Build a Bridge to Nowhere

Where is the place for caution

in a passionate life?

Does passion tear a life asunder?

Cause unimaginable strife?

A passionless existence with each

insipid,  mundane, rotten day

where the sun rises to dry rot

and sets in exactly the same way?

Poisoned by ennui, drowning in a quagmire

a continuum of blandness

framed by the violence of inaction

your life in the grip of darkness,

the profound darkness of compromise

when you give up the little things:

Joy, grace, compassion: the beauty

of life that gives you wings.

It creeps in insidiously cell by cell

paralyses every part of your soul

and you're stuck in a moment,

a life in a fish bowl.

Security, acceptability, each

A nail in your prison's bars --

Did you trade a warm home for a shell,

instead of reaching for the stars?

Did you trade your creativity

for a life with status quo?

Did you sell your soul

'coz you had nowhere left to go?

And there you go wandering

now looking for your soul

as the fog of insidious insecurity

inexorably draws you to your goal.

A goal fed at the cost of honesty,

the inevitable suicide of truth;

there it hangs, lonely, unmourned, unacknowledged,

unwanted as a broken tooth.

So build, if you will, a bridge to nowhere,

For nowhere is a good place to start.

A bridge to the past, to the future --

Take your prison cell apart.

Take the steel from your heart

And build your bridge brick by brick --

Layer it with honesty, truth, gentleness and caring,

With compassion and grace to make it stick.

Build a bridge out to nowhere

To your very own Zihuatanejo

to the dreams you traded for security

to the creativity you let go.

Tonight I blasted our music

through large speakers in honour of you --

To send a wish on winged flight

So you can blast through your prison cell too.