Old song lyrics

Found some old lyrics to a song I never finished:

 

If you took all the letters of all the words

of every alphabet ever known to man

and ravelled them up into one giant mess

and unravelled them again

they still wouldn't make one single word

as chaotic or brief

as the encylopedias in your eyes

as the single slingshot of your breath

 

and all the names and all the places

you've carved deep beneath your skin

you think i don't have ambitions

i'm the only one with the whole map of everything and everyone you've ever been

 

you found me like a carpetbagger

crumpled and ragged

everything i owned or felt or remembered

stuffed deep inside me jagged

as a brick sick with remembering

how it got to be so hard

that's the only thing worth saving

 

 

and i can't let a day go by

when i don't let you know

that you found my heart all locked up in love

and too shy to burst, too damp to glow

i've been waiting for kindling

i've been waiting for warmth

i've been waiting for someone

to tell the world what i'm worth

 

and silence is all the places

between blindness and pain

and it's the lapses between us

that define who i am

and not only did my dreams not come true

they never came at all

i'm still the silence before you leap

i'm still the gulp before the fall

 

and sometimes it's hard to find your voice in this void

and sometimes all you want is an excuse to be ignored

you know me, you love me, you strip my skin bare

that's why it's so easy to pretend nothing's there

 

Sometimes before sleeping, I imagine the stars below

and earthworms and dirt storms and mushrooms above

and maybe that's what they mean when they say mushroom cloud

'cause we live in a world that explodes upside down

 

all the things you were taught to value

hard work, keeping your word

pale in comparison

to just feeling good

 

and that's how we are, baby

that's how we want to be

with you imagining i'm a fig or a peach or a tree

or any other kind of fruit a man could split wide with his tongue

but i'm sturdy and graceful and not nearly done

 

and every time you finish something

you tear the fabric of what might have been

and every time we almost get this right

we screw it up again

 

and maybe that's the pleasure

maybe that's the whole damn point

 

 

and love is uglier than dirty snow

and i'd set you to sail on a melting ice floe

if i knew it could dissolve all the shards in my heart

but the only way to end loving is never to start

 

As though your dreams were a position, we assume them

If your goals were coals, we'd both consume them

I'm burning with the flame of what you were meant to be

but I'm left wondering if anything is left that could safely be called "me"

 

 

and love is never painless

and strength is never blind

hard rocks grow inside me

and roots wrap deep around

your love is hard rocks inside me

your roots grows deep around

and the dead dissolve and melt away

but the ones you once loved never dissipate or even fade

instead they get larger, like a gray super nova

and murkier and sneakier until it's you they're graying over

Light Snow

is like ascent

peters out

somewhere near the top

is like a lover asphyxiated

by the distance between

what he can offer

and what you can't live without.

Choruses

"Male bullfrogs aggregate into groups called choruses." - "Bullfrog," Wikipedia

I buoy up like a bullfrog's croak, 

closely timed to evoke the strength

of packs, a masterclass

in virility.  I sit by the window and look out

wearing a pajama top five sizes too big
with sprigs of holly and stars, while cars
plow cautious furrows through the rain.
The drivers wave, I look
like a quiet lady with a book while behind me
my kitchen sinks into ruthless anarchy.
They'd never guess how it goes in here.
We all need temples, and gods
to rail against, my railing is doused
with the spaghetti sauce I tossed while soused
and dreaming of some old lover
the kind who sneaks you notes
of love with some other woman's name scratched out,
whose thumb finds just that right spot
of soreness in your neck, who'd trek
through the snow and sleet to see you
only to knock on your neighbor's door,
"they all look the same,"
the sort that makes you doubt
you exist to him, or without.

Summer is that stain that soaks into the dirt
after the long chisel of winter has scratched
its claw and carved a plank
of the earth, after the rank and mirthless
thaw of March, after the glue and weld,
the spring rains that held that first hint
of something building, when the whole world's an erection
of a cathedral no scaffolding can contain,
that sweaty time when we're all grappling
with one sting or another, when venoms run high
and the light is still long, and half naked women can sit
alone by their windows, and sigh together,
and read for a bit, and hum along.

Station Wagon

Childhood is still that time where they're not 
going to let you walk free to the store
on the corner and pick out what you want, 
but they'll pile four or five of you into the back
of an old station wagon, lower the hatch, 
first wetting a finger to smudge away dirt
on this cheek, or straightening a shirt,
"move away from the windows,"
hedging their bets, a haphazard prayer
hoping for the best.

The Pipes

are clogged, the plumber called.
He arrives with a snake, and within minutes
pulls your hair and my spit
with some bits of blood in it
in one big turgid mass that he plops in the trash.

It's funny how tangled things get
in the end, and how quickly
removed
expunged in one spongy thick ooze
so everything flows a little more easily again.

"You should probably get a drain catcher," he says,
and I wonder how he knew
about the slow siphoning
of self, the bits coming unglued,
the parts of me that washed
down the drain
after you.

Beaks

Who, upon seeing a beak
for the first time could guess
the sleek long stream of effluence
the feathers and wings
who could guess the shape of things
to come from just that one
beginning?

New Year's Resolution

Today I am oatmeal, cautiously, steel-cut and steamed in milk, 
your first meal after the long illness of last year, your heart a raisin plumping, 
warm, drawing moisture till you are slick and bloated as a seal pup, as a tick, 
falling off sweet. Today I am dates and pomegranates and coconut milk,
anything that dangles just out of reach, I am an apple
you could bite without remorse, as a matter of course,
a cup of corn kernels you pour in a pan, heat, the thrill of splitting, beetle skins flung back in your hand,
white and martyred, a hailstorm of supernovas against the tongue.
Today your hands tell you I am not an almond after all
but a true nut, hold both flesh and fruit, meat and hull,
something to shield, something to discover.
Today you vow to eat healthy and true,
today you roll over
open your eyes
and find me staring back at you.