Levi The Poet - Keep Forgiving lyrics

Keep forgiving
When all is not what you thought it was
When the lynch mob pulls back the curtain to
Reveal all that is ferocious and majestical
Well we are each of us
Small men to varying degrees
Projecting the great and powerful
Oz with booming voices
So much louder than we are confident

Keep forgiving
If you grow to hate what you loved
Well I don’t want to be a pendulum
Swinging from one ivory tower to another
Not everyone is competition
I pray for you on the days
That I pray for my enemies
(The same days that I pray for myself)
Life tends to beat the binaries out of you
It’s healthy when you and I become we
But we have got to keep forgiving


If you write for everybody, you
Write for no one, so I write for my friends
I’ve watched all of them grope for
Understanding like a pipe dream
Heard every word that they haven't
Said through eyes watering
Wondering if God really hates them as much as
They think that he does in the deafening
Inarticulable silence
Their lips are all sealed the same
Not because they have nothing
To say but because
None of them know how to say it
And neither do I maybe you can relate

Keep forgiving
That goes for yourself as much as anyone

Keep forgiving
When pledged allegiances poison the body
And civil war breaks out
Between limbs and you
Tuck your children into bed at night
Remembering the way that you treated their
Mother as somehow less than
Though you are the product of woman
Without the power to
Multiply and you would not
Be here without her, and neither would they
Perspective, perspective
And the last shall be first and
She'll deserve every trophy that
God has for her after being
Your trophy for so long, i’m sorry

Keep forgiving me this goes both ways
With fingers for pistols firing
Indictments and blame
At celebrities as machines I made
The bullets -
Sometimes - stand to temporarily
Tame the bitterness
But it’s still self-medicated anger
And the gun shot residue only fans the flames
I heard you say that
Fostering the festering pain
Was a match struck in the forest
And the faintest whisper enough of a
Gust to set it ablaze keep forgiving
Did it set your skin to fire
As a boy trying to
Reconcile how a father could possibly
Treat you like that?
I used the past like funeral pyre
Thinking I could burn it away
(And tie you to the stake while i’m at it)
I wanted to be the broken link in the chain
But when i set the torch to timber
It was I who found myself
Burning from the inside out
And I see how hell is as here
And now as it is anywhere else

Keep forgiving have pity
Is there a drop of water for my tongue?
I used scissors to fork it and spoke blood
Spoke blood and tinctured the saliva
To serve on a sponge
Called it compassion, called it death by love
Well, no wonder we’re so
Hellbent on hanging someone

Keep forgiving
When the disconnect seems to beat
The poetry out of you
And the joy isn’t quite there but you can’t
Quite remember where or why it went
And the lenses protecting your
Vision continue to cloud
And spread reflecting eyes as opaque as
The dimly lit mirror that they
Seem to be doubling up on just
For the hell of it
Well, it was never just for the hell of it
But who really believes that in
The midst of the dispersion
Or setting a broken bone?
The bloodletting felt like murder
But you had to get the poison out of me

Keep forgiving
When we come brandishing swords for
The ears of those who
Spoke to what they should have
Given over to silence
When I steal the right to vengeance
When i think that I am justified in my anger
Like holding onto it is doing anything
Other than picking at wounds that
I don’t have the scope to see as a cell block
Keep forgiving
When the memories of what was threaten
To shut your heart down
And the laughter that you can still hear
From the mouths of friends who
Are no longer around make you wish
That you could change the channel
If you write for everybody, you
Write for no one, so this will be for you

Keep forgiving as forgiven
As every pointer finger bent backwards
And broken like the
Moment all of my indictments returned to me
And the bullets ricochet straight back
In on my gunsights well this is a small
Narrow lens from which to view the world

Keep forgiving as forgiven
We don’t always get to wear the white hat
Pardon is not always preceded by repentance
In fact, i think it’s exactly the opposite
If it were not for love, i would have never
Ever come back

Keep forgiving
You can’t unsee what you’ve seen
But the world is colorful
Ferocious and majestic
Without small men or straw men or me to
Blow smoke and mirrors from our machinery
That toggle switch is reductionistic
Let the pin go decrease

Hate is a prison
I've told my stories, but they are yours
You may never get your apology, and
On the day that you do
It may not mean a thing

Keep forgiving