An almanac awry

unprecedented
and no explanation
you're reaching up with your own two hands
and catching air as an explanation
twenty years long, and twenty years wide
but still there's no answers just yet as to whys

a warm, summer breeze breathes promise amid the winter
but these shifting, trembling floors do not feel and don't remember
there is promise in the earth, as it waits for stronger tides
the tides of war and peace can be held by the heart of a child
no one ever heard of this
but we all thought we knew
it's unprecedented what You're doing
unprecedented -- just like You

Half truth, half you

There's nothing more to say,
Nothing new, just another day
You won't call,
No, and I won't answer.
Did we always know,
In the end we'd only hear
"I told you so's"
And how everything just seems
Like someone's sick joke?

No, I can't,
I can't un-do what's been done
I close my eyes,
You're the only one,
And I just wish sometimes you wouldn't stay away.

Are you happy?
Did it make you feel better,
To throw your punches,
While I was on my knees
So lay it all on me,
What does it matter anyway?

Say, goodybye,
Sing it softly speaking this lullaby,
You know we both sound best together.

Stranger staring back

Watching everyone's faces for a trace of worry,
Looking over my shoulder to see everything is the same.
Hopefully wishing for a break from these routines.

No one says otherwise. Not a word seems misplaced.
No excuse for me to doubt,
This stranger staring back into my face.

But I do. I know your secret. I know.
You assume my position, and even my accents.
Still, you're a stranger living in my skin.

What do people do -- maybe my elders?
When they cannot recognize the mirror looking back,
When a stranger sleeps in their beds?

I'm searching for my shadow that's been misplaced.
Straining to see some clue to where I've gone.
I'm lost, oh why, when I'm where I've always been...

the beginning of the ends meet

I'm hearing melodies in my head,
and I feel a rhythm pulsing in my bones --
A building anthem rising
Amid my heart that's torn apart.
My hands are slowly getting weaker,
I cannot seem to find,
The strength to pick up where we left off,
Strong legs to leave it far behind.

You hear the tyrant wind howling,
Tearing flesh down to the bone.
You see the whole world wakefully sleeping,
A key without a home.

I know I said I was resolved,
Three I's, no you's, no we.
I could make up my own mind to
Never need you, never dream.
And though we said we didn't want this
No, not this way at all.
I'd still do it all again, dear,
Just to know that I could fall.

We're all a sleeping forest.
Lines of grey around the light.
Yet in this dark December,
I wish it was you holding me tight.

For a mandolin and a banjo...

Eddie Vedder and I are getting our acts together.
Well, he's singing about change and rising up, facing the world and shunning society's ways of doing things, and I - I am thinking that it sounds great AND like a lot of work.

Feel my pain

If you could,
Just maybe translate something for me.
See, I don't know how I'm supposed to feel,
And I don't know how I can react.
Because I don't feel.
Some might think I have tapped into,
A Midas' touch if there ever were one.
But I would just like to:
Cry when I am sad
Dance in joy
Reflect the pain I feel,
In some way, when I am forgotten, judged,
snubbed, ignored and all else.
I would just like to feel it for my self.
It is so detached from me.
Can someone feel it for me?

On things undeserved and hope

With all of the change
Still You have not forgotten
All things will be right