To base your dreams on a lie,
To place your faith in a pile of weathered sand,
Only to watch it wash away
As if you meant nothing to the tide.
To think that you meant something,
Anything to the one you looked to,
Only to find it was never true,
Is to know that you have nothing to trust in again.
What if the Sun said to the Earth,
“I never loved you?”
What if the Moon refused to draw the oceans
Or the stars refused to twinkle in the sky?
What if the trees refused to bear fruit
Or the skies refused to rain?
Shaken to its core the Life we know would cease,
And never be the same.
Such is the fault of mortal man,
He creates faith in phantoms of the mind,
And the lies of the heart told countless times in countless ways,
While the messenger plots its next and most painful ploy.
Such is the fault of mortal man,
He creates hope in the shadows of the tortured,
And longs for some semblance of Love where
There is only a barren landscape.
Such is the fault of mortal man,
To count on nothing while told to trust,
To give his all to a cause killed long ago,
Even if his all is never going to be good enough in the eyes of his Master.
Such is the fault of mortal man,
To pray to a god not listening,
And to suffer the indignities of a babe
Suckling at the breast of a golden idol.
Yes, I know how you feel.
Yes, you have taught your lesson well.
There was no truth in any of it,
That bastard child was never going to be good enough.
A false smile, a phony embrace,
Came down to one simple truth withheld for far too long,
“I never loved you my child,
And now you may go away as I pretend you were never born.”
Yes, such things as told to a Mother to her Child,
Such worthlessness has been the only truth spoken in his ear,
Repeated, repeated, repeated once more,
Until the darkness drapes upon his weary soul.
“Oh, but wait! I can’t pretend you were never born!”
Utters the Mother seeing remnants of a life once lived in such false beliefs,
“So off you go my Child,
You may find your way through the frigid wastelands without me.”
And as the once steadfast Sun refused to rise,
He walks about aimlessly and without direction,
Even the Earth beneath his feet seems as if it cannot exist
One more day as a trusted, stable friend.
And so is the fault of mortal man,
To desire to be something so much better than he is,
For someone so much better than he ever thought he deserved,
To see what he always knew would be.
And so is the fault of mortal man,
To trust that the Sun will rise in the East,
And the Earth will hold true beneath his feet,
Only to awaken to darkness falling through the fault lines.
And so is the fault of mortal man,
To believe if even for one second that he could accomplish
What he always knew would end in certain failure.
A nightmare realized in the midst of unending pain.
And so is the fault of mortal man,
To dare open his eyes in the midst of Love’s sweet sanctity,
To believe he could be accepted as imperfect but trying
And to believe he could be so much more than he ever was.
Now close your eyes you mortal man,
And cry no more for your misgivings,
End the torture of living in that past,
While you seek the comfort you may now deserve.