Confused and mystified
Confounded and dazed
Befuddled and stultified
A shellshock haze
Raindogged and scattered
Demolished and razed
Cracked and shattered
On the brink of crazed.
Depressed and terrorized
Sucked in and crushed
Broken and demoralized
Thrown out and flushed
Superimposed and projected
Swept under and brushed
Beat down and dejected
Silenced and hushed.
Buffeted and twisted
Trapped, snared, and roped
Ignored and blacklisted
Unable to cope
Self-fulfilled prophecy
Against all hope
A lone, downward odyssey
A steep silent slope.
Is this the way I thought I’d enter
This new era of prosperity and peace?
Not comprehending the collapse of the center
While the drift to either extremes increase
I will not let this get the better of me
I will find the healing and the remedy
And though I always struggle with these demons and tormentors
I will sing a new song and be released.
©2023 The Hesh Inc.
This is one of the songs I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, as I tried to make sense of the whole thing. I reposted it on August 4, 2020, in the wake of the huge explosion that rocked Beirut, Lebanon, to which any number of parallels can be drawn from 9/11—not the least of which would be all the shellshocked and wounded wandering their city in a daze.
Musically, the song is constructed around a R&B groove with lots of 9th and 11th piano chords, appropriately and not coincidentally. I recorded an early version of it with my musical partner Izzy Kieffer for a project that eventually morphed into his second album, Uncork the Bottle. However, this song was left off the final track list.
May all the destructive ideologies that have so dogged the world be defeated once and for all.