Another good Friday

by John Smallshaw
(London, England)

Were we that time in a place
Or the place in that time?
Whatever the answer
I guess that it's fine.

But I can never decide
Lord knows how I've tried.
Sat up in the loneliness in the long distance of night
Wondering if one was wrong
Or the other one right.

And at the end of it
I made no sense of it.
In time and place where the staggering minutes will stand up and face you
Look through you, and to you it comes as a shock then
to realise the clock when
it strikes
does not make a mark in the dark where you lay.
Stay there
Stay where the light disappears
and it will never be said that the tears you once shed were seen, but just wasted.

No one can see you when time looks right through you
like the deadbeat
where the day meets his night.
Does time or his place in his time seem alright
Does he run through the legends he's heard
Believe he has shared in that wealth
Does he have good health?

In some life where there's time and the place
in case we should also fall flat on our face
and struggle to rise.
I look into my own eyes and what do I see?
A man that could be, and once was, a man just like me.

Tears will not help, cry if you please
get down on your knees and pray.
In the time and the place of today
we have got to do more than we say.

Stay silent and die
Do not hear the cry
Lie to yourself and say it's okay
Just another today.