Before this begins to sound like the world’s saddest violin
melody poured over an overly sentimental idea
just begging for ridicule or oversight or some other dark
thing that lives under our collective beds at night,
just know that I don’t blame you.  

This is how things go.  The sun rises.  The sun falls.
The song starts.  The song ends.  We turn things on
and eventually we turn off – the music, the exit ramp,
the person we built up in our minds to deafening volumes
of greatness, our savior, our destination, our relief
from the madness of the world.  This is how things go.  

There’s a time for everything and once upon a time,
there were guitars as tall as heartaches and chords
and cryptic little half notes hatching like new chicks
and whole ones sustained for infinite measures before
sweet forever was interrupted like sweet forever  

is always interrupted.  I don’t blame you.  No.  The songs,
they leave me too, first the lyric, stolen jeweled words
from your precious lips, then, the arrangement, key,
and eventually, the entire composition itself, all gone,
goodbye.  It just takes me a little longer to forget.

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