Timothy Patrick Hinkle - A Lost Love and a Roving Eye

from SpinTunes 18 Round 2 by Spintunes

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In round one of SpinTunes 16, I did a song based around a scene in a movie rather than from a book and I remember feeling as if there was some disappointment that more of us did movies than books from some of the judges. So, a bit later, for the Song Fight prompt "Mythical Creature," I did a song from a book (Edith Nesbit's Book of Dragons). After doing that song, the thought crossed my mind that I might do a song for each of the stories in the book. Casting around for a topic for this challenge, I revisited that thought.

This song started out being based on the story "The Deliverers of their Country," but it turned into its own thing pretty quickly. In the story, a tiny dragon flies into a young girl's eye. But the dragon is safely removed and is merely a harbinger of larger dragons on the horizon. There is no gestalt flying eyeball entity in the book. That just showed up out of nowhere and took over (just like in the song).

lyrics

Something in my eye, something in my eye
The world as one did cry out in pain and rising terror
The worms so very small at once attacked us all
Nothing to do but fall down in our unplanned obsequence
As they burrowed inside us
Nothing remained to hide us from ourselves

See them swim through the air, they’re descending to glare at me
These floating eyes of God
I remember the days when we’d say you were crazy
Inventing things so very odd
Just a fact of life now
We’ve accepted it somehow
The gaze from which we’re never free

Every other eye from it’s socket did fly
While we screamed out goodbye in anguish and confusion
Now eyes of every scale from butterfly to whale
Watch from the air to curtail rebellious behavior
In our minds images gather
We see things that we’d rather that we had not seen

Shared a coffee last night with my love blocked from sight
By the mask that I wear when I sleep
My love still has both eyes, have the floaters got wise
To the secret we’re trying to keep
Just a matter of time
‘Til they uncover our crime
And that will mean the end of me

When a sight is seen that displeases our masters
All the people gather 'round
All are compelled to stare at the offending party
With our looks the villain we’ll hound
As our vacant eye cavities align on what they cannot see
A beam of fire erupts out of each staring cyclops head
Somewhere an eye falls to the ground, unseen, but does it make a sound?
Unseeing, as are all the eyes belonging to the dead

See them swim through the air, they’re descending to glare at me
These floating eyes of God

credits

from SpinTunes 18 Round 2, released October 18, 2021

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Spintunes Union, South Carolina

Spintunes is a semi-annual songwriting contest. Every other week, the competitors receive a challenge and a week to meet it.

Each album on this site contains the responses to a single challenge.