The Nothing

(album: The Tingly Circus - 2007)

I am the empress
My hair is pulled back
And I am childlike
And I am dying

Dark Eve bites Adam apple
Licks red juices from chin dribble
Purple plum and yellow night
The Lord kicking himself all the while
Kicking himself all the while

The perfume of pagans and angry angels
The scent of her mouth somehow leaked into my winter layers
Reeling, still reeling, cries outside the theater doors
Rewinder breaks, remember those clementine oranges
Chest roared hoarse (clementine oranges)
Peeling ash off a Camel Light
Smoke too many cigarettes in the back of the parking lot
Never a word spoken unless from my lips first
Reeling, still reeling from today:
That hug we made long in the hallway
Was I made animal?
As if slept & awoke
Having dreamt human form
Became by morn
What I was always
Untamed
With constant, steady urge to run

Hands hold ankles taut
Soft while lips and tongue take
Breath into lungs
Held to hold fork firm to eat from purple street
Rain fall and snow melts and everyday a baby doesn't make it
King of owls perches in my chest
I am child, I did not ask for this
But everyday a baby opens eyes awake from purple street
And the struck match burns at the point of strike
Sharp cut to blue and then the light

Lip of a window, lip of a can, lip of a lover, sea lipped on the sand
I'm a pale attempt at a full-limbed lion
Were we a travesty?
To love in the jungle of our hearts
Tangled and pulsing
Won't you tell me?
We could be Adam and Eve again
We could take our clothes off right here, right now, eat fruit into the night
Oh we did not frolic like rabbits, we ran like hares chased by hounds Until we tripped and all was lost and our hides
Oh, and our hides

And from the darkness erupts a sound loud as trumpets
Hearts rise up in song to the surface
I dare say, build your love big as skyscrapers
I bowed in her essence and when I woke I found my face in my hands
Don't hold your dead dog in a carpet bag
You will need your hands to clap
And your arms to hug people when they're crying
Sobs can be heard from the highest
But don't look up, don't turn around
It's unimportant
But what grief it is
To love someone as your own blood and watch them turn and walk away
Too unhappy to cry
This pain that decorates my chest, it is heavy as a piece of furniture That I must carry
It challenges and weakens me and when I think, my spine might split
The weight is lifted and I'll rest upon it
And the beebuzz will not fail to seduce the flowers
Thus reversing their existence, making mothers out of them
I stand motherless and vertical amongst the others
And there is something like a needle in our ears
But we are not, we are not, we are not, we are not
Fearful
Fear-ful

I am the empress
My hair is pulled back
I am childlike
And I am dying
And my two options
Are a boy who rides a horse and hunts purple buffalo
Or a child who eats PB&J in an attic
And still a fear of trusting anyone
When the nothing is in my fingertips
And when it empties out my heart