Through the Gray,
4/8/04.
You don't control me.
I've always owned me.
I've never been a slave:
I've always known I'm forever free
that we're all forever free, but maybe
our freedom extends so far
we can choose to be slaves.
Your ghost has no grip on me, truly.
It's me who refuses to let go,
it's me who's got to loosen his ghastly grip.
I didn't mean to immortalize a nightmare,
I only wanted to make a fist in rebuttal
because these values aren't my own
it was a question of survival
this is not my face, just a mask you
helped me make, another layer of a
face I had to forge to adapt and it
seems I got buried in soon-fed lies.
Nothing new.
So it's happened
time after time.
Time after time in my life,
life after life, time
and time again.
Spinning on wheels within wheels,
growing ever-dizzy, created masks over masks,
a Chinese box on towards infinity, the
catastrophe of identity,
trying to look closer,
ever-regressing.
Draped in an ominous,
overwhelming shadow of
all my lies --
or are the lies the shadow?
No matter, no apparent
way on out of the cave, we just
remain entranced by the flickering shadows
and blind to the fact we're bound and mindless,
just like the three blind men arguing
over the elephant once again.
What's the point anyway,
what could truth, independence
and freedom bring?
Sometimes suffering seems
to be the only permanence in life,
from microcosm to macrocosom,
like us to this planet,
like you to your family,
like you to me and
me to you.
There is no reason
what is just is.
No one to blame:
we're all innocent in our ignorance.
I can't blame you for the way I felt,
you can't blame me for feeling this way.
There is no good and evil,
we each just inherit or create our way,
use it to navigate through the gray.
I can't blame you for
what you did to them.
I can't blame myself.
So you hurt me
by hurting them, and
I just wanted compensation
for all the pain within
and around me, but
I can't blame you for
what you did to them.
I can't blame myself
for wanting to kill you.
It wasn't a gift, it was a service
and so I have a debt and I only want
to pay back the favor.
So as I do my spring cleaning
as I swallow every shadow with a smile
wearing a wide grin, as I
slay every damned dragon
shimmering with tradition and
demanding submission,
I'll finally work my way to you,
and when I finally get
down to you
I'll give you a book,
tell you what it means,
demand you live by it.
I'll grab a belt,
beat you into submission
just like you did for your children
because I wouldn't want to
spoil you by sparing this.
Wouldn't dream of sparing you
on my way on through the gray.
4/8/04.
You don't control me.
I've always owned me.
I've never been a slave:
I've always known I'm forever free
that we're all forever free, but maybe
our freedom extends so far
we can choose to be slaves.
Your ghost has no grip on me, truly.
It's me who refuses to let go,
it's me who's got to loosen his ghastly grip.
I didn't mean to immortalize a nightmare,
I only wanted to make a fist in rebuttal
because these values aren't my own
it was a question of survival
this is not my face, just a mask you
helped me make, another layer of a
face I had to forge to adapt and it
seems I got buried in soon-fed lies.
Nothing new.
So it's happened
time after time.
Time after time in my life,
life after life, time
and time again.
Spinning on wheels within wheels,
growing ever-dizzy, created masks over masks,
a Chinese box on towards infinity, the
catastrophe of identity,
trying to look closer,
ever-regressing.
Draped in an ominous,
overwhelming shadow of
all my lies --
or are the lies the shadow?
No matter, no apparent
way on out of the cave, we just
remain entranced by the flickering shadows
and blind to the fact we're bound and mindless,
just like the three blind men arguing
over the elephant once again.
What's the point anyway,
what could truth, independence
and freedom bring?
Sometimes suffering seems
to be the only permanence in life,
from microcosm to macrocosom,
like us to this planet,
like you to your family,
like you to me and
me to you.
There is no reason
what is just is.
No one to blame:
we're all innocent in our ignorance.
I can't blame you for the way I felt,
you can't blame me for feeling this way.
There is no good and evil,
we each just inherit or create our way,
use it to navigate through the gray.
I can't blame you for
what you did to them.
I can't blame myself.
So you hurt me
by hurting them, and
I just wanted compensation
for all the pain within
and around me, but
I can't blame you for
what you did to them.
I can't blame myself
for wanting to kill you.
It wasn't a gift, it was a service
and so I have a debt and I only want
to pay back the favor.
So as I do my spring cleaning
as I swallow every shadow with a smile
wearing a wide grin, as I
slay every damned dragon
shimmering with tradition and
demanding submission,
I'll finally work my way to you,
and when I finally get
down to you
I'll give you a book,
tell you what it means,
demand you live by it.
I'll grab a belt,
beat you into submission
just like you did for your children
because I wouldn't want to
spoil you by sparing this.
Wouldn't dream of sparing you
on my way on through the gray.
