The Skin I'm In

I don’t know you, but for these handed down bones,
names on moss covered stones. I don’t know you.
But you arrived, and what you did to survive
you left a wake so wide. You handed this to me.

I washed my hands down by the river.
I washed my hands of you.
But you keep staring back from the mirror
to remind me again of the skin I’m in.

You couldn’t know me, the possibility
that I might live and breathe to carry on your name.
My ungrateful crime is pointing fingers through time.
Did you just toe the line or build a world of chains.

(The ancestors speak)

What’s the matter don’t you like it,
don’t you like being heard.
Don’t you like the first choice,
don’t you like the last word.
Don’t you like that you don’t have to know
what this is about,
be deaf, dumb, and blind
and get the benefit of the doubt,
to walk through this world
in a velvet cocoon
that everybody else can see,
except, of course, you,
because you are everybody
your true is true.
That’s what I handed to you.

So here we are by the grace of some god,
knowing the mirror is flawed. What do we do now?

 music and lyrics by Greg Greenway ©2016 Sheen of Heat Music. All rights reserved.

Recorded on his 2016 "20,000 Versions of the Sun" album.