Premonition

“Premonition” is the third song in the cycle The Dark-Eyed Chameleon. Over its course, the narrator moves from vague unease to the first direct encounter with the darkest depths of his partner’s psyche, manifested in a near-catatonic episode – “You are mute, frozen, alone … on a dead planet without a name, orbiting a dead sun.” Growing doubt and dread are touched upon in a quiet, eerie section: “Under us, the ground is always shifting. Unstable like our California.”

Date: 2008Composer: Mark AbelText: Mark AbelSong Collection: The Dark-Eyed Chameleon

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PREMONITION

Rain fell steadily today.
It always makes me wistful.
No matter, more hours to spend
in the warm tent of our love.

But you are silent and far away.
Where? You can never say.
I have seen this chasm before;
it is uncharted and buried deep within you.
And when I try to excavate, you dissolve
into a smile that could melt a glacier.
“Our love is the truth,” I heard you say,
not long ago.

Today is different.
You are mute, frozen, alone
on a dead planet without a name,
orbiting a dead sun.
I cannot hail you,
my precious, my sphinx,
across these light years of the soul.

“It will pass,” you say, and in time it does.
But this ghost, as ancient as thee, never sleeps.

Under us the ground is always shifting,
unstable like our California.
I still think my love is all you need.
Am I a fool, a saint — or a target?

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