The Blue Hammer

I lived in a house with a blue steel hammer

I lived all alone she left me that way

Everything around me seemed to be shattered

I nailed it all to the ground and then I wandered away

I searched for work at my side was the hammer

I pounded on doors through the winter and spring

But no one had any jobs for a stranger

Nothing broken for a man who could fix anything

If a church had a pew that was falling apart

I'd nail it back together for free

But if a woman had a roof with a hole in the heart

There would be something she could do for me

I met a woman who stood before a hot hungry needle

She climbed a rubber ladder and leapt into this lap

Then I met a man who drank from the moat around a castle

Then crawled all day and night just to collapse inside a shack

A fire broke out and the trees began moaning

The animals scrambled or huddled in fear

I searched for a pain that might lead to a clearing

For I knew that a high place would be better than here

I longed for escape from the black burning woods

Everything in the smoke was trying to get free

But nothing I saw could be saved or made good

In fact everything was so scorched on all sides of me

I made it back home and I passed through the door

All that I'd left behind was exactly the same

After pulling all the nails from the walls and the floor

I knew it was time to put the blue hammer away

I laid myself down and slipped into dreaming

Where I was clutching my lover and reliving the past

I awoke to the smoke and the fire in the ceiling

When you retire your hammer the forest attacks