No man is not an island, happily:
A king of kings to rule behind locked doors.
With only endless Ocean's company
And furtive myths of strange and ancient shores.

The island wears a daunting crown of bluff
Except an obscure Bay without a name,
Where truth and contradiction lie rebuffed,
And trav'lers seek for purchase without claim

But if, perhaps, a woman came one day,
One clad in razor love, with changing words,
She might walk past the warning signs at Bay,
Beyond the turning tracks of those deterred.

She'd walk, a stranger lost in stranger lands
Where shadow puppets speak in shifting tongue
So many mirrors of an unseen man
So many cages full of hopes unsung

With time she'd reach what she had come to find
Through fogs of well-worn sens'ry tales and tricks
Her prize: the door of daunting castle blind
With king atop his mound of eyeball-bricks

The moat is filled with raw emotion tar
Small boats transverse across the pitch to bring
Some feeble lights of reason from afar
The sinking ships will never see the king

To get across she'd have to swim the way
And towards the center, darker monsters lie
And rhyme and reason slowly fade away
The liquid blackness stretches forever
Make things no sense and senses lost
In deep under-think, grave thought pain
Rejection guilt grief self-disgust fear, fear,
Fear, fear, fear fear fear fearfearfearfear
Anxiety hope wonder interest joy love
A shaking hand would breach the other shore

Emerging dry, the woman finds the man
A wrinkled fool grown fat and faint enthroned
His distant gaze through cloudy windows scans
On mem'ries cast and flightless visions sown

His words are snuffed behind his heavy shield
His broken wings will never feel the sun
He's safe in sanctum, with his heart concealed
A voyeuristic vampire slow undone.

Her love song'd break his sallow reverie
His shield would fall, his timid heart would shine
Her epic tales of worlds beyond the sea
Would fix the boats and help the roads align

They'd walk out of the castle, hand in hand
And in the Bay they'd build a ship of dreams
And sail away to find a greater land
Where golden Present reigns and Future gleams

No man has made an island happily
His scars and pains have paved his sorry way
He makes his cage but also holds the key
These Islands move among us every day

A man is God who lives with eye-lids drawn
But even God with eyes closed sees no dawn