Two Poems (That Sort of Rhyme)

"We've Still Got the Rain (Our Song Without Music)"

You said you would teach me
About the fish in the sea
All darting movement
And liquid bodies
But we don't talk that much anymore
No, it's no one's fault
We just don't go there anymore
Those late-night walks to the liquor store

Now you said it was okay
I'd be better off without you
All those different people
With faces that remind me of you
Hanging
Around
Don't know them
As well
As I know you

But the winter's cold
With the icy snows
And the summer's
Hot and dry

I only go
To New Mexico
When it feels
Like I could die

And you would sing
About the fallen leaves
As those autumn days
Passed us by

So...

Come on, Come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
And it's falling slow

Now these days after you disappeared
I still stay her
And wait for you to pick up the phone
Yeah, sometimes we talk
But it's about nothing at all
Just hi, hey, how's the weather?

I'd invite you over, but I know you've got plans
And someone else you would like to meet
You could stay the night
I think that'd be alright
It's not like it's hurting anything
But in the morning
You'll open you eyes
And slip from the door
Out to the street

So I'll watch and wait
As you hesitate
Before crossing
To the other side

You and him will meet
On a taxi seat
And tell what only strangers
Could confide

And you'll drive
To someplace safe
Where you'll
Forget about last night

But...

Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
Come on, come on
We've got the rain
And it's falling slow

Against the glass
On the pane
Of my window
Carrying thoughts
Like drugs
Like ecstasy
Washing it back
Washing it away
Until it's gone
Just lying here
In my bed
Staring there
Can't think of
Something not said
Getting cold
Getting hot
Getting a headache
Thinking I should leave
Thinking I should stay
Thick of bodies
My own
Someone else's
Might be yours
Not thinking
Yeah
And
But
No
Yet
Coming to the conclusion
So
Nor
We
Or
You
Finally empty of everything

Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
Come on, come on
We've still got the rain
And it's falling slow



"All My Plans Fell Through"

Silence sounds shrilling
In the quiet spaces
Filled only with the passing of time
Through a doorway
I saw it as an infant
Wailing out a chorus line
As my thoughts bubble
To the surface
And conspire to leave me confused
The path of this story
Is endless
I only follow it long enough to keep me amused

Bitter sounds
Crashing like waves
On the shores
My consciousness made

Stuck somewhere past the beginning
Not quite further enough yet
Somewhere echoes a wailing
That shares its tone with my own regret
Somehow I handed over the number
My brain kept it memorized
Still don't know how this happened
Away in the land of
Nothing buried
Empires ending
The suns setting in the skies

"The Sky Just Cracked Open and the World Turned a Final Time, Or, This Feels Too Good"

The sun just exploded
But we'll keep dancing anyway
'Cause this feeling's too good to waste.
Heaven is calling for us,
All the angels with their scrubbed wings,
But I'll just grin and bear it
And you'll just grin and bear it.
And we'll go down into the valley
Walking barefoot on the hot sands
And laugh at the scorpions
Who try to sting
And the snakes
Who try to bite
But are too afraid now
To do anything.
You and me and no one else
Will step lightly across a lake bottom
Gone dry in the middle of August,
With the fish suspended in the air
Like flapping stars
As the planet hurtles downward
Into some unknowable abyss.
And the final souls
Are reaching for salvation
But we'll still be holding hands
And taking refuge in a cave
That sends our voices back at us
Colored with the spectrum of human emotion,
Because the two of us have to encompass it all now.
And we'll feel and find and dig our way
To the middle of the earth
And find it's a hollowed out husk
That we'll make our home
As millions of years of history
Crumble around us
And stars wink out
And the universe twists in the middle
With everything collapsing to nothing.
And we'll dance when we're just molecules,
Reduced to atoms,
Crushed into a shiny orb
That holds everything that was, is, and will ever be.
And from us
Existence will be made anew.