Playing Hamlet

from Book of Agonies by Michael McGuire

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lyrics

Who’s there; for I cannot tell by that softly burning moon, Is it that ghost of the rest of my days come again so soon, If so I wish you’d scare up some sympathy from these skeptics beyond belief, That I could grow as old as the world and not outlive this grief.

It is the sorrow in the cradle of creation, That drinks my tears for its libation.

Pay me the homage I seek for my life is distilled from the rain, Give me the doomsday mercies for there is nothing that dies not in vain, And if the heavens truly take our spent souls to their graces, Then why stop the senses with the vulgarity of these Earthly places.

The death of fathers is indeed a common theme, I cry not the sleep; but the dream.

Softly turning is this world in the palm of my hand, As I regard every cloud; moon; river and sea that shapes the world of man, And I sink to the morbid depths of my mortal philosophy, And its particulars in application to my own woe-born biography.

Let me crawl to this wretched tomb of my grief, Take a knife to time’s throat; stop this thief.

My savaged soul lives at the mercy of this breathing machine, Studying the mortality of motion and what it might mean, And how the vivid moment turns too soon into the vague memory, With your future feeding off the past and its epic inventory.

I cannot cure but only learn to live with this pain, So grant me my storm; tender me my rain.

Oct. 07

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from Book of Agonies, released July 24, 2008

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Michael McGuire Nashville, Tennessee

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