Voice Betrayed

Itching to etch for days:
the fog, the rain, the haze
and inspired fortunes phase
you in and out of stirring craze.
Words turn meanings - switch in phrase -
and syntax taxing tampered praise
create a patchwork puzzle of blacks and greys
and meaning is lost: alphabet decays.
Language thrown into the blaze
of reds and yellows; your ending frays
and falls apart in neat cliches,
but it's only your voice you did betray.
Your feather or pen, your ink well lays
as welted proof of no todays
as past swallows you whole and weighs
upon your shoulders: kicks and plays.
Wake up: it's just a phase
'cause you're not done with all the ways
you write and wait through his delays;
I wonder if this one stays.

*******************************************

Title comes from an earlier draft.

Listening to a lot of Elliott Smith, though I'm not sure that explains anything. Upon first reading, this won't make any sense, but it is really quite literal: sort of about writing out your life and then revising when someone tells you it's wrong until it makes no sense and then you quit complaining about what has already happened to start focusing on what is happening or could potentially happen next...though that may not be any better. Something like that.





"So, wake up 'cause you're not done. You could pick yourself up, kid, and you could learn how to love..." Kevin Devine Ballgame [Live]

Advance

Putting broken words together:
you are form, formal, formidable.
Our split speech spits
and spews in sync
with lavish decor
around the door
way to a place where
language is love.
Your eyes and mouth
defy the possible
and your sentences
lack sense;
they conflict
and contradict
with action,
with what I know.
But I feel your glance
on the back of my neck
and I see the tips of your lips
advance.
Adverse am I
to my own defeat,
to an end unknown,
and a truth never shown.

***************************************


Among other things, I adore your words.




"I'm falling back in love with the letter you wrote." Kevin Devine The Longer That I'm Out Here

The Riders Ride

I watched the Sunrise shake
and sip down lemonade
in springtime's blowing breath;
he wrapped himself in flames.
The devil's humid heat
sticks to your melting flesh
and as the Riders ride,
their gallops' genocide,
the Almighty hides his head
and weeps into his palms.
Too sunk to swallow up
redemption, pride, or love,
you choke down molten rock
and drown within hell's wicked walls.
It's fate and it's yours to own,
no pearly gates to welcome you.
It's not your fault; it wasn't you:
just your nation, your leader, your vote.
His Grace disgraced in gunfire and guts,
and with no mercy left Him to offer,
your wrinkled words of worship
can’t do a thing to save us now.


*************************************************

^ Mostly written during Later Romantic Lit.


It's spring and beautiful out and all I can think about is the Apocalypse. Does that make me weird?




"I prayed for providence. God said, 'Don't pray no more.'" - Kevin Devine All Of Everything, Erased

Story

It's that song you fell asleep to
that now keeps you awake
and it stares into your soul
through eyelids never closed.
And that nightmare left you drenched
in someone else's sweat
with the smell on salt and sand
saturating through your sheet.
You want the language all to stop:
those words you can't hear
whose demands you already know
and they bite and tease and tear.
Away. What kept you sane
you ask in anguish in volumes
of abridged anthologies: fragment
sentences and incomplete thoughts
and love letters never sent and
air you merely pretended to breathe
that's locked in the binding
and lost is the smudges.
The past turns with each page,
torn and twisted,
tinged from timidity
and everything you didn't say.
Somewhere in between each line
you taint with clever vocabulary,
there's a man with a look
about him you don't understand.
He's holding a book
and it's bigger than yours
and it tells every story,
every myth ever written or told.
You already told him you love him
and he already knows how to wreck you.
And all that remains is
that you write your story now.


************************************************

^ I haven't been sleeping well. ^

All the words in my head are really cheap knock offs of muffled KD demos and Shakespearean imagery. And there's more.



"This kind of wordplay gets you ostracized, but if you operate inside these perfect lines you'll be fine." Kevin Devine Write Your Story Now

Inside To Out To In

You take a deep breath
and a big step back
and you keep your eyes closed.
You think you can find clarity
in eye lids' locked darkness;
in your armored cocoon.
Only life breaks through;
it's edge rough and rusted
and rogue hate bleeds in.
Thick skin forms where your
ignorance couldn't protect you,
where what you know spits you open.
Desensitized and vulnerable,
careless and stubborn,
you put yourself out.
Like Coriolanus and his 27
marks of honor and valiance,
painted like medals on flesh
and you cover and hide
what you lived through, but not over
and it rots you from inside to out to in.
And then you can't live
in a world where others breathe
and you despise every smile,
each one a reminder of your failure
and by your own design;
it's such a drag.


******************************************


I stole this entire poem.


Sources:


MENENIUS: True! I'll be sworn they are true.
Where is he wounded?

[To the Tribunes]

God save your good worships! Marcius is coming
home: he has more cause to be proud. Where is he wounded?

VOLUMNIA: I' the shoulder and i' the left arm there will be
large cicatrices to show the people, when he shall
stand for his place. He received in the repulse of
Tarquin seven hurts i' the body.

MENENIUS: One i' the neck, and two i' the thigh,--there's
nine that I know.

VOLUMNIA: He had, before this last expedition, twenty-five
wounds upon him.

MENENIUS: Now it's twenty-seven: every gash was an enemy's grave.

[A shout and flourish]

Hark! the trumpets.

VOLUMNIA: These are the ushers of Marcius: before him he
carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears:
Death, that dark spirit, in 's nervy arm doth lie;
Which, being advanced, declines, and then men die.

[A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS the general, and TITUS LARTIUS; between them, CORIOLANUS, crowned with an oaken garland; with Captains and Soldiers, and a Herald]

HERALD: Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight
Within Corioli gates: where he hath won,
With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these
In honour follows Coriolanus.
Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

[Flourish]

ALL: Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus!

CORIOLANUS: No more of this; it does offend my heart:
Pray now, no more.


"Coriolanus" by William Shakespeare.


-- AND --


"Time heals all wounds they say, but the self inflicted won't just fade away and in these shifting tides of blame why are you suprised to see your name? It's such a drag. Time got the best of you. Things you gave you say were taken, explaination piled over excuse. And so the story goes, but by your own design and if you look to me to find you then my eyes will pass right though..."


"By Design" by Rites Of Spring