Everything that is, when seen through time’s lens,
Was built on the ashes of all our might-have-beens.

Seems to be a truism. Or, as The Offspring might say, a Half-Truism.

This is the point I’m making…
Even if you don’t know you know,
You know I am not breaking
These rules designed to slow

The thought processes governed by
A logical process of design.
This is the reason that we try
To avoid crossing any line,

Breaking any number of rules.
You may accuse me of
The qualities of a thousand fools
With intellect not quite above

Those you’d never glance at twice.
And I still think I shall care about
Things like truth and sacrifice.
Of certain things, I have no doubt,

I have made my own selection
Upon further reflection.
Upon further reflection,
I have made my own selection.

Of certain things I have no doubt:
Things like truth and sacrifice.
And I still think I shall care about
Those you’d never glance at twice

With intellect not quite above
The qualities of a thousand fools!
You may accuse me of
Breaking any number of rules

To avoid crossing any line.
This is the reason that we try
A logical process of design,
The thought processes governed by

These rules designed to slow
(You know, I am not breaking–
Even if you “don’t know”, you know.)
This is the point I’m making:

When everything’s coherent
Every part fits its own section.
It is a little more apparent
Upon further reflection.

For you see the castles they have built are sculpted hypocrisy
Denying all eternity in pursuit of expediency.
Yet when push comes to shove you’ll find interdependency
Between their claims and the morals they identify as deviancy.

For lo!, when things are looking up, the atheist is quite sure
That morals are delusions, tricks to make you feel secure.
But in reality there is nothing at all that is impure
(If there’s one thing that is certain, on this they’re not demure!)

They fight against all claims of virtue, any standards of behavior.
“We are good for goodness sake; we need not your Savior.”
They’ll do it all their own way, saying “We’ll keep that for which we labor.
While we tend to our own needs, you go grovel for your neighbor.”

They claim morality is a lie, a deceit of evolution’s wheel.
It’s nothing but serendipity, a matter of how you feel.
There’s no standard, it’s all relative, and it’s best that you steel
Yourself rather than bend the knee and kneel.

Yet let just one of them kick the bucket and they become the greatest moralists!
Telling you what you dare not say, they’re always there to assist
And order you to “shut up, shut up!”—and how they do persist
With a zeal that makes up for all the times their morals have been missed!

Let the one who died be a champion striving for non-faith
And suddenly they all realize that nowhere for them is safe;
So lashing out like little kids, they attack and they strafe
Their own troops they’ve put forth, like some evil haunted wraith.

For suddenly they’ve discovered laws that apply to you and me.
No longer are they opinion. No! They’re dogma, can’t you see?
You must submit to their demands, it is a moral decree
That one not inform the atheists of their fate in eternity.

For that would be too insensitive—wait for the corpse to cool
And give them time to forget how they live but as a tool
To the bleakness of a future built without sanity’s rule.
Truly, the more they whine and cry, the more they play the fool.

So take these hypocrites away, be done with them at last.
They played loose and free, and it ended in a blast.
And now they’re left with a mess to clean in the filth that they’ve amassed
In a wasted life spent in their own void, so infinite and vast.

Preach not to me, you atheist, you lying hypocrite
Who now deigns to condemn all that you would so easily permit
Were it not for but just one man whose body merely quit.
Such is your “virtue”, and we all know, that it is not legit.

I felt out of place today
Wandering out across the gray
Horizon fields I used to play
And where I long so much to stay.

But happiness for what was past
Is cursed never to last
It goes by ever so fast
Gone in an instant, in a blast.

I wonder what would be unique
If I could find the words to speak
Of what I tried in my heart to sneak
The days when I would turn my cheek.

I feel for something deep inside
Something I can no longer hide
Yet there’s nothing there I can abide
Though I can’t say I never tried
But all the things that I replied
Had never been truly applied
To all the pain I have supplied.
There’s nothing about which I haven’t lied.

Wandering further from the path
Beyond the fork in the bird bath
Tempting fate and eternal wrath
Perhaps you could try to do the math

You’d see what was calculated
Was just the same as what was fated
Beneath the trees where we all waited
And raged at the one we all so hated.

I feel for something deep inside
Something I can no longer hide
Yet there’s nothing there I can abide
Though I can’t say I never tried
But all the things that I replied
Had never been truly applied
To all the pain I have supplied.
There’s nothing about which I haven’t lied.

So now you see what we all schemed
Isn’t exactly what it first seemed
When we all slept and wearily dreamed
Of worlds held up by what was beamed

Through the nights that ran so cold
Before we found we’d all grown old
And none of us would be so bold
We saw our hand and chose to fold

We told ourselves it was for the best
Another lie, like all the rest
We pretended that we were always blest
But in the end we failed our test.

I feel for something deep inside
Something I can no longer hide
Yet there’s nothing there I can abide
Though I can’t say I never tried
But all the things that I replied
Had never been truly applied
To all the pain I have supplied.
There’s nothing about which I haven’t lied.

And when at last the soil turns
And our heart gives up all it yearns
Our soul inside no longer burns
Because even it finally learns

All passion and no respite
Fills you with emptiness and spite
Until you find you’ve lost the fight
Left alone in the darkest night.

I feel for something deep inside
Something I can no longer hide
Yet there’s nothing there I can abide
Though I can’t say I never tried
But all the things that I replied
Had never been truly applied
To all the pain I have supplied.
There’s nothing about which I haven’t lied.

II.
Look beyond the mystic show
To a knowledge we impart
The shadows, the darkness
With heartfelt hate embracing

Over what pale skies clear
Find purposeful wisdom forever near
Catacombs and dungeons hear
A bitterness, raging fear.

III.
Look beyond the mystic show
Over what pale skies clear
To a knowledge we impart
Find purposeful wisdom forever near

The shadows, the darkness
Catacombs and dungeons hear
With heartfelt hate embracing
A bitterness, raging fear.

Note: It took me about an hour this morning to come up with this little poem. When I wrote it, I was looking more for structure than for any thematic concerns.

The structure, which some of you may have gleaned by reading it already, is as follows. The first block contains the four lines that are in A-A-A-A rhyme scheme. If you take every other word of the first block starting with the first word, you create the first stanza of the second block. If you take every other word starting with the second word, you create the second stanza of the second block. Finally, the third block shows what happens if you alternate between the two stanzas. Thus, the first line of the first stanza of the third block is every other word of the first line of the first block starting with the first word; the second line of the first stanza of the third block is every other word of the first line of the first block starting with the second word. Etc. It may be easier to say that the third block consists of the first line of the first stanza of the second block followed by the first line of the second stanza of the second block, followed by the second line of the first stanza of the second block, etc.

Of course, all of it should be easy to see if you just look at the poem itself :-P

I should note that there can be improvement with my method above. For instance, you can see that the first stanza of the second block has no rhyme scheme at all; this could be fixed if I spent more time on it. Furthermore, the poem itself could use a little ironing out. But all in all I think it’s a fairly successful first attempt at combining two stanzas into one.

Then out of the blue I get hit with inspiration.

A brief example will suffice I think. When I wrote The Outlaw (which I’ve no longer made available, BTW, since I’m going to work on a revision now that my writing is much more gooder), it took me a few weeks to do the first two “books” in it. Then, one Saturday in 1998, I sat down at around 11 AM and wrote non-stop until around 8 PM. During those 9 hours, I did the entire last book (which was approximately 30,000 words). Why? Because I knew exactly what I wanted, and it just shot out of me.

When I write music, it’s often the same way. I’m getting good enough to know chord structures in my mind before I even sit down to write music. I’ll be like, “I want to write something in E minor today.” And I’ll instantly think of Em – C- G – D (one of my favorite progressions) and suddenly there’s a melody there.

Today, it happened with both. I was sitting there minding my own business when a song leapt into my mind. While I currently lack the ability to record anything, I hammered it out on my guitar in about thirty minutes. The chords for this one are B5 – F#5 – A5 – E5 for the verse, and the chorus is B5* – A5* – E5* – B5* and the bridge section goes C#* – B5* – A5, which are tabbed:

Regular E-A-D-G-B-E tuning

 B5    F#5    A5   E5      B5*   A5*    E5*    C#*
----- ----- ----- -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
----- ----- ----- -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
--4-- ----- --2-- -----  -----  -----  --9--  -----
--4-- --4-- --2-- --2--  --9--  --7--  --9--  --11-
--2-- --4-- --0-- --2--  --9--  --7--  --7--  --11-
----- --2-- ----- --0--  --7--  --5--  -----  --9--

On this one I actually didn’t think up the chords first, but instead when the words popped into my mind they already had their melody and it took me about 30 seconds to figure out what chords went with that melody :-) And then the words instantly came out too (very little revision was required):

Woke up this morning at three AM
Thinking of the way my life has been
Wondering what happened to all of them
Those friends I had way back when.

Sat beneath the glow of an orange street light
Sheltered from the sounds of a haunted night
Thinking that I might’ve turned out all right
Still wondering how I got here tonight.

[Chorus]
And time marches on
Further into the past
Everything will soon be gone
Shoulda known it wouldn’t last.

Fell away for an hour or two
But I still ended here without you.
Remembered time, how it always flew
And all the chaos that would ensue

Oh, I remember waking ‘fore the crack of dawn
Never had to even stifle a yawn
Met with all of them out on the lawn
Raced toward trouble like we were drawn.

[Repeat chorus]
[Bridge]
These things I see will come again
In someone else’s day
When my memories grow dim
I’ll still know what to say.
[Repeat chorus]

Now don’t ask me what this necessarily means or why it came to me. That’s the funny thing about getting sudden inspiration….often you have no clue why it came out. Anyway, I wish I had some recording equipment so you could actually hear it. But maybe you’re glad you can’t :-)

Anyway, here’s the lyrics:

I Know Why
Words and Music by Peter Pike. (c) 2005 by Selenium. All rights reserved.

I ask you to look this way
You look at me as if to say
And tell me that it is broken.
I pretend to understand
I fake that I comprehend
But I don’t know a word you’ve spoken.

All around the world falls
All around the sky dies
It is everywhere
Under suffocating lies
Everything I ever thought
Is buried in the mass
Of undeciphered malcontent
And embittered trash.

I know why your universe is gray
And why you never stay.
It has something to do with me
And what you see.

I ask God for a sign
And He says that I only whine
And beg Him for something else I think I need
It is nothing personal at all
Just a product of the Fall
And my envious greed.

All around the buildings fall
All around the sparrow dies
It is everywhere
Under suffocating lies
Everything I ever knew
Is buried in the grave
Of undeciphered malcontent
The only thing I save.

I know why your universe is gray
And why you never stay.
It has something to do with me
And what you see.

The face in the mirror
The mirage in the shiver
The place where I was
The longing just because
A world that never felt at peace
It was never at ease
I only felt this way
Cuz I knew some day I’d pay.

I am standing in the rain
It showers me with pain
And all I know how to do is cry.
I pretend that it is fine
I pretend that you are mine
And never bother to question why

All around my facades fall
All around my image dies
It is everywhere
Under suffocating lies
Everything I ever was
Is buried far beyond
My undeciphered malcontent
The vision’s finally dawned

I know why your universe is gray
And why you never stay.
It has nothing to do with me
And what you see.

This song is one of the songs that I really like even though I also don’t like it. Probably a lot of it has to do with the fact that it comes from when I was in a dark place (yeah, a demon-possessed apartment isn’t exactly a “happy place”). Still, this song contains some of my favorite lyrics of anything I’ve ever written (especially the second verse).

The song feels a bit disjointed, both lyrically and musically, which is semi-intentional. It’s especially evident in the bridge section, where I go into it by having “competing” solo riffs. It’s actually to actualize the point of the first verse about incomprehensibility. By the way, in case you didn’t get it, the “you” who is being refered to throughout the song is the “face in the mirror.” On that level, it makes the song seem sort of schizophrenic, and I suppose there are aspects of that echoing in there; but in reality, it deals a great deal with the struggle between what I wanted to be and what I really was at the time.

In any case, the opening riff is one of the most fun ones to play on guitar. And I also liked the chords I came up with for the verses. I even like the rhythm riffs for the bridge. However, the solos aren’t as good as I’d like (although it fits the song anyway), and I don’t care for my vocals in this song either. I sound too much like Bono…. (Travis will understand this means that I’m wailing too much in it.) :-P

Oh well. I just thought I’d share the background with you. And yes, this means that I watched Spinal Tap again and wish I was in a band again….

While I slave away in a cubicle that has no window (so I can’t see the squirrels…and they were married), my parents have to send me pictures of where they spent the last couple of weeks. Yup: see for yourself!

Tell me this isn’t cruel and unusual punishment….

*sob*

Oh, tan-like psuedo-walls surrounding me
Fall down to flatten all you see!
My soul wastes for naught in cubicles
And wishes for even the diversion of torn cuticles.
To suffix me in this endless workplace.
Oh, tan-like psuedo-walls grant me grace!