Do You Understand (What Has Happened To You)

Do you?

Today, I remembered all the things that I'd forgotten

Black mold on the bath rim

Haggard bike frames leaned against everything

Annie's anarchist brochures on the sill

Beaded cotton creeping across the blankets

And I saw you in the dead yard

Spray-painting haiku on a trashed mattress

Flapping your lashes at street cats

When every other second, we were fumbling through the interview

But every other second, I was kissing you

Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba

Do you understand what has happened to you?

Ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba

Please write down what you know to be true

Or write down your name

Or your favorite band

If you start feeling funny

Don't look at your hands

Today, I remembered all the things that I'd forgotten

How guests arrived at random intervals

(Pitiful) A little sick of their own squats

Looking to drink beer in front of some different pictures on the wall for a change

Now, Annie'd ended up downstairs with the Tyler dropouts

Philosophizing negative space and the inherent value of medical waste

But I'm pretty sure most of those kids work on the docks these days

Inevitably, Ava would appear (Ava)

Both arms binding some weird, bulging bag of freezer pizzas and romaine

And everyone was always owing Ava something (Ava) like eight dollars in change

Depending on how many were present

Ba, ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba

Do you understand what has happened to you?

Ba, ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba

Please write down what you know to be true

Or write down your name

Or your favorite band

If you start feeling funny

Don't look at your hands

Today, I remembered all of the things that I'd forgotten

That somewhere along the way, we maxed our novelty allotment

That blowflies started buzzing

And we moved out of the basement apartment

We crammed the secondhand furniture into her car

Cracked paint flaked off in fat chips on the back seat

With swollen trash bags of T-shirts, swimsuits, old shoes

A violin bow sticking out the window

Annie gathered and bagged the unread mail

As I milled about, memorizing light switches, water stains

Dropped the key in the letterbox and drove off