SPILT NEEDLES

I’m the one for you, ‘cause I know all the dirty things you like to do.
I’m the fear in your eyes, I’m the fire in your thighs.
I’m the sound that’s buzzing around your head.

She is dancing away from you now.
She was just a wish.
And her memory is all that is left for you now.
You see, you’re a gypsy.

My city’s still breathing (but barely it’s true)
Through buildings gone missing like teeth
The sidewalks are watching me think about you
Sparkled with broken glass
I’m back with scars to show
Back with the streets I know
Will never take me anywhere but here
The stain in the carpet, this drink in my hand
The strangers whose faces I know
We meet here for our dress-rehearsal
To say, “I wanted it this way”
Wait for the year to drown
Spring forward, fall back down
I’m trying not to wonder where you are
All this time lingers, undefined
Someone choose who’s left and who’s leaving
Memory will rust and erode into lists
Of all that you gave me:
A blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest
The best parts of lonely, duct-tape, and soldered wires
New words for old desires
And every birthday card I threw away
I wait in 4/4 time
Count yellow highway lines that you’re relying on
To lead you home.

The snow arrived on time;
the circus train was running late.
Ripped spots pass, and all the knuckles worn,
fire bombs bursting to the running boards!
A pounding in his chest crushing like a cider press,
the hogger rode the throttle ‘round the bender like a flank-strapped horse.
As Elephant addressed the frightened animal car,
“We’ll return now to the dust, for the dust we are!
Tonight, our bridal fate - the hour’s come to consummate!”
And drove her massive body on the truck into the iron bars.

I dreamt on the rocks at the asbury dune that you jumped from the top of the log flume.
And they gather like wolves on the boardwalk below, they’re howling for answers.
No wolf can know I charged at the waves with a glass in my hand.
I was tossed like a ball at the bottle stand.
And I landed besides your remains on the stones, where your cold finger wrapped round my ankle bone.
Maybe 10 feet away was a star, thousands of times the size our sun exploding like tiny balloons you throw darts at.

There were phrases of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony that still made Cole cry. He always thought it had to do with the circumstances of the composition itself. He imagined Beethoven deaf and soul-sick, his heart broken, scribbling furiously while Death stood in the doorway, clipping his nails. Still, Cole thought, it might have been living in the country that was making him cry. It was killing him with its silence and loneliness - making everything ordinary too beautiful to bear.