This is a first draft of a song I've been writing. Acoustic folk/punk song. Anyway let me know what you think, all feedback welcome! This is probably my highest word count for a song yet.
He was just a big-shot man who went nowhere fast,
They all say they knew him once but he didn't give them a chance.
He fell in love with the highway noise and the roads that took his life away,
Now a shadow of the man he was, he just fights to get through the days.
The die cast, this would never last; a mere footprint in his winding path.
A fool's hope he cast in stone, if only someone had done the maths
As time passed he broke all ties and it was far too late when he realised
So I asked just what he'd thought would happen when his fate had seemed so self designed
And he turned to me with a hollow sigh and took me in with his bleary eyes
As if the friends, the phantoms he'd left behind were within my blood and had ensnared my mind
And I knew he yearned not for sympathy and that his gift to me was transparancy
So I swore a vow to hear him out, this big shot man who'd discovered doubt
He said 'It's not what you were, it's what you will always have been,
It won't invade your thoughts for the first few years
but one day you'll see that you've outlived your peers
And the empty canvas that was your life has become a wash of your greatest fears;
Oh but what would you do, were you shown a path of such clarity?
Who would be so foolish not to select a life of such vitality?
For the world is cruel and the people crude in going about their daily deeds
So the logic indicates that life is best with each less mouth to feed
But logic is as logic does and a forgone life isn't life enough
To find joy and hope in what we do or to allow the time to discover love
So I consider you an honest fool, who's lost himself in ridicule;
I take pride in fighting tides and in venturing from the paddling pool
(Middle
So don't mind if I still roll my eyes
At this masterpiece of misread lies
I'm a sceptic, yes, but no fantacist
And I pray that you may one day start to get the gist
(Interlude)
He said 'It's not what you were, it's what you will always have been,'
These words still haunt my dreams to this very day
Like the twisted chords of once sweet serenades
So I compose myself and refuse to make the same mistakes
And so he turns away from my stoic glare and brushes back his murky hair
He pays with change he'd found that night and he grasps the arms of his creaking chair
And the only thing that he'll let share the load as he prepares to take back to the road
Is the silent night who's empathy he'd so boldly hoped to gain from me
(Outro)
But as he takes his leave his eyes catch mine and it's like the room is exempt from time
And in that lasting moment I see a man, who's scanned the seas and discovered land
A big-shot man he may have been but when it comes down to this closing scene
I'm richer than he'll ever be and I've kept my soul and my conscience clean
