My life
tick
slides through time
tock
and time
tick
trickles past
tock
as fast
tick
as the hands
tock
go round the face
tick
of the clock
tock
and with every
tick
and with every
tock
my life
tick
melts away
tock
as it did
tick
for all those
tock
who now
tick
are no more
tock
tick...tock...tick...tock.

I was followed home tonight,
so when I got in
I locked the door
and ran through all the house
locking all the windows too.

But it came in through the walls -
and no one heard me scream

When you left the house
and heard an ambulance wail,
what would you have done
if you had known it wailed for you?

Oh yes: I know that
all my life,
from out of the future
an ambulance
has been coming for me.

Its driver has the map;
his schedule's well defined.
He knows the time,
he knows the place
we'll meet on my road through life.

As for me, I stagger on,
unknowing and quite blind.

I asked the Rock
as old as the Earth
where the stars
had gone.

It said that they
were dead,
and how I wept
at that!

I climbed the Rock
as old as the Earth
and on to the wind
I threw my life,
to be carried away
to eternal night.

Water my grief, my tears.
Flood my broken heart.
I saw Death come to to kiss you;
creeping through the dark.
I held you, dear, so tightly;
I wanted you to stay,
but Death had come
to take you.
He said we had to part.

Water my grief my tears,
and drown my broken heart.

Move stealthily about the house
baby's trying to sleep.
Move stealthily about the house
whisper when you speak
Move stealthily about the house
don't make that floarboard creak.
Move stealthily about the house,
baby's trying to sleep.

Move stealthily about the house,
grandad's lying in there
Move stealthily about the house
step quietly on the stair.
Move stealthily about the house,
we don't want him to hear.
Move stealthily about the house,
Grandad's dying in there.

I sit in the barber's chair,
staring into the mirror behind the sink -
on the pictured wall, beautifully-tonsored
models trapped above the hair gels looking cool for ever more -
and on the barber's face an expression of close
concentration, snipping here and snipping there,
as he has snipped a thousand times before
while a ready-programmed conversation
spills from his brain, through his mouth and
into his customer's ear.

I look into the mirror at the man in the barber's chair.
I know the face. it's always there, staring
dispassionately back.
But is that me behind those eyes?
And if the face were
different, would I be different too?

Are we our faces? Is that all?
The hair falls off the barbers's scissors in clumps to the floor.
Bits of me mingled there with bits of other people;
minutes of their lives.
Anger, smiles, going to work, coffee breaks,
"Yea. I'm OK thanks. And you?"
All those interactions;
all those feelings welling up and falling back
like waves against a wall;
decisions; and indecisions.

There's a month of me under the barber's feet.
And now the barber's boy has come to sweep it all away.
Neatly, the story of my life is dumped into a bin.