i listen to music like a vulture, bird of praying for the next song to feel as nice as the one preceding, circling around the stereo system waiting for the sound to cease before descending on the cds and trying another song on my company, feeding on victims of my music taste, and singing along to the lines i wished i could write with the effect that the sounds deliver the rhymes along, and ive been intense with my choices like each song fit into a bracket between which was my soundtrack for the moment and beyond, leading me into the next scene and into the beginning credits of a different storyline, ive been listening like this, survival instincts playing on my eardrums ever since i hoboed back to s f with a medicine bag tied to a stick and propped over my shoulder, just a vagabond rifleman shooting for stars that have been shot down, mayday, mayday, crash landing i guess somewhere (no one told me that all those virginia city meteor showers would have been waiting for me in the shape of words that make up the letters you always sent). and by the time i got home, its true, all the lower arcana tarot jester lookalike contests long won by better journeymen, but i still had a thing for ripped blue jeans, holes on the knees and material missing in the back so that without those white long john leggings ive been wearing underneath they couldnt be worn for modest men like me.
i dont think im hearing the songs any differently. my intent has mutated. self alabi, the songs are more necessary, confirming everything. and i spend a moment, one out of every other one, wishing i could play them for you instead of just sending lyrics and their muted representation of the movements that i feel comparing my feelings for you to the awe i feel for the purestain of these tunes when theyre crying for me slowly softly in and out of key, under the slim chances in my room. the shadow under my covers. naked in the bleach of the sun that makes it by the window structure. all around. these songs are ours tonight. that i knew youd know. the words galvanize the application of these dedications for you, dancerdear, but its the undescribed salvation of chords that prove whats real again and again that i wish you were here to die for. i keep wondering why we didnt play these songs to death when you were wrapped around me and we had the option. if you were here tonight, if you were next to me and this stereo autumn, then id let the songs succeed at their manslaughter and kill me over as well. then we would be eco system deserts for some other vultures that im ignoring until theyre invited by what neardeathalterlife experience it could be, is yours and mine to have someday, sometime.
in the timebeing . . . i put on mixed tapes while i write this down to you. skip trace the hypnosis, the suggestive subtext influences that stitch the method of my typewritten results here on paper.
you have to hear this one requiem. parallel funeral part and parcel, a piece in backward contempt. giving birth to more of my romantic and desperate, paid respects, in full, to (for) you. so long.
90 hour lip synch songs. leonard cohen christmas carols in your email folder, about cosmic rationale. 'da shhtuff dwreams rr meed uhv' . . . is that it? more clues about youandme from ragtime artists and old timer metronome experts and one hit wonders and darkstars with their superstardom and their pop songs. our sounds. our choruses.
all together now.
trip on the crush i got for you in the back of my mind. no one saw, i caught myself in time. no big spills. im getting good at saving myself while youre away, keeping myself away from accidents on the stairwells and the fire escape smoke breaks.
misunderstood. dig a grave for all those doubts. protests for the pests i cant see. the insect infest that sometimes gets to me, lazily wondering if we will ever really get to be.
together. yeah, its creepy. the bugs always mix it all up and they come in through the woodwork when its cold like it is outside. winter misery. cramped in here with all those laugh track violin sympathy case doubts i dont like to admit i have. its like im just figuring out how to worry and am practicing all the time. makes perfect. sense at all what were doing. dragging our ruby slippers behind our heels and forgetting that waiting is what were stuck doing until cash comes in, intercepting the guillotine reasons why my homesickness for you is accurately justified.
the fog drowns the sky tonight even despite the futility of its opaque net catching the light that it usually hides from me during the day. the moon is a buttercup, barely resolute. i was walking back from the swallowed town that barely makes the attempt at pretending to really exist. people go through here. they dont treat anything as if it were significant enough to merit even the slightest of treatments, they dont have here the time to indulge eye contact. ive been up for days now and i think it shows up on my crackerjack face like it does over and over again. dusky trumpet lonely bugle jazz couplets play in my mind at night like this. i hum lyrics to accompany the swamp of my moody retreat into the structure where i keep my things, out here on 15th avenue. i was hoping to avoid steven or jason or anybody else so i could sneak in here and get this written and get it sent and then im planning on deadening my senses with something, at the fourth day of insomnialiving food usually taxes my system enough to do the trick. i get too tired trying to digest and i slip off the seizure on being awake that ive been clinging to. am i alive?
datalust in my dreams. maybe, you think? lots of numbers and abacus approaches to long equations that machines usually crunch and chew on like candy bars. blew my peace of mind, elizabeth. slippery fish, you seem so far away suddenly. the light is dimming. but the screen is smiling like lampglow in pitch black rural madness at midnight losses when your too far from a place where you feel safe enough to keep panic off your brainwave radar.
cello songs, like scarecrow scenes on horror film farms. serial killers in my hallucinations. i always think i see the bogeyman coming round the corners of my doors when im this tired and bent over, out of shape, play for keeps, and then i realize that im still wishful thinking, imagining you walking in the door, keeping me from crying any more.
TONIGHTS SONG LIST
so long, marianne |
thats no way to say goodbye |
nights in white satin |
bird of passage | ahead by a century |
under the milky way |
streets of philadelphia