`I burn' after Valery

I burn with a flame that's all my own, but freeze when I see this brutal life and see it whole..

I burn with a flame that's all my own, but freeze when I see this brutal life and see it whole . . . sleep's the only time I reconcile myself to the world in which I spend my days.

I drift out in a light, uneasy doze and meet the day just gone there - on patrol and ready, if bad dreams are on the prowl, to repeat itself behind my sleeper's eyes;

enjoying itself so much that when I wake I'm thrown like a corpse in the tide against the flesh; and like a shell that echoes the ocean's plash

my years ring with strange laughter and I ache, on the furthest edge of wonderment, with doubt - Am I awake or asleep, alive or dead?