the shadows do the talking
looking at the begging glares
how strange the fallen’s cries
dug down with tar dug down with sound
restless fading tired flights
the day will come for time to bleed
restfull deeds they strengthen
drop down and smell the glow alone
new nights come and claim the calm
their eyes burst into flames
the path that shows the light
must pass revealing the shine
I had to think over this one for a bit, I’ve read this several times now and each time I am struck by the mood and the series of images that I’ve been trying to piece together. I’d say the imagery is more cryptic than your “Explorer” poem– many of the images here are oxymoronic or synesthetic, and force the reader to think in atypical ways. What really comes through here is a certain mood that I can’t quite define… “tragically revelatory”? The title is almost suggestive of some kind of purge… and there is a lot of emotion undulating under the surface here.
I like how between the three verses it transitions from images of darkness (shadows do the talking/ dug down with tar/ fading tired flights), to images of light (burst into flames/ path that shows light/ revealing the shine.) Reading this I have the sense of a pendulum on it’s upswing, with the heavy feel of its eventual dropping back down.
thanks for the reflection on this one. this one started out as a much larger set of lyrics that i found were too much so i pared it down to what you see here.
my original intentions…
the first verse is about the people who pass by the homeless on the streets and their absence of voice/action in the rest of their life. they feel bad momentarily but forgot to do anything about other’s situations in a humanistic sense later…when the visual of seeing the homeless is gone from their memory. the second verse is from the perspective of the homeless person needing to purge everything from their past in order to get out of the funk and realize that they need to go at it alone to get into a better place. and the third is about the redemption of the homeless person who made it out and how the original people who passed by are burnt by not getting their ass in gear to help out. they wanted to but didn’t and then couldn’t believe that the homeless person was able to get out of their situation without help. and they wonder if they would be able to do the same. and at the end, the light that blinds the homeless person with the positivity of the future must be short lived so that he/she can move onto more important things.
as i said…it was part of a larger piece, but i felt like this boils it down and obfuscates my original idea enough to allow the reader to infer pieces that i may not have thought of.