This mess we're in and

 

Can you hear them, the helicopters?

I'm in New York, no need for words now

We sit in silence, you look me in the eye directly

You met me, I think it's Wednesday, the evening

The mess we're in, and, oh, the city sun sets over me

Oh, the city sun sets over me

Night and day I dream of making love to you now, baby

Love-making on-screen, impossible dream

And I have seen the sunrise over the river

The freeway reminding of this mess we're in 

And oh, the city sun sets over me

Oh, the city sun sets over me

Oh, the city sun set over me

Oh, the city sun sets over me

What were you wanting? (what was it you wanted?)

I just want to say (I just want to say)

Don't ever change (don't ever change now, baby)

And thank you (and thank you)

I don't think we will meet again (I don't think we will meet again)

You must leave now before the sun rises above the skyscrapers

(And you must leave now)

And the city landscape (before the sunrise)

Comes into view (above skyscrapers)

Sweat on my skin, and oh (the sin)

And this mess we're in

And oh, the city sun sets over me

Oh, the city sun set over me

One Way

Arizona, Thanksgiving

2003 Soundtrack

Another Way

We've been trying something a little different this tour

we've been looking at one of our songs from a different angle

under a different light

so we can hopefully kinda almost see it for the first time

we'd like to try that for you tonight, is that okay?

we're gonna need your help though

we're gonna need your help and your permission

so we need you to find a comfortable space

that is not only comfortable but vulnerable

i want you to shut your eyes and go there

and we'll meet you on the other side........

I saw the gap again today, while you were begging me to stay

Take care not to make me enter. If I do, we both may disappear

Know that I will choke until I swallow

Choke this infant here before me

What is this but my reflection?

Who am I to judge or strike you down?

But you're pushing and shoving me

Pushing and shoving me

You still love me, you still love me

But you didn't need to push it on me

You still love me, you still love me

But you didn't need to push it on me

Rest your trigger on my finger

Bang my head upon the fault line

You'd better take care not to make me enter

'Cause if I do, we both may disappear

But you're pushing and shoving me

Pushing and shoving me

You still love me, you still love me

But you didn't need to push it on me

You're pushing and shoving me

Pushing and shoving me

I'm slipping back into the gap again

I'm alive when you're touching me

Alive when you're shoving me down

But I'd trade it all for just a little peace of mind

Push it on me

You're pushing and shoving and scrambling 

Keep my feet down on the ground

I am somewhere I don't wanna be

Push me somewhere I don't wanna be

You put me somewhere I don't wanna be

Seeing someplace I don't wanna see

Never wanna see that place again

I saw that gap again today

While you were begging me to stay

Managed to push myself away

And you as well, my dear

If when I say I might fade like a sigh if I stay

You minimize my movement anyway

I must persuade you another way

Pushing and shoving

Pushing and shoving, pushing me

There's no love in fear

Yeah, I'm staring down the hole again

Hands are on my back again

Survival is my only friend

Terrified of what may come

Remember I'll always love you

As I claw your fucking throat away

But it will end no other way

It will end no other way

Dream It True

Like a storm this rage envelops me

Delivers me to places I didn’t want to be

Shows me mirrors I’ve spent years abandoning

Scares me to the point of no return

Pushes me over the edge

Like the fire inside destroys as it burns

Nothing I wish to embrace

This absence in my face, the level of rage

The drama I’ve given into

Opens doors I have no wish to walk through

I give everything for the string dangling in front of me

Teasing the thought of sanity

I’m lost without the light

Able to lead me back to clarity and sight

My rage is uncontrolled

My anger unparalleled

My hope abandoned

My fists in flight

I must find the way back to love

Let go of the fear

The love you seek lies in there

Let go, walk through, love awaits you

Believe, and dream it true

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Constructs

 

"Karma's a word, like 'love' a way of saying 'what I am here to do.' I do not resent my karma. I'm grateful for it, grateful for my wonderful wife, for my beautiful daughter. They are gifts, and so I do what I must do to honor them."

"Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, vagaries of perception! Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose! And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love! You must be able to see it! You must know it by now! You can't win! It's pointless to keep fighting! Why? Why do you persist? - Because I choose to."

At Our Best

It’s said that our fears manifest

And karma hits us while at our best

To tear down all we hold onto

That which keeps us from growing

And from being free

It takes us as far down as it has to

In order to break our will

To be reborn free through death

If we take it that far

No one escapes it

No one evades it

But still a choice exists

Hidden in the consciousness

It’s the ability to surrender

To let go and succumb

To remember to be humbled

To let go of all we believe we know

So simple it sounds

Yet so difficult for so many of us

I’m given advice to lay low

I remember to be humble

I remember it’s been so long

Since I even considered the concept

Of Humility

My overconfidence, and my will

My fears and my truths

I know now that all will fall

And that in turn I may too

These mistakes before and

In front of me

Will always be

If I die a thousand deaths

Each one will reach the same depth

I am what I am

I came to be via one choice

Here I am to understand

To see through, to understand why

But we can never see past the choices

We do not understand

Or wont accept

But the choice has already been made

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Cozumel

Stalker

Muscles Maybe

These moments frozen in time

We call them memories

Holding emotion and ties

Threads that contain reality

If one was to cut loose

Do they all pull?  And fall away?

I stare into photographs

Of love, of joy, of hope, and cry

Feeling a feeling of something lost

Somewhere in me

In my muscles maybe

These memories live

Over and over, the life they know

And I wonder

As I live my own

What I know…

I stare at these images

Of love, of relation, of memory

And in me I know

All are a past

But there is no past, only now

And I wonder are they all dead

Or just in my head

They’ve grown apart

A part of me

A part from me

And I don’t know them anymore

Although I could

If I chose, but I don’t, so I don’t

And one day they die

I remember my images

And am saddened and I feel sorry

Again for something lost

But I cant put my finger on it or why

They are all dead or will die

No one for sure will ever know why

All of this we hold on to with dear life

With

Dear

Life

With dear life

With dear life

If only I knew

Why

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Floating Away

I watch these recent energies

Go back to their normal place in reality

I look to the sky, knowing what awaits me

Me back to me, and you back to the sea

I watch you floating away

Or is it me?

This wave pushes and pulls me

I never know where I stand

What’s sea and what’s land

These oceans within betray me

Or is it me?

I taste this salt on my lips

And this blood on my fingertips

It’s all bitterness

Bred from fear and ignorance

There’s something in this air

That tears at my skin and hair

My eyes burn, my stomach turns

And I wait for the moment that delivers her

But the miracle never comes

The magic of love

I question how deep the rabbit hole goes

And how much a lover can ever really know

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Inbred

Inbred

Ignorant 

To the lives you’ve shed

Your history’s lost

Through two too close to sense the cost

Your image is blurred

Your life is turned

Your catalyst, burned

Your soul holds nothing learned

You fucking inbred piece of shit

Clinging to the illusion of it

You’re nothing

Nothing to remember

Nothing to embrace

Nothing to call upon

Nothing but space

Burn in your own ignorance

Burn in your life of chance

You will return to nothing!

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

But not since you left..

No more gold lights for the queen earth

To keep you warm in your kingdoms

High on the waves you make for us

But not since you left have the waves come

The bar is dead and the rocket's rain

Is keeping you wet in your deathbed

So high on the waves you made for us

And not since you left have the waves come

High on the waves you made for us

Not since you left have the waves come

Have the waves come, have the waves come

The waves come.. the waves come

Hope

"We all know that the reason that most of us are here is because of our affinity for disobedience.”

"You do not truly know someone until you fight them."

"Denial is the most predictable of all human responses."

"Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness."

Layers

You move in layers

But from here it appears the same

I’m fortunate enough to see through

I begin to understand

Chapels eclipse in the horizon

And clouds backdrop the cross

You find ways to remind

Ways I’m able to perceive

Your messages I receive

The divinity in everything I see

Close enough to reach out and touch

But we move in miles per hour

And although you’re this close

No bridge could be crossed

But I too know, no touch could be lost

If smoke enveloped me

Or if blood soaked me

I would still breathe you in

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Formal Casualty

Product of You

A Stone

Quiet

In this room I can hear the sound that nothing makes

I can hear my thoughts, my fears, my dreams, my years

Nothing… is beautiful

Quiet is strong, quiet is wise, quiet is powerful

I can hear the power of silence in this room

In my head, in the world

The silence is breath

That frozen moment in between time

For silence, it’s so quiet

Everything sleeps, everything

I had forgotten your voice

Shut out your whisper

Feared your presence

I did not know what thoughts, fears, dreams, years

You might bring forth from me

I used distractions and vain actions

To keep you from my ears

Even though you are my friend

I betrayed you as I believed my friend death betrayed me

Between smoke and mirrors, clouds and flames
The sky melted in the distance
And nothing was the same
It shone like the fire of war
Clouds merging the skies and shore
Years ago this downward spiral began
Here into a depression she couldn’t understand
I was almost brave and almost breaking down
Somewhere in between

But not yet quite beyond

In losing a battle I couldn’t see
Sensing only the loss and lack of hope
Nothing nowhere throwing me a rope
Safer probably, I’d say I’d be
Than were they to leave that alone with me…
Yes, my excuses are my own

And my eyes became stone

They say you can’t get blood from a stone
But I say leave ‘can’t’ well alone
Because again this is a lie

Today I’ve shown

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Floating

Hanging on, here until I'm gone

Right where I belong

Just hanging on

Even though

Watched you come and go

How was I to know you'd steal the show

One day I'll have enough to gamble

I'll wait to hear your final call

Bet it all

Hanging on, here until I'm gone

Right where I belong

Just hanging on

Even though I pass this time alone 

Somewhere so unknown 

It heals the soul

You ask for walls, I'll build them higher

We'll lie in shadows of them all

I'd stand but they're much too tall

And I fall

February stars, floating in the dark

Temporary scars, February stars

February stars, floating in the dark

Temporary scars, February stars

February stars, floating in the dark

Temporary scars, February stars

Cut Short

Cut Short

And the pieces left to see

Have already been taken away

You think how it isn’t fair

And all the what ifs

But it’s no use

The end is certain, and soon

Every single moment is acknowledged

Appreciated, glorified

And you can bet on no one truly understanding

Eyes two steps away

When you remember how they used to be only one

Only one

You can sit and stare into nothingness

So long that you realize days have passed

And you know you might as well

Be the only one in the world

You look for things you wanted to see

But those answers aren’t there

You think the questions will slow

But they don’t

The answers come no easier

Although you somehow thought they would

They don’t

You dream because somehow

You believe those images will materialize

But you have no promises, only faith

And that and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee

But not there, if anywhere

You suck it in and save your energy

Because you think “What if I need it”

Everything becomes conscious

And carefree simultaneously

You relish in the contradictions

And the ways they’re unable to understand

They dismiss it, and make allowances for you

And no matter how special you feel

It’s not enough, it’s never enough

Because you will be gone

And they will be here, remembering

Making it all mean something to them

And you may be able to watch

But you’ll never be able to touch, again

Death is for the living

Life’s secrets for the dead

Irony, contradiction, divinity, eternity

Is all you have left

Save the longing

How could you forget the longing?

You practiced before you came

Longing for another opinion

An ounce of hope looking to be left alive

And how you promise to do it right this time

But now, this time right now

You waste, fantasizing about how you would do it

Differently, better, perfect, in tune

But your life has bloomed

And this moment is all that’s promised

Not the next

Yet even at this moment

You are human, and wasting

Like us all, but now

You have been given a gift of knowing

The end is coming, again

You waste time pondering

Maybe you realize this

So you run out the door

To find whatever it is you’re looking for

But you don’t know

Because you’re not dead, yet

Speak, speak out

Touch with the soul

Give them something to remember

Give yourself something to remember

To reflect upon, to smile at

To know you physically touched the soul of another

And your own soul

Before its time

Before your moment in time

Everything

A curse, and a blessing

Contradicting

Reflecting

Death and the living

Dreaming

And dying

Each moment in its time

ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn

Smoke and Mirrors

between smoke and mirrors
clouds and flames
the sky melts in the distance
and nothing's the same
it looks like the fire of war
with the clouds surrounding
the merger of the sky and shore


ⓒ 2003 Shawn Michael Quinn