Atop Paris

I climbed the rings of the Eiffel tower.
Just to say this to you
I climbed the Eiffel tower rung by rung to
write this to you.
I sit atop this tower looking out over this
world, thinking these thoughts I swore never
to recount again.
For the first time in so many years I'm afraid.
I'm afraid of letting you down, maybe one day
I'll have the strength to say this to you.


I've been wandering this world, dreaming in
my sleep wondering if I could ever be..just me.
I see the whole world from here but I don't see
you. So for you I sing this song from atop Paris
tonight...


I was born as happy as any child would be.
Now that I'm older I know what loneliness means
I never write songs, I never think long cause I
knew that its all for nothing anyways.
So now I sit thinking of the time I've spent creating
this numbness I feel, never allowing the tears to fall.
But tonight they falls from atop the Eiffel tower where I
sit writing this letter to you.


I've been wandering this world, dreaming in
my sleep wondering if I could ever be..just me.
I see the whole world from here but I don't see
you. So for you I sing this song from atop Paris
tonight...

So this letter comes to an end, I feel like its just
begun. God has a plan inside of his hand for me.
So God here's my heart, I hope that you read every part
Know that I love you with all my heart...
Cause tonight atop Paris you look quite beautiful to me.

Christa

Crumble

all that's happened, all that has become
has driven me to one place.
A place of complete insecurity I just don't
know what to think. Will you stay? Will you
leave? Will you betray me?
How do I know? How do I believe that I'm not
being set up once more, I just don't know if
I can take anymore.


Oh please if your sent to destroy me then just
do it, don't play games with me don't dance around
me leaving me with dreams that you care and hopes
that you won't hurt me. If your here to kill me just
do it, take your knife and kill me now I have nothing
left to lose I just want it to be over.

I know I'm supposed to say strong but I just don't feel like
I can anymore, I don't know what to believe or who will
betray me next, I come to see that when you open yourself
up to anyone your immediately vulnerable, any minute they
could turn on you leaving you diving frantically trying to
pull it all back together, the fear of what they do next
lurks in the shadows.


Falling apart is not an option, so if you here to destroy me
just do it now, so I may have the reason, I may have the reason
to crumble to the ground with not care of who sees.
For my heart to bleed out in agony and no one to stop it, my
destruction would be so simple...so easy. Just stab me, just beat
me, just do it all I don't care anymore. Just get it over with the
wait is driving me to my knees in anguish.


And if your not here to destroy me then show me I can trust you
show me that all that has happened is not my end.
I only wish to find some peace some solace just the place to sit
and regain some strength, some stability some...place to breathe.


If you want to destroy this soul you don't have much work left to
do, there isn't much left to destroy. Your job will be quick and
easy. I will give it to you quickly for the sake of it just being
over. Destroy me, see if I care, maybe I'll find some peace, some
life perhaps. If you really want to see me crumble.

I give up, I give in.
God save us, perhaps it'll be over soon....
God save our souls, if we make it through this night...
God save me again for no one else can.

Welcome to the Masquerade

Please Hear What I'm Not Saying



Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear for I wear a mask, a thousand masks,masks that I'm afraid to take off,and none of them is me.

Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, but don't be fooled,for our sake don't be fooled.I give you the impression that I'm secure,that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without,that confidence is my name and coolness my game,that the water's calm and I'm in command and that I need no one, but don't believe me.



My surface may seem smooth but my surface is my mask,ever-varying and ever-concealing.Beneath lies no complacence. Beneath lies confusion, and fear, and aloneness.But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it.I panic at the thought of my weakness exposed.That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,a nonchalant sophisticated facade,to help me pretend,to shield me from the glance that knows.

But such a glance is precisely my salvation, my only hope,and I know it.



That is, if it's followed by acceptance,if it's followed by love. It's the only thing that can liberate me from myself,from my own self-built prison walls,from the barriers I so painstakingly erect. It's the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself,that I'm really worth something. But I don't tell you this. I don't dare to, I'm afraid to. I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance, will not be followed by love. I'm afraid you'll think less of me,that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me.



I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing and that you will see this and reject me.

So I play my game, my desperate pretending game, with a facade of assurance without and a trembling child within. So begins the glittering but empty parade of masks,and my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that's really nothing, and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me.



So when I'm going through my routine do not be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying, what I'd like to be able to say,what for survival I need to say,but what I can't say.

I don't like hiding. I don't like playing superficial phony games. I want to stop playing them. I want to be genuine and spontaneous and me but you've got to help me.You've got to hold out your hand even when that's the last thing I seem to want.



Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead. Only you can call me into aliveness.Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care,my heart begins to grow wings--very small wings,very feeble wings,but wings!

With your power to touch me into feeling you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that.I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a creator--an honest-to-God creator--of the person that is me if you choose to.



You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,you alone can remove my mask,you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic,from my lonely prison,if you choose to.Please choose to.

Do not pass me by.It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.The nearer you approach to me the blinder I may strike back.It's irrational, but despite what the books say about men often I am irrational.



I fight against the very thing I cry out for. But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls and in this lies my hope. Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands but with gentle hands for a child is very sensitive.

Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man you meet and I am every woman you meet.

Welcome to the masquerade

Charles C. Finn

September 1966

Out Of Order

Sometimes I feel like an alien.
Like I'm from some other planet unwelcome
and scorned here.
Sometimes I feel like I've stepped out of
someone else's future, time or place.
I'm different, I'm unnatural.

Out of place lost in space I can't seem
to think why I can't find my way or place.
I know you said that I'd be alone for being
different, for being yours but I never thought
I'd be on my own among my own kind.

Even among my own I remain an outsider I'm treated
like a deserter. What did I do to deserve this?
I can thing of a whole list of things...I guess.
Maybe I do deserve it I'm not sure. I've tried to
make a place no one can say I did not try and yet
it remains the same I don't belong with you.

So now what? how do I solve this? Just pretend that
I don't notice? Just pretend I don't care, just pretend
that its not happening? I'll try but it'll kill me in the
end. I've always been different, people said that I was
born twenty years old and at my adulthood I am wise.

I can't say I agree with this only that I am treated as
if I'm some weird terrestrial being.
What am I? Am I a black sheep? An outcast? A snake?
I'm not opposed to being alone, I've been alone ever
since I can remember. Its what I'm used to, I'm used to
the fake friends that fraudulent efforts to act like they
care its normal.

I don't care if I'm alone it is what it is, I just know...
I shouldn't give up but I want to, I'm tired of the constant
cycle of it all.
The cycle of pretending that I don't know that they are going
to leave just like the rest, pretending that it doesn't hurt
pretending that I understand. I wish I did understand.

Everyone says I'm setting them up to fail...truth is
I'm just setting them up to be human. No one sticks
I don't know why they just don't it's not failing it's just
life.

Hanging on to life.
Holding on to hope.
Praying for it to be different.
Clinging to the only truth that its not over yet.


Lord give me strength.


Christa