Snake Life

(album: The Returner - 2023)

I used to dream I'd shed my skin
And leave it lying on the ground
Crawl away from where I'd been
A new and wet and gleaming one
But every scar and every bruise
They shine like blue Botswana jewels
What did not kill me fills me
With the power of a thousand suns

Woo-hoo, ooh-ooh

Every wound a rift, a hide
A portal to another time
Time slips and folds and flees and flies
She teaches us we are divine

Woo-hoo, ooh-ooh

We travel time back to the child
Back to that inner garden wild
And further up and further in
To the indigo sky past the red sea cliff
Where our wings unfurl
We fly further still
In and up and up and in
Past the deathless stars
Through the breathless void

We burst through our skin
Skins turn to asteroids
Now the bountiful blackness
Weds that pregnant silence
And a song is born
And those cold rocks transform
Into gleaming planets
With purple moons
And rainbow rings gently coiling
Circling, circling
In the gravity of the burning suns
We now embody bright constellations
Bright constellations
Never seen before, a whole universe
A whole blazing force, a whole blazing force
Unstoppable, unstoppable

I used to dream, but now I write
I wield my words like spindles bright
To weave a world where every child
Is safe and loved, is safe and loved
Is safe and loved
And Black is beautiful and good