Poem: 2010

It started on a Friday, with a suicide bombing in Pakistan,
while I nursed a hangover and navigated Dublin snow
which had just turned to dirty grey sludge when we heard about Haiti,
later to be overshadowed by 8.8 and tsunamis in Chile,
though we were more concerned when misbehaving volcanoes
grounded us in chaotic airports.

This year we watched waters spoiled by oil, and worried about shortages
and tutted at the ineptitude of the Grecian government,
not knowing what was coming in six months time.
We fell out with the French over handballs and cheating
and shook buckets for the sake of those deceased and displaced
by Pakistani monsoon rains.

We allowed ourselves a feel-good moment watching rescued miners
and one of bemused bafflement by antihydrogen atoms at CERN,
then watched in anger as our country faced financial disaster,
making November about bailouts and blizzards
and losing faith in the things we used to rely on
in foolish complacency.

At the start of it I was different; a simple passing change
inexplicably darkened the days to seeming insurmountability
which cannot be attributed to any one happening,
but soon it will be over and we can dust ourselves off
and begin the important work of forgetting,
not learning anything.

Poem: Lies, damned lies and...

Make your way in silence to the edge of our cities
and hide yourself there, behind the newest addition
of multi million showcasing we call art.
Keep your eyes downcast, do not cry out
or we will find you and bundle you off to anonymous elsewhere
to muffle your voice, fearing the human story.

You are 22 per cent that falls through the cracks of policy.
The other 78 do not want to bear witness,
as you peer through the double glazing,
flattening the flowerbeds and rosebushes
and mucking suburban content
with the detritus of a broken life.

Poem: Safety

It is the right thing to be kind, from a safe distance,
if you let it the terrible weight of others need will consume you
and you become a parody of compassion, trampled and used up,
pathetic in your bruised black acquiescence. Mortified martyr
to the consuming greed of your own capitulation.

Lost in subservience you cease as an entity onto yourself,
a perversified puppet to another’s damage, you are nothing
but a willing victim, revelling in the depth of your terrible sacrifice,
waiting for the world to take notice. Ridiculous distortion
of the notion of empathic intervention.

Take yourself to one side and be alone, you are damaged,
unable to connect without making yourself a casualty to
the human tendency to take advantage, inspired by your submission
and masochistic kindness. Beautifully broken
you will be safe at last in isolation.

Poem: Shame

As small children we were taught about it in baggy school uniforms and knee socks
and never wearing patent shoes lest the boys saw our underpants reflected in them.
We were taught about it at rare school dances,
where the nuns pushed us apart telling us, ‘leave room for the holy ghost’.

Later on we were taught about it in class with talk of a man and a woman,
being married and doing your duty, bearing children.
In not speaking about pleasure and desire they taught us about it,
leaving us confused, betrayed and alarmed at our own bodies.

We were taught it in girls disappearing from school once bumps began to show
and in scandal when one teacher was asked not to return.
In not talking about the diversity of sexuality they taught us about it
telling us lies about punishment and consequence.

In teaching us about it they took what was good and pure
and twisted and corrupted it until every longing was a perversity.
On our knees and confessing our impure thoughts in dark rooms
we were taught it, without their ever needing to say the word.

Later on, in trying to rebel against it we rediscovered it, deepened it
in the bottom of a bottle, a handful of pills or powder and bad decisions.
In being determined not to feel it we bargained our happiness against it,
driven by it we sacrificed ourselves to dirty dark rooms and misery.

Poem: Are you Happy?

Are you happy?
Have you lost yourself in this Americanised insensibility
demanding that it be a continuous state,
expecting to smile every moment of the day.

Do you measure everything by it
and desperately scramble for its attainment,
scorning that it is enough to be content.

What will the cost of achievement be,
did you shelf common sense and empathy,
swap the diverseness of experience for fantasy.

Did you forget that pursuit was the actual goal,
negate all thought in favour of soul
taking one part as the sum of the whole.

There is bliss beneath pain, did you forget
When you planned to go smiling from birth to death
As a pointless grinning marionette.

Go ahead and bask in your vacant glee
Feeling virtually nothing and calling it happy,
You have my grief, my heart and my absolute pity.

Poem: Epitaph

The wind is howling through the old oak trees.
Who would have thought?
Sweet smiling eyes, sweet eyes smile.
Whisper your secrets in a cat’s ear
But I can see you. The hunter is here.
Lift up your frock, at least above your knee
And the wind is howling through the trees.

I can see you hovering in the corner of my eye
First left, left to right and sink lower again.
It was a back tooth wish this time,
Quarter for quarter and swallow a dime.
The first clock is chiming but the last keeps the time.
And the wind is howling, and the trees cry.

Poem: Winter

Winter is coming again, crisp clean cold and Christmas lights.
The plants have died, the trees naked and stark against autumnal skies,
This is my season. Briefly I pretended to be a Summer flower, for you
But of all the fairytale characters I most wanted to be the Snow Queen,
The White Witch. I was never a Disney princess.

When the sun was shining I played at make believe, pretend warmth.
I do not feel it, they tore it out of me with good intentions,
I am safe. For awhile you made me wish that I was better, able,
Somewhere deep down I think it would have be something to love you,
But it’s a relief that it is over. I am glad that it is Winter.

Poem: A dream

Here is a hope for you, here is a dream,
I have wrapped it in silver paper
and hidden it, unfulfilled and secure.
You can keep it, put it with the rest of your curios.

I like to look at it sometimes, this glittering thing,
but we must not touch it
it will shatter too easily, already it is cracked at the edges.
Protect it from me, hide it from the world.

I am trusting you with it, it is precious,
without it I would wither away,
I will not risk it with foolish determination.
Mind it and admire it, do not let me lose it.

Do not look at it too closely, it will blind you
with its burning need
but glimpsed from afar it is beautiful, promising.
Treat it gently, keep it safe, do not tread on it.

Poem: The World

There is something bleak in the winter sun, we expect it now.
A long time has passed since we took the magic out of the rainbow-
Picked it into it’s component parts and marvelled for once at reality.

Twenty five letters to play with and we have Shakespeare or Jordan,
Words crafted carefully or thrown to the new wasted world,
So much uncovered, yet clinging in desperation to insipid fantasy.
Twisting our tortured forms, hoping to create human chrysalis
Whilst ignoring our wings and stagnating in ignorance.

Stronger, healthier and safer then we have ever been, we panic.
Imagining paedophiles in every playground and the earth burning beneath us
We twitter uselessly around nonentities, prattling instead of listening.

Today’s newspapers no longer tomorrow's fish and chip wrapper
To pay homage to the Gods of health, safety and stupidity while
We cradle the blood soaked innocents we forced to be our heroes
And imprison the broken in a kinder chemical Bedlam.

A long time has passed since we took the magic out of the rainbow,
We have forgotten the majesty of simple solutions in fractured light-
A whole world pointedly looking away, frightened children covering their eyes.


(This has been posted before, but much edited...)

Poem: Damage

They got to me in the end.
I thought I had escaped them
with my books and poems, with my thinking.

They got to me in the hidden inside place
where I live as myself, snide whispering voices
I had forgotten, still influencing.

They got to me with made up stories,
make believe that lurked and grew in secret
only to appear in a hateful moment.

They got to me, they tore through
sense and goodness, until I found myself
parroting bad black lies, instinctively.

They got to me, just when I thought I was free
From dusty, dirty old books, from this
ugly stupidity. They got to me.

Poem: Heroine

She is all used up, worn to nothing by the harshness of life,
go ahead and talk to her about dreams
with your idealistic cosseted view of the world,
then watch her step outside to barter her hopes
in exchange for so much poisonous escape.

She believes herself loved, he waits for her
in the next room, listening closely for her distress
so that he can intervene when she needs saving,
they trade on household chores, he washes the dishes,
buys the drugs, she spreads her legs and mops the floors.

She smiles emptily into the distance, spaced and absent
but for rare moments of shattering reality
when she talks about the remembrance of hands on her skin,
each moment of desperate surrender breaking her apart,
etched with terrible clarity on her body and heart.

We make her a cautionary tale, another statistic
to use for advocacy and funding,
when she was a child she dreamt of what she would be,
now she is wrecked, vanishing into the footnotes,
filed away with the rest of the detritus.

Brash, brazen and angry, she views the world with a cynical pragmatism
that makes mockery of our wishing wells,
all of our desultory interventions meaningless
in the face of bone weary despair, a broken life,
an unfortunate contemporary human sacrifice.

Poem: Virtual Anger

It is easier to be angry about nothing at all,
Spewing ferocious hatred, irascible in our insistence
That we are right, like it matters in
The greater scheme of everything.

It is a certain song, a lyric or
Some television programme, swearing
On the radio, how dare they,
We give in to righteous anger.

Put it in a letter, on a blog,
Tweet it, how much hate can you
Fit into one hundred and forty characters?
@everyone, the world had turned to dirt.

Impetuous, we do not think about anything,
Retweet this, borrow an opinion
Without thought, hesitation or consideration,
Ideas are cheapened, moot social currency.

Virtual opinions for a virtual world,
Reactionary causes that matter if they are trending,
Easily we can all pretend to care
When it requires us to take no action.

Poem: Mediums

Despicable carrions, gorging on grief,
picking over old bones with gleeful deceit,
vile abusers of the bereft and bereaved
exploiting their victims need to believe.

Heady with power they descend and they feast
and call it a comfort, this rape of the deceased.
Their despairing prey so intolerably misled
by these liars who claim to speak with the dead.

Poem: Result.

The men are hanging around the backstreets, like they did when they were boys
uninterrupted now by school or wide waisted shouting mothers
beckoning them home for dinner and bed.

There is no need now for secretive smoking, and the cheeky calls to passerby’s
have taken on a leering and sinisterly threatening air
darkened by hopelessness and disappointment.

These men are the faces behind the numbers, the real world result
of the consuming greed that used them up
and spat them out to be forgotten.

With nothing to do they drink and fight, armed with their own pointlessness.
At midnight the Guards come and move them along
to be somebody else’s problem.

Poem: Nothing Matters Anymore

It is not true that nothing matters anymore
but I have spent four hours pacing,
Beyond shock,
Contemplating,
There is no time left for our wasting.

These were my words,
My craft,
I fed my soul to parchment,
Long since I was parched
I emptied out my heart to this unimportant paper,
Never loving, never touching,
Thinking I would have time later,
Tell you later,
Empty words, empty paper,
And always later.

Time runs out, I had forgotten
Books can be burned, the pages rotting,
Twisted from their one time wish
For a poem lasts little longer than a kiss,
They do not matter next to this,
It is only you, not them I miss,
Without you I do not exist.

Everything for one more kiss,
And everything destroyed by this.

It came too swiftly in the end,
To lose my heart in such a friend,
So simply pace and try to write
And drink and weep into the night.
Wrapped in this hurt I am contrite,
I did not love you as I might.

In this pain I am now alone
And only need you because you’re gone,
Burning need,
Broken poem,
Always and forever gone.

Poem: What they will do.

They will teach you how to be someone else,
It’s easy to play at make believe, to hide under the bed with the monsters.
They will hold up your deepest shames and fears and tell you that they are true,
And you will go on your knees and thank them for it,
Wrap yourself up in lies upon lies, call them your prayers and swallow them,
They will give you a spoon full of sugar and applaud your efforts.

You will learn how to fit in with their vision of the world, God will love you more,
So it will not matter that hating yourself eats at you or that mirrors mock you.
You will be lonely, but you will not remember that it does not have to be that way,
Your body will belong to them, the purest of pleasures corrupted as sin.
They will take from you all of the joy and love and life that you could have had,
And leave you empty, unable to vocalise what it is that you have lost.

There will be no part of you they will not corrupt, you will believe it is for your own good.

Poem: Rain

It is raining outside, the sun catching in the drops
Creating a glistening difference in the mundane.
From this vantage point I can see the city,
Alien in a blanket of coloured umbrellas.
Water gathers in the gutters, mixing with spilled oil,
Creating swirling rainbows on the ground.
Just for this moment, still and soaked through,
It is easy to watch and remember what we forgot.
Soon everything will be washed clean and waiting,
The past drying out in Summer puddles.
Hopeful, amid small hurts and happenings, we realise
That the world is very beautiful, despite everything.

Poem: It Does not do,

It does not do to dwell on dreams
And live in make believe,
To take others truths as certain things
And forget to question these.

It does not do to wish on stars
And be defined by dying light,
To allow ourselves be shaped by fantasy
And not be what we might.

It does not do to cling to lies
And use faith as blind defence,
To be afraid of the great unknown
And surrender common sense.

It does not do to ignore the truth
And mythologise reality,
To bind ourselves in code and creed
And not wish to be free.

It does not do and yet is done
And we feel safe in empty trust,
To make sense of a nonsensical world
We each do what we must.

Poem: Things we won't do now.

We will never go out at one o’clock in the day and drink until the pub closes,
Stumbling home to cold Chinese food in your house.

We will never have a ’do nothing day’ and wander around town, penniless
Looking at pretty things that we do not have the money to buy.

We will never have another fight about something thoughtless
That one of us said to upset the other.

We will never decide that it doesn’t matter and laugh at the reasons behind it
Over cans of cheap beer and cigarettes.

We will never get in trouble again, for not being able to keep
Any of the secrets we are told from each other.

We will never gossip shamelessly about everybody that we know
For hours and hours on the phone.

We will never get stoned and lie on the floor, listening to music
And singing along tunelessly.

We will never dress up in suits and traditional white dresses,
And make forever promises to each other.

We will never have even one more second where we are together.

Poem: Believe

I do not believe in things that cannot be true,
Insects but not angels.

I did not believe in this thing we call love,
I could not touch it or quantify it.
You told me everyday, and I smiled, condescending,
But you accepted what I would not say.

I was always the cynic,
I did not believe in broken hearts,
Now I cannot reason away misery,
And trusted semantics have crumbled to ash.

I cannot change the person I am.

I miss you more than I can begin to explain,
Never before did I want to believe in Fairytales.
Would that I was rich in faith,
And could imagine you waiting for me, happy and safe.

But when I am in that twilight place,
Caught between waking and sleeping,
I feel your presence and know it is wishful thinking.

I would never have believed that my heart could be breaking.

Poem: Medium

I dream of you sometimes.
When the cold is in my heart and bones
And I am lonely again
I wish that you are whispering to me,
And reaching out from some great, black
Mystical beyond.

So it was easy then
For him to say a name and sway on his
Black draped stage and flutter his fingers
Over my cheek,
In some mockery of how you once touched me.

I wanted it to be you so much
That the table bucked and rattled
With the strength of my want, and
I thought that I could smell you in him,
Taste once again your taste in my mouth,
Feel you moving with me, breathing your breath on my neck.

I ached for you and he saw it,
Cramming his pockets and purse with
My hope and hurt and desperation.
For a while I wanted to belive the lie
But I know that there is none of you left
The truth? There is no life after death.

Poem: Shrine

Shrine

It is still here,
Surrounded by dusty reminders
Of what was,
What can never be.

Still, silent
An old LP hitches and turns relentlessly
With each catch
As a final full stop.

Nobody lives here anymore

Poem: Bravery

It takes real bravery to pack up your past,
Those hurts that wake you in the night,
To recognise that which should not have happened
And make the choice not to fight.

To know your dreams and surrender them
And follow a different road,
Let them be stories you tell to yourself,
Forgotten once they are told.

To limit your reach, let the stars remain distant,
And wishes as silent parts of yourself,
And smile through it all, and say you are happy
For the sake of somebody else.

Poem: We wish for impossible things.

There are some things you should wish for
With your half-baked, heart ached toss of a coin,
These are your wishing well moments, your bubble dreams,
These wishes, they are impossible things.

Yesterday, once today, is memory
And blue black bruises fade to brown
She wished for clean white kisses, yellow mornings
These wishes, they are impossible things.

You reach right handed, left bloody
And one time caress is a slap
She wanted soft touches, babies, white weddings
These wishes, they are impossible things.

Sometimes she is so much smaller then this
And curls in a corner to cry
And in the darkness, there pain sings,
These wishes, they are impossible things.

Once upon a promise they spoke magic
And led us then to believe
Beneath our shoulders were angels wings
And so we wish for impossible things.

Poem: Afterwards

We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and try continuing.
I have grey hat that makes my eyes look blue
And four hundred and sixty three books gathering dust
That swirls in the evening sunlight, as it always was.

I launch myself into the evenings, the night is better,
The days are getting longer and smothering us in light.
I wear dark glasses and hide in the corner of the pub
Waiting for the bitter sun to fade away.

At midnight I come home and dance in the dark,
I dream that I am flying over the city alone
But when I wake my hands are clenched in fists,
Head thumping and churning stomach sick.

Whiskey in your morning coffee makes you warm,
But the Winter is nearly over. I need to wear leather gloves
So I do not touch the filth of the world, perhaps I can buy lace
In summer colours, so it does not seem so strange.

There are four thousand and seventy six paving stones between here and work,
I am careful not to step on the cracks between them. Cobblestones are harder
But I am trying to come up with another arrangement.
Can you come back now please?

Afterwards, I carefully saved up every moment,
They are bottled and waiting in the corner, when you return
We will open them and let time flow out, it will be like music.
I do not make bad wishes anymore.

Poem: Glass Animals

Glass animals casting rainbows on the wall
And ceiling, I thought they were fairies,
Dancing in the sunlight, the magic of them was spellbinding,
When I was still just a little thing, at my beginnings.

Later, I hung prisms in the window,
Hoping that I could capture them again,
But this city apartment does not let the light in,
The walls remain grey, as is fitting.

Poem: Tir na nOg

What does Oisin feel now, leaving the golden haired daughter of the sea God
Because his heart ached for the sight of his beloved Roisin,
On returning to find her magic gone, wiped out by cruel robed men
With their hatred of all of her naked glory.

There are no words to say to this warrior poet as he crumbles,
To explain away our inaction in allowing her to be raped and broken,
But we have forgotten the poems of the Fianna, and Roisins pride,
Allowing all of our stories to be named as legends.

Our dreams of Tir na nOg are lost, dug up and emptied out to make room
For another consecrated concrete block of desperation.
The Tuatha de Danann are bleeding in the back streets
Reduced to powerlessness, as are all of the old Gods.

Poor Roisin

Poor Roisin, she was a damaged child, but brave.
Gathering together her dreams, taking up arms
In the name of a brighter tomorrow, and hope,
She broke away, out alone, poor Roisin.

Poor Roisin, she had just begun to be free,
She was not ready to break those ties, see the dangers
Lurking behind the alters, lauded and robed,
She let them poison her home, poor Roisin.

Poor Roisin, she thought that green fields and luck
Would be enough, washed down with a pint of the black stuff,
She did not take care of the little ones, put her faith in God,
Allowed them to be broken and robbed, poor Roisin.

Poor Roisin, she is so confused now, so betrayed,
Brighter tomorrows blighted by bygone days.
Once again she must fight, force a change
Finally drive the monsters away, poor Roisin.

Poem

I wrote you a poem, and put it inside a Valentines card,
In some sort of out-of-character romantic offering,
You glanced but briefly, we don’t do hearts and flowers,
And asked for me on my knees, for the day that was in it.

I knelt, why not, and gave you this moment of surrender,
We both know that I am the one who calls the shots,
By virtue of the darker days, and your fear of my drowning
In sadness, where you cannot hope to reach me.

I will give to you myself, it was in the poem,
But only those parts of myself that are mine to give.
Line seventeen, I am leaving you, for your sake,
Though I know that you do not want for me to leave.

Line twenty two, it was a long poem, you got bored,
I am going to find somewhere silent, and stay there,
And you cannot come with me, you cannot come,
I packed my bags while you were sleeping.

Line forty, rambling descriptions, something about sex
And you in me, and me disappearing, it’s a mess.
Hand on heart, it beats here still, I’ve forgotten
The reasons, but I have retained the will.

Line sixty, I love you, in my way, this way,
Love and hate, all mixed up and confused in
The chemical mistakes inside my mind,
No more pills, no more lines, just goodbyes.

This Woman

Mostly she does not think
Rocking, rocking in a haze of bliss
Bought with her body, hands, kiss.

The first time he touched her she reached up
To push his hands away but was confused
By tiny pin pricks of pleasure buried
Somewhere beneath the hurt.

Later she would lie still, every inch of her body
Bathed in his sweat and her shame
While he panted and pushed
Somewhere above her.

In time she would leave him taking with her a body
That was no longer her own, which would bear her strange
Beloved children that she cannot touch,
Fearing the unbroken innocence of them.

This is not my Ireland.

It should be enough now.
I try to imagine two soldiers, barely more than boys
Doing something as mundane as collecting a pizza
Before the world filled up with shots around them
And left them dying on an unremarkable Saturday,
A year ago today.

It should be enough now.

If I could

I would like to go back please,
a time before clocks began ticking away from one moment,
When I was still creating experiences, not recovering from them,
When I still measured the moments until, not the ones since
And had never wished I could stand still and stop counting.

I want to return now,
the old painted perfect tomorrow dreams, new mornings
Promising better today, wanting tomorrows and tomorrows,
Rather then this consuming continuing yesterday, it’s broken promises,
Its destruction of dreaming in showing the fallacy of wishing.

I would reclaim for myself,
moments of total expectation where the world was possibility
Wrapped in fairytale endings and happy ever afters,
Long before I was circus mirror image of myself, aching with clenched waiting,
Broken apart and drowning in the starkest expectation of this.

Best Laid Plans

You must away now, so soon?
We had just planted the first seeds, too late in the spring
Forgetting how time creeps and crawls, seeps past us.
You will not see next years Daffodils, or this years roses,
We are hoping for the new lambs, one more Easter,
Without realising I bought one egg too few, a new dress in black,
Mourning clothes and court shoes.
We used to plan for forever, it was so short,
Years to months to days, soon minutes and nothing.

Birthday Poem (since its @derrenbrown birthday!)

Birthday poems in perfect rhyme – printed, reprinted, used and abused
Until we trample what meaning they may have had into bromidic nonsense,
Cheap with our words, these platitudes speak only of negligence –
Once, in consideration, words had power, we fettered them with our indolence –

But then, in thought, with intent and meaning, we look for better wishes
Which do not sickly, sweetly mush with feigned devoirs,
It is a good thing that life has seen you kind thus far –
And these innocuous rhymes, I wish you many more.

Life?

Three times Monday, then the weekend
And time spirals into something else
Amidst bottles of wine and breaking hearts.
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is.

Friday bleeds into Sunday, blurred with discontent.
Mine is a Rosé, then later on straight gin and tears,
Dancing past midnight when we forget to think.
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is.

Is it time for white dresses and breeding yet?
Shall we continue to wallow, past growing up ideas,
To hell with commitment, meet me out back by the bins.
They didn’t mention life would be like this
But it is.

Long ago stories, cleaner then now moments
Try this one darling, you will dance with the stars.
Save up memories for when life is reminisce,
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is.

What’s in a name, words loved and forgotten
The promise and potential of once turned to rot,
They didn’t mention life would be like this.
But it is, and it is,
And it is.

How I feel today

Another Queen

She is regal as she tells me, brokenly
That she came here dreaming
of a better life for her boys.
Now they speak rapidly
In a language that she cannot understand
And are embarrassed by the scars on her face
And between her thighs.

She can feel the world shifting beneath her
As she struggles to be understood.
At night she dreams of the sun
And arid plains of forever and hope,
Away from the spit at her feet
And dark rains of Ireland.

Breaking up

It is another day, another wake up and get up
And go.

You used to have eggs for breakfast and go for a run,
I stuck to cigarettes and coffee and going slow
And that should have been a sign of something I guess.

This ending has been mostly easy
Excepting the loss of your coffee machine,
Now I drink instant, and there is never fresh milk.

I can’t reach the top shelf, the light bulbs need changing,
The smell of the skip downstairs makes me gag
And I keep running out of toilet roll.

You expected that I would miss you more
But it is loss of little domesticities that hurts,
We were more familiar then we were in love.

Lost

It was a small thing, a forgotten splash in a well
Of something more hope than a wish-
Once we believed in magic, foolishly,
We would be better with coins still in our pockets
And wishes kept secret and safe
Not turning green and stagnating
In the unforgiving waters of this world.

The Garden

Garden colours,
these rustic greens and browns are lonely
for the want of vivid flashes of butterflies wings.

Flower beds running riot
and entwining in the long grass,
lapping at the edges of the stagnant pond
containing one, self satisfied, solitary fat fish.

The bird feeders,
neglected since December first, have run empty,
They no longer come here and fill the silence.

Everything in the greenhouse
has withered brown and dried.

In the midst of mourning I forgot your garden,
but with work and time it will be alright,
the hardiest plants always survive.

A bit of Sillyness

He was a gallant knight on a trusty steed, they lived in a fairytale
For her he fought the terrible beast, in love he could not fail.
She was princess fair locked away from the world, waiting for her knight
He rescued her and they rode off into the setting light.

She bore his children, warmed his bed, he always saved the day
She buried deep her terrible dread that she was living in a cliché
He was a stranger dark and strange, she could not still her heart
They came together and allowed a different story to start.

She feared and loved him through her fear, he kissed her and made her weep
She spoke and sent him to his death for a secret she could not keep.
He looked into her eyes as the fight began, she swiftly looked away
His opponent was a more skilled man, soon he had lost the day.

He was a gallant knight on a trusty steed, they lived in a fairytale
For her he fought the terrible beast, in love he could not fail.
She was princess fair locked away from the world with her gallant knight
She dreamed of a time she could go off into the setting light.