March To The Beat Of Your Own Drum

The orchestra will try to make you

Change your tune

You don’t have to keep in time

Or even be heard

Above the cacophony

As long as you hear your own music

Feel the rhythm

Love the style

And enjoy the way

It makes you feel

The artistic director may try to

Turn you around

Conduct you

And make you toe the line

Find musicians more to your liking

Ones that share the same tempo

And can keep in time to your beat

As you keep in time with theirs

And let you do a solo now and then

Make and play the sort of music

That allows you to change key

Without warning

It has to be that way

Or, all your life

You’ll be out of tune.

It Started Out Like Any Other Day

It started out

With the same theme

Like any other day

Old routine

Long time

Stuck in the sack

They’re having fun

I’m out of whack

While cocooned

Had strange dreams

Chewing leaves

Anything green

I was running away

From a bird on my case

Dived into undergrowth

To get it out of my face

Ate my way through

The neighbours hedge

Flower patch

Gouged on veg

Addicted to grass

Tried to ease

Desperate craving

For garden peas

Exhausted then

Fell asleep

Hairy legs

Belly deep

The neighbourhood cried

Here comes trouble

I yawned and stretched

And burst from the bubble

It started out

With the same theme

Like any other day

Old routine

But life became

A permanent high

When I emerged

A butterfly.

It Happened In The Attic

Below the belt of this old house, it’s cold

Numb and still, and finally, got old

It doesn’t have a creak or moan

There are no stairs in this old home

And in the footsteps, no stories will be told

But the top of this old house, it shines bright

Its restless light won’t allow the night

Electricity-you hear its hum

It can’t switch off, it’s always on

This lonely one, just won’t give up the fight

The action is all happening upstairs

There’s a ghost that sits up there and dares

To dream of things that never came to pass

Of memories, that still hold hard and fast

It’s firing on all cylinders-don’t look down

Hopes and goals could still come back to town

Love could wipe the tears away

Of manic, laughing clowns this day

That in the past, were only going to drown

It happened in the attic, that cold night

Thieves planned to steal, and leave, without a fight

They had thought the job would be

oh, so soft

They hadn’t bargained

on the old one, in the loft

Now inventions, are created, thick and fast

They’ll see the flames explode the attic glass

The sparks they fly, and shake the building too

And they’ll be fireworks for anyone in view

The thieves didn’t get a chance

to steal

And rub on open wounds

that never learned to heal

Now, inside the attic,

there’s a glow

And the warmth into the house,

begins to flow

And bring back life into the soul,

that they all said,

was abandoned, boarded up, and left for dead.

Hiding In The Shadows

It’s hiding in the shadows

I say it won’t last

The murky old memories

Cobwebs of the past

Detritus and debris

Lying on the floor

The body of regret

Dead behind the door

Bitterness and sorrow

Smells of rot and rust

Of damp, dark mildew

Of mold, dank and must.

It’s hiding in the shadows

The pain and the love

The joy and the anger

Mingle in the dust

The hopes and the what-if’s

Broken dreams, failed schemes

Scramble for the strip of light

That peeps beyond the beams

I listen for footsteps

But they are silent in the hall

What’s hiding in the shadows

Won’t come out at all.

Is frozen in the distance

And cannot move or go.

It’s stuck in aged decades

Of many moons ago.

This shadow is looming

And it won’t let me be.

What’s hiding in the shadows

Well, that thing…

Is me.