Ships in the Night
I know we both have a lot to say
I know we both live from day to day
I know you’re packing and you’re going away
And we can’t find anything to say
Why can’t we meet on common ground?
With trees and stars shining all around
Taking our shoes off and hanging around
Why can’t we find our common ground?
But where are you going when you leave here?
Can I call you far, can I call you near?
Where is your next stop or isn’t clear?
When is the next time you’ll be back here?
Flashes of black and flashes of gold
We can’t let our dreams be bought and sold
The time runs free and the days unfold
I’ll see you again when the nights grow cold
What the Thunder Said
And apocalyptic feeling came on the summer wind
As if the earth were saying this is all too much
Across the bay the storm clouds were assembled
Beyond the towers the lightning split the sky
As if to say why don’t you all remember?
Why are you terrified to look within?
Can’t you free the emptiness the wind blows through?
The empty southern wind in the summer blows
Why can’t you stand to be as lonely as the lazy stars?
And what is all the meaning of your busy ways?
What is it you won’t say that drives you mad?
That’s what the thunder said as it split the air
And what’s the urge that drives you through these cities?
That rise like floodlit rivers in the night
The sun was in my eyes as we crossed the bridge
Across the river and deep into the West.
And if there is a moral to this restlessness
And if you are to know the grand design
I think you have to leave it all behind you
Collect your faith and swim in the unknown
And maybe there the thunder’s not so frightening
It’s only trying to tell me I must change
And maybe revolution’s not so terrible
Perhaps the world is friendly in the end
And in the emptiness there grows a garden
And if I reach it I will have to stay
Forgetting all the things that I thought were true
Forgetting all that stripped me raw and bleeding
It’s got to be that way that’s what the angels say
And I can hear them singing in the stars
And I can hear them singing on the summer wind
A song bright as a storm across the bay
Starlight and Velvet
She’s got me on starlight again
She’s got me on starlight again
And I’m rolling down
The rivers
of the city night
My hands are shaking
And my
thoughts are spinning right
It feels like velvet
And I wish
I may I wish I might
Drown my sorrow
In her
footsteps so light
She’s got me on sunshine again
She’s got me on sunshine again
And my face is burning
And the
fire rages in my mind
The world’s exploding
And I’m
staring at the death of time
The sky is grieving
And the
glowing trees are dreadful kind
And the stairway is waiting
For me to
climb
She’s got me on moonbeams again
She’s got me on moonbeams again
The room’s expanding and
I can’t
think of what to say
The tide is flowing
And it
nearly takes my breath away
Electric curtains
Catch the
fire of the breaking day
The rhythm holds me
And I guess
it’s time to go and play
Ed Lyons has been writing and publishing poems for over forty years. He is a regular contributor to the Poems from the Heron Clan anthology, and has also appeared in Albatross, A New Ulster, and written hymns for the Moravian Church. The last is the subject of Ed’s 2019 chapbook Wachovia, published by Katherine James Books in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ed lives in Winston-Salem, also in North Carolina.
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