At school I was Eleanor Rigby,
A lonely schoolboy in the dark.
Then with some kind of will
I dragged myself from the well
To become the fool on the hill.
I suffered the pain of those people;
I felt the same kind of hurt inside.
Whenever I heard those melodies
I just wanted to run and hide.
For the sixties sent me spinning
With promises the decade never kept.
For free-love was as fast as the bulletproof glass
Of the rich limousines of those stone-day-steps.
No ideology could save me;
No promises could ever be true;
I was father Mackenzie’s ghost
And the alienation of it just grew.
I found ways to hide the feelings inside
With drink and with many a disguise:
But you could know the real man I was
By looking in my unshaded eyes.
Pop music moved and changed me:
It also opened the wound
That lonely children feel, vulnerable and real
Under the tread of a relentless wheel.
I changed, but in vain I was altered,
To sit on that windy hill,
Helpless and hopeless with vertigo
And I carry that sadness still.
I cut myself off from my feelings
I was found by spirits in the night.
I dreamed the non-dream that lives in the heart
That you only imagine in blind sight.
Hope was my quest in years of loneliness
Hope grew from a flicker to a flame
Hope kept alive the good things inside
That the world nearly sent to the grave.
1995 Nov 10th
