which there are two.
A little boy and girl, 7 and 9
    neither of which know of you.

One day I'll tell them of a man
    who had more important things to do
And then I'll point to my husband and say
   ' I didn't have a daddy like you'

And no amount of words,
   will change what is our past.
I do not seek apologies,
   I only needed to ask.

If when you go to bed at night,
   you ever think of me.
Do you ever think what you've lost,
   or did you just believe,

That we were better off alone
    and that I'd be alright.
Or were you just to busy,
    to think of me at night.

Did you remember,
   if my eyes were brown or blue.
Did ever wonder,
   If I looked like you."

"But little girl you didn't ask
    any of those today
I can answer all sufficiently
   and help you find your way."

"Old many I didn't need to ask,
     to get the answers that I seek.
For when you did not recognize
   your smile or your cheeks,

I knew that you were fine without me,
     and your reasons for being gone,
Were that you were much to busy,
     to bring a kid a long.

And I know that you don't miss me,
    for when my husband's away,
He drops down to his knees at the door,
   longing to hug his kids all day.

You did no such thing right here,
   and now I know the truth.
You were much to selfish,
   Who would need a man like you.

But before I leave, you should know,
   that I was never okay.
I always blamed myself,
   for why you didn't stay.

But thank you for the answers,
   and maybe I'll sleep tonight.
Knowing it wasn't me, but you,
   that was too weak to fight.

I'll take comfort in knowing it wasn't me,
   that pushed your love away.
You had no spare love to give,
   so I'm glad you didn't stay.

So I hope that you are happy,
   and I hope the world is kind and true.
For I am finally okay,
   knowing it was always you.

I stand above my bed
And examine the damage.
Blankets this way and that
Pillows all over
Sheets tangled up around themselves.
Proof of something that
Only hours ago
Left this place empty.
I take in the rubble
And breathe deeply.
I lower myself down to those
Tangled sheets
And backwards bedspreads
And fill my lungs with you.
I pull them up around me
And close my eyes
And wish for this place to be
The same kind of battleground
Again tomorrow.

We Haven't Found an Anchor Yet (But This'll Have to Do)



...

Tear the clock off the wall
We'll say we invented
A world where time passes
The way it was meant to


We'll build it out of bottlecaps
Or cadences of songs
That were sung a long long time ago
And will be sung long after
We're all gone

It was good to sing along

Or build it out of unmade beds
Or scratches on the walls
Or the things we said before
We went to bed and
All the parts we can't recall

I know I loved it all


Our hearts are still red
And the walls are still white
And we haven't got a map
But we've got all night

The sky may turn black
But the ocean's still blue
We haven't found an anchor yet
But this'll have to do


Tear the clock off the wall
We'll say we invented
A world where time passes
The way it was meant to

Throw yourself to the wind
Let it take us wherever it will
We've hours and pages
and glasses to fill



Art for Aeroplanes



It was something, it had to be
something about the sound
The wind chimes made
That reminded me

Below flickering shapes
of the last silhouettes of the leaves
in trees in autumn yards we
made our way through

The melody was
Aimless and the
Cadence never came
So much different than the
Saddest thing
A symphony could play

Like the sounds from our childhood
Resolved into a wordless hum
We understood


It was something, perhaps
A particular way that the light
Hit the street
That reminded me

Connecting the dots
On those stumbling walks between
Softer parts of mid December's
Muddy sting

It had rained and made those
multi coloured
columns on the ground
We went walking down the middle
there was
No one else around

I think I felt the way we did
In all our favorite hiding spots
When we were kids


It was gone in an instant
It was gone in an instant
And so were we
We had places to be


Afternoon's grid
Of jet trails overhead
Looked nothing like the lines we would've left
Had we spilled paint behind us
Everywhere we threw ourselves
When that high sun had set

Not sure what we're looking for
If anything at all

Something that we've seen before?
Something that we lost?

Or maybe this is it, for all we know

The light was bright, we turned away
And the bits of it that stayed
Looked something like the softly focused
Half remembered shape of things
From sun baked roads so long ago
On rainy days

Not sure what we're looking for
If anything at all

Something that we've seen before?
Something that we lost?

Maybe this is it, all I know is
If our faces showed a little of the lights inside our heads
We put on quite a show

And so
One more for the road



One Thousand Little Rooms



We've left our shoes
By the doors of a thousand places
Much like this one
Before

I've seen those colours
In the eyes of a thousand faces
Much like yours
And yours and yours and yours

Marilee is pounding the keys of
A piano all covered in ash
Below bottles in a row on a windowsill
With paint stains on the glass
Paint stains on the glass


I think we're made up of
Sparsely scattered instances
In places
In time

Like shapes of cities at night
Are but a million filaments
Of incandescent light

Marilee still pounding the keys of
A piano all covered in ash
Below bottles in a row on a windowsill
With paint stains on the glass

And our conversation fell
And our conversation rose
And our conversation fell
And our conversation rose
And all the things we had to say
Overlapped the notes to make a space
Your restless island souls could call a coast


One thousand little rooms
Where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
From little rooms where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
From little rooms where we light our little fires at night
Are like the places in our lives and inside our minds
The way the shape of the city is a million lights
The little rooms where we light our little fires

Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight
Are what we call our home tonight



Farewell Fires & Flying Machines



That night you brought a camera
That night your hands shook, but
It was the closest that you ever came, I'd say
To how it really looked

That night you wore a sweater
You left it lying on the floor
The folds I traced with tired eyes like some old map with lines that led to
Places we'd forgotten things before

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadences of our favorite songs
Give them a shape
They're prone to fade away

We still had lights behind our eyelids
Long after we'd all gone to bed
I'd love to save them but I've never been a painter
And so I write it down instead

And I'll fill one thousand pages
I'll write whatever comes to mind
And on the day I find myself one thousand miles away
Perhaps a part of me will still exist behind

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadences of our favorite songs
While I'm describing fleeting dreams
Of faces, streets, and wine
We'll make them real

Oh, but what colour was that fire anyways, my dear?


When I leave I'm going very far away
When I leave I'm going very far away

When I leave I'm going very far away
I don't want to see your colours fade
When I leave I'm going very far away
I don't want to see your colours fade

I don't want to see you
Looking like those grey remains
Of last night's farewell fires
Waiting to be swept away

So throw your paint on every wall
Illustrate the cadence of our favorite song
Each and every brightly coloured, tired eye
We'll leave a mark at all
The highest spots we rise

There are things which have no shape



While We're All Still Here**



We hid away in places
No one else would ever think to look
Imagined that the things we said
Were inked and set in pages
Of some great book

Well in a way they were
I think
Although we'll never know
Quite how the whole thing ends

When the sun begins to rise
When all our lines are said
When, someday this moment's passed us by
The way we seem to pass our shadows
As we're passed by cars at night

Will we see pages?
Looking like familiar flags
Will we see them through Old Eyes?

It was hand on heart
It was heart on sleeve
Impossible to miss, but
It was hard to believe
It was staring at the sun
It was stumbling blind
It was a place
It was a time
It was hard to define
It was the sum of all our footprints
And the paint we may have spilled
It was a little like a blueprint
Of a thing we'd planned to build
It was the times we had to whisper
And the things we had to shout
It was the candle that we lit
To see the last one burning out
It was hazy
It was aimless
It was staying the course
It was a weighty affair
With direction and force
It was a world that we built
Out of bits of thin air
It was bent light in a parting glass we've yet to share

We're all still here


There will come a day
When the sky goes dark with
Aeroplanes, angels, and black clouds

But we're still here
For now

There will come a day
When the sky goes dark with
Aeroplanes, angels, and black clouds

But we're still here
For now

...

I had
drowned in
those ocean currents
they call eyes.

Slipped away,
not a word outspoken.
Strangled with glacier hands,
fingertips of salt and
thunder cottoning my
eardrums.

You wanted to save me,
but I could not tell you
over the salt eroding
my throat,

that you were the one drowning me.

I manipulated hearts today-
Without guilt I was in control
and it felt good.

With my own hands
I cut them,
With my own hands
I felt them,
With my own imagination
I twisted them until they fit just right.
Just like placing stars in
the magic of the night.

I cut out paper hearts today,
Twenty four of them.
It all seemed perfect,
One heart for every hour-
In a day,
That we're apart.

I moved them,
The hearts,
And shaped them-
And spread them apart,
Like time zones between here,
And Australia.

If only there wasn't a time zone bewteen us,
If only there wasn't your destiny and mine-
If somehow these hearts could beat together;
The rhythm to a love song-
But they cannot...

They're paper thin
hoping to win,
The hands of someone
to hold them.