I was young once.
Yeah, you can laugh.
But I was young and you weren’t here.
Oh God, how time has passed.

But youth can die
Before the mind,
And take the heart
And make it blind,
And swallow up a man,
His pride,
His anger,
And make death his bride.

And time can smirk upon your fate,
As you will see when it’s too late;
When all your dreams as yet unborn
Lie wasted, broken, shattered, torn
In remnants of a memory,
A time that couldn’t, wouldn’t be;
In eyes within your head that see
The memories of a Never-Be.

Stand up?
We did.
What was it for?
I had the time to open doors,
To choose one of life’s corridors.
But look at me in lost unfound.
My legs are weak, my hands are bound,
My mind keeps going round and round
With yesterday, but never now.

No, now is never here, it seems.
And yesterday is only dreams.
Tomorrow?
Well, I guess I’ll die.
But one more look at times gone by.

Of times on Sunday afternoons,
In fields of laughter, beachy dunes.
Of firing missiles through the sky
Which never hurt, but made us cry.
Of being bad, still being good,
Of doing things we never should.
Of chasing through the shady wood
In search of action, never blood.

Of Monday mornings.
Friday nights? They never were.
And was that right?
Before the wheel,
Before the bomb,
Before the millions met the Somme.
Before the Devil took the helm
Of all the ships to take the Realm.
Before the system swallowed nature,
Ripped and ruined, robbed and raped her.
Before the skies came down to Earth,
Before the lands had given birth
To monsters in their millions who,
With metal hearts could rape us too.
Before the war we called a peace,
“It’s not ours, so let us feast!”
And eat with stomachs fit to burst,
And store some too - to rot, what’s worse!
Before the hell,
Before the war,
Before the deaths,
Before the poor, I’d plead forgiveness.
But what for?

To change the colour of a grain of sand upon the beach
Will never change the nature of what exists upon the shore.