Harlequin & Columbine

A song

 

We work each to our own ends

Discovering new ways to meet again

Keeping secret these lonely charms

From their star-crossed coats of arms

 

Where will we stand at day-break?

Which new games will we learn to play

To keep these houses on their foundations?

While considering our own little ways

To slip away

 

You conduct a world of sleepless nights

I arrange the skies in empty rooms

Still they never once suspect

The hidden messages in the shape of you

Where will we stand with the

Weight of the world holding us here?

Dressed in our finery and rags

So as to leave nary a clue

When we disappear

 

So join the masquerade

Keep your plans all laid out

Trade hearts... change your faces...

To the endless nights

In the city's cold lights

A spark... to light the furnace...

Of two souls trapped in amber

Then they clash, we'll stand together

But so long as this hysteria lasts

We're one life lived on two sides of the glass

A search and amending

Countless chances and shifting endings

Offer a guiding hand and a kiss

To fate's cowards and lunatics

 

Where will we stand in the twilight,

Painting the glow in the dusky sky?

When will the children of stormy seas

Make lovers of these enemies

That keep us all in line?

 

So join the masquerade

Keep your plans all laid out

Trade hearts... change your faces...

To the endless nights

In the city's cold lights

A spark... to light the furnace...

Of two souls trapped in amber

Then they clash, we'll stand together

But so long as this hysteria lasts

We're one life lived on two sides of the glass

 

Waiting in hallways and isolated cells

Watching across the rooms we know so well

Keep these heats beating, keep these lips breathing

Stay these ageless walls from sinking

Remembering beyond remembering

Single nights and stolen glances

Busy these restless servants' hands

Creating questions to hear the answers

 

Where will we stand in the moment

When all our work finally comes to an end?

Will we meet when our words and theories

Have closed our days as mere adversaries?

Do we rest, or begin again?

 

End the masquerade

All your plans come played out

Trade hearts... show your faces...

Here shall end the nights

With the morning light

The spark... to light the furnace...

Of two souls breaking from amber

When they rest, we'll stand together

With all of this hysteria passed

Will be two lives, now on one side of the glass

 

 

Reviews

[emmajoy]

Have read this twice, second time slowwwwwwly .. am wondering if maybe it would work better as open prose. Your phrasing is quite beautiful but there's a fluctuating meter - not that it spoils your work, but ..

You use lyrical bursts of language, no doubt intentionally, pictures just burst into my mind: 'A spark... to light the furnace... Of two souls trapped in amber ~ Then they clash, we'll stand together ~ But so long as this hysteria lasts ~ We're one life lived on two sides of the glass' ... and so it continues until the two become one ..

[Mark]

I had a little difficulty in interpreting this at first, but the third repetition of the chorus gave me the key: you seem to be saying that, as long as we present ourselves as we FEEL we are desired to be, we will remain seperate, but once we purpose to become genuine, the sought for joining will proceed naturally. "The end of the masquerade...:, "...this hysteria passed", "...on one side of the glass."
I was a little confused by your structure as well, but another reviewer pointed out that it was lyrical-seeming, thus not really requiring the rigid metric format that I strive for. But the interplay of tight rhyme and meter, with the occasional rhyme, with the completely unrhymed, seemed to me a little jarring. That, I realize, might help convey the impression of the frustrated suitor's confusion, but, well, to me anyway, it was a minus.

[Brad]

this read very much like a song, i love the closing stanza the best