Tied Tight

Didn't expect to be here again
Lining up in a soup kitchen
Amongst the ghosts of old friends

The smell of booze, b.o. and profanity
It was so very long ago I began my rise
Above such insanity
Bloodied fists, slashed wrists, kneedle tracks
Couldn't believe after all I'd striven for, I was back

It was 34 years to the day
That mum and I had run away
The Block and Waterloo
Where my step dad sold drugs
It was Sydney's Bronx
Filled with rotten thugs

Best scenario was a neighbour on the 'Done'
Or teens sitting round passing a cone
More commonly blood and the sound of sirens
Responding to DVs, ODs or the clash of irons

And I was just a frieghtened kitten
Still breaking-in my mittens
Losing my baby teeth to coke
And being forced to choke

Yeah that's right a child defiled
It was a sight I had filed
Never to be remembered
A past long surrendered

And from the age of 9 I prepared for baptism
Nearly succeeded in taking my life
But God had other plans and then some
Who'd-a-thought I'd graduate and find a wife

But back to reality cheque
Perhaps a karma debt unchecked
For I found myself at that old sq 1
Back to where my hell had begun

Eyes googled me up and down
I must have looked like a clown
It was a joke and it was on me
This is what divorce can do
Unravel all your hard earned dreams

And spirit your children away
Till all that's left is the nightmare,
the lonliness, and this tie

It was this tie that kept me to my boat,
My... moral compass
Binding me to the mast
with the ghosts they couldn't see

It was my grandpa's wisdom you see
helped me to weather the storm
Till I found a new job
And now I'm riding it like a surfer reborn

There's always gotta be that angel there
Tangled in your wires somewhere
A light that had shone to point the way

For me it was my gramps that day
And although he too soon passed away
He taught me how to reach up high
And taught me how to tie a tie