Old Songs in Late Afternoon

The song is too familiar by now:
Hero denied, on a logical course, turns
To hero victorious, if only in pain
That we donate towards.

The progression is only of chords,
Transcendence is only in words that rhyme.
We think it’s the heartbeat that drives our lives,
The scars of love our medal to shine.

One day it will have nothing to do with your life,
As much as you’ve waited in its void
For your number to turn up.
You’re glad to have wasted your time

In another’s dream. It seemed freeing
‘Til you knew the song too well
To think it applied to you, as some homage
To your daily loss, as if that’s what it was. 

It's always whatever you need it to be,
As long as you don’t know what it is,
The tricks it consists of,
The souls given over to its charge.

The chaos of the mad as they escape the clubs
Seems like order to us now, like sanity.
There is no other world, we say,
Than the one of beauty and heartbreak,

And we line up to play our roles
As off-key singers, busy drummers, 
Guitarists without callouses or thumbs.
And even when it loses, at last, its meaning

There is still another alternative take 
Somewhere waiting, that may free you 
From the aimlessness within. There must be a song 

Beyond all last chances, to lose yourself in again.