Buttons

In my mind, not enough birds have died In the shadow of this once cast stone And I'm not unwell, but I am ill at ease With all the buttons still left to sew Through needles eyes See me sharper than I see myself... So you should stitch me in to stop me from bleeding And education can be fickle I think Sometimes the more you learn The more you lose a sense of what you think you know About all the buttons still left to sew And I'm outside myself more and more these days So you should stitch my skin to stop me from bleeding All over this fresh sing and I Acknowledge all the corners And all the freshly painted walls, that bear no former scars Since they're patched up and over now But I was born of miners and I'm designed to chip away, tunnel in the dark... But why must it always come down to some unseen contender? I don't know When hatchlings all we are Just battling the whitewash birds above Sharks below Though I feel empathy Towards the ones who threaten me I'd still leave them soft-shelled to the beaks of crows... But every now and then a tempest blows And the veneer I keep comes unsewn But will you ever read me well? I can only assume so And I'm buoyant like a flotsam man Now relegated by the waves to land They dry me like a brittle bone Paraded like a polished stone And that's what you ought to know I'd see them smashed on the reefs below