finals, part three.
after proving the existence of my own willpower in a two decade long tryst, i wandered back by your little corner of the world and found words stolen from my songs. i wandered your plazas and alleyways and found angry gouges carved into marble statues of lovers. i paused on the bridge to your house to hear your far off shouts of ridicule and cold, selfish entitlement mix unintelligibly with your lonely cries for understanding. there, in the sick southern humidity you love, i realized; your voice that haunts the hallway between dreams and morning, the music you composed -- i'd rather be deaf than ever hear it again.
if i had my way, the world you created would be leveled, cauterized and pass out of human history.
sadly though, like the presidents i'd rather forget crying over, like the drunken new year's eve fuckups and walks of shame we're so intimate with, it's become part of me. now every time i remember the half-forgotten nightmare of you, your history and your legacy, i hate myself more for letting you near the part of me that you can never, ever paint over.
it'll peel and crack, and eventually wear down to the bricks and tendons, an ugly splotch in the center of my otherwise decently-kept facade.
you'll always be there. you'll be my ragged, discolored facial scar that people will stare at across rooms.
there'll be times that weeks will pass without me looking in the mirror, or walking by the blister named for a greek goddess. then, i'll be unplugging my amplifier in tampa and see a piece of our history, and the walls will cave in under a tidal wave named for you. i'll be walking the streets in san francisco and someone will stop me to ask how i got these scars. they'll ask about the wreckage in your wake, and i'll invent new stories to explain -- something magic, life affirming, wholly devoid of your arsenic and destructive lust.
and now you send peace offerings to your dead.
the dead, as they say, do not forget how you wiped out their gardens and bedrooms, their families, their sense of security and even their memory of love.
the dead in secret build bombs of sound and spoken word.
they will have their revenge in the next life.
you can keep your white flags.
if i had my way, the world you created would be leveled, cauterized and pass out of human history.
sadly though, like the presidents i'd rather forget crying over, like the drunken new year's eve fuckups and walks of shame we're so intimate with, it's become part of me. now every time i remember the half-forgotten nightmare of you, your history and your legacy, i hate myself more for letting you near the part of me that you can never, ever paint over.
it'll peel and crack, and eventually wear down to the bricks and tendons, an ugly splotch in the center of my otherwise decently-kept facade.
you'll always be there. you'll be my ragged, discolored facial scar that people will stare at across rooms.
there'll be times that weeks will pass without me looking in the mirror, or walking by the blister named for a greek goddess. then, i'll be unplugging my amplifier in tampa and see a piece of our history, and the walls will cave in under a tidal wave named for you. i'll be walking the streets in san francisco and someone will stop me to ask how i got these scars. they'll ask about the wreckage in your wake, and i'll invent new stories to explain -- something magic, life affirming, wholly devoid of your arsenic and destructive lust.
and now you send peace offerings to your dead.
the dead, as they say, do not forget how you wiped out their gardens and bedrooms, their families, their sense of security and even their memory of love.
the dead in secret build bombs of sound and spoken word.
they will have their revenge in the next life.
you can keep your white flags.