When New Radicals broke onto the scene
with their exuberent one-hit wonder,
as a child I'd wonder if it was called
out of context. But tenacity, taut and ripped,
was the building block from whence I came,
and the words
you get what you giveresounded, in booming bass, a stirring bone song.
Honesty was the cornerstone I wrote for.
Then years yellowed like leaves in autumn,
layers of bright eyes stripped away,
clouded and dim, past skin and flesh
into shakened soul. I grew up, I didn't know.
Armour sprung into self, adamantine.
Sunned-in fields crumpling into
a clearing abandoned and left behind.
The seasons chased each other like heartbeats.
I saved in a tiny pillbox, the last rays of sun.
So I could see better. Love better.
Pull tangles out from the ghosts that roam.
Too late I was caught in all you wished for,
and all you need. What was it that Elliott Smith said?
A happy day, then you pay.So I must fool somebody else,
paint days in the style of grand masters,
be the best imitation of myself.
Some years later Tegan and Sara sang,
in their doowah 'lectro-folk, wondering
if this were the last honest love
to carry me home.
Losing was a problem of speech, the theories of the little play
creeping into the heart's soundstage.
(Braxton was never this potent
when emoting evolved into performance art.)
Life became a matter of combating lethargy
while hanging from a moment --
hardly on an even plain. Teetering on an unveined pole,
arms flailing to command the West and East
in the hallowed halls of lost refrains,
the major falls, then the minor lifts.
The falcon follows another into the dark.
Was this just a dream
from the basement on the hill?
Draw the blinds. Close the window.
Pull your sore ribs in. It's only just
the end of the world, blue on Sunday, wan on Wednesday.
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