The Blue Hammer - Simon Joyner
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
