Fevers & Mirrors

You turn on a spindle. You are so much looser now but you're not explaining how you gained
such new repose. I touch the clasp of your locket, with its picture held, some secret you wouldn't
tell but let it choke your neck. So we imagine a darkness where all shapes divide, solids
changing into light, with a burst of heat so bright. Well fine, don't you do what I want you to.
Don't degrade yourself the way I do because you don't depend on all the shit that I use to make
my moods improve. Near a sea of pianos, there were waves of chords that crashed against the
shore in one huge and pointless roar. And there were girls bringing water, like a dream they
came to cure the fever of my brain, and soothe my burning throat. And they made me a
necklace, hanging beads of sweat on a string of my regrets, and placed it round my neck and
they were singing, Don't you do what you've wanted to. Yeah, don't destroy yourself like those
cowards do and maybe the sun keeps coming up because it has gotten used to you and your
constant need for proof.

Now and then it seems worse than it is, but mostly the view is accurate. You see your breath in
the air while you climb up the stairs to that coffin you call your apartment. And you sink in your
chair, brush the snow from your hair and drink the cold away. You are not really sure what you
are doing this for but you need something to fill up the days. A few more hours. There is a
dream in my brain that just won't go away. It has been stuck there since it came a few nights
ago I'm standing on a bridge in the town where I lived as a kid with my mom and my brothers.
And then the bridge disappears and I'm standing on air with nothing holding me. And I hang like
a star, fucking glow in the dark, for all those staring eyes to see, like the ones we've wished on.
But now I'm confused. Is this death really you? Do these dreams have any meaning? No. No, I
think it is more like a ghost that has been following us both. Something vague that we are not
seeing, something more like a feeling.

At the center of the world there is a statue of a girl.
She is standing near a well with a bucket bare and dry.
I went and looked her in the eyes and she turned me into sand.
This clumsy form that I despise, it scattered easy in her hand.
And it came to rest upon a beach, with a million others there.
We sat and waited for the sea to stretch out
so that we could disappear into the endlessness of blue,
into the horror of the truth.
We are far less than we knew.
Yes, we are far less than we knew
but we knew what we could taste.
Girls found honey to drench our hands.
Men cut marble to mark our graves.
Saying that we will need something to remind us
of all the sweetness that has passed through us
(fresh sangria and lemon tea).
The priests dressed children for a choir
(white-robed small voices praise Him)
but found no joy in what was sung.
The funeral had begun in the middle of the day
when you drive home to your place from that job that makes you sleep
back to the thoughts that keep you awake long after
night has come to claim any light
that still remains in the corner of the frame that you put around her face.
Two pills just weren't' enough.
The alarm clock is going off but you are not waking up.
This isn't happening, happening, happening. It is.

The fragile keep secrets, gathered in pockets, and they will sell them for nothing a cheap watch
or locket that kind of gold washes off. The sad at like lepers, they stick to the shadows and long
to ring bells of warning to tell of their coming so that the pure can shut their doors. The angry are
animals senseless and savage. They act without order in logical lapses, they stain their mouths
with blood. So take my hand, this barren land is alive tonight. The corn has grown stalks that
form a wall that hides. The wind carries sounds that I can't see from beyond that line. Then the
stalks begin to sway oh stay with me Arienette until the wolves are away. The wicked are
vultures, they bake in the canyons. They circle in sunlight and wait for their victims to collapse
and call to them. The desperate are water. They will run down forever and soak into silence to
just end up together in some dark and distant place. So don't leave me here with only mirrors
watching me. This house it holds nothing but the memories. And the moon it leaves silver but
never sleep. And then the silver turns to gray so stay with me Arienette until the wolves are away.

Does he kiss your eyelids in the morning when you start to raise your head? And does he sing to
you incessantly from the place between your bed and wall? Does he walk around all day at
school with his feet inside your shoes? Looking down every few steps to pretend he walks with
you. Does he know that place below your neck that is your favorite to be touched and does he cry
through broken sentences like I love you far too much? Does he lay awake listening to your
breath? Worried that you smoke too many cigarettes. Is he coughing now on a bathroom floor?
For every speck of tile there are a thousand more that you won't ever see but most hold inside
yourself eternally. I drug your ghost across the country and we plotted out my death. In every
city, memories would whisper, Here is where you rest. I was determined in Chicago but I dug
my teeth into my knees and I settled for a telephone and sang into your machine. You are my
sunshine, my only sunshine I kissed a girl with a broken jaw that her father gave to her. She
had eyes bright enough to burn me. They reminded me of yours. In a story told she was a little
girl in a red-rouge, sun-bruised field and there were rows of ripe tomatoes where a secret was
concealed. And it rose like thunder, clapped under our hands. And it stretched for centuries to a
diary entry's end where I wrote, You make me happy when the skies are gray You make me
happy the skies are gray and gray and gray. Well the clock's heart it hangs inside its open
chest with its hands stretched towards the calendar hanging itself but I will not weep for those
dying days. For all the ones who have left there are a few that stayed. And they found me here
and pulled me from the grass where I was laid.

The phone slips from a loose grip. Words were missed then some apology like I didn't want to
tell you this it's just some guys she has been hanging out with oh I don't know the past couple
of weeks I guess. Thank you and hang up the phone. Let the funeral start. Hear the casket
close. Let's pin split-black ribbon onto your overcoat. Still laughter pours from under doors in this
house. I don't understand that sound no more. It seems artificial like a T.V. set. Haligh, Haligh,
Haligh, Haligh this weight it must be satisfied. You offer only one reply. You know not what you
do. But you tear and tear your hair from roots. From that same head you have twice removed a
lock of hair you said would prove our love would never die. Well ha ha ha. But I remember
everything the words we spoke on freezing South street. And all those morning watching you
get ready for school. You combed your hair inside that mirror. The one you painted blue and
glued with jewelry tears. Something about those bright colors always made you feel better. So
now we speak with ruined tongues and the words we say aren't' meant for anyone. It's just a
mumbled sentence to a passing acquaintance, but there was once you said you hated my
suffering and you understood and you'd take care of me. You would always be there, well where
are you now? Haligh, Haligh, Haligh, Haligh, the plans were never finalized but left to hang like
yarn and twice dangling before my eyes. As you tear and tear your hair from roots, from that
same head that you have twice removed a lock of hair you said would prove that our love would
never die. As I sing and sing of awful things, the pleasure that my sadness brings as my fingers
press onto the strings you get another clumsy chord. Haligh, Haligh, an awful lie. This weight will
now be satisfied. I will give you only one reply, I know not who I am but I talk in the mirror to the
stranger that appears. Our conversations are circles and always one sided, nothing is clear.
Except we keep coming back to this meaning that I lack. He says the choices were given and
now I must live them or just not live, but do you want that?