You Are Here

Behind a wasted window, you hear the children shout;
You try to blend into them but your bruises stand you out;
They sing their songs of sixpence, blind mice and blackbird pie,
And ridicule your pitiful attempts to harm a fly;
Impaled upon the railings, behind a wailing wall,
You wonder where you go from here and why you're here at all.

The hangers-on have nearly torn the tails from your coat
And still they wonder why you sit here spitting in your moat;
They drink a pint of freeload to your fabulous career
And so say all of them until they push you off the pier;
You march into oblivion armed with a carriage clock
And keys you've had for so long, you forget what they unlock.

And from a wasted garden, you hear the children shout;
You try to listen to them but you don't know what they're on about;
You look through books of photos taken only yesterday
And wonder how from then till now the years leaked away,
So everything in front of you does nothing but remind
Your punctured soul of all the junk you thought you'd left behind.

There tolls the bell but still you tell yourself it's no big deal
And stick another plaster onto your Achilles heel;
Your letters to the elders have fallen through the cracks
And so, the executioner keeps sharpening his axe;
Just as you hear his bloody knuckles knocking on your door,
You notice there’s a gap between your footprints and the floor.

Here's to the stale dreams of a life-defying man,
The fire escape that led you straight into a frying pan;
This is how they end you up: once bitten, nice no more -
Then they bite you one more time, to make completely sure;
So here you are, surveying the remains of your belief
That there's a kindly saint inside the heart of every thief.

Somewhere far above you, a bird spits out a song
You haven't heard since you were nine and used to sing along;
And somewhere far behind you, this tune falls on the ears
Of someone else who one day will be wondering why they're here;
Meanwhile the righteous victors clean up today's crime scene
And throw your photo in a file marked ‘what might have been'.