Peter Stewart-Kroeker: Church Lights Blaze, She Knows

Church Lights Blaze

Church lights blaze
As the local drunk
Yells his lost love’s name
Into the night.

Piano plays thick and oozy
Like the blood that
Runs in the streets.

Preacher softly mutters
Words of prayer, as a
Young couple give a
Nervous shot at love
In the darkened corners
Of the red brick school.

The Congregation sit
Stiff and silent, as their
Minds drift into the ceiling
And seep into the wood.

The dying criminal hangs
Loosely on crossed beams,
Singing into the souls
Of the lost and the hungry.

The tune drifts silent and
Unpleasant, ear to ear,
As foundations start to tremble,
And mountains begin to fall.

And the city of might
Becomes a city of ruins,
And falls into broken glass
And twisted metal.

And in the fallen there lies
A beginning,
And communion with
The holy hand divine.

She Knows (in search of desperation)

They say Jane burned her own house down
Burned everything she owned
Was no accident she said
She said she was alone
In search of the unknown
And in the heated flame
She heard someone call her name
And an ashen cross
Appeared within her loss
It danced before her eyes
Danced across the smokey skies
Yeah danced across the smokey skies

Chorus:
And she knows
Where you’ve been
She knows
Where you’ve hidden

When you’re blood it burns your skin
And you’re broken down on the floor
And you call into the night
In search of some divine light
But your shackles keep you pinned down
And in desperation

They say Jane don’t live on
Nothing at all but bread and wine
Said fire will burn you clean of all impurity
For search of the divine
They say they found her
By the side of the road
She was stripped bare and naked
Of all of her clothes
And nobody knows what happened
But it was no accident she said

Chorus
When you’re groveling in the dirt
And you’re drunk and you’re hurt
And your life feels like it’s slipping off into nothing
And you feel like a child
With absolutely nothing to hold on to

Chorus

All those things you never tell
And it’s fucking hell
When it tears into the sinews of your heart
And it tears it all apart
Yeah it tears it all apart