Poem of the week: Liam Vaughan

This poem sounds more like song lyrics than a poem, but I like 'em. Maybe that makes it better than a poem: how many poems can you sing? How many poets these days write lyrics -- not just lines that stick in the mind, but whole pieces that your mind hops along with in easy rhythmic accordance, besides the heavy duty of absorbing its power cerebrally and emotionally?

FORBEARANCE by Liam Vaughan

To go softly on your journey
With a strength confined to one
When your daily bread is broken
But you’ve still not yet begun

Let me stand outside your window
Let me look into your soul
At the parts you hide from people
And the places you daren’t go

If I understood I’d tell you
But I hardly know myself
There’s a time and place for all this
But you’re doing something else

In a waking state of ignorance
I’ll play the village clown
I won’t press for vindication
I’ll try not to bring you down

Let me strip away my being
Hold it underneath for you
Make it clean and inoffensive
Make it anything but true

But the prize that I’m proposing
Isn’t worth the price you’ll pay
So you’ll leave me being no-one
Where I’ll slowly fade away

Now you’ve battened down your windows
I can’t see you anymore
So I’ll try and find myself again
And leave you wanting more