The Story in the Soil

You turn on a spindle
You’re 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 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”

Here’s a scale, weigh it out and you’ll find, easily
More than sufficient doubt that these colors you see were picked in advance
By some careful hand with an absolute concept of beauty
They are smeared and these blurs come in random order
And they color the eyes of your former lovers
Hers were green like July, except when she cried they were red
Now, I know a disease that these doctors can’t treat
You contract on the day you accept all you see
Is a mirror, and a mirror is all it can be-
A reflection of something we’re missing
And language just happened, it was never planned
And it’s inadequate to describe where I am
In the room of my house where the light’s never been
Waiting for this day to end
And these clocks keep unwinding and completely ignore
Everything that we hate or adore
Once the page of a calendar is turned it’s no more
So tell me then, what was it for?
Oh tell me, what was it for?

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?
Oh, 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’s a thousand more
You won’t ever see, but must hold inside yourself eternally
Well, 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
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine’
And 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
And 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 skies are gray
You make me happy when skies are gray, and gray, and gray’
Well the clock’s heart, it hangs inside its open chest
With hands stretched towards the calendar hanging itself
But I will not weep for those dying days
For all the ones who’ve left there’s a few that’ve stayed
And they found me here and pulled me from the grass where I was laid

Now and again it seems worse than it is
But mostly the view is accurate
You see your breath in the air as you climb up the stairs
To that coffin you call your apartment
And you sink in the chair, brush the snow from your hair
And drink the cold away
And you’re not really sure what you’re doing this for
But you need something to fill up the days
A few more hours
There’s a dream in my brain that just won’t go away
It’s 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 their starving 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’s more like a ghost
That’s been following us both
Something vague that we’re not seeing
Something more like a feeling

You follow the footsteps, echoes leading down a hall
To a room, there’s music playing, tiny bells with moving parts
Here the shadows make things ugly, an effect quite undesirable
And the gold and yellow daylight grows like ivy across the wall
And it bounces off of the painted porcelain, a tiny dancing doll
Her body spins, as she pirouettes again, the world suddenly seems small
On an off-white, subtle morning
You stretch your legs in the front seat
And the road has made a vacuum where our voices used to be
And you lay your head onto my shoulder, pour like water over me
So if I just exist for the next ten minutes of this drive that would be fine
And all these trees that line this curb would be rejoicing and alive
Soon all the joy that pours from everything makes fountains of your eyes
Because you finally understand the movement of a hand
Waving good-bye

The fragile keep secrets, gathered in pockets
And they’ll sell them for nothing, a cheap watch or locket
That kind of gold washes off
And the sad act like lepers, they stick to the shadows
They long to ring bells of warning to tell of their coming
So that the pure can shut their doors
And 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
Oh, the corn has grown stalks that form a wall too high
But 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
Yeah
The wicked are vultures, and they bake in the canyons
They circle in sunlight and wait for their victims
To collapse and call to them
And the desperate are water, they’ll run down forever
As they soak into silence and end up together
In a dark and distant, 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 sunlight turns to gray
Oh, stay with me, Arienette, until the wolves are away

Tomorrow when I wake up I’m finding my brother
And I’m making him take me back down to the water
That lake where we sailed and we laughed with our father
I will not desert him, I will not desert him
No matter how I may wish for a coffin so clean
Or these trees to undress all their leaves onto me
I’ll put my face in the dirt and then finally I’ll see
The sky that has been avoiding me
Well, I started this letter, I’m gonna send it to Ruba
It will be blessed by her eyes on the gulf coast of Florida
With her feet in the sand and one hand on her swimsuit
She’ll recite the prayer of my pen
Saying, time take us forward
Relief from this longing
They can land that plane on my heart, I don’t care
Just give me November, the warmth of a whisper
In the freezing darkness of my room
But no matter what I would do in attempt to replace
All these pills that I take trying to balance my brain
I see the curious girl with that look on her face
So surprised, she stares out from her display case

The phone slips from a loose grip
Words were missed like some apology
I didn’t want to tell you this
No, it’s just some guy she’s been hanging out with
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 to your overcoat
But laughter pours from under doors
In this house, I don’t understand that sound no more
It seems artificial, like a T.V. set
Well, haligh, haligh, haligh, haligh
This weight it must be satisfied
You offer only one reply
You know not what you do
As you tear and tear your hair from roots
From that same head you have twice removed now
A lock of hair you said would prove our love would never die
Well ha ha ha
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 would always make you feel better
But 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
You said you hate my suffering and you understood and you’d take care of me
You’d always be there, well where are you now?
Haligh, haligh, haligh, haligh
The plans were never finalized
But left to hang like yarn and twine dangling before my eyes
As you tear and tear your hair from roots
From that same head you have twice removed now
A lock of hair you said would prove our love would never die
And I sing and sing unlawful things, the pleasure that my sadness brings
As my fingers press onto the strings yet another clumsy chord
Haligh, haligh, an awful lie
This weight would now be satisfied
I’m gonna 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, 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 you must live them
Or just not live, but do you want that?