Safe: A Browncoat Ballad

Safe

A Browncoat Ballad

There are few things

More beautiful

Than the brother’s love

For his sweet baby sister

An unconditional love

For a girl unjustly undone

By a bored curiosity

From behind the hands of blue

She steps outside

Ever protected

Trying to remember

What once was

What she once was

A dancer of free spirit

While she dances

The man that claims the faith needs saving prayers

While she returns

Through dance

To what she once was

Her brother and his protective watch are taken

There was once a time

When the brother’s watch

Deciphered the code

His future sacrificed for something immeasurably more important

The brother and sister are taken

Left behind

To fend for themselves

Just like before

The hill folk have them

In their unforgiving grip

And death squeezes tight upon the preacher

With options nearly nonexistent

The doctor returns

To what he once was

And the preacher, in an unexpected way,

Does the same

Siblings share in memories

And are struck by nostalgia’s longing

For everything they had taken from them

Grateful for what they still have: one another

Tied to the stake on false charges of witchcraft

Her brother will not abandon her

As their old family did

Their new family arrives just in time

Big damn heroes

Have everyone back on board

Back home

To the unconditional love of family

With hope and smiles

The siblings now know

That their family is not just the two

It’s the preacher and the rest of the crew

Shindig: A Browncoat Ballad

Shindig

A Browncoat Ballad

Stand back and give the big one a stick

While the muscle plays his part, the thief plays his

So long as the pilot

Doesn’t crash and kill them all

The companion should arrive in time

For a mighty fancy shindig

The crew goes it separate ways

After the captain fails to appreciate the pretties

Leaving the muscle and the captain

To deal with the proper businessman with roots in the community

The businessman takes off his very fine hat

Explains the job

That requires diamonds the size of testicles

And some pretties

Thus are introduced

The lady mechanic in her fluffy pink dress

And her escort:

Captain Tightpants

A hovering chandelier

A suspicious buffet table

In need of questioning

And a man in a sash

A fancy party for some

A high stakes card game for others

There are many ways to have fun

But for the captain, disrespect cannot be a part of it

The captain isn’t the only one

Who cannot abide disrespectful, useless people

But he is one of the few

That would strike a master swordsman over just such uselessness

It’s out of the crew’s hands

The companion can’t do much to put it in the captain’s

After all, the most he knows of swordsmanship is which end to hold

Even if it’s a fight, it’s not the captain’s type of party

A crew held hostage

Another layer to the complicated girl manifests

And the captain makes his point with the companion

Making no use of even a pound of pressure

The next day

He makes his point

Against the useless man from the fancy shindig

Making use of plenty pounds of brutish pressure

It’s not the dress

It’s not the money and the food it buys

It’s not about being fancy

It’s about being useful

There’s not much use

For people who would choose to be rude

Especially when they only find use

In the superficiality of man-made wealth

So be useful

Be kind and considerate

Defend your friends and your morals

Admit to your mistakes

You don’t need to know the steps

When you walk with friends

You don’t need to wear the nicest clothes

When you wear the truth upon your sleeves

Good friends

Friends from whom you’ve earned,

And continue to earn,

Respect

That’s really the only ingredient one needs

For a mighty fine shindig

Bushwhacked: A Browncoat Ballad

Bushwhacked

A Browncoat Ballad

A ruleless bit of fun

Interrupted by ghosts of settlers

Of settlers once of something

Now reduced to less than nothing

Reduced, undone, remade into nothing by nothing

Reduced to nothing by a nothing

That was once something

Before that something made it to the edge of space

Families turned cattle

Cattle for the slaughter

Nothing can withstand the nothing

Despite this absolute truth

Curiosity leads the crew

To discover the details in the truth

Among the ship turned to nothing

There is deception aboard the ship

Nothing masquerading in the dark as something

Thus what was on the ship

Is still on that ship

And always will be

…

            …

                        …Reavers…

Work to be done

To distract from the truth needs solvin’

Nothing can distract, however, the tortured girl

From the darkness filling the infirmary, infecting serenity

Guess it’s a good thing

Good thing

Real good thing

Good—good—real good

Real good thing the feds showed up

Not even purple can escape

Can’t escape their place as cattle

When the purple is eclipsed

By equalizing slaughter

Such is the violence

The death

The process

The remaking

Of something into nothing

Nothing is what the purple obtains

From questioning the brown

Challenging their loyalty

Their loyalty to the only thing they have

Their home

Their family

Their place aboard Serenity

Stop it with your pointless dribble!

The darkness has waited long enough!

The captain must now face

The one thing that he knows

Is pure in its undeniable, undefiable truth

The captain must rescue the girl

The girl and her brother

Two of the few lights

Still flickering in the nothingness

Does it count?

Does it?

Well does it captain!?

…

Does it count as murder

When you kill a Reaver?

Does it count for anything

When you put an end to nothing?

The Alliance appears to believe

That it doesn’t count for much

The Train Job: A Browncoat Ballad

The Train Job

A Browncoat Ballad

A Browncoat in a purple belly bar

A toast to unification

Is a toast to his defeat

Good thing his ship ain’t got no guns

Amongst the brawl, contact was made

A job available from a most frightening source

The masochist aboard the space station

Proves his reputation before making the deal

Onto the train, prepared to follow the simple plan

But it can never be simple, no matter how thrilling the heroics may be

An alliance surprise

Makes it a challenge, a welcomed challenge for this former Independent Soldier

Then things get testy, iffy

Downright not shiny

As extraction is blown

And the hero title gets fuzzy

With her reputation

The companion frees the Browncoats

Once the man swinging his chain of command

Is put to down by sparkly butterflies

The title of hero is regained

With a change in mind

To match what was never changed

In the captain’s heart

A hero makes choices

Choices that define their titles

Like helping a young lady

With a head full of nightmares

It’s not every man that would even unknowingly risk confrontation

With the ruthless hands of blue

Serenity: A Browncoat Ballad

Serenity

A Browncoat Ballad

A browncoated captain picking bones

Like a vulture

With defeat in his eyes

He cannot feel victory

The bones picked were tainted

The plan: trade this problem for coin and passengers

Onto the ship they board as passengers

Only to become problems for the captain with empty pockets

A shepherd and his strawberries and spices

A well dressed young man and his very fragile cargo

One Mr. Dobson… all aboard

This would prove to be a recipe for some rather strange unpleasantness

Uncomfortable meetings and eating

Made all the more unsettling by a signal

And a secret

A few secrets, actually, a few potentially lethal secrets

The mechanic lies stable, but easily ended

Should things get worse

The fragile cargo wakes up

And the doctor’s entire secret is revealed in sorrowful narrative

On the way to plan B

The man-made devils float by, marking their prey

They return to their darkness

From which they are lethal hunters

It’s getting crowded

In the unlucky captain’s sky

Left with no choice

But to face the Browncoat fortune

A blatant double cross earns a gunman a bullet through his head

The shootout that ensues leaves the unlucky captain

With desperately needed coin and no more tainted bones

And a moment to vent recently building frustrations

They ride back, right into another standoff

The frustrated captain wastes no time

After all, they have none

Not now that the hunters have come out from the darkness

With a crafty pilot,

Genius mechanic,

And a Crazy Ivan

The prey leaves the predator burning

This is life out here in the black

Can this preacher keep his humanity, his faith?

Can this doctor keep his sister, her soul?

Can this captain keep his ship, his serenity?

This crew will keep flying

And for this captain

That’s enough, just to fly with no particular destination

To keep to the one thing they can’t take

After all, it’s how you get there

That is the worthier part

Serenity Valley: A Prelude to the Browncoat Ballads

Serenity Valley: A Prelude to the Browncoat Ballads

Despite the human nature
For human flaw and mortal weakness
The citizens of this bountiful, yet fragile sphere in space
Found the means with which to traverse and settle
Among the seemingly infinite stars

Despite the vastness
There were those who could not exist in twisted peacefulness
Not without people to control
People to change into what they deemed
Acceptable

Unbeknownst to the men and women
Clad in the brown of the soil they wished to freely roam
Without the forceful falsehood of the purple-bellied bullies
These warriors for independence
Were fighting for something so much more

More than freedom
More than their love of the land
More than the sky above their heads
More than the new blue seas
More, even than, if you could believe, serenity

It was in this battle of serenity
For serenity
That one Browncoat would lose his faith
His faith in something greater
When the wrong angels came down mercilessly upon serenity

Dawn

Dawn

We sing with lungs filled with words
Dance along to the notes we heard
Once upon a time now regained
Our spirits soar unrestrained

We have surpassed our limitations
With the aide of our secret libations
Drunk on the magic in our veins
Set free by the whimsy in our brains

So, come now and dance with me
As what was once the future becomes presently
The life we must now come to understand
Perhaps time itself will expand

With this expansion comes chance
A frightening thing at first glance
But if you were only to take a closer look
In the range of the whispering gasp you took

Your first steps, indeed, without even realizing
But now you must be more active in materializing
The beginning, the path, and the object you seek
This one true object born of the reality not bleak

The reality, instead of blinding light
A light of hope and promise, the will to fight
A very real battle across the emotional spectrum
A battle fit for deciding what you just might become

This is your new day
Your chance to stay
The amazing person you are
While adding to your repertoire

So I make of you this request
Find truth in your place among the rest
To whom my each new day belongs
To whom for which I write my songs