Red Balloon

You are from mountains

You're gentle and you're wild

I imagine myself on the road

That edges your house

Should I watch the chimney smoke

Rise up like a wraith, like a ghost?

Should I watch the lights

Illumine, darken like my hope?

Tell me your song

And I will sing it too

Sweet song of mystery -

The scorpion and the moon

But for the part that has no reason

That cannot hold the tiger's jaw

The piece of me, the piece of me that would risk it all

For that moment, when we touch

Fingers delirious

Fingers with eyes, inching across my skin

Trying to see everything

And the ground drops away

And my mind drops away

Tell me your secrets

Let me trace them in your palm

When you first came to this city

Did you pine, oh did you yearn

For your green-gable land

With volcano sands?

Did the tower blocks

And the pound shops

Bring you down in the end?

Tell me your song

And I will sing it too

But the hourglass is running for

The scorpion and the moon

At this altitude

There's no consequence

See the figurines, see your garden fence?

Don't you want to know, to experience

All your lives un-led and your dreams undreamt?

Now I feel like

I feel like

A red balloon

Tugging at the string

Longing

To be weightless