Segue to Reflection

born into thick wet night, under sliver moon, on rickety boat, tossed about
by the great dark waters, when i became Albion and Albion became me.
soon as took small steps was i taught to bear the boat, as mother
beautiful angel of protection, went to rich, muddy land ’til god
hung stars. be brave boy for her. the sea stayed, a second mother.
in still night sang small songs of green islands with sister.
devised easy lies in bemusing time alone, learned the sea,
awash with troubles, off the dank islands of dreams, like a
mute dog chained in the alfalfa. would crenelate my being,
for dubious day faint streetlight’s flicker and cry of liquor
would pull me there, seeking new truth, wondering at
albion’s bursting life, as mother’s dream-telling fought
fears…always loved to speak of me in third person.

as it happens i was left there only then to find,
more of me than ever i’d known and none of it in my mind…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to The Mirror

relentlessly dreamed of father’s treacherous ghost.
met me in tiered tower, where bold black bells tolled.
grew dimmer he did and darker in mind.
invented prayers and asked great god to lead blank way to him,
as he had no plans to know me.
heard him scratch and trample by, found only failing trails of scot blood
i couldn’t cultivate hate enough to forsake.
open doors father, so cold here in vast recess of the sea.
we may sail off in tears, embarrassed of sad hearts, all saints sing along, at night,
and drink to love of mother, with only moonlight bearing quiet witness…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to A Burning Flame

frightened face of hers lacked no poignancy, had excess yellow charm.
was sometimes fiery red and short of breath, sometimes desperate.
carried a foot stomping stubbornness nearer to ripe reason than rude.
when didn’t know the language spoken, prayed for confidence to try.
always prayerful, blessedly brave and yet was still a child’s face.
a child with faith in god enough
to make albion a beginner.

i watch soft flowers wilt and seep the moisture from their stems,
they fall to waves beneath my window, i admire them,
as she holds a guided wisdom, given and innate,
sister visits in my kingdom, giggle and make her wait…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Choir Boy

Albion morphed, with showers of tearful sky, powerful, huge waters
and blind years of dinghy to land school.
taught me tired teacher’s fallen passion and politics of child cliques.
spots of earth stretched out and shook like dusty bears, begging question.
longed to look out eyehole cracks of rocks, in which one might sleep.
albion, so long lost, in dreary social infancy, craved intoxicating music,
poet’s strife.
with woeful goodbye, pushed myself, eyes open, into the icy waters.
became what the sea could deftly hold and thrashing me she was,
for every yard i swam to the islands of dreams.
with an empty cup and lyric link to the heavens,
mardi gras of journey had begun…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Innocent

from the start the good times were plenty, from the start it was cool and we were
kings, near the end, it was the same as any ending, takes a while to talk about these
things. it was rules and regulations against saviors and salvations, i mean we were
boys who wanted more from life than spit ! we were tied up in tomorrow, laughter,
booze and sorrow, but the happiness was just in getting it…
…found, friends, unbowed, to no ends, shared, took, frightened and forsook,
inspired, black gardens, crosses, then hardens, bathes, betrays, leaves and stays,
withdrawn, protected, unwilling, disconnected, acting unaffected…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Alone This Friday

i feel a drop of rain let spill, oh god, my prayers had quite a will,
for that’s no rain, that’s alcohol; beer wine every one, and all.
i see a puddle, steps ahead and dive into this drunken bed
and swim with such a great delight, as only thought i ever might…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Shine

and in my tipsy reverie, an angel came to visit me,
‘cause i’d been searching endlessly, through each bright inlet of the sea,
above my head, beneath my feet,
the alleyways, the city streets,
and bottles upon bottles, futilely,
for the honorable world she’d bring to me,
so i would hide the worser half of me…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Lord

… surveyed daily wreckage from a home in bleeding trees,
Albion had practiced killing principles,
i had nursed my fear of love, with pickled hands that couldn’t grasp the gift,
did well at disappointing god above…
and how to hide my heart inside my fist,
while what destroyed me fit me like a glove…

she: “where’s your girlfriend…?
(sees something) “is that drugs…?”
“i feel like you totally understand me…”
Albion: “sorry, uh… what was your name again…?

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Junky for the Pain

the poison i’m smoking, the poison is choking me,
i haven’t spoken, i’m broken, i’m broken, i’m broken….
and it looks like all my nightmares took on personalities
and they won’t behave and i’m a willing slave
to all these worthless saints and thieves.
and certainly life’s irony is never lost on me,
that my island seems the safest place in all the troubled sea,
the demons that i call my friends are these,
the demons that i call my friends are these…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Behind the Song

Soldier: “HALT! no passage to the other islands again, you will stay!”

Albion: “but Albion must… i’ve lost songs… gone around the bend…
have to fight my way back… this whole war is because of me!”

Soldier: “uh,huh…… just this once! …but leave all DEFENSES STRIPPED…
it’s killing the islands, the whole damn lot!”…

Segue to Sweet Smile

as you wipe away your falling tears i’m falling,
where you hide your face i’ll see,
where you walk, the place you rest in,
the cove you make your mother’s nest in,
sail to any port upon the sea,
then turn around and see it’s me,
turn around and see it’s me…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Heaven and Avarice

i want for all the riches up in heaven,
i want for all the riches here on earth,
i want the peaceful sea of never wanting,
for wanting is itself a costly curse…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Segue to Albion Moonlight

So; worthily thrown away is any dream too realistic.
albion hasn’t even sarcastic use for realistic dreams.
savior bring dreams asking certain impossibilities of all humanity.
conjure dreams inspiring purest, most hopeful, most lustful desires.
compel me to dreams offering green apocalypse, renaissance, bright wars within.
wearing accomplishments like a raw doctorate will i go then
and, if without this trial , without this triumph… to kiss the new millennium.
chose all of this out, in some starless corner of tight universe.
playing it all out on the deep blue waters, under moonlight showers.
peace in wet islands now, how long? only sweet breath of cosmos knows.
black waves caressing now, white glow points pathways…
numberless…

©2011 Stratherrick Publishers, all rights reserved

Do They Know

In the land of lonely exiled preachers
And all of the banished saints,
Where broken down in decadence
They register complaints
To all the hearing weary subjects
Whose minds are ever swayed

Desperation talks in time
To private nations and their kind
It told them all to lie and they obeyed

Do they know time, do they know love or is it hate?
How slyly hypnotized when free will is too late
And do they know, what do they know
And how do you know?

They gather in the mystic hills
to knock on heaven’s door
Riding out the pleasure sea
Just to writhe on a bloody shore
Who’s to say it’s Heaven when one man calls it hell
Who’s to say such ‘freedom’ won’t become a prison cell
To lock away those wishers by the well

Do they know dark delusion, or are they birds of light?
Do they indulge full lust in flesh and disregard what’s right
And do they know, what do they know
And how do you know?

May 8, 1987

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

My Mistake

Of hopes of dreams of friendships past
Of times that came to never last
If I assail, at least I’m safe
A loose and lonely armored waif

Its not to say my body’s tired
Protected by a hand that’s hired
To hold mine when I am betrayed
I’ve found they’ve left, I thought they’d stayed

May 3, 1987

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Extinction

Light fragments of hollow framed night
Bird sits alone in drug like ecstasy
Sugar sense and caverns of existence
Killing, men placed in rows, across a mirror
Of the earth, too precise, too neat
Killers, snuffing out fragments of the frame, the life force
One by one, line by line, as if to cough
Through the barrel of a gun
The frame of light is gone
The darkness may, will, bleed to cover
The whole canvas

May 1, 1987

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Seduced

Power comes to plead to me and take my heavy hand
Power leads me to her bed and sweets of old are bland
Without her I might wither and be carried by the breeze
In league I’ll wither just the same but over darker seas

Vanished is my judgment vanished from my hands
Vanished is the sorrow still infesting lower lands
The doors remain unopen and the grey keeps closing in
The gospel is rewritten when a new day does begin

Tragedy, serenity, all those in between
From too tall hills to rolling waves I recount all I’ve seen
And those who listen understand and those who don’t remain
Tragedy sleeps in silence along with sad, blue rain

Power is a welcome gift, power gives me life
And I don’t know I’m dying till I see the bloody knife

April 7, 1987

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Elusive

I went out yesterday looking for ‘the way’ again
And spied the Devil laughing laying in his lions’ den
I heard the people crying while they waited for a King
To know the works of Heaven, to hear the choir sing

I started talking to some people cause I figured they must know
That lonely hope without true faith will make the coming slow
I sympathized with those who at their death became afraid
But I fell down in my judgment, and down is where I stayed

April 5, 1987

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

Scars Have Aged

A raging thief of time runs from the light
And hurries to the hills
Hustling days to sublimate the night
As smoothly his own soul he kills

Can any one be too far gone?
Gone from comfortably sane
Gone to all but ruins of
Crazed relentlessness in vain

Through the bars you see his eyes
The windows to his crystal pain
Unleashes rage and fear and lies
And rage and fear and lies remain

Twisted words, unknowing face
Speaks lion heart, the caged
The wounds he’s made will cause his death
Even if the scars have aged

March 1, 1987

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

I Will Stand, Alone

I will stand, alone,
a mountain in a vast expanse of hills
The sunlight when the breath of winter chills
The living far beyond what suffering kills

I will stand, alone
And some will look to me to lead the way
And you could ever take this fire away
As legend, I am built to never sway

I will stand, alone
Dreaming of the times I stood by you
Dreaming of when you stood by me too
Dreaming that the ending isn’t true

I will stand, alone
Wishing for the day when you return
Wishing for the heat of love, its burn
Wishing away the pain I’ve had to learn

I will stand, alone
For I don’t feel the emptiness at all
And from my mountain I will never fall
And you would never hear me if I’d call

I will stand, alone
Because I’m stronger than I was before
And life will always offer something more
Possibly ‘til I find heaven’s shore

I will stand, alone

October 20, 1986

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved

All About

Reality has overflowed, he felt the weight of living
It brought him down too low, with too much hurt
Clock tolls and its time to go, so, bled of all his giving
On the road to find his new home in the dirt

Some would say a one-man show. Some would rude fool
Others that he simply loved to live
He’d smile and say he didn’t know, cocked cigarette and cool
But it was his soul, no one else’s soul to give

He gave his gift ‘til timely death, with prideful pain intense
Though, it really seems he hid it from us all
Needing just to be the best and yes, somehow it all makes sense
It truly was his rise that caused his fall

The day the bow was drawn, it released him cross the sun
Catapulted by the need to see it all
And the upon descending, when he knew his life was ending
Thought, “is that what it’s all about after all?”

October 18, 1986

©1986-2011 Stratherrick Publishers (ASCAP) all rights reserved