All good Naysayers speak up! Or Hold your Peace!
For your father is a mailman involved in the smuggling of forbidden goods.
And your mother lives in Illinoise making apple jam and playing brand new violins!
You have worked so hard in your useless proffesion,
Smoking cigarettes in the bathtub at night
Covering the scent with vanilla and air
Only to get up in the morning and pour down the leftover pills that were never prescribed
And you check the telephone for any leftover fingerprints on its handle
and carefully dial the numbers, picking who to call
7. 7. 7. 7. 7. 7-
Because you cant seem to remember the rest of the numbers
your thumb heavily pushes on the sevens, nervously wondering how far your memory goes
'Oh, how come its come down to this?'
says your mouth into the phone your fingers grip tightly
"Ill tell you what, ill tell you what, i'll tell you what, you concerned citizen"
Says the lady on the other end
"W-well quickley now, i have to fall asleep again, so be fast now"
So she tells you to go buy some new curtains and fall in love again
because the guests from the neighborhood are coming
Just so you can invite them in and serve them classy rich lemonade
And stand on your cushioned chair banging the spoons to the steal
yelling about how the absolute best thing in life was being alive long enough to buy more than 30 cds.
When your head seems to keep looking behind your back
making sure the people arn't stumbling behind you at night.
"Im going to Holland! Dont follow me now people, dont follow me"
But we all knew that you wanted them to safely follow your trail
long enough to know enough about your illnesses and anxieties
15 minutes of freedom from the goals set by your faux maturity
15 seconds of comfort from whispering your secrets to the stumbling people
2 minutes under the nonexistant umbrella you hold so carefully
with photographs of made up childhood memories stored away in your pocket
neatly placed into the envelope you once wrote letters to people on
about employment and shame.
Do they walk around around your thoughts all over those words you planned to
speak someday in a speech to people in Chicago
Hoping that their the ones worrying about you. That their the ones with sheets
and sheets of available cures.
And you walked for a while measuring your sanity in cups and cups of coffee and wine
Measuring your vanity by the amounts of time you stop to see your reflection in the mirror
Your sister reminded you of all those ashes you wasted in the parks
around the house you once lived in.
And we finally decided that the clocks are all accusing you of waking up at the wrong time.
Snce the sunlight didnt even pour through the cracks in your window sill
on that morning in April. That day you balled up the leftover of whatever was still there.
We left and said "goodbye goodbye goodbye city, tonight i am unconcerned and not the worried one" |