Buttons - Josh Pyke

In my mind, not enough birds have died

In the shadow of this once cast stone

And I’m not unwell, but I am ill at ease

With all the buttons still left to sew

Through needles eyes

See me sharper than I see myself…

So you should stitch me in to stop me from bleeding

And education can be fickle I think

Sometimes the more you learn

The more you lose a sense of what you think you know

About all the buttons still left to sew

And I’m outside myself more and more these days

So you should stitch my skin to stop me from bleeding

All over this fresh sing and I

Acknowledge all the corners

And all the freshly painted walls, that bear no former scars

Since they’re patched up and over now

But I was born of miners and I’m designed to chip away, tunnel in the dark…

But why must it always come down to some unseen contender?

I don’t know

When hatchlings all we are

Just battling the whitewash birds above

Sharks below

Though I feel empathy

Towards the ones who threaten me

I’d still leave them soft-shelled to the beaks of crows…

But every now and then a tempest blows

And the veneer I keep comes unsewn

But will you ever read me well?

I can only assume so

And I’m buoyant like a flotsam man

Now relegated by the waves to land

They dry me like a brittle bone

Paraded like a polished stone

And that’s what you ought to know

I’d see them smashed on the reefs below