Oh my dear, my darling.
She was some sort of sweet vibration
tumbling over golden strings,

tripping over stolen words.
She lives to ruin the moment.
Like, when I said, “I love you,”

or did something more subtle
Something driven more by actions than by words.
I wait for her all through light and dark and wet and dry and cold and hot,

I quote the lyrics from old love songs;
half forgotten lines
of memories, of my childhood, that I feel we can relate to.

And I do not even matter.
At night the wind pushes me in the other direction.
This gentle, guiding hand that gets

stronger the more I ignore it.
It sings, or cries, or howls, or wails;
Sometimes it whistles softly in my ears.

It plays a tender, wistful tune.
Be Important To Someone That Will Care.
It carries me over buildings,

over city streets,
to the other side of a river.
But I always find my way back.

Back to warm, forgetful arms,
to words that go on forever,
to a silent disappointment; nothing is ever quite right.

It’s the sourness in the milk.
The half hearted smiles,
and always, always not knowing.

I ignore the sound of an old blind man’s guitar on the subway,
With his leather-skin hands and
his smoke and gravel voice, warning of heartache and broken promises and begging for a dollar.

I am above it,
seeking out some softer,
more familiar tune. More heartbreaking, in a way.

Now, pandering, now pleading,
now popping some sweet pill between her lips,
hoping that the torture will feed my art somehow

in the long run.
There needs to be some sort of justification for a thing like this.
Some sort of reason to make it all more worthwhile.

“This next one is ‘A Lament For Pretty Baby,’
who never loved me as well as she should.
Who probably didn’t even try.”