Entry tags:
you can't go home, but you can shop there
What I know, what I'll never know - turn away from the light of this day
Where I've been, where I'll never go - turn around, take me back again again again
Tonight I followed my tracks from eight, nine years ago. Passed the new structures built over places I used to haunt, got lost, got confused. Told stories as I went because when bricks and the concrete are gone the stories are all I'm left with. I didn't take nearly enough pictures back then, goddamnit, and although I still have the watercolor paintings I made sitting on the side of a fountain, dipping my brushes into the algae-green water, the fountain is lost under a shopping center and everything around it is gone too like it never existed and somehow I've lost a part of myself in the process. Those paintings really sucked, anyway. Never been a painter.
What I've seen, what I'll never see again - are these eyes burning
What I need, what I'll never need - see that face with a smile at me
So we walk, and I spin my tales, and I think one place was one thing, and I think another was something else, and I know what that one was - or maybe the thing next to it - and yeah this was much cooler when it was overgrown and abandoned - and the more stories I tell it's active and it doesn't hurt, because it always does -- when you first allow something to change you, and then it goes away, it always hurts somewhere. Down that corner, yeah, one-two-three, that's where Raven was, and that reminded me of the story I didn't tell you, about the tweaked-out guy who played the Sex Pistols for me. He had an acoustic guitar, couldn't have been more than twenty, couldn't have eaten in days, and he stopped me on the street because he liked the color of my eyes and wanted to sing a song for me.
Will you learn, will you ever learn - how to live with this life
Will you need, will you never need - to be alone again
Found the one place that was more my own than all the rest of it, and I took the winding way there because I wasn't sure I wanted to see what it had become. The bricks were different and I stopped in the middle of the street. Walked up to a door I had to fight with to close. Realized the locks had changed but the handle was the same: a round handle with a battered brass tongue you pressed to open the door. The day the drought broke - it hadn't rained in months - I shucked off my shoes and stood in that doorway, lifting my arms out to feel the rain. It trapped the dust on the ground and for about half an hour until the sun dried it up everything was clean.
And maybe I'll never know, I never knew how to leave this heart behind
And what I need, what I'll never need -- see that face with a smile at me?
Remembered something else and slid my hands along the wooden frame - up, up, up, there. Deep under layers of paint I could feel them, just barely: two screw-holes in the wood, at an angle, top right and bottom left, where the mezuzah had been bolted to the door frame. It's not all gone, then, not if you know where to look, just hidden because nobody else knows or cares anymore.
If I ever get that far, won't need you anymore...
Never did go see the Pagan Saints. Think they broke up a couple of years ago.
Where I've been, where I'll never go - turn around, take me back again again again
Tonight I followed my tracks from eight, nine years ago. Passed the new structures built over places I used to haunt, got lost, got confused. Told stories as I went because when bricks and the concrete are gone the stories are all I'm left with. I didn't take nearly enough pictures back then, goddamnit, and although I still have the watercolor paintings I made sitting on the side of a fountain, dipping my brushes into the algae-green water, the fountain is lost under a shopping center and everything around it is gone too like it never existed and somehow I've lost a part of myself in the process. Those paintings really sucked, anyway. Never been a painter.
What I've seen, what I'll never see again - are these eyes burning
What I need, what I'll never need - see that face with a smile at me
So we walk, and I spin my tales, and I think one place was one thing, and I think another was something else, and I know what that one was - or maybe the thing next to it - and yeah this was much cooler when it was overgrown and abandoned - and the more stories I tell it's active and it doesn't hurt, because it always does -- when you first allow something to change you, and then it goes away, it always hurts somewhere. Down that corner, yeah, one-two-three, that's where Raven was, and that reminded me of the story I didn't tell you, about the tweaked-out guy who played the Sex Pistols for me. He had an acoustic guitar, couldn't have been more than twenty, couldn't have eaten in days, and he stopped me on the street because he liked the color of my eyes and wanted to sing a song for me.
Will you learn, will you ever learn - how to live with this life
Will you need, will you never need - to be alone again
Found the one place that was more my own than all the rest of it, and I took the winding way there because I wasn't sure I wanted to see what it had become. The bricks were different and I stopped in the middle of the street. Walked up to a door I had to fight with to close. Realized the locks had changed but the handle was the same: a round handle with a battered brass tongue you pressed to open the door. The day the drought broke - it hadn't rained in months - I shucked off my shoes and stood in that doorway, lifting my arms out to feel the rain. It trapped the dust on the ground and for about half an hour until the sun dried it up everything was clean.
And maybe I'll never know, I never knew how to leave this heart behind
And what I need, what I'll never need -- see that face with a smile at me?
Remembered something else and slid my hands along the wooden frame - up, up, up, there. Deep under layers of paint I could feel them, just barely: two screw-holes in the wood, at an angle, top right and bottom left, where the mezuzah had been bolted to the door frame. It's not all gone, then, not if you know where to look, just hidden because nobody else knows or cares anymore.
If I ever get that far, won't need you anymore...
Never did go see the Pagan Saints. Think they broke up a couple of years ago.