it doesn't have to make sense
this all this all ... all this all this
it only has to feel like memory borne out of flesh
off the tip
nub of a thumb stuck out for a ride
hey, how's your thumb today?
i laugh about it now
i laughed about it then
but it was a metaphor for my pain
every day the same pain
i can't look out my window for fear of the stinking rot i walk with
every day
standing above above
vinyl on repeat so i don't gotta rise up rise up
even if that means i listen to side one of Ball seventeen times
i can say
i know the band
that does
that one song everyone knows and makes up funny names for
the one that's thirty some-odd minutes long
nobody gets this
but it doesn't have to make sense
and i can make it rhyme, see
i can say twin two three thumb
crazy in love
tum ta tum tum tum
then it's like this, all upside down and fucked up
crazy in my head baking all night long
for everything cooked in the oven i get to forget the pain
but even then my apple pies should turn sour with woe but they don't, see
they don't
they stay sweet melted honey dripper love
so it busts up your tongue
the taste makes you crazy
back for more
it doesn't have to make sense
i can break i can break
break like the dickens
break through solid-like i can break through anything
head like a brick stone rock baby-back built to the nines
chimes in my ears
you don't have to stay here with me
you don't have to stay here without me
you don't have to stay here at all
when i fall
it's gonna be hard
it's gonna be fast
and i'm gonna leave you on the tip of a needle
i'm sorry for that
sorry for your loss
cuz you're gonna lose me when i go
are ya gonna miss me when i'm gone?
it's only for later.
my head ain't in the oven yet.
bit by bit
chip by chip
death comes by the grace of God
and i ain't ready yet
the outside air works thick on my skin
honey dripping rotting sun
tender slaps all over
it's noon already
i can't find the time
can't find the space
liminal, like between desert sands and moon drenched sea
down there by moonstone
and cobbled antitheses
maybe rotting next to you
maybe sometimes fresh lingering
dipping toes in fingertips out
morsels of you in my mouth for the day after
i try to talk but you're dripping out from the corners of my mouth
still, like flow to bow
bent back and schisms deep
a cherry blossomed back gnawed scratching
a bit of blood for later, balsa wood tones
smooth blonde wood
and a deep deep inside feeling when the cold hit my face
it's morning again
you're in my bed beneath piles of cloth
randomly situated burning cotton flesh
you're that budding contradiction
oxymoronic faith healing tearing me down in stride
it's cold like the devil but the honey dripper, cone upturned, keeps you here.
nestled in timeless abandon.
wearing your love like heaven
all this i need like a light needs a spark
infusion meets de-evolution
somewhere in the middle where nonsense make the most sense
and the poor wranglers stuck in the gutter reel at their casted shadows amid the grime and pain and grain and dirt and flying mud balloons.
heart's on the line and words skip like my swathed copy of donovan — skipping over and over and over....
....you got to pick up every every every every every ...stitch....
and i will but only after i blow the dust off the needle and place her gently back to the vinyl
and somewhere in the middle i'm gonna meet you
teetering between songs — long pause — too long — and then it begins
like food that makes you remember the past
a smell
a taste
pie, maybe, or waffles. maybe this petal or that nib of chocolate but really
it's an old black sabbath song.
the one with the rain in the beginning that makes me stop everything, forget my work, my promises and look to you
black and smooth
maybe this is a poem of love but for whom?
can a girl love vinyl so intensely as to write poetry for it?
can a girl forget her friends, her love, her coffee in the morning and become obsessed with a record?
now it starts...like an electrical banana
i am all at once wined and dined, oh it seemed just like a dream!
it did wot syd said and i slept nary a wink last night
hearing the crackles between songs and struggling with scissors not sharp enough to cut out art for the sake of art
keeping me up all night, plugging away and away and away
it did seem like a dream — the kind where fishies swim in the air instead of the water
all colors told fins true to blues and yellows
it was the time of green in the morning but fading in the night when my dips come
those dips come fierce and i freeze but my vinyl, she keeps me safe like a warm blanket of nostalgia threatening to keep me in another time away from this reality i seem to....
....in the sad town
cold iron hands
clap the party of clowns outside
rain falls in gray far away
please, please, baby lemonade....
so hey, syd, what'd ya mean? Sometimes i remember you what you did to my heart sometimes i forget why i understood you
was the sad town in your heart, dear syd? my sweet love, syd...were the cold iron hands chasing you in the night, my dear syd? the party of clowns always chasing you, too...threatening to steal your love like they do to me
yeah, i guess this sort of was a love poem of sorts.
like a blade of grass that stands still in a blizzard
or a shade tree that doesn't cast a shadow
a poem for love
a poem for love
a poem for syd and donovan and me and you
a poem for black vinyl
a poem for love
a poem for love
deep and now discarded.
