1. |
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When the third shift workers start dragging their feet,
I’m sitting in the kitchen by the window.
I can hear them on the sidewalk below
and their footsteps will echo until morning.
They ought to tell me to rest, send me to bed,
but sleep will not come for me.
The calendar’s pages have all torn away
with more whiskey replacing my blood cells.
There’s piles of papers around the apartment,
they’re blank like the stare I’ve perfected,
and all of my books are just half-finished now;
it’s likely that I never started
because the page’s old comfort has been wanting lately
and that can all fall by the wayside
so long as I am able to say to myself
that the weather is the worst of my troubles.
The temperature’s dropping and the heat is still off--
I’ll find cheaper ways to keep warm at night.
With bottles or bodies lying next to me,
I will burn all my brain cells and bridges.
But that all depends on how lonesome I get,
the feet that come stumbling along with mine.
The memories get tangled, but I shake them off:
it’s best to forget after sunset.
I watched a girl as she uncurled across my unmade bed,
having some trouble trying to peel herself out of her jeans.
She said, “It’s like in a book: my bending legs and your breaking heart.”
And she offered her secrets, like I’d keep them safe and sound,
but all that I wanted were the words
to write in a poem.
If I wake up just one more time on that couch
in Bushwick when I can’t remember why,
then I swear, instead of riding that train home,
I’ll throw this weak body below it!
But my friend, she’s more understanding than I:
she puts on a fresh pot of coffee.
The taste may be burnt as we drink it all down,
but at least I can smile at the offer.
She keeps forgiving all my drunken pleas
for comfort I can’t recall sending,
the desperate desire for some kind of relief
when satellites make the words linger.
She’s ready to listen, but I say nothing now;
the wave is past, and the worst is over.
She smiles at me across our coffee cups,
some honesty I can’t retreat from.
She says, “You used to be such an eloquent boy.
You used to be such an honest young man.
The person I knew: what happened to him?
And I’m glad you got away to the city, my old friend,
but whatever happened to you?”
If I only knew.
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2. |
Mutual Appreciation
03:57
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Who do you want me to be?
Drinking well whiskey neat,
I’m a man after your own heart.
We’ve know each other for years,
but it all becomes clear
as the outlines are starting to blur.
So the neon can blind us
as the alcohol hides us;
let’s be secrets we keep from ourselves.
Let’s be secrets we keep from ourselves.
Kick the shoes from your feet
and lay your legs across my knees
in a booth out of sight of the bar.
I guess it’s funny to you
how I never could make a move;
you just knew I was hoping you would.
Slur your words in my neck
before our friends get back,
because you don’t want to tell them just yet.
No, you don’t want to tell them just yet!
But they all said this would happen eventually.
I guess our numbers have come up finally.
Did you feel it those night I crashed on your couch,
Waiting up for your shadow in the doorway,
beckoning? “Come here.”
But in a day we’ll part ways.
You’ll call me up just to say,
“It was fun babe, but that’s all it was.
It was fun, boy, but that’s all it was.
It was fun, friend, but that’s all it was.
You’re in love, kid, but I can’t be the one.”
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Scrivener Boston, Massachusetts
Scrivener is the songwriting project of Bart Comegys, hailing originally from the woods in upstate New York.
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