Neil Peart – “The Enemy Within” (1984)

August 31, 2009 at 7:06 pm (Poetry & Literature)

Things crawl in the darkness
That imagination spins
Needles at your nerve ends
Crawl like spiders on your skin

Pounding in your temples
And a surge of adrenaline
Every muscle tense –  
To fence
The enemy within

I’m not giving in
To security under pressure
I’m not missing out
On the promise of adventure
I’m not giving up
On implausible dreams –  
Experience to extremes –  
Experience to extremes

Suspicious-looking stranger
Flashes you a dangerous grin
Shadows across your window –
Was it only trees in the wind?

Every breath a static charge –  
A tongue that tastes like tin
Steely-eyed outside to hide the enemy within…

To you-is it movement or is it action?
It is contact or just reaction?
And you-revolution or just resistance?
Is it living, or just existence?
Yeah, you-it takes a little more persistence
To get up and go the distance…

Neil Peart