fell asleep early tonight,
while the spring sun still shined bright,
behind rolling black clouds,
and dark tides
skirted the mountain, shaking up my house.

as my mind slipped aside,
I realized all dreams were dead,
but I guess that's fine.
dreams just keep you awake in the end.
it's what I once loved about them.

but as I closed my eyes,
the world turned real and I felt alive.
and all things fell out of my hand
across a gray and tired land.

I drew a sky pulsing red,
painted the darkness strange, and bled.
I realized even then
I was just wasting for the end.

I saw my father’s shaking head
among the rubble that was left.
he held his hands to the sky,
like a sun, like an eye.
in them I saw
all the hardness and softness that they'd held.

And the old man cried,
“damn,
you killed it all.
whatever happened to all you used to know?

was it stolen or socked away?
did you end it with yourself,
is it lying with your old husked world,
beside piles of ash and glass,
or did the wind whisk it far away,
flying from your yearning grasp?

if so, I'm sorry son,
but, I guess now all you'll ever know
is it’s how that old song goes:
that's the way it goes.”

I woke and saw no light,
rising on my mountain side.
I thought about home
and all the love I used to know.
where far away my family waits for me,
where old friends and I sat singing in the streets
(the songs’ echoes still haunting me,
where I once felt light and free.
Then I stood up and put on a coat,
walked out into the frigid world.
I guess that’s the way it goes.