A poem called "Seven Times"

Pages written under her
I read the book of pride
In the end of love and greed
I'll have already died
With the pain, that goes with love
The answers took their toll
I went to breathe the air of gifts
And left my lonely soul
The carnival has left our town
It's fun was very real
I cried the night that I was live
And made the evening feel
In the end of laughs of love
And staunch reality
In the end of laughs of love
I will be here, so free.

Thanks!!

I wrote these for school a few years back. Any comments appreciated:

Alone In Japan

I wander under skylights
through the slow droning swarm
of a shopping mall.
When I find the piano shop
I sit down to play
and catch
the piercing passive glare
of a saleswoman.
"I'm being an American," I realize.

The woman at the candy shop
scoops candy,
less nervous
more cautious
than with the Japanese.
Her daughter climbs atop a stool,
small fine hand rears up
to point at me,
The American.
For the first time
I feel the weight of eyes.

***

Naming Ceremony

You lay in bed and you can't catch your breath
because you don't know its name.
If you knew the right word you could call sweetly
through friendly teeth,
pierce the husk,
hold it down.

So you bundle up in wool and find the yard dark out back.
You're greeted with wild static,
iced moths imitating the stars
in a dance around lanterns,
trees glazed.

You glide over the deck leaving long spirit footprints
beneath maples tall as moons
and you follow your boots through gates and gardens.
You heed the howl
of windswept canyons between houses.

Your search ends as you emerge
to the corner of Oriole and Duchess.
Like giving in, you hold your head and breathe.
It's simple:
you were brought here
for a rite of admission
to the austere world of the aware.

Everything is illuminated…
Light; dark.
Night and day.
Black; and white.
Good or Evil…There is no in between you know. Nothing you can rely on cause you don’t belong to neither of them. You are alone you know…All alone, he pauses, and there is nothing you can do!
You are a shadow of a figure hiding the light. You will never get the chance to even see it; you are behind it. You are the opposite of it.
You can’t hide…You can’t even escape!

You are an idol in the mirror.
Now don’t get confused! You’re not somebody’s alter ego or even him or her! You are just a figure. An illuminated figure…

Just imagine. Just imagine what will happen to you when that mirror breaks into pieces. That figure you were, he pauses again, stops being a figure. Those small
pieces of mirror; those thrashes of light become what you were…

< A face comes threateningly and falls on the mirror. Some thrashes of the mirror idolize the face, some have blood on them and some reflect the light of the sun shining through the window>

Light. That’s what we were. That’s what we are suppose to be. You should just look up. See the white clouds, the blue sky, the sun. That’s what we were and what we shall be…
Instead we are a missing piece of a mirror reflecting nothing.

A missing piece mirroring nothing; nothing but the truth that doesn’t exist. There is no truth, no lie, no imagination or reality. Everyone makes his own truth; his own world. And lives there. Everything else is a lie, a reflection of life that doesn’t exist and even if it exists it shall be broken…like the mirror.

So break it! Break your mirror along with the reflection of your li(f)e. You are not real! You are s-somebody’s product. Somebody’s invention or even somebody’s dream but YOU ARE NOT REAL!!! You were invented, produced and sold because they created you for their own purposes. They are gonna use you and then throw you away.

What is it left?
< A body is crawling on the thrashes of the mirror, bleeding and agonising to get on its feet>
There’s nothing left. Because nothing is real. Don’t try to hide. You are a reflection of somebody’s life. A thrush of a mirror. An inflamed reaction of the blood flowing from your head. Hypnos. A dream you will never remember. All the thoughts, the darkness in your feelings, the selfishness of your individuality, the lost world of someone’s missing truth…

WAKE UP!

It’s not a dream…Spread the wings of your plunged heart. Get up! Admit your timeless illumination of life; accept your truth along with the thrashes of the mirror lying on the floor full of blood and deception. Reject your existence, feel the nothing of your heart and let it be you.

*The darkness of your aura surrounds the everything of this illuminated fantasy of reality. You can’t see anything. You are confused and you can’t even feel your feet. You are falling…*
Let’s hope that someone will break your fall; reach out and take your hand…


Please comment. I would really like an opinion on this...

Here's a poem I just wrote in literally 5-10 minutes. Feel free to criticize, since I spent so little time on it. For what it is, though, I think it's ok.


Grasshopper Symphony

I am a tree.
Standing in the moonlight, standing
for a purpose. Let the waters of
public acceptance flow into my
veins like a river.

I am the moon.
Glowing down upon God's green
Earth, glowing with eyes of approval
for every plant and flower struggling to
reach me. Let my effervescent, ever-shining
energy reach those who seek it most.

I am a wanderer.
Walking along the path by the
creek at night, walking further and
further into my own destiny. Let me rest
awhile under this tree. As I wander I sometimes
wonder, "If a tree fell, would I be underneath it and
meet a quick demise, or will I slowly fade away with time?"

But for now, I sleep.

Wrote this for Gr. 12 writer's craft. Had fun doing it. Shortly after writing it, I actually got a summer job at a convenience store, which gave me a lot more ideas for some of the customer-relations stuff, but whatever. Some foul language, if anyone's offended by stuff like that.

Interested in any feedback too.

Here it is:

DOUBLE ROBBERY AND THE PETER GUNN THEME

I was sitting in my bright yellow and red uniform behind the cashier’s desk at the Quick·Stop in Aurora when I had my life‘s one great idea. I was reading the lottery tickets that were on display at my desk. This was taking awhile because all of the tickets were upside down. When there were no customers in the store, this was one of the things I did. The other thing was to try and close my eyes for exactly one minute. If I did it right, I gave myself a cookie, or I gave the next customer his change back in pennies. So far, during my tenure at the Quick·Stop, I had done this 2347 times. That’s more than 39 hours, and too many pennies.
Anyways, I was wondering if it was a ‘2’ or an ‘S’ on one of the lottery tickets when my idea hit. I had ideas before, like having a meatball sandwich for lunch, or figuring out what to watch on the television, but nothing this important. I felt like Einstein and Curie’s bastard lovechild. I felt like I could kill James Bond and eat the Easter Bunny.
So, maybe I said “Holy shit.” Some kid in the back of the store maybe heard me and maybe started to cry. The kid’s mom rushed him out and gave me a dirty look, which was ridiculous, because if the word ‘shit’ makes your nine-year-old cry, your nine-year-old has problems that a dirty look isn’t going to fix. That didn’t matter though. What mattered was my idea.
The first thing you had to know about me was that I had been working at the Quick·Stop for five years, and I was still working the night shift. You wouldn’t be exaggerating if you said my life was going nowhere. My idea was a beautiful thing though: worker’s comp. I would get my friend to rob and beat me for worker’s comp. This is when a chorus of angels singing “Hallelujah,” should have broken out, but the muzak version of Cher’s ‘Believe’ would have to do.
The next week was hell. Someone put up a cardboard cut-out of a clown for some new advertising promotion. There was a button you could press and the clown would make these annoying clown noises. Kids loved it, probably because it sounded like the auditory equivalent of getting kicked in the face. So, I had to deal with that in addition to the chart-topping hits of a Mr. Phil Collins. Through the dull throb of a headache, I began to realize that I hated all of the inconsiderate people who walked into the Quick·Stop. People would leave a penny in the take-a-penny, leave-a-penny jar. People would ask me if the new ‘Rolling Stone’ was out. Some guy even asked me if a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup contained enough peanut butter to harm him if he was severely allergic to peanuts. All of these people would go about their daily routines instead of screaming at me to empty the register, instead of assaulting me, instead of jumping the counter and treating my face like a public bathroom.
“Do you think that Jesus wrote the Bible?” the voice on the telephone asked me. This voice belonged to Jacob Miller. I thought that Jake would be the only person who would be able to rob me, but he was gone for the week on some new clinical trial. That’s what Jake did for money; participate in clinical trials for new drugs. His hair fell out during a trial for Para Aminosalicylate. He developed a rash that looked suspiciously like someone giving the middle finger on Venlafaxine ER, and he thought that the government was trying to kill him on Buprenorphine. I knew he would help me because we had been friends since high school, and his life sucked worse than mine.
“Yeah,” I said after a long pause. I was trying to get the sarcastic tone just right. “Jesus was just some guy who wrote all of this great stuff about himself. Seriously, he would just get home, rip out the diary and write about what an awesome guy he was. ‘Dear Diary, I definitely saved about seventeen people today. I fed a crowd of people with a single slice of bread. Oh, and I figured out that I could levitate. Gee-Whiz, I’m a cool guy.’”
“Well, that’s what I was thinking too,” Jake said, not missing a beat. “Because if Jesus was just some guy, he couldn’t have been more special than me. And I could write some crazy shit down. Like, today the doctor gave me Triamphopolynene, and the walls bled purple for three hours. I could write that down, bury it, and maybe in like a thousand years somebody really good at digging will find it and start a religion for me. It would be like church with drinking.”
There was nothing that I could say to that. It actually made sense, in a blasphemous sort of way. “So yeah,” I said again, “That sounds like a better-than-average plan. Do you want to rob me next Saturday?” I knew that I was just blindsiding him with the question, but, really, would there ever be a good time to ask? Besides, Jake was the kind of guy who will start a forest fire if you tell him you have matches.
“Saturday sounds great. I’ll pick you up Friday. We can plan,” Jake finished. By plan, he meant listen to what I had to tell him, but that was okay. I said goodbye and went to sleep. It was noon, and I was stuck on the nightshift again. Plus, I had getting robbed by the new Jesus to think about.
That Friday, I was waiting in Jake’s car - an old Ford Mustang with a lousy paintjob - while he stopped in at another convenience store. This one had a similar layout, so it was good for him to walk around in. He came out eating raw five-second bacon from its packaging. All he ate was pumpkin pie, cereal and bacon. He got around to the driver’s side and sat down. The car sank two inches. He turned on the CD player - the only modern touch the car had - and ‘The Peter Gunn Theme’ started to play. ‘The Peter Gunn Theme’ is one of those songs that just makes you feel cool. I mean, we could have been talking about the price of gas in China and we still would have sounded cool, all because of that song. So, if you ever plan on planning a robbery, ‘The Peter Gunn Theme’ would be a smart thing to listen to.
We went over the plan and everything seemed perfect. Almost Hallmark card perfect, only I’m pretty sure they don’t have a card about getting robbed for worker’s comp. Near the end of my shift, Jake would come in wearing a ski mask. He would rob me at gunpoint with a gun that wasn’t loaded, beat me in the face, and leave. Once he left, I’d pull the silent alarm, but he’d already be gone. Jake already had the gun from when he thought the government was trying to kill him, and the rest of the plan was smooth. He was asking lots of questions, but that was a good thing, because I knew that meant he would understand the plan better. Also, it would be a great story for his pseudo-bible.
The night I was robbed started off slow. The lottery wasn’t big enough for anyone to want tickets, so I served a smaller than usual number of people who didn’t want to cause me bodily harm. I had figured out a row of upside-down lottery cards, and paid back two customers in pennies.
The big hand of the clock swept downwards. It was ten-thirty and the store was empty. Jake, who hated to be late, kicked in the door. He was wearing an oversized hoody and a leotard over his face. “Give me all of your money!” he shouted. Only he shouted it in a fake Mexican accent. I almost started laughing. The sight of a 300 pound man wearing a leotard, shouting obscenities at you in an ugly Spanish accent will do that. They trained Quick·Stop employees well though, and I started to freak out. I tossed the roasted peanut display over and made a big scene of begging for my life. As bags of salty heart attacks fell to the floor, Jake pointed the impotent gun at me and thrust a garbage bag into my hands. He had actually written a dollar sign on it, and I got that hitching feeling in my chest that always came with a big laugh. “This is not goddamned funny! What will be funny is your brains all over the wall, Mr. Store clerk!” That accent man, it was making me cry. Here I was getting robbed by Jesus, and he was acting like the shitty understudy for Zorro.
I gave him all the money in the register, about $450. He was just about to jam his gun into my face when it happened. In hindsight, I can see it perfectly. Jake, acting like Jesus-the-Zorro-understudy, had his sweaty fist raised in the air, holding the gun to pistol whip me. I was just about to go into hysterics, he looked so dumb. Then, from the side of the store, there was a huge booming noise, like sound from every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie was having a fight with the sound of every Chuck Norris movie. Glass shattered and a milk carton splattered and flopped to the floor. This guy ran in, looking everywhere at once, sweeping a real gun around the room. “What do you think you‘re doing?” he said; only you could tell it wasn’t a question. He half screamed his words. “That‘s my fucking money!” he screeched, and he fired his gun at the chocolate rack, sending pieces of Mars Bar and Snickers ricocheting, splattering into the annoying clown display. Then he pulled out a bottle of pills and ate a handful of them. He started laughing uncontrollably.
Only nothing was very funny anymore.
I don’t think I’ve done anything as fast as when I pressed that silent alarm. Once he killed those chocolate bars, my fingers jammed on to that alarm, like if I pressed it hard enough this whole situation would end. Like if I pressed the button under the desk until my fingers bled, this psycho with the gun would say: “Oh, sorry guys. I meant to rob the gas station down the street, I‘ll just be going now. Well, this is embarrassing isn’t it?”
This guy must have noticed something though, because he pointed his gun at me and just screamed “What did you do? You snivelling little waste of life, what did you do?” That gun was the absolute scariest thing in the world. Staring straight into the barrel of the gun, I realized that I was nothing. This guy could have literally moved his finger and turned me into a lumpy stain on the floor. Just one nervous reaction and you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between my face and a spilled can of semi-congealed tomato sauce.
Jake wasn’t handling the situation that great either. He dropped the garbage bag full of money, and as ten dollar bills and quarters fell to the floor, Jake forgot that me and him were the only ones that knew his gun was useless. His gun dropped to the floor and I knew that I was going to die as a Quick·Stop employee. “Please don’t hurt us man,” Jake said, dropping the Mexican accent and pulling off the leotard. Is this what Jesus would have done?
Before anything else could happen, a police car came roaring into our parking lot. Apparently, I had underestimated the effectiveness of our silent alarm. As the cop was about to get out of his car, the guy with the real gun swung it over to where the car was and fired. He fired until the already shattered window was completely destroyed, and his gun made a cold, metallic clicking sound. In one fluid motion, he reached into the back pocket of his dirty, faded jeans and brought out another clip. As he was reloading he yelled out “This is now a hostage situation pig! If anyone comes in, everybody dies!” He picked up the gun Jake dropped, and weighed it in his hand. “Empty,” he said, and tossed it away. The cop backed out to the edge of the parking lot, and if he didn’t call for backup right then, I promised myself I’d quit paying taxes.
The guy with the gun shoved me and Jake behind the counter, and started barricading the entrance of the store, where the shattered windows were. He toppled over every display he could find, creating a wall of colourful signs, candy, soup, bread, chips, and magazines. I knew if there was a shootout, Quick·Stop would never be able to sell any of those products again. A bag of Cheetos with a bullet hole in it will never be bought, even if you tell people bullet holes lower carbs.
Me and Jake just sat behind the counter. I felt beaten, like a dog that had just been caught pissing on the carpet. So I just curled up into a pathetic ball and waited for whatever is supposed to happen in a hostage negotiation to happen.
I was getting really worried about what the police were going to do. In Aurora, nothing bad ever happens. There are car accidents, and once someone jumped off a building, but what the cops mostly had to deal with were drunk teenagers and high teenagers. A whole bunch of police cars pulled up in front of the store. When we heard a helicopter overhead, the guy started to mumble under his breath. Then, finally, the negotiator came.
“I WANT YOU TO KNOW, WE ARE TAKING YOUR THREATS VERY SERIOUSLY. DO YOU HAVE A LIST OF DEMANDS?” boomed over a megaphone.
The guy lifted the top of his head over the makeshift barrier and shouted obscenities at the negotiator.
“OH MY GOD! PLEASE DO NOT KILL ANYONE!” was the response. My stomach rolled, and I almost vomited. I tried talking to Jake, but he wasn’t listening.
The guy with the gun wasn’t acting right. Not that he was ever acting right in the first place, but he seemed a bit detached from the whole situation. He developed this spastic twitch in his face, like his nose was itching and he was using his head instead of his hands to scratch it. He took another handful of pills from his back pocket and that seemed to set him straight. He was back to his pacing-around-the-store-at-a-running-pace self again. He checked in on us and screamed “You two better stay the fuck still!” Not like I was going anywhere in the first place.
Jake still wasn’t talking to me when our captor stole a Zippo and started throwing flaming rolls of toilet paper at the police outside. The two-ply fireballs flew through the air and I lost sight of them. I felt really sorry for the negotiator; because I’m sure he had no clue as to what was going on. Here’s a guy who they probably use twice a year, and he gets pulled from his nice home in suburbia and dragged someplace where a random idiot with a gun speaks to him only in four-letter words and throws flaming toilet paper rolls at him.
While our captor shouted up his list of demands that involved a Lear jet, seventy-three million dollars, and a statue built in his honour in Malaysia, I had what you would call an epiphany. It landed with a dull thud in the centre of my head, but lit up my mind like neon: YOU DESERVE THIS.
I leaned over to Jake and told him that I was a shitty friend, and I would understand if he never talked to me again. I told him that maybe, if later he forgave me, to put me in his bible. Then I stood up and did the most heroic thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Our hostage taker turned and stared at me. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Fuck you,” I said as I swung my fist at him, hoping to connect at the jaw.
Everything else is a blur. I remembered my momentum shifting forwards, and I remembered thinking that this just might work. Then there was a flash and a bang, and my momentum shifted all the way back. I felt something splash on me, and an icy cold feeling where my stomach was.
The negotiator said something like “HOLY SHIT!” over the megaphone.
Police charged through the barricade and opened fire. I remembered hearing a scream muffled by a gurgling noise, I remembered our captor’s body spinning in the air, and I remembered things getting very dark.

***

I was a big deal in Aurora for about a weekend. The guy the cops killed was apparently some mental patient that the institutions couldn’t afford to take care of anymore. I was shot up pretty bad but the ambulance was already at the Quick·Stop because of the hostage situation, and in a small town like Aurora, the hospital was pretty close. Not that I ever want to get shot again, but if it happens, I hope I’m a hostage in a small town. I talked to Jake about it, and he agrees. We started talking again later on, when I recovered from all those bullets.
I said big deal for about a weekend because the cops found out about my plan. Jake’s gun was still at the scene, and our little act was caught on the surveillance tapes. They charged him with attempted robbery. I could have got out of it because Jake would never rat someone out, but I was getting tired of the white, sterile hospital room and the morphine they kept giving me. So, even though I was pretty much comatose, I told the cops my plan, and they charged me with Jake. We both pleaded guilty, but we weren’t exactly hardcore criminals, so we got put in some minimal security prison for like two months. It was a rehab job too, so I had to show remorse for what I did. And do community service. Jake could still participate in clinical trials, so he really didn’t give a shit either way.
I did the community service and I found out that hell is a room full of old people singing “Won’t You Call Me Sweetheart.” When I was done, the only employer that would take me was McDonalds. So what the fuck does that teach you?



*END*

Machols' poetry is amazing. Very, very nice.

I agree.... Machols is like the modern day poet. His poems are so much fun to read, too. Keep em coming, Machols.

I always have an admiration for people who have poetic skills.... maybe because I don't have any.

A little something I threw together last night. This is just a first draft and I have yet to make revisions.

An Abstract Hallucinatory Muse on the Ecclesiastical Vices of Man’s Existence

Standing knife poised he smiles down
Down at the rebels below
Who for fiftythousand years fought for independence
Where the hungry souls of their bastard children
Lick the frozen saliva
Off the streetlights of deception
Who’s lights shine brighter than the stars
Who now stand speechless and shameful
Their tongues numb with confusion
Who light their makeshift pipes
Breathe deep and smoke the crack of life
Who line up at the brothel of faith
And suck God’s razor wang
Hoping for temporary satisfaction
In some abstract nonexistent utopia
Who eat their own hearts in search of truth
Caught up in the mindfuck of existence
Jaded and alone
Frustrated and hungry
They line up at the fountain of youth
Only to find the water dirty and foul

Knife poised he smiles down
As Rasputin rapes a hopeless nun
His face hangs high above the city streets
As Pol Pot crushes the skulls of his bourgeois enemies
Beneath his forceful foot
And the cycle follows on
And we live our lives
Guided by the hazy memories
Of our ancient past
And the hopeless hopes
Of our imaginary futures
And the tired ghosts of our bastard children
Line up at the whorehouse of faith
To get fucked by God’s razor wang
And when they are done
Hallucinate a flash of lightning
And spend the rest of their lives searching
For meaning in a meaningless world

Knife poised he stands
Ready to slit the throat of God
Ready to slice up the chewy chunks of sin
And toss them into his tasty soup of corruption
To feed to all the hungry souls of the bastard children
Of the rebels down below
Who for fiftythousand years will fight for their independence
So they might be reborn from the ashes of their fathers

A long time ago, O put the universe in motion. O created a place of land, water, and gases, of rocks, rivers, and clouds. O breathed life into the universe as well. A hierarchy of life, one in which rational human beings reigned over the thoughtless creatures of nature. O placed them in this chaos, for reasons that only O knew, and blessed them with the ability to think and to discover, to develop and to destroy. O placed them in a universe which was a conundrum, a puzzle, an enigma, a beautiful mystery, an ugly tragedy.
The humans developed. They built, constructed, thought out ways of the universe, all in a glorious ambition to see the great O. Whether they knew it or not, they loved O, they worshipped O, and their life was spent trying to understand O. But O was crafty and wise, and O knew that if anyone should see O, O would surely be destroyed, for to see O, would be to equal O. So O put an end to each individual human, so not one would become so wise or great in power to see O, and O made them capable of reproduction, so that the individual human was nothing more than a pinpoint in the grander scheme of life, or of mankind, the continual existence .
With the dimension of Time,  grew to great proportions and developed, slowly, but gradually.  had only one goal, and that was to see O. Sneering from above, O allowed them a chance. O built them a table and on that table was an empty puzzle, and yet no puzzle pieces. But  had a genius of  own, and with the great effort of Time  were able to create pieces from imagination, from mind, and  collaborated to put together the puzzle, using textbooks as a link of memory and time, so that when an individual died, the next generation would have something to look back upon, and to continue building from, and that was how  went about constructing the puzzle.
As Time progressed, the collaborative  came closer and closer to finishing the puzzle.  also became very excited, knowing that the image revealed at the end was the very face of O. But alas,  efforts were to no avail. For O was more clever than they could realize, and had given them a table with irregular, jagged holes. When  tried to put the pieces together, some of the pieces would fall through the holes and land on the floor where  could not retrieve theme. Frustrated,  worked around these holes, figuring  would complete the puzzle nevertheless, to discover the great O, perhaps even equal him.
Meanwhile, O lied beneath the table watching  construct the puzzle, knowing that  were only creating a picture of O with the puzzle pieces, knowing that all  had to do was cut through the table and look down, and then they would behold O himself (and surely die). Some of  realized this. But their power was not great enough to cut the table out. They were afraid. So instead, they threw their puzzle pieces out and peered through the holes in the table. Some of them got a glimpse of O, but the holes were so small that they could not see his complete image, and the table so large, that they could not possibly look through all of the holes. Those that saw O were horrified, compelled, astonished, glorified. They ran to the puzzle-makers and attempted to tell the story.
“Look through the holes!” they cried. “For there you will behold O. O is lying beneath the table, watching you, grinning because you are trying to make this useless puzzle.” But the puzzle-makers laughed and said, “The holes in the table are nothing more than our inability to see steadily. We have so many pieces together as it is. Come, let us finish this puzzle while there is still time.” And so the great creation  was divided, between those who tried to complete the puzzle, and those who peered through the holes. It is difficult to say who was right. For the puzzle-makers indeed got closer to understanding O, while the hole-seekers saw fragments of O through the table. And yet none saw O.

fuck - don't read that, my squares were transformed into 5's

I thought I would post some lyrics I wrote awhile back. Whether it's poetry or not is debatable, but I love artists like Leonard Cohen and Glenn Richards (from Augie March) who almost elevate their songs to short stories set to music. The language in this is fairly simple, but I'd like to think it's effective because of this. Anyway this is a section from my song 'Vincentia:1886'. It's a mid tempo folk song if that helps.


Here comes the town parade, that haunted old affair,
where sun drenched figures clear the streets in droves of weary mares.
Confetti and ribbons mark each white picket gate
,while inside one house three sisters mourn in dresses of black lace.
Their father loved to dream and with his last dying breaths he said:

If the stars are falling from the sky tonight, bury them inside the woods where I used to hide,
when I was a child, broken and betrayed.
Hoping for a light to shine upon these days.

The eldest child Suzanne now raised the family,
working at a jewellery store, fake smiles through gritted teeth.
Beneath her icy gaze there lay an awkward scheme ,to steal a gold encrusted brooch and flee to the city.
But guilt soon intervened and for the first time in her life she prayed:

Lord I know my heart is riddled with dark thoughts,
but if I'm stealing to survive then should I serve my time?
Just remember why I've been lead astray,
no guidance from the parents you so cruelly took away.


I'd love to hear any constructive criticism or about other lyricists I should check out. Thanks.