Just an Ordinary Girl

She was just an ordinary girl
Dancing naked in the garden
Dancing naked in the moonlight
Red roses added color to her hair

She sang songs of tribulation
She sang songs of desolation
There was no absolution
No songs of salvation
No words of comfort
In the cold night air

The music was the wind
And a distant mandolin
She wished for a violin
To make her voice sound better
To make her voice sound sweeter

But the violinist
Had a broken finger
And he could not play as needed
So her voice was cold and ugly
And turned the world to sadness

The night gathered darker
And her songs became sadder
And the roses wilted in her hair
Her skin was blue and faded
Her eyes were worn and jaded
And she wished she was anyplace but here

She felt like she was a prisoner
To being just an ordinary girl
She longed for things beyond her
She longed for things unknowing
She longed for someone to love her
She longed for a lover to care
She longed to be wanted
To be thought of as a beauty
But she was just an ordinary girl

The roses in the garden
Became harder than any kind of stone
The night birds stopped singing
Leaving the ordinary girl all alone
The mandolin stopped playing
The night wind blew colder
The girl was now remorseful
For the things her songs had done

She wanted to go backwards
To the time of her beginning
Before her songs turned the world around
But clocks only tick forward
Towards the end she’d wished for
Not the one her heart wanted
Not the ones that filled her every dream

Just an ordinary girl
Made a difference in the world
With her songs of tribulation
The day would have ended better
If her songs were of salvation
If she had begged for absolution

She was just an ordinary girl
Dancing naked in the garden
Dancing naked in the moonlight
Red roses added color to her hair

She sang songs of tribulation
She sang songs of desolation
There was no absolution
No songs of salvation
No words of comfort
In the cold night air

Why Me

Why must I always be
At the bottom of the barrel
Why must my toast
Always be un-buttered
Always made from mouldy bread
Always burnt to crispness

Why am I the last
To be forever un-chosen
Why am I always picked on
And never picked upon
To take up a noble cause
Why do I never know
The knowing and seasons of others

When the whole world smiles
Why must I weep
Upon my own parade
On my own birthday clowns
On my own chocolate birthday cake

Why am I always rained upon
While the sun shines on others
Dancing in the street, two feet away
Why is my tea always cold
So un-flavoured from weak old tea bags

While others earn their burial urns
With pennies so easily found
I must dig for my richness
Among the dead, so long in smelly ground

I pick the pockets of the prophets
But they have less than I do
But why do others find the gold
That falls through the holes
Of un-holy and broken shoes

Why must I steal my words
From Wordsworth and word smiths
To paint pictures of lost birds
Who never loved or laid an egg

Why must I lay
Upon my death bed
While those older than me
Have found immortality

Why don’t my chickens lay eggs
So my family can be fat with meat
And not forever rail thin and hungry

Why must the seeds of wheat I sew
Forever fall upon un-fallow ground
Forever fall upon un-hallowed ground

I call all my questions out to the stars
Out to the moaning wind
Out to places I can never go to
But my questions return un-answered
And my dreams return un-dreamed
And my love spurned returns un-requited

Another Young Soldier

Can you hear the bugle playing
As they carry you to your grave
You are just a young many of twenty
But you were always very brave
You faced down every bully
You tried to right every wrong
Your country sent you to a bloody war
And now another young man is gone

Your mother’s cried so many tears
She can’t get out of bed
Your daddy is somewhere drinking
And wishing he were dead

Can you hear the drummer playing
As they lower you into your grave
You took up your countries call
Before you even had to shave
You stood up to the oppressor
And tried to right every wrong
You went off to a needless war
Now another young man is gone

You’ll never again make love to your wife
You’ll never watch your young son grow
You’ll never see him become a man
Do you wonder if he’ll ever understand

Can you hear the bag pipe playing
As they cover you in your grave
You thought you were doing the right thing
When you went away
You stood up to the dictator
You tried to right every wrong
You fought against all the odds
And now another young man is gone

Your body and mind were broken
Before your country brought you home
They left you to die like a rabid dog
On the streets all alone

Can you hear your friends weeping
As they leave you in your lonely grave
You are just a young man of twenty years
But you always were so brave
You faced down all the bullies
You tried to right every wrong
Your country sent you to an endless war
And now another young man is gone

A Troubled Man

Troubled thoughts
In a troubled mind
Of a troubled man
In troubling times
Will he ever find
His road to redemption

Or will he wander
In a never land
Filled with empty
And lonely things
Never finding
His way
Towards freedom

His music was his laughter
His music was his tears
And he never
Thought the years
Would ever change him

His music changed the world
His music shaped the morning
Now the world is in mourning
Because his shadow faded

Caught between
Being black and white
Caught between
Wrong and right
Was shame and guilt
His undoing

Did he live his dreams
Or did his dreams live him
Did we in someway
Lift him down
To be ordinary clay
Mired in the dark
That we live in

He could have been
Our light
He should have
Changed the darkness
But he lived in a land
Where he could
Never be the man
That we wanted

He never grew
Out of a child’s world
So he framed
His destiny
The way we
Frame our wanting

In the memories
Of our minds
He’ll be forever young
And we’ll
Always hear him singing

Children will dance
To his music
That he makes anew
In the place
Where he is going

His pain and sorrow
Are all gone
But our hurt
Is just beginning

Troubled thoughts
In a troubled mind
Of a troubled man
In troubling times
Can he now
Ever find
His own salvation

The Songs our Fathers Sang

In Selma Alabama a brave woman took a stand
A young black preacher led us to the Promised Land
He preached that equality and justice belong to everyone
No matter the colour of their skin
It’s time to sing the songs that our fathers sang
It’s time to sing the songs our fathers sang

Let there be an end to war and tyranny
Set all of the political prisoners free
Let love be the only word that’s heard
Let freedom be more than just another word
Let the strings of all your banjos ring
And tell all the little children to once more sing
Tell all the little children to once more sing
Sing the songs of peace that our fathers sang

From the Fraser River Valley down to the shining sea
From the snowy mountains across the prairie lands
Our beardless youth are called on to be men
When will the politicians ever learn in their hearts
That war is a bitter game no one ever wins
It’s time to sing our father’s songs of love again
It’s time to sing our father’s songs of love again

Pete Seeger’s and Woody Guthrie’s dreams go forever on
Bob Dylan’s songs of freedom are on the blowing wind
The causes are the same, even though the times have changed
It’s time to sing the songs our fathers sang
It’s time to sing the songs our fathers sang

Rainbows and dew drops fade in the light of day
The old and broken soldiers just simply fade away
And young men die on the killing fields again
Will we ever learn to pray for peace instead of war
Or will we just go on destroying life as we did before
We need to teach the children the songs our fathers sang
It’s time to teach the children the songs our fathers sang

In Selma Alabama a brave woman took a stand
A young black preacher led us to the Promised Land
He preached that equality and justice belong to everyone
No matter the colour of their skin
It’s time to sing the songs that our fathers sang
It’s time to sing the songs our fathers sang

Pete Seeger’s and Woody Guthrie’s dreams go forever on
Bob Dylan’s songs of freedom are on the blowing wind
The causes are the same, even though the times have changed
It’s time to sing the songs our fathers sang
It’s time to sing the songs our fathers sang

The Streets of Chi Town

Cocaine, death cold and snow white
Blood streams hot and rose red
Young folks are lying in the gutter dead
The streets of Chi Town are running red
With the blood of its children

Callie at fourteen, is a woman grown
She use to have a man of her own
Now her man is shot and gone
Because of the bad thing he went and done
And now she has a baby on the way

A dirty ally was Callie’s wedding bed
Now she’s just another mother that’s unwed
Because she never listened to a word her mother said
And the streets of Chi Town are flowing red
With the blood of its children

Her man was just starting to shave
But now he’s lying in a cold lonely grave
Young Callie is trying the best to save
A little money for her child

Being a street walker in the night
Can never make anything right
So she deals a little of the death white
Knowing that it’s not all sweetness and light
However there is no other game to play
Her belly is growing bigger every day

Because there’s a baby on the way
She has become a ganger’s prey
In her dreams, her man is still around
Instead of lying dead like a hound
In the cold and bloody ground of Chi Town

Her man James put the blankets on his own bed
And now his lying cold and dead
The streets of Chi Town are running red
With the blood of its children

After dark in Seneca park
Looks like all the cops have fled
And the streets of Chi Town
Are running bright red
With the blood of its children

The gangers own the town at night
The drugs they sell are a blight
Sapping the will of any who’ll fight
And those that stand for something right
End with an alleyway as their burial site

The ghetto streets are a war zone
A wooden box is the war lord’s throne
His warriors are less than half grown
But their faces are well known
In the ugly streets of Chi Town

Old folks huddle in the dark
Listening to guns go off in the park
And pray to make it through the night
Pray to live until the morning light

Young James was killed in a drive by
He never had a chance to say goodbye
Callie watched without a tear in her eye

She couldn’t take the time to cry
Because its dog eat dog
And only the strong survive
She knew she had to stay alive
Selling drug is hard way to survive
But that’s the only one game to play
When you have a child on the way

A young woman with child is lying dead
Two bullets in her pretty little head
And the streets of Chi Town are running red
With the blood of its children

Cocaine, death cold and snow white
Blood streams hot and rose red
Young folks are lying in the gutter dead
The streets of Chi Town are running red
With the blood of its children