From a Balance Beam

There is a man holding a megaphone He must have been the voice of God The bystanders claimed they saw angels Flying up and down the block They must have been attached to wires I saw one laying in the lawn with a broken arm So I called 911 Well that's one less founded opinion One more cause for a dispute So the street filled, like a basin Up with cameras and their crews And they washed away the rumors Leaving just the concrete truth It was a spectacle No, I mean a miracle So then I fell like that girl from a balance beam A gymnasium of eyes were all holding on to me I lifted one foot to cross the other And I felt myself slipping It was a small mistake Sometimes that is all it takes Now I'm staring at my wrist Hoping that the timing is right When the planets will align There will be no planets to align Just the carcass of the sun And those little painted marbles Spinning senseless through an endless black sky (and so it never started And it will never stop Just like I am and you are) It was in a foreign hotel's bathtub I baptized myself in change And one by one I drowned all of the people I had been I emerged to find the parallels were fewer I was cleansed I looked in the mirror And someone new was there Still, I was as helpless as a chess piece When I was lifted up by someone's hand And delivered from the corner my enemies had got me in But in all of my salvation I still felt imprisonment Inside that holding cell that is myself So I wait for the day when I'll hear the key As it turns in the lock And the guard will say to me "Oh my patient prisoner you have waited for this day And finally you are free! You are free! You are freezing." Now I'm staring at the sun Waiting for it to explode Because a day is gonna come Don't know when but it will come And then we will finally know the way out of here And I will throw away this wrinkled map And my chart of stars and compass, cracked And I'll climb out that tree All wet with sap to avoid the hungry beasts below I'll cut out my lover's tongue and sing Of a graveyard gray and a garden green And we won't have to worry no more No we won't have to wonder again about How this song or story ends About how this song and story will end