Lying here on the cold ground
You're not at my side.
You mean more than life to me.
Take a truth and a lie.

I'll show you what true heaven is
Anytime you want to die.
As long as you're here with me, darling
It's enough for me tonight.

And the ocean takes me home
By your side.
With the moonlight in your hair
By your side.

When you're lost, alone, I'll be there for you
By your side.
I'll stand by you even if you're wrong
I'm on your side.

The sparks fly me home tonight
By your side.
Let our love light up the skies
By your side.

I'll be by your side when they come for you
I'll never leave if love can see you through.
If they take you to hell I'm coming too
I'm on your side.

And the ocean takes me home
By your side.
With the moonlight in your hair
By your side.

(Hmm. A song where the verses stay the same but the chorus changes each time. Different.)

Love at first sight proves a cheat, is a lie--
But the lie met truth in you.
Believing what I cannot see as reality
I'm falling into you.

The beauty of your love locked behind a wall of stone
And I don't know what to do.
You're running so so far away...
I'm here.
Where are you?

Love at first sight is a cheat, is a lie--
But the lie met truth in you.
Believing a reality I cannot see
I'm falling over you.

The tragedy of romance so bitterly awry
And I don't know what to do.
I'm reaching, you're slipping, my grasp is so weak...
I'm dying.
What are you?

Love at first sight is a cheat, is a lie--
But the lie is not truth in you.
Believing a reality I cannot feel
I'm falling headfirst into you.

Entrapped in the tight embrace of cold despair
And I don't know what to do.
Death approaching ever nearer....
I'm lost.
Who are you?

Love at first sight proves a cheat, tastes a lie--
But that lie met its match in you.
Believing so passionately what disproves my life
I'm falling, darling, for you.

Fallen a time too many for comfort
And I don't know what to do.
Fading and falling, gradually going
I'm not even here.
Why are you?

Reality killing my heart deep in me
And I don't know what to do.
Hope within despair, dying ere it blooms...
I love you. So much.
Do you?

(Props for this one go to Ryan. You not only help me deal with my muse, you inspire my muse! A two-for-one package deal. :p )

Arousing, drifting, heavy waking.
Rise up and face the moon.
Salt-like falling, music dying
Slow-drowning in the blue.

Shadows burning, smoking to threads
Cannot endure the heat of your light.
Free-falling you exploded into my sphere
Caught in my throat before I lied.

Hear me now.
The truth comes out.
I enjoyed it then
But I'm sorry now.

I'll always be a shade of reality
A shadow of a man.
I'll never fully come alive.
Unless I hear you sing again.

Wondering, waiting, hesitating
Trying to peg music to the sands.
Water plunging, rearing--and gone are my walls
And you're slipping through my hands.

Like sunlight, like lightning, you move me
As the moon moves the ocean's waves.
Like trying to cage starlight and pine-rain
Like trying to live without grace.

Hear me now.
The truth comes out.
I enjoyed it then
But I'm sorry now.

I'll always be a shade of reality
A shadow of a man.
I'll never fully come alive.
Unless I hear you sing again.

Amusing ourselves with the ghosts of could-be's
But they haunt us more than we know.
Full-flowing, not knowing, oh maddening hope.
Holed heart all I have to show.

Hear me now.
The truth comes out.
I enjoyed it then
But I'm sorry now.

I'll always be a shade of reality
A shadow of a man.
I'll never fully come alive.
Unless I hear you sing again.

Break down the barriers of my enshattered heart
With a look, with a touch of your hands.
The smell and the magic of you haunting my dreams.
I won't last unless you sing again.

 (This is different...)

You told me we were over.
You were through with me today.
You seemed surprised I couldn't help but cry
Like, what are you missing, babe?

What is your problem? Seriously.
We were wrong from the start.
You wanna know what my problem is?
It's everything you are.

I love your nerdy smile.
I love your deep blue eyes
That can captivate me for hours.
You used to hold me when I'd cry.

I love the way you'd look at me
Like there was no other girl in the world.
The way you sort of saunter around
Like you had it all under control.

The way you got all shy and shaking
The night of our very first kiss.
And when you held me closer than heaven itself
Do you know you were my very first?

I love the way you'd throw your head back and laugh
When your eyes'd light on fire when you got mad.
When I cried over my ex and you got all still and quiet
And then left to beat up the cad.

I love how you're so confusing
And enchanting and irritatingly new.
I love the way our fingers would meet.
I love that you are you.

You'd touch me and it'd feel like fire itself
And I'd feel so strong and so very weak.
That's my problem. That's it, right there.
I still love you, dear.....

Don't ask me why I'm crying.
Don't tell me you're sorry too.
I don't think you realize. This wasn't just another love.
My problem, darling? It's you.

              G      C          D            G
[1st vs] I won't trust you come alone.
  G      C         C            D
I won't make your heart my home.
  G      C         D           G
Lights on the freeway's broken road.
   G     C      C      D
I want to come home.

                G   Gsus    G      D
[chorus] Take it into your soul
   C   D    C    D    G
Breathe in--breathe in deep.
   G   Gsus   G       D
Catch my falling heart
   C   D   C   Dsus  D
It's all yours to keep.

[2nd vs] On my knees to win this fight.
I glow inside when you smile.
You're the only heaven in my hellish life.
It's enough to have you here tonight.

[chorus]  Take it into your soul
Breathe in--breathe it in deep.
Catch my falling heart
It's all yours to keep.

[3rd vs] I cannot breathe unless you're nearby.
All I can feel is your life.
When my senses refuse to lend their trust
Your face still fills my eyes.

[end-chorus] Falling into you
Making one out of two.
Falling into love so deep.
You are everything to me.

Everything I breathe
All life to me.
You are everything to me.
I'm yours to keep.

A child stolen from a mother
For a few swallows of stolen herbs.
Taken from her kingdom
Entrapped with feigned love and cold barriers.

Men are evil, so wicked, so cruel
But she never quite believed.
If Mother is right about all men
How did she ever get me?

Fairy maiden in a tall tower
Weaving gold hair into a ladder of love.
Fairy maiden in a tall tower
Waiting for her prince to come.

Dutiful child, obedient daughter.
Let down her hair as instructed each time.
Sang for hours on end in her home of rock
And that was the beginning of the end.

For he heard her voice and broke through the thorns
And brought new life to that little daughter.
But he spelled the deaths of them both, for he
Had forgotten about the mother.

Fairy maiden in a tall tower
And her prince had just come.
But the mother was in the tower too
And hell broke out from there.

He wandered the world for months and years
Only one thing did he truly seek to find.
But he had no hope of success
For now this man was blind.

Her hacked-off gold braids burned into his mind.
Her screams eternally scarred.
The knife bloodied when the mother turned on him
And the tower came crumbling down.

She was still out there, somewhere.
And he wouldn't give up this time.
Though she were in Hades, yet he'd find her still
For she was with his child.

Fairy maiden in a tall tower
And he broke her free of stone.
Fairy maiden out of the tower
But now she was alone.

A new day dawned but he could not tell
Till he ran into a child on the road.
Who took his hand and laughing ran
Straight into the arms of Rapunzel.

Her tears on his weary weeping face
Broke through and let him see.
Far away till they both fell
And she was within his reach.

Fairy maiden in a tall tower
No one other, blind or open, could I see.
Her beauty scarred, her loved healed my entire life
For now she is with me.

You asked me for a story
As true as the tears of her eyes.
Your mother and her beautiful shortened hair
The sunshine of my life.

(So...this one was different.)

highschool. emotions. hormones. stress. zits. too-early mornings, too-late nights. highs. lows. crushes. condescendence. searching for love. bubble baths and picking strawberries from the garden and skinny dipping on a summer night and a cool glass of lemonade on the swingset with your friends.
piling ten people into a five-person car and screaming along to every song on the radio like it was a bad karaoke contest.
always having to write another paper or study for this quiz and stressing out majorly over tests only to pass them each time and make everyone else hate you. bad hair days. who had bad hair days? they were lucky. i had bad hair weeks.
majorly crushing on the popular senior and thinking it was true love only to find yourself crushing on the cute math nerd two weeks later. gossip. gossip in the hallways. gossip on the phone. small-towns...hey, they talk. vetting each boy you meet and wondering if maybe this time he'd be the one.
trying to be a model and realizing that you'll never be a tall skinny blonde, and being okay with that. singing off-key in front of your crush. falling down the stairs in front of your crush.
swing dance every monday nights. pouring sweat at said swing dances coz it was 90 degrees and you were burning up and so embarrassed about it but no one else noticed coz they were all sweating too and the boys would literally have sweat dripping down their faces into their eyes and coating their arms so everytime they'd spin you your arm would come away soaked in their sweat and you'd be so grossed and weirdly amused that it'd make you forget your own problems.
starving yourself all day before Thanksgiving so you could pig out that day. going for a drive just to drive. getting upset that you were expected to know what you wanted to do with your entire life before you were 18. making up words. staying up too late and being tired all day long.
making new friends and then having them betray you, and still going out there and making new friends again. wondering how you could ever trust enough to love but knowing that this hole in your heart would impel you forward to find a love that is real.
wardrobe malfunctions and learning how valuable a safety pin can be. dances, formal dresses, the magic that mascara, heels, and a cute dress can work on a bad day. praying boys would find you beautiful. wanting to be told you were sexy and then getting ticked off when it happened. taking the plunge and wearing no makeup around your crush and feeling sooo good when he still hung out with you all evening.
forgetful like you have alzheimers'. your first kiss, and it was nothing like what you imagined. blaring music and getting in trouble from your parents. chick flicks and sleepovers. playing tag in a deserted theater after everyone else is gone.
wanting a romance like the movies but you never really believed in the whole i'm-in-love-can't-eat-can't-sleep-can't-breathe thing....till it happened to you. and you loved him so much, and you never should have. you couldn't sleep; when you were with him, you couldn't breathe. he was the only one who ever successfully broke your heart, coz he was the only one who ever had enough of it to.
friends who held you when you cried and made you eat when you were so heartbroken you didn't even care about food or sleep anymore and listened to you and distracted you and helped you breathe again. and when it happened to them, you could reach out and hold them and know exactly how they felt, coz you went through this hell too. helping each other and healing each other and somehow making it through and coming out on top. completely opening up to them and loving them and trusting them, even though you've been betrayed before. and by this--not by your romance, but by this love---you discover what true love is.

(Thanks to my friend Kara for the few words that inspired this lengthy musing [pun intended. Ha ha.] on music and its power and beauty.)

The music inside her head
Like a ribbon running through threaded glass.
The mirror shattered around
Could not withstand the would-haves...

Searing into her soul like ice
And fire and glass and wine.
Giving nuance and otherworld dimension
To passion that drives to die.

I sang of the heavens above
And of hell and love and God.
And of a possession beyond demons
Of her exacting lord.

A world of black and white and notes of love
That bleed out into eternity and disappear as they spiral high.
Coloring every facet with creation nude
Lending bars of strength to the impossibility of survival.

I sang of my past loves
And betrayals and sweet memories and scars.
I sang of the world and every star
To discover who I was.

I sang of heartache and passion
And why we fall when we've fallen before.
Insanity to expect to be caught this time
When last time you broke the floor.

I sang of men's masks and men's hearts
I sang of the cruel irresistibility of love.
I sang of the power of music
To show us so clearly who we are
When it was hidden before.
Every secret she conceals to disclose.

Release of despair enables to persevere
Though it births a self-inflicted suicide.
A demanding lover so soothing in the struggle.
This beauty lends meaning to life.

Though she possess you and overwhelm you and destroy your life in this sweet exhiliaration
Though she grant you no life of your own
Through her words you die and are reborn.
And the music inspires you to live again.

(I think this is a duet. Or it has a voice-over thingamabob in the end. Either one. Not quite sure which.)

[1st vs] I was just a stupid mistake.
You were the brightest thing of my day.
Like lightning you burned through all my walls
Left a new scar on my heart.

You said you loved me like nothing else
Then why was I just not enough?
You knew you were breaking me each time.
I loved you. That was your first lie.

[pre-chorus] Tell me why you take delight in wounding me.
Tell me why you left and left me with nothing.
You went away--said you were never coming back.
So tell me why you're sorry now.

[chorus] You're too late today.
You're too late.
You're too late this time.
You're too late.
I'm not listening when you apologize.

[2nd vs] You pulled me all around like I was a kid's toy
And you know just what to do to take me high.
But you cut that rope and let me fall.
Left me off worse than before.

[pre-chorus] Tell me why you take delight in wounding me.
Tell me why you left and left me with nothing.
You went away--said you were never coming back.
So tell me why you're sorry now.

[chorus] You're too late today.
You're too late.
You're too late this time.
You're too late.
I'm not listening when you apologize.

[bridge] Was it all just a game
Did you put on a show?
Did you become your mask
Or were you always an actor?
Did you enjoy knowing you were breaking me?
Did you enjoy saying sorry?

[end-pre-chorus] Tell me why you never stopped hurting me.
Tell me why you filled my life with everything.
But you left---and for months you never came back.
So why are you sorry now?

[end-chorus] You're too late. (I won't let you back inside.)
You're too late. (And I mean it this time.)
You're too late. (And I can withstand your threats and cries.)

I'm not listening when you say goodbye.