Reason or Rhyme

Why must you shed such tender tears
In the evening of your years?
No other love could stem the tide
Of the loneliness I hide.
Open your heart and let me live!

No reason or rhyme, by chance or design...
Just a dance to the music of time.

-- Bryan Ferry (2010)

Move Over

Things look bad from over here
Too much confusion and no solution
Everyone here knows your fear
You're out of touch and you try too much

The country needs a father
Not an uncle or big brother
Someone to keep the peace at home

If we can't get together
Look out for stormy weather
Don't make me pay for your mistakes
I have to pay my own

If we can not wake you
Then we'll have to shake you
Though some say you'll only understand a gun
Got to prove them wrong or you will lose the battle
Don't you know we'll start a war which will be won by none

Yesterday's glory won't help us today
You want to retire?  Get out of the way

-- John Kay / Gabriel Mekler (Steppenwolf) 1969

The Garden

The arrow flies when you dream

The hours tick away, the cells tick away
The Watchmaker keeps to his schemes
The hours tick away....

 

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect
So hard to earn, so easily burned
In the fullness of time, a garden to nurture and protect

 

In the rise and the set of the sun
'Til the stars go spinning 'round the night
It is what it is

And forever, each moment a memory in flight

 

-- Neil Peart (Rush) 2012

Time

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, 

Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town,
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine,
Staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long,
And there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.

-- Pink Floyd (1973)

Time

Time speaks with golden words
When there's nothing to be heard
Hides behind the stars
Silver in the night
Lies in the coming light

Time living with today
In a lonely way
She whispers never a surprise
She won't tell you why

Time speaks her golden tongue
And when everything is done
She lies to no one

-- Screaming Trees (1990)

Between the Wheels

To live between a rock and a hard place -- in between time,
Cruising in prime time -- soaking up the cathode rays.

To live between the wars in our time -- living in real time,

Holding the good time -- holding onto yesterdays.

You know how that rabbit feels going under your speeding wheels.

Bright images flashing by like windshields towards a fly.
Frozen in the fatal climb, but the wheels of time just pass you by.

Wheels can take you around.  Wheels can cut you down.
We can go from boom to bust; from dreams to a bowl of dust.

We can fall from rockets' red glare down to brother can you spare.
Another war, another wasteland, and another lost generation.

It slips between your hands like water -- this living in real time.

A dizzying lifetime reeling by on celluloid.

Struck between the eyes by the big time world.

Walking uneasy streets, hiding beneath the sheets.
Got to try and fill the void. 

-- Neil Peart (Rush) 1984