
The Kelly Song Collective
Held
The sun will burn. The moon will know.
The stars will die. The seas will cry. The winds will blow.
All through my mind a tumbleweed –
she was a flower that was a girl that was a seed.
Flames will taste the books they burn –
the history of the words we love, the sounds we learn.
And fire drinks the autumn air.
The sparks are eyes like fireflies around your hair.
I’ve held your hair – a ribbon in my hand.
I’ve made the knot, twisted in the sand.
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Babies born to fill our tombs.
The reaper’s knife so full of life and empty wombs.
Hate will bloom if love will wilt.
So, here’s a cup to lighten up your sober guilt.
And all the roads will lead you home.
They’ll steer you from Jerusalem, Mecca, and Rome.
The yellow of the lion’s tooth
will dry and then a skeleton shows us the truth.
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I’ve held the truth – your body in my hand.
The hour glass – its blood is made of sand.
The stoic trees will shed their skin.
The ground will eat their dying meat, Then sleep again.
And neither fate nor destiny
will beat the odds, and all your gods beg on their knees.
The sky will fold – a paper plane.
And it’s too late to perforate your widow’s pain.
Now gravity has lost its hold.
His cherished son has up and run. His hands are old.
I’ve held his hand. It’s made of rusted sound.
It nailed my heart to the calloused ground.
I won’t waste your time.
It’s far too young next to mine.
Our bottle’s in the sea.
The note is yours. It moves in me.
The rivers limp and stumble lame.
Around the bend your oldest friend forgets your name.
Its sound is drawn from chamber walls,
then spit like blood and there’s a flood in concert halls.
The night will lick its whistling lips.
It’s a call to arms and boyish charms And sinking ships.
Still at last until for now,
the legs of time can’t skip and rhyme. They don’t know how.
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© Audsongs 2018
