I have a friend, he's mostly made of pain. He wakes up, drives to work and
straight back home again. He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper, I
thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover. Then I tried to tell him
that he had a sense of color and composition so magnificent and he said thank
you please but your flattery is truly not becoming me. Your eyes are poor,
you're blind, you see no beauty could have come from me. I'm a waste of breath,
of space, of time.
I knew a woman, she was dignified and true and her love for her man was one of
her many virtues until one day she found out that he had lied and she decided
the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie. But she was grateful for
everything that had happened and she was anxious for all that would come next.
But then she wept, what did you expect, in that big old house with the cars she
kept. Oh and such is life she often said, with one day leading to the next, you
get a little closer to your death which was fine with her, she never got upset
and with all the day she may have left she would never clean another mess or
fold his shirts or look her best. She was free to waste away alone.
Last night, my brother he got drunk and drove and this cop, he pulled him off to
the side of the road and he said officer, officer, you've got the wrong man, no,
no, I'm a student of medicine, the son of a banker, you don't understand. The
cop said no one got hurt you should be thankful and your carelessness, it is
something awful. No I can't just let you go and though your father's name is
known, your decisions now are yours alone, you're nothing but a stepping stone
on a path to debt, to loss, to shame.
The last few months I've been living with this couple, yeah you know the kind
who buy everything in doubles. They fit together like a puzzle and I love their
love and I am thankful that someone actually receives the prize that was
promised by all those fairy tales that drugged us. And they still do me, I'm
sick, lonely, no laurel tree, just green envy. Will my number come up
eventually? Like love's some kind of lottery where you scratch and see what's
underneath. It's sorry, just one cherry, play again, get lucky.
I've been hanging out down by the train's depot, no I don't ride, I just sit and
watch the people there. And they remind me of windup cars in motion, the way
they spin and turn and jockey for positions and I want to scream out that it all
is nonsense, oh your life's one track, can't you see it's pointless? But just
then my knees give under me, my head feels weak and suddenly it's clear to see
it's not them but me who's lost my self-identity as I hide behind these books I
read while scribbling my poetry. Like art could save a wretch like me with some
ideal ideology that no one could hope to achieve and I am never real, it's just
a sketch of me and everything I've made is trite and cheap and a waste of paint,
of tape, of time.
Now I park my car down by the cathedral where the floodlights point up at the
steeples. Choir practice was filling up with people, I could hear the sound
escaping as an echo, sloping off the ceiling at an angle and when the voices
blend they sound like angels. I hope there's some room still in the middle. But
when I lift my voice up now to reach them, the range is too high, way up in
heaven so I hold my tongue, forget the song, tie my shoes, start walking off and
try to just keep moving on with my broken heart and my absent God. And I have no
faith but it's all I want to be loved and believe in my soul, in my soul, in my
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