Every Day You Stay Alive
Every Day You Stay Alive,” is at the end of Lazarus Heart. I wrote it for Chris at a time when he was just so fucking fed up with being sick that he didn’t want to go on. He had a lot of those times, and I swear that I couldn’t have put up with what he had to endure. But I just kept reminding him that he had survived the abuse because he had wanted to live; now that he was getting better wasn’t the time to give up.
Is one more victory you score
In the war
For something more
A battle fought heart beat by beat
For solid ground beneath your feet
Is clean, relentless, healing pain
As poisons drain
And old scars strain
Against the healthy tissue grown
From broken brain and broken bone
Is defeat for those who made you prey
To parasite
Appetites
Cannibals who swallowed you whole
Made carrion of body and soul
Is defiance to those who avert their eyes
Drown your cries
In plausible lies
Then beat you down with sticks and stones
To bury their secrets with your bones
Is to see them shrivel hour by hour
To watch them cower
Beneath your power
Aged vipers, venom spent
Their evil insignificant.
Is one more day between you and the past
This will not last
It’s fading fast
Into the rearview, distance-drowned
With every mile of hard-won ground
