Sometimes in the city

Outside of the city the world seems to me an endless series of questions.
From this overpass everything seems so near, I could be there now, if I chose that direction.

I say this to you, even as you are so far away, I wonder if you can hear me?

And so it’s Christmas, I wonder what the prayers of the city sound like this time of year.

I see the skyscrapers like prayers, are there lights bright enough in the world to breach the heavens?

I wonder if we’ll ever ask the right questions, just the same I fear we’ll never be quite ready to hear the answers they would bring.

I know where I’m going, just now, I’m quite sure of it. But the directions I have differ greatly from the direction I seek. There are no maps for the traveler who finds he is lost within himself.

The lights are endless, the pavement in front of me consumes every direction I should care to go, and I have so many questions right now, but there isn’t a lane for that. Anyway, there’s never enough time for that trip when one must travel at the speed of life.

I wonder if the dream has died. I look in the mirror just now and question the integrity of it all, this life.

The roads I travel are littered with broken-down dreams, I hear about them on the radio I can’t tune out, I see them on the tv I can’t turn off, I relate to them in every story ever told; they all start with “today I heard the saddest thing.”

This mirror, am I wrong to look behind me? I can’t really see the past, just a bunch of things I’d done once upon a time that I can't look past. The only thing you really take with you are ghosts; the things you’ve done, the things you wish you didn’t. No, too many misgivings for one car, for one driver. When I look again this mirror tells me I am dying.

If I look hard enough, I swear I can find tears somewhere in there, they fit a stranger whos just behind me, back in the past beyond the glass.

Who do you cry for? ?siht ekil eb syawla ti lliW
Are you sorry for what you’ve seen? .ti etah I
Would it be easier if you could just look away? .seY
Is it the world now which makes you weep? .seY
Will anything ever change? ?egnahc sgniht t’nac yhW
What will you do? ?od I nac tahW

I see all these tall buildings, but is anybody listening? All these prayers in the sky, all these prayers in the darkness. Is it such a strange thing that they all look like prayers?

They’re all looking up, they’re all looking for heaven, we’re all searching, so far below.

I worry they'll be fooled by those mis-guided lights. Not me, I can see from here that there is no use at all for blinded prayers.

Who will find the courage to look about them, who will give answers, when will there be answers? Im afraid the sort of answers I'm thinking of are about as easy to find as the kind of places directions can never take me. Surely hope got lost there, too. So it goes.

I want to see everything as a sign, in life, just like the street lights which tell me which way to go.

Maybe every road won’t always lead me home- for me this is an admission bordering on a resignation, and that’s something that’s changed- but that doesn't mean I won't always want to be there when I'm lost.

I just want to be someplace that feels like it, tonight.