Pulling A Song From A Sad Little Heart

There’s nothing like a touch of melancholy to drag out the inner poet. In 2001 I was recovering from PMT (or FOF)* in Southport on Australia’s Gold Coast, next door to Surfers Paradise – a more beautiful place to patch a leaking heart I cannot imagine.

My income, then, came from helping families recover from their seemingly insurmountable debt crises. It occurred to me, just this morning, that, as I helped them to repair their broken piggy banks, they helped me to repair my broken heart. There is nothing like service to others to take us up and out of our perceived misery.

I’m not sure how I got by on so little sleep but depression does that, I’m told. Though I just wanted to go to sleep and never wake again, never face another sad little day, shutting the eyes and hoping for sleep never worked – sleep seldom came.

So I’d get up, make a coffee and take my stuff out to the balcony and enjoy the 1.00 am or 2.00 am or 3.00 am or 4.00 am (or any other silly am time) view over the bay. Then I’d roll a smoke and start writing.

For some reason, I know this song came at 4.00 am – not sure why I remember that – and I guess it came out of a need to find peace in a distant childhood that knew little of peace. Well, that’s what my sad little heart thought on that Southport balcony at 4.00 in the morning as I sipped another coffee, rolled another cigarette and let the words fall from my pen.

There is a reference in the song to Jilly, which is what my father called my mother … because that was her name. So here it is, Heart of Nails:

Am                                      C

I am a fine carpenter, a hewer of wood,

G                                                    F

And my graceful creations in mansions have stood

Dm                                                    Am

They talk of the wonder and the peace that they feel,

                   G                                    F                   Am

When they see, they touch, they smell, my sculptures so real.

But I am just a man with a heart pierced with nails,

Against the beating and harsh words so ever it rails,

But my father knew nothing ‘bout gentle and kind,

And many nails in his heart, if you look there you’ll find.

You are a fine lass, oh Jilly my love,

Seein’ the beauty I make and we fit hand in glove,

But inside there’s a pain that’s never to go,

And a leaking from my nails my essence it flows.

You would be a good wife of that I’m so sure,

Oh, Jilly I want you forever and more,

But you wonder and look sad, in the moonlight we stand,

Why you can’t come closer and take me like a man.

I want to hug you and smile, it’s sweet and it’s pain,

I feel your kind heart but the nails press again,

I’d love a sweet house and a family to start,

But I don’t know how to not put nails in their heart.

So I carve another piece, graceful curves and how,

Not a nail in the wood would I ever allow,

Wishin’ I had a heart like my sculptures of wood,

Never a nail or a pain and I’d love you like I should.

Wishin’ I had a heart like my sculptures of wood,

Never a nail or a pain and I’d love you like I should.

 *PMT = Post Marriage Trauma or FOF, as a never-to-be-married-again friend called it – Fear Of Freedom.