For the Sake of No One
Lyrics by John Brenner.
A Matter of Days
Watch the time fly away
A clock that strikes too soon
A brick gazebo in the rain
A conversation in the midst of machines
Ice thick on the reservoir
A million shimmering drops of lies
Faux French, milkweed dreams
Sacred in the memory
Offset
Clusters of fragrant stars
Your prisoner
My familiar dream
On the corner, in the old street
Two ghosts, too cowardly
Remember our mad delight?
Eyes accustomed to less white
All the trembling, the air too sweet
All the despair of your hair
All is false and vain
But your name...
Only fools endure
At our Sunday best on the battlements
We would give the world the lie
Eight years in the rift
The fiend on the cliff
Wants to teach us to fly
Canyons
All dreams muffle their music
Fearfully I try to understand
Your world
Far behind
The sky
Seems small today
Canyons divide your glances
If glances say what they mean
Two languishing in the apse
Beneath a hollow sun
Elbowing through doorways
Endless rafts of words
Like nightshades in evergreen lands
A chord like five night trains
One umber hair winding
My lips are too pale for your cheek
On a Promontory
Every
moon
I run toward
languishing
yellow
mumbled hellos
Anguishing,
listening to
echoing streets
Tumbling jealously,
Zealously, dismayed
Vigil
Snow sounded a warning
A compressed afternoon
Deafening whispers
Shone like rotten wood
My fingers sought shelter
In your room
You ravaged
And like a vandal left too soon
Memories of
Pale lunar fictions,
Breasts, and leaves
Alone on a jetty
I was down the hill
An old and weary
Chasm of azure
pierced by arrows
Stretching ropes from the steeples
Confound the plagues
Little drunken vigil
Memories of
Pale lunar fictions,
Breasts, and leaves
The Whisper Stream
We have no faith in stones
No taste for eating earth
This is for you alone
My temporary soul
The hard shadows at noon
Snow falls through the holes
A hundred promises
Ended with that madness
Music for our desire
The terror of yielding
Slowly drives you away
Sweating, drifting
Eyes on those sacred hands
Everything is seen
Everything is known
Everything ignored
For the Sake of No One
Our wings are numb, heavy with sleep
Wailing in deserts, far from thyme
Scentless, senseless lonely wandering
Waters and held breath, our former disharmony
No flame inspires, this day on fire
Out of you, only embers
Living to remember