Another Time, Another Place, Another World.

Oh, to live another planet,
Where the sun is burned to blackness,
Not to see the light of darkness,
Never seeing another face.
For the eyes are framed with sorrow,
And the lips grin with hatred,
And the teeth are bared in loathing,
Forget the saving thought of grace.

The pain I see is nothing more,
Than the anguish that I feel,
I'm walled away in solitude,
And lonely is my name.
Would that I live in darkness,
But better I die in daylight,
Wishing a better world,
Won't change the one I got.
If my hair were bleached to bone,
And my face a grinning skull,
The shame would not desert me,
No more  than the pain.
If my head was packed with sawdust,
And my body stuffed with rags,
Still people possessed of pins,
Would stab me in the face.

I'm longing for that planet,
That breathes free and lonely,
Where the shots and pills,
To crush one's ills,
Are gone forevermore.
I doubt that I will find it,
Yet still I keep on looking,
For the likes of me,
There's nothing more,
What else can I do?

Were I to travel back in time,
And forsake my own eternity,
To escape the wrathful God,
To forsake my parent's rage.
Would people back there love me,
Or would they hate me also,
Would they lock my heart up,
Or just lop off my head?
Perhaps they would chase me,
Or merely name me crazy,
Lock me in a moldy cell,
To live on only print.
Or maybe be a caveman,
Play at being a Sabertooth,
And be bitten by the cobra,
When I thought I lost the bear.

Yet another place awaits me,
And I fear I won't be lonely,
Be forced to play a weeping harp,
While my mind is far away.
But for me there is no choosing,
For it seems I'm always losing.
I'm a fool chained with pain,
I live only in my dreams.
You'd think I said the prayer,
Whispered in frantic pain,
Trembling with the urgency,
All those long years of yore.
No I won't deny it,
Yes, I did the deed-
Yet still I might even die,
With the promise unfulfilled.
For the works are up to me,
So those up there have said-
A frail reed a-bending, 
Blowing in the wind,
Falling like a cut-down tree.
If my face were made of brass,
And my mind a ticking clockwork,
Would I daily live for God, 
Or still just feed my face?

I'd love to be a robot,
And have one single purpose,
Just following the Script,
Just rolling off a log.
But I am cursed with rebel will,
And yearn for that far off day,
When I shall see no accusing face,
With hatred writ plain as day,
The contempt upon a surly brow,
for a fool with no sense at all,
Yet one who sees his wrong.
I cannot see the place,
Where I will live my future,
But impelled by fickle living,
Still I blunder on relentless,
A legend in my bathroom,
A page upon the scroll.
Yet still I say the words,
While I question yet the meaning,
Do the words live for me as well,
As they do for all the world?
Or have I been abandoned,
A suicidal rear-guard,
Left to brush the tracks away, 
While the army leaves again?

Dennis Young