Played Life Safe

I’ve played life safe--

The craziest thing I’ve ever done

Is making love with a man I should have left undone

Then crying when I left him far behind

I was always looking for the crazy in my mind

My mother worried

I would hurt myself somewhere on that farm

But I just wanted to get out, not do any self-harm

Sometimes even mothers don’t understand your game

Who knew that my daughter and I would be the same

I was born

With shards of sadness in my heart

They just wedged deeper each time it broke apart

So happiness was often just a great pretense

No wonder life never made mush sense

I’d sit and contemplate

The big questions of faith and noise

Seeking to uncover a unique voice

But we all say the same things again and again

Just wrapped in different packages of sun and rain

The clock is winding down

But it will never really stop

Just roll closer to the sharp edge of the cliff drop

It transforms as it falls down to the river

Weaving tapestries with the taker and the giver

We are compelled

To leave behind fractions of our DNA

Believing we live on in the phrases they say

But the essence of who we are

Is neither that close nor that far

The greatest divide

Is between our mind and heart

One is all lines and fact, the other curved art

The mind is what we’ve come to believe

But the heart is where we really live

So pack up your yesterdays

But don’t tie them in a bundle on your back

Throw them in the river in a weighted sack

Like mewling kittens no one wants around

Then pretend you’re headed for the higher ground