The Siren Song

(Hammill)

Letters in pencil, some of them as heavy as lead,
as dated as carbon, as black as coal, but burning as red.
Clues faintly stencilled: the message, though leeched, is unbled,
as secret as marble - as young, as old, as living, as dead.
And always that laugh
that comes as though it's from pain:
though I'm lashed to the mast
still it hammers round my brain.

Laughter in the backbone,
laughter impossibly wise,
that same laughter that comes
every time I flash on that look in your eyes
which whispers of a black zone
which'll mock all my credos as lies,
where all logic is done
and time will smash every theory I devise.
And the hour-glass is shattered
only by the magic of your touch
where nothing really matters....
No, Nothing matters very much!

So the siren song runs through the ages,
and it courses through my veins like champagne;
and with all the sweet kisses of addiction
it's calling me to break my bonds again.

Future memory exploding like shrapnel,
some splinters escape on my tongue,
some of them scar comprehension...
beneath the scab they burn, but the wound becomes numb.
And always the song draws me forward,
rejoicing in the search and the prayer,
bored with all but the mad, the strange,
the freak, the impossible dare.
Still your laugh chills my marrow
till I embrace it on my knees....
Oh, when the mast becomes a flagpole,
what becomes of me?

What becomes, oh, what becomes of me?