Words to the Wise

It was not for his smiling nor for causes unkind,

That he held on to the picture of a girl on the side,

His was always a life in decline,

We stayed up until the dawn all the time,

And he'd ask me to tell him everything that he'd done wrong,

And I knew he'd have a picture of a girl all along,

So I told him there's been nothing which can't be undone,

But my mind was always ahead of my tongue,

And I watched him fold the sheets of a bed that he'd die on,

And I watched as his breath went from little to none,

And I knew he'd be thinking that she was the one,

That she was the one that he thought that he loved.

I was looking around by the end of the week,

I was thinking about drifting away in my sleep,

I'd been sitting for days with my hands underneath,

The weight of my body supported by his seat,

No longer listening to anything that I see,

Like watching a battle from a balcony,

And there was him always shaking over possibility,

Forming and re-forming an advance upon retreat,

And pawing for reflections of a weak identity,

As if there was something that we were supposed to see,

As if there is something that we are supposed to be,

To protect us from all that we surrendered.

So Mr. Modern had a brain freeze in his room,

When what he thought and what he knew for the first time were in tune,

When I showed him that a crescent was just the sun behind the moon,

When I showed him black and white was like behind a bride and groom,

And he asked me to tell him everything that he'd done wrong,

So I showed him a pencil that was worn down to the bone,

He'd been pressing and pressing for what never could be done,

He has pages of equations that all added up to one,

I put zeros on my right and I am growing to the sun,

I put zeros on my left and I am shrinking close to none,

But I like to spread my fingers like there's nothing to be won,

And laugh, let us laugh at what's begun.

But he cried and he cried for all things he'd sent away,

And I knew he only let them go so he could lament their decay,

But I didn't feel like lamenting that day,

Ashes upon ashes were collecting in his tray,

Clashing and clashing as black will do with gray,

And I knew that both of our bodies were made of the same clay,

And I remembered being told about the laws of gravity,

As if masses upon masses were of one consistency,

And I saw that he was talking but I heard him distantly,

I saw feeding heads of deers rise when they heard artillery,

But I didn't want to be a cordinant in that field,

So I left before he finished and said "smile and they will yield".

Next to the sculpture of a young Oedipus,

In all of the exhibit it was only us,

That the critics and the children both couldn't help to touch,

And I thought that it was maybe on account of our looks,

But he said that it was all on account of our guts,

For all four of our eyes would be gone soon enough,

And marble cracks and semen erupts and golden turns into ashen locks,

And though now you are free of pocket watches and clocks,

And though now you are free from remembering your thoughts,

Though now you can be here and know that you're not,

All that you now know you will soon find you forget.