so i was walking this path
carrying this huge black rock
not really sure where it came from
but i think it had always been there
like a part of me you know?
it carved a channel into my back
it broke me down into something
i wasn’t meant to be
something broken
something bent and bleak
but never alone
the path was filled with the crushed
every one who ever was and is and will be
walked with me beneath their own stone
and it was the most normal ever
and it was the most unnatural ever
the strangest thing happened one day
someone told me i could take the burden off
someone else took it for me…
and i could stand up straight for the first time
and I could walk tall and proud
still strange things would happen here and there
like every so often i would see this stone
and just pick it up and put it on my back
like i missed the pain
like i missed being enslaved to the hurt
but then i remembered who i was
and i would put it down and run and run
like wind across the water I would fly
but odder still were the looks from some
resentment and whispered questions of
"where’s his weight?"
"why’s he walk so tall like that?"
"none should lift so light as he"
cuz they still held their burdens
like dead babies in the arms of grieving mums
like an ex-con sleeping better on the cold hard floor
than the fresh new bed offered up to him
and the one who walked alongside
the one who taught us to walk upright
who took it all on himself and walked
like no one ever walked before
like a giant in our midst
he would cry for the hopelessness of it all
he was Sisyphus taking the back embedded blocks
only to have them taken back by selfish bleeding hands
worse still
sometimes when I’d pick up a new stone
realize the folly of it all to put it down again
for fear of the lost and the fog
some of my travelling companions would pick it up
my own stone meant for him and him alone
they’d pick it up and pop it right up there on their own
then they’d stare at me and say
"look at how we hunch and bow low to the merciless earth"
"this is supposed to be you not us"
but i just can’t do it anymore no sir, no more, no more
i will not hold my load like an albatross before my eyes
nor tie it round my neck or bleed beneath it’s razor laughter
why you want my millstone weighted to your own
when both could be gone
this is the great mystery
this is the great sadness
but i will not wait or stand still in the crowd
have to keep walking straight ahead and tall, so tall
just a man clothed in ego and arrogance
but a man nonetheless who knows who carrys it all for me
don’t look for me to carry what ain’t mine to carry
cuz though some thorns are meant for my head
they press the flesh of another more worthy
though some nails are meant for my hands
they pierce the sinew and bone of another more worthy
sometimes we pick up our curses again and again
and i get that…
but to pick up the curse of another to add to you own
that is death in the hot midday
give me dew and morning shade of dawn