When We Forget Our Name

Down the fields of black and grey,

Where there’s little of joy and hay,

I strolled by one cold winter night

It took me all my will and might

 

To let bygones be bygones

And pale tales be spawned,

Among wasted mead and love

And wasted ale and mirth;

 

For we choose our own endings,

Script our own poetry and sing

With friends and fiends alike

And rest our heads upon a spike

 

Until scarlet blood adorns our face

And we stare unto a fated haze

Of our own follies and shame-

It makes us forget our name.

 

In the midst of doubt and fire

We swiftly earn their ire,

Whence we must nonchalantly utter

And if we don’t, they mutter.

 

Knowing not, do we our courage muster

To share our meals and our mead,

And our wine and our bread,

And hence to dispel our dread

 

Of soul participation and games

Finally, what shall be our aims?

Are we to fail, my dear friend?

Are we to fall, my dear friend?

 

So they tell us time and again,

Unsheathed in acerbic rain,

And a slash of steel among stars

As if we of failure be stalwarts,

 

As if we of failure be stewards,

Harbingers of reality to friends in debt

Akin in life and death

Time has never been so kind.

 

And yet we flounder and fumble

Upon our resolve to end it all

Doubt our own upon their sly

Like meteorites out of a leaden sky

 

And yet we stay and slumber,

Upon our devastation lumber

And forget ourselves and our name,

Time stands only for fame.