In madness, the warped mind twists and snakes upwards towards the light,
Yet remains forevermore in a dark and sickly night.
There I was, though with a memory that knew not where to start,
In this forest, black and ominous, that keeps you and I apart.
Running through the smothering haze of murky, poisoned fumes,
Where the trees cover a pallid sky and the end always looms,
I heard the voices shouting screaming cursing me for I,
I never knew the warmth that rested in a lover’s eye.
And though my dreams had offered once a chance I would be saved,
Now I felt my dreams would only haunt me to the grave.
All I’ve ever wanted is to run out into the blue,
And laugh and sing with all the rest but most of all see you.
See you and give you what the world could never give to me,
To love and dance and shine for everyone we’d ever see.
But I can’t seem to run away, this forest holds me close,
That sickly sweet and slithering comfort for which I am the host.
There’s something reassuring when you cannot run away,
The knowledge that tomorrow is no different than today.
But still I wonder, still I wonder, if there was a way,
Would I take the leap of faith or like all else just pass away?

It seemed like years I had been stumbling around here in the dark,
In this forest, in this prison ship I could never disembark.
When suddenly my eyesight left me, no it was just light,
Light that blinded me; I had forgotten day could follow night.
Behind me rose the towering trees, sentinels of the dusk,
But before me lay a sight I didn’t believe that I could trust.
A river, soft and mellow, meandering quietly through the day,
And far across the turquoise water, I saw the angels lay.
I was enveloped with a wonder known only to children’s minds,
By what miracle had I been brought here, only of my kind.
As I was watching ancestral spirits praying to the dawn,
A voice that seemed to come from me began to sing a song.
I heard of riches imagination would never dare to dream,
And lands where all the peoples would bow down just to me.
Then another voice said “It’s a lie” and doubt began to creep,
Inside my mind like nightmares do when children try to sleep.
Perhaps it was too good to be true, would all this wealth and power,
Really bring me happiness during my final hour?
So there I lay, a battlefield of cold lust and self-doubt,
Beside this river whose turquoise water seemed the only offer out.

But lo, what sound could wake me from this troubled reverie?
A new voice and a new song now were drifting on the breeze.
I couldn’t place the origin nor could I hear the words,
But there was something in the tune that I had never before heard.
It held a warmth and kindness, enough to soothe a troubled soul,
It didn’t need cold logic and it didn’t demand control.
Nor too were doubt and mistrust tones that echoed through my brain,
Those hallmarks of the mind which has embraced the insane.
Instead there was a nakedness and honesty inside,
The song which never claimed to have anything to hide.
Soon the river’s waters began to ripple and then she came,
Sailing in a boat with room for two, and one spot still remained.
I felt my heart begin to race, “Was this the chance I sought?
Salvation from the loneliness that clouds my every thought?”
The other voices began to sense a changing deep inside,
And soon they tried to warn me of the dangers of the ride.
“That boat will bring you nowhere, if you think that you’re trapped now,
Just imagine how hard life will be with no friends but the clouds.”
But the deceit could not be hidden from their poisonous words,
While in your song the purity of love was all I heard.

The boat pulled up along the shore, you beckoned me aboard,
That face that held a beauty I had so long adored.
Maybe all the doubts are true, but for what I desire most,
If in some universe there is a chance, I stepped off of the coast.
Into the boat and silence was the only sound I heard,
The voices that had plagued me had vanished without a word.
I looked at her, she looked at me, we pushed off from the shore,
With no doubts now that life could change and love last evermore.